****

With the knowledge that the girl of his dreams loathed prom, Tim began to dread his family’s weekly spaghetti dinners, during which he was inundated with questions about his prom plans. While most high school seniors were being grilled about what they were doing post-graduation, his family could only focus on what he was doing on April 15th, the unofficial day when boys asked girls to prom.

“Have you considered organizing a flash mob?” a now-balding Donny asked. “You know, if the internet was more popular in my day, I’m sure as heck I would’ve gone ‘viral.’”

Donny had not made it too far from home since prom. He, like all the rest of the elder Spognardi brothers, worked at the family’s carpet store, hopelessly selling wall-to-wall carpeting in a hardwood-and-laminate-floor economy.

“No, no, no,” Jimmy protested. “Flash mobs are passé. Here’s what you gotta do: Fill the school pool with goldfish…” He spread his hands as if he were holding up a cardboard sign. “Of all the fish in the sea, will you go to prom with me?’”

“I can’t fill the pool with goldfish,” Tim mumbled as he prodded at his plate of untouched noodles. “It’s, like, an animal rights thing.”

“Everything is so goddamn PC these days. Not like when I stole a horse,” Donny grumbled as he stuffed a meatball into his mouth. A touch of sauce dotted his shirt, but he didn’t notice.

“What he really needs to do is listen to his heart,” Doug insisted. “Think about what the girl you want to ask likes. The right technique of asking will come to you.”

“Is that how you figured out you wanted to pull the fire alarm? Because the girl you asked liked fire?” Tim asked his brother.

“Oh no, no. I mean, I dunno. I never asked her if she liked fire. I just didn’t want some other guy to ask her, and the fire alarm was conveniently located.”

“Well, what about you guys? What inspired you?”

Donny thought for a second, then let out a breath that puffed up his cheeks.

“Mostly wanting to steal a horse,” he shrugged. “And looking cool, I guess.”

“Yeah, definitely looking cool was a big one for me,” Jimmy piped up in agreement, seemingly forgetting about the adult diaper.

In that moment, Tim stared into the basket of garlic bread and realized everything his brothers stood for was meaningless.

****

Awakened, Tim approached the morning of April 15th with zero outrageous antics planned. No goldfish. No flash mobs. No diapers. He decided he would tell Violet she was right about prom being a beacon of capitalist greed and heteronormativity. Then, presumably he thought, she would be so impressed by his change of heart that she would take him into her arms and they would make out with the ferocity of lovers who know that at any moment they could be torn apart by the sound of the first period bell.

As he entered the school, Tim noticed a pair of girls wearing matching T-shirts that said, “NO.” Below a row of lockers—covered in giant sheets of neon construction paper that spelled out “NO NO NO”—a group of girls sat cutting into a grocery store sheet cake with “NO” piped out in frosting and passing out slices on paper plates. Suddenly, everywhere Tim looked, girls were wearing the shirts. Even at eight in the morning, these girls had somehow maneuvered to bring in pizzas that spelled out “NO” in toppings. And not just pepperoni, but olives spelling out “NO,” and pineapple tidbits spelling out “NO.”

Confetti shaped in tiny Ns and Os fell onto Tim’s shoulder, and he turned to find even more girls, triumphantly shouting, “NO! NO! NO!” Then he saw their target: A boy dressed as a zombie holding a handwritten sign that read, “Sarah, I’m DYING to go to prom with you!”

“What’s going on?” Tim asked him.

The boy desperately grabbed Tim by the shoulder.

“Whatever…you’ve got planned….” he choked between breaths, “they don’t want it…they don’t want to…go to prom?”

A look of horror, exaggerated by the finest, most pallid zombie makeup Hot Topic had to offer, fell upon his face, and he retreated to the boys’ bathroom, attempting to avoid another bombardment of confetti.

Just then, Tim noticed Violet across the hallway. She looked dazzling, with “NO” spelled out in stick-on rhinestones across her neck and carefully scribed in eyeliner across each eyelid. Each time she blinked, it was as if her face was a sign flashing, “NO-NO.”

“Violet!” he called.

She glanced at him for a second, then rolled her eyes.

“Violet!” Tim persisted. “Violet, I just wanted to tell you…you’re right.”

“Right about what?”

“About prom being a sham.”

“OK. Thanks.”

Tim looked at her expectantly.

“So…” he pondered. “Do you want to hang out instead of going to prom?”

“Um…I can’t. Sorry.”

“Well, why not?”

“I’m just, like, really busy with things right now. It’s probably going to take me a while to get this eye makeup off so…”

“Yeah, yeah. Totally. I understand. It’s cool.”

Tim didn’t understand at all. He had an inkling that maybe it didn’t really take girls weeks to remove eyeliner. But who knows? Girls are mysterious creatures, Tim thought. One year they’re completely dazzled by the idea of being elaborately asked to prom, the next they’re all convinced it’s a conspiracy between Big Sequin and the government. Girls say one thing and mean another…

Tim watched as dozens of them swarmed the hallway and shouted, “NO!” ♦