Dressed in Dreams by Tanisha C. Ford

Author:Tanisha C. Ford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

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Now, I was sharing this rite of passage with a sea of other members of the class of 1998, black high school graduates poised to take over the world. In my haste to exit Fort Wayne, I had sped through homecoming and prom and graduation. Graduating from high school was so expected for me that I hadn’t even taken a pause to reflect on the fact that it was an accomplishment, one that several in my family had never achieved, one that my grandparents had fled Alabama for me to be able to attain. When I agreed to come to Myrtle Beach, I had no clue that Senior Week was a thing, but I quickly became a member of the Myrtle Beach student council and made up for all the celebration I’d skipped in my senior year back in Fort Wayne.

We strolled around that night as music blared and underage folks imbibed secret stashes of Tanqueray and Absolut. I wasn’t a drinker. But the energy of it was intoxicating. We passed Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and ran through the Nightmare Haunted House, a narrow space more like a two-floor apartment than a house, full of horrors, concluding with a masked man dressed as Leatherface chasing us out with a chainsaw. We laughed guffs full of adrenaline as we made our way down the street. I met all sorts of folks, high school football players headed off on college scholarships and hilarious girls Crystal knew.

And then I met my prom king: Darius Parrish, a chocolate-skinned, baby-faced boy Crystal had graduated with. He was rolling with a crew of guys. I was instantly drawn to his low southern drawl; he sounded similar to the guys in Atlanta but with a bit of Geechee in his voice. Crystal told me Darius was a gentleman. And he was laid back and not playing the scene like his more boisterous homeboys. He was sharp-dressed too, wearing a crisp black-and-white-striped Polo shirt over a white ribbed tank and some dark-wash jean shorts with creases sharp as razors and a pair of super-clean white sneakers. His voice was so low that I had to lean in to hear him. His breath smelled fresh, like the Doublemint gum he was chewing. We became inseparable, joking lightheartedly and hugging as we took over the street with our massive crew. It felt good to have someone else to talk to because I felt like a permanent third wheel with Crystal and David all booed up.

For the next three days, we partied and bounced around the beach and made beelines through hotel suites and cheap restaurants, binging on McDonald’s burgers and crab legs and convenience store junk food and super-size Slurpees, and seeing groups like 112 and Allure in concert. I made several friends, and we exchanged usernames, vowing to add each other as AOL buddies just as soon as we got back to our dial-up connections. I couldn’t believe this was my new life.

As it turned out,

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