Imagines: Celebrity Encounters Starring You

Michael Clifford Takes You to Prom

BY KASSANDRA TATE

Imagine . . .

You're sitting in the driver's seat, dolled up to the best of yourabilities in a dress you didn't want to buy and shoes that almoststabbed you in the process of putting them on. The garagedoor is open, but the car is off. Your car is compact, so it's a littlecrammed, but the way you've gotten your knees propped againstthe steering wheel is comfortable enough for scrolling throughTwitter not-so-mindlessly. No matter how many times you refreshyour feed, nothing seems to be going on that's any more excitingthan someone you follow's thoughts on an episode of some obscureHBO show. Still, you keep at it, half hoping you'll lose trackof the time. 

Losing track of the time is key—if you let the hours slip by,then you'll be far too late to even think about leaving. 

You could list around a million things you'd rather be doing tonight than going. You considered getting a job at a fast-food joint earlier this week solely so you could claim the weekend night shift. You prayed for a last-minute project from your teachers that would keep you cooped up in your room all night long. Heck, you even asked your neighbours if their imbecilic children needed a babysitter, which is a task you usually avoid like the plague.

You'll do anything—anything to avoid going to prom.

It's not like you're against the whole establishment. Prom is supposed to be one of the more enjoyable aspects of the highschool experience, and you'd like it to be so. But none of it is going how you imagined it would. For starters, your dress isn't even the colour you wanted it to be. Your hair refused to cooperate with you while you were getting ready. And like the cherry on top of a vanilla sundae you ordered as chocolate, you're the only one of your friends who wasn't able to get a date. 

Your high school prom seems like a ridiculous thing to get upset over, but you can't help it. It was a growing agitation, a domino effect. One of your friends got a box of chocolates and a sign with a stereotypical prom pun on it, and suddenly, it was an avalanche. Your friends were getting serenaded at lunch, decorations were being put on their cars, the whole nine yards. And there you were, always there to jump around with excitement.Deep down, the fear grew stronger and louder inside—when would it be your turn? You tried hard to be patient, but the closer you drew to prom, the more evident it became: You were about to be the third wheel to, like, twelve people. 

Thirteenth wheel? That doesn't sound too lucky. 

It's been a daily struggle to hide your slight bitterness. For weeks you've pent up your responses, grinning and bearing far too often through dress shopping, boutonniere picking (your friends insisted you get one for yourself instead of a corsage—how unique!), and all the usual prom-preparation festivities. You know your friends only mean the best by including you, but it doesn't make any of it sting less. If anything, it makes you feel like some sort of charity case, what with the way they pay special attention to your choices, no matter how outrageous they are. You even tested the theory once and stepped out of the dressing room in chunky heels coloured a gaudy orange chevron pattern. They absolutely adored them!

It's not that you don't have a date that's put you in a tizzy—it's that you're the only one alone. If things had gone like they previously had at formals, you and your friends would've gone stag together, no problem. But now they have people to focus on, and color schemes to match, and other things that you, being dateless, just wouldn't understand. When you aren't being cocooned with sudden, suffocating reassurance, you feel a little like white noise. 

Worst of all, what would happen when you actually got to prom and all your friends have someone to dance with? What would you do, dance around them?