Sarah Ockler
Prom is the most important night of your life.
That’s what everyone keeps telling you, anyway. A night to remember, they say. Something you’ll reflect on with fondness and joy and maybe a bit of longing, too, when you can no longer stuff that thirty-something ass into your teen-something poofy-sleeved dream dress.
Hey, you only live once, right?
Screw that.
Thing is, you don’t have a boyfriend. And yeah, you could invite one of your guy friends from another school, or go stag. But…stag. Do you really want to spend another weekend bobbing around the dance floor in an awkward, gyrating clump with your few remaining girlfriends, arms entwined, belting out those heartbreaking Bon Jovi ballads? You’re practically a college woman, for the love of hair spray. Who needs prom?
Um…pretty much everyone you know, apparently.
And though you don’t solicit their to-go-or-not-to-go advice, your classmates are happy to dish it out. You’ll regret it, they warn! You’ll miss out on the most magical, momentous night of your life!
Honestly, you feel kinda sad that some people believe the most magical, momentous night of their entire lives could possibly be over and done with before their eighteenth birthday. I mean, you haven’t even experienced a proper orgasm yet, let alone Indian food or marrying your best friend or a road trip to the Grand Canyon or climbing the highest mountain in Colorado or writing a book (all coming in due time). But this won’t stop the rite of passage do-gooders from trying to convince you otherwise, what with their vivid depictions of your promless future and all. Stopping them would take an act of God. Or maybe…
The Grateful Dead.
The Dead are coming to town on prom weekend, you gleefully discover! Soon the entire county will be overrun by patchouli-scented, pot-smokin’, peace-lovin’ Deadheads, and if magical moments are what you’re after, you can’t think of a better crowd to inspire a few.
The decision is easy now. You’re ditching prom to hang out with the Dead. And your best friend, Melissa, is coming with you. Neither of you has enough cash to buy tickets, but that’s okay. You’ll show up anyway, hang out on the grounds, and catch a few riffs from the open-air arena.
When the big night arrives, you pack Melissa’s old Civic with blankets and snacks and all your raging, naked excitement and head to the stadium, high on rebellion and big-eyed dreams. The grounds are alive with cars and buses, tents, girls in long skirts, and boys kicking hacky sacks and blowing bubbles into the sky. Campfires and hot dogs and earthy sage spice the air, and you close your eyes and take it all in, memorizing every detail.
Melissa pulls the gold Civic into a disorganized tangle of cars that stretches into the next county. There’s a faded red and white NO PARKING sign, but you come to the only logical conclusion: It’s a concert. They can’t possibly tow everyone.
You leave the car beneath the sign and meld into the crush of barefooted, hairy-legged Deadheads meandering toward the stadium. People sell beer out of giant ice chests; others sell weed out of Whitman’s Sampler boxes. You pass by these industrious, homegrown vendors until a better offer catches your attention.
“Free hugs,” a twenty-something guy calls out. He’s cute; seems like a fair deal. You take him up on the offer. He’s a good hugger, too, and you get your money’s worth. Perfect, since you’ve only got fifteen bucks to your name.
You find a good spot on the grass outside the stadium and stretch out on a blanket the color of the sky. You and Melissa watch the sunset, sipping two sugary wine coolers that her brother snagged for you. Music floats on the air, drifting on pale purple smoke into the night. All around you, baby Deadheads toddle naked through the grass while women braid their hair and men sway in trippy, rhythmic circles. You fantasize about them. About dropping out and falling in with a new family, traveling the country, following the music. You’re a writer, after all, and there’s a story in that kind of life. You’re a hippie, too, deep down where it counts. You want to grow vegetables and braid your hair and walk around smelling like the earth. You want to learn the words to all the songs, to understand the stuff that Jerry Garcia sings about.
To unravel the mystery of why good music always makes you cry.
But that’s for the future, maybe. Tonight, you’re just happy to be there.
Sometime after the first set, the stadium doors open, and security calls you forth, ushering in the poor, ticketless masses for a chance to see the stage. The Dead, it turns out, welcome all. You’re entranced. When you reach the top of the stairs and step out into the stands, your heart flutters. Jerry’s leading the band in this crazy jam, part jazz riff, part folksy drum trip. There are no words, just rich music, and everyone in the packed stadium sways and spins, hands floating up like little birds. Colored lights illuminate the stage, and though you’re way up high, the energy reaches you and fills you with an inexplicable human connectedness the likes of which you’ll never again feel. Soon, your hands float up like the rest, and you dance.
At the end of the show, you drift on the current of the crowd, flowing outside like water. You don’t speak, but you look at your best friend and smile, eyes shining. It’s that kind of night, and you drop your last fifteen bucks on a T-shirt to commemorate it. “Toke up, Doc,” it says under a red-eyed Bugs Bunny doing just that.
(FYI, the shirt isn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser with school officials that Monday, or with your parents, but that’s a story for another letter.)
You and Melissa are so enraptured that you don’t immediately notice the cop looking out across the field, standing in the empty spot where Melissa’s car ought to be. The illegally parked vehicles have been impounded, he announces. You can reclaim them at the station for a fee of one hundred and eighty-five dollars.
You look at the shirt in your hands.
That’s all, folks.
You’re stranded.
You could take your chances at Camp Deadhead, you think. Put that fantasy in motion, find a nice dreadlocked family and share their wool blankets until it’s time to shove off at dawn….
No. Look around. Take a deep breath of tea-scented air and assess the situation. There’s trash everywhere, cans and bottles overflowing from barrels, dotting the grass like aluminum flowers.
Five-cent-deposit-earning aluminum flowers.
Free Hugs Guy, still standing where you’d left him earlier in all his dreadlocked, tie-dyed, hugs-for-all glory, overhears your predicament and offers to help. He doesn’t have any money, either, since he didn’t make a profit that night, but he’s not as reluctant to approach random strangers for help. He’s also fluent in Stoner. With his guidance, you scrounge up a quarter for the pay phone and call Melissa’s mom, who’s accustomed to your stranger-than-fiction antics and who, critical to the plan taking shape in your mind, owns a minivan.
I’m not gonna lie. Free Hugs Guy and his utter selflessness are long gone by the time the minivan rolls up. It’s three hours of backbreaking labor to collect enough glass and metal, using your sky-blue blanket as a net and heaving it, one trip at a time, into the cavernous minivan. By the time you cash in at the grocery store, you’re bleary-eyed and delirious, but you earn nearly two hundred bucks—four thousand cans’ and bottles’ worth.
Enough to free the car and snag a box of doughnuts for the ride home, way too many hours past curfew.
That show was one for the archives.
You witnessed history that night. Two years later, Jerry Garcia will be dead. The prom show will end up being the band’s last appearance in town.
And you were there.
In some ways, your classmates are right. You will look back on prom night with fondness and joy. And for the rest of your life, people will swear that prom was the most magical, momentous night of their lives, and they’ll wonder, as they did then, whether you regret ditching the dance. But I promise you something: You’ll never regret it. Not once.
Because you got to dance with the Dead.
And twenty years later, in the quiet that follows your most magical, momentous nights, sometimes you’ll catch yourself singing an old song with your eyes closed, and you’ll remember those crazy riffs and the sky-blue blanket full of bottles and you’ll smile, your heart full and content.
Sarah Ockler is the best-selling author of Fixing Delilah (2010) and the critically acclaimed Twenty Boy Summer (2009), a YALSA Teens’ Top Ten nominee and IndieNext pick. When she’s not writing or reading at home in Colorado, Sarah enjoys taking pictures, eating cupcakes, hugging trees, and road-tripping through the country with her husband, Alex. Check out her latest young adult novel, Bittersweet (2012), and visit her at SarahOckler.com.