You spent a week picking the dress.

Not too fancy — but not not fancy. You thought Kyle would hate something glittery, so you picked something soft, subtle. Spent forty-five minutes on your eyeliner. Your mom took your picture in the driveway.

He pulls up ten minutes late in that beat-up Volvo, window stuck half-down, a cigarette burning low between his fingers.

“You look nice,” he says, not quite looking at you. “Like a Sylvia Plath poem.”

You laugh. Unsure if it’s a compliment. You think it is.

You drive in silence, his playlist low — something with too much reverb and no chorus. He talks about capitalism. About how school dances are performative state rituals. You nod.

You think he’s joking. You hope he’s joking.

He’s driving. Not towards the school gym — not towards the lights or the music or the line of parked cars and over-perfumed teenagers — but uphill, towards the dark.

The houses get sparser. Chain-link fences give way to long driveways and empty porches. Streetlights flicker out behind you.

“Wait,” you say, already knowing. “Where are we going?”

He shrugs, eyes on the road. “Jonah’s place. He’s throwing something in his garage. It’ll be cool. There’s a band. And weed. You’ll like it better.”

You look down at your corsage. One petal has already crumpled.

“We weren’t actually going to prom?” you ask.

Kyle glances over, brows pulled together. “Prom’s lame. You knew that, right?”

You didn’t.

But you don’t say anything.

When he pulls up, the street is quiet except for a dull throb of bass from behind the house. You can already see the silhouettes of people moving inside — warm light leaking from an open garage door. Someone’s lit sparklers in the driveway. Someone’s laughing too loud. It smells like smoke and something sour.

Kyle kills the engine, then reaches across you to grab something from the glove box — a crumpled pack of gum, a lighter, maybe a zine. He doesn’t say anything, but his fingers brush your knee as he leans back.

You follow him to the house, stepping carefully around oil stains and discarded beer bottles. The hem of your dress catches on a rose bush. You want to cry, but don’t.

Inside, it’s warm — not cozy, just crowded. The garage is strung with old Christmas lights and bedsheets duct-taped to the walls. A guy with blue hair is playing guitar with his eyes closed. Someone hands you a Solo cup that smells like fruit punch and vodka. You take it out of politeness.

Kyle disappears into the corner with a few people you’ve seen around school — theater kids, mostly, or the kind who write manifestos in the margins of their notebooks. You hover by a busted recliner, unsure what to do with your hands.

Your phone buzzes in your purse.

Texts from your friends at the gym.

Pics of the glittering decorations, of everyone laughing under the disco ball, of your name still taped to the seat at your table.

You don’t open them.

Across the garage, Kyle is quoting Bukowski to a girl in a leather jacket who looks deeply bored. She nods anyway.

You sip your drink. The taste burns.

And just when you think you might slip out — call your mom, walk home, pretend you were sick — Kyle wanders back to you, slow and easy. He doesn’t say anything. Just takes your free hand in his like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Like this — this garage, this moment, this anti-prom — is enough.

You squeeze back, just once.

Even though it’s not.