GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, MEN WITH PRETTY DAUGHTERS DO

The prom queen puked and her tiara was taken away on the spot. The runner-up riled us the remainder of the year by acting like she’d been the original chosen one; and an original anything, she was not. The girls nominated for prom queen are never original. We all know that.

But Jackson and I had a real decent time. We danced together and apart. We puked and had nothing taken away from us. We’d forsaken dinner at the Rib & Chop House, where everyone else went eating, for Subway. Sure, we could have spent the money on corn-fed Angus or what have you, but we bought a couple of bottles of damn good whiskey instead.

Being the life of the party takes sacrificing.

No sweat.

Besides, with all the puking at that prom, you could see—I mean really see— how much beef had been ate up for nothing. I bet if youda put all the puke together, youda seen two whole head of cattle wasted. At our high school most of us recognize the value of a dollar and meat.

What’d Jackson and I waste? Six bucks and a foot-long.

Not too shabby.

Jackson looked fine. He wore a camouflage tuxedo that I’m sure a hoard of guys envied despite their girlfriends’ snickering. Jade Gelles showed her exact true colors, is all I can say. You know, a surname’s not for nothin.

I sewed my own dress, and if I’da known Jackson was gonna pick me up in his daddy’s jacked-up truck, I mighta let the hem down some. After being taken round to chat with his parents and grandparents and stepparents all at his brother’s house, I was getting back into the rig and I am dead sure their entirety got a full-on beaver shot.

Jackson says, “No, they didn’t. They wasn’t looking at you. They was seeing how high I’d glossed the truck.”

Though he jokey calls me LiLo now.

It’s not like I’m going to marry Jackson or nothin, cause he’s got no drive. So if his folk didn’t compliment on the work I’d put into looking pretty, it’s no hair off my knuckles. I looked pretty, or Jackson wouldn’t have let me in his daddy’s truck in the first place. And that’d be a whole-nother story, with my daddy in it.

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