the things that make you panic

May 2083 (prom) - Dallas Deppiesse (18) and Lucy Harris (16) // Elijah Roberts (17) and Melissa Fortney (15) // Vicky Garth (18) // Summer Phoenix (18) and Tyler Jackson (19).

*** Sorry, I just realized three of my four girls have long dark hair, so I hope that doesn't get too confusing - none of them are wearing the same style. The first section kind of banks on you already knowing who these characters are, so new readers might want to read the linked posts above first. Before you think you're going crazy, yes, the first half is written in a wandering second person POV - and I intend it that way ;)

Box of tissues warning, and maybe NSFW?...

Soundtrack, "Details in the Fabric," by Jason Mraz/James Morrison. ***

You're young. You're growing up by the very minute, but inside, you're not much different from one minute to the next. Not deep down, where it counts, where you still feel the same things you've always felt. You're still the same girl you've been all along.

You borrowed this dress, but your parents wouldn't know that. And they wouldn't notice he's wearing the same suit he wore last year. Tonight you have no curfew, but only because your school is hosting a chaperoned after-prom party. Your parents also don't know you aren't going to it. And you're not going to prom either.

He wanted to take you somewhere nice, not that cheap place in the city center that rents by the hour. You aren't sure if this is allowed, so you'll duck behind a wall while he checks in. And you probably don't need to run up the stairs - you're not being chased, no one is here to stop you. But you run anyway, and then he does too, both of you running like fools.

It's what you love about him the most. He's your best friend, and you can be fools together. You don't know how to be foolish without him - you've never had to try.

Your parents have given up on you anyway, the way you've thrown yourself into him. They think you're a lost cause. You're lost, yes, but you're still the same girl you were before all of this, the girl they raised, smart, spirited, and full of life.

All of that, and a hopeless lost cause for this young man. Your best friend, who is brilliant and sweet, a little too skinny and ridiculously smart, who holds your heart in his hands and promises not to break it, and who can even be funny when nobody suspects it.

And he's often quite serious too. He says this like fact, like just another of the thousands of facts he knows, "You're so beautiful."

He's said it a thousand times before, but it never grows old. You hope he'll want to keep saying it thousands of times more.

You've never looked more beautiful in your life. You know this, not because your boyfriend tells you so - he's your date, and you figure it's his job to tell you so. But before you left, your daddy said you were every bit as beautiful as your mother, who is the most beautiful woman you can think of, but he said you were miles more beautiful in spirit.

But when your boyfriend tells you, "You look really pretty tonight," it doesn't pale in comparison. Even if your dad did phrase it better. Because besides your daddy, this might be the first time any real boy has said that to you.

You aren't your cousin, after all, and you're certainly not your mother. But maybe you are a little bit pretty. Or maybe you clean up nicely at least.

It almost makes you worry he's been deceived.

Deceived by this dress, by these curls in your hair. Has he forgotten you're in the garden club at school, or that you take pictures of bugs for fun?

Once he remembers the truth again, will he throw you back to where you came from?

You're a throw-away girl, and you always have been. You'll try to be a little bit more, but of what you can't even imagine.

You're just you, which isn't enough, or most precisely, you can't be her. Not even if you could try. And you know you'll never be good enough, especially if you keep trying to live up to all these things that you're not. It isn't your fault your parents didn't have time for you.

It isn't your fault you weren't what he wanted.

But you still remember all those words he said. And you know you weren't just imagining them. He wrote some of them down, inside little pink cards, attached to these roses you've let dry and harden in your room. A fossilized love, artifacts of this brief and wonderful time, long gone extinct.

You feel loneliness to the point of terror.

You feel loved to the point of terror. Because how he loves you can't possibly be matched.

How could it? He's your best friend, the first boy you ever considered loving, grown into the only man you ever want to love. He says he could never forget you, and you believe him. But it's terrifying.

So you'll make sure he remembers. You'll paint yourself on every synapse of his memory, enough to last every day of these next two years, enough to bring him back to you.

"Don't worry," he tells you, so you'll try not to worry. Not tonight at least.

"Go to sleep," he tells you, wrapping his arms snug around your waist. "I'm right here."

So you'll sleep, so you'll try not to worry. Because if this isn't meant to last, then what could?

Most things don't last, if you think about it. And you do think about it, too hard most of the time. It's the hard truth of life, things don't last. Things end. Things stop and quit and get lost.

You're still waiting for something to hold on to, something valid, something real.

You're afraid he might actually like you for real.

So you'll see if he really means it. You'll show him who you really are.

In all your dorky glory.

You'll be shocked to find he likes you that way. Or even that he's a bit of a dork himself.

Because you can't resist who you are, and you're not going to change, where it counts, from one minute to the next.

And he wouldn't want you to.

So you'll just be yourself, here, with him.

Because you're perfect just the way you are.

You always were.

***

People are going to prom tonight, but Summer won't bother. They're dressing up in gowns and heels, getting their hair done up only to fall out halfway through the dance. She's been to prom twice now, and she's over it. She's over high school and the false security of it. Little girls, floating through the world with ideas and dreams in their heads. It all comes crashing down - it always crashes. Nothing ever turns out the way you think it will. There's always a catch, a trade-off, a sacrifice, so that even if you did get what you want, it wouldn't be golden and shining like you imagined it. It would be real, and real is never golden and shining.

Beau called her first, to tell her that Tyler joined the recruits. "Good," she said, her first reaction. But she didn't mean it. It wasn't good when she thought about it, it was terrifying. So she comes to find him, bringing all of their broken disassembled love, and she stands here in the lobby of his dormitory to wait.

It was all supposed to be so much simpler than this, but she did everything wrong, at every step of the way. All she wanted was some space, but it ate itself alive from the inside, and it fell apart.

She was angry at first, but not now. By the time she sees him there is no anger left, only regrets, sorrow, and apologies.

"Stay," she says. "Is there any way you can stay? Don't go, and I'll marry you. We'll get our little house with the yard for Mary Jane."

His mouth begins to curve into a smile, but he stops it. "You don't mean that," he says.

"I do mean it," she says. She means it enough. She means it if it will keep him here, though she already knows that it can't. She means it the way she would have meant it in time, if things had unfolded differently.

He shakes his head. She doesn't know if it means no, he won't marry her, or no, it won't work. Either way, it means no.

But then he smiles, taking her shoulder in his hand. "It's fine," he says. "This will be good. This will be okay. I'll go do this thing, and you'll still love me, and I'll still love you, and we'll just stay out of each others way for a while."

As he takes her chin into his fingertips, she starts to cry.

"I just made a mistake," she says. "I'm so sorry."

"I know, it's okay," he says.

"No, it's not okay," she says. "Don't you realize, you're going to war? You could die! People die, Tyler, and they don't come back. You don't know what that feels like. It fucking sucks!"

"I won't die," he says, which sounds nothing like a promise and only floats in between them, as uncertain as hope.

"You can't promise that," she says. "You can't know."

He doesn't answer her but only tucks his face into her hair, turns her body to him, and holds her close.

"You didn't even want to go out with me," she says, managing a weak laugh. "You were in love with Stephanie. We were babies, how were we supposed to know that was the start of our whole lives?"

"I know," he says.

"I screwed it all up," she says.

"No, you didn't," he whispers in her ear. "You're fine, Summer. You're perfect."

His voice is deep, rippling warmth from her ear through her shoulder, reverberating in her body like echoes. "You're perfect," he says again. "You always were."

*******

notes: forgive me for being experimental, lol! I hope the first half was easy enough to follow, because I know I don't normally write these stories in second person. But I felt like it suited the first half of this one, and the sort of loose portrait of prom night, and how it happened for each of these kids.

I'll post the outtakes and gameplay notes separately in a little bit (tomorrow, maybe...), because they're a whole different mood, lol! And there's a lot of them ;)