By the next morning, the principal had called, police were at the school, and a man I hadn’t seen in 12 years was waiting in the office with a checkb0ok.
That’s when I learned that Ava hadn’t ruined her prom.
She’d ruined somebody else’s cover-up’
Ava hadn’t ruined her prom.
For most of that year, my kitchen table looked less like a place to eat and more like a warning. Bills sat beside my mother’s pill organizer: rent, utilities, pharmacy receipts.
Every time I paid one thing, two more showed up.
But Ava’s prom was coming.
And Ava had a dress: a dream she’d sketched when she was 12. Soft purple, tiny pearls on the sleeves, and a neckline she called « princess, but not babyish. »
Continue on the next page:
