Don’t Trope Over Your Shoelaces

I really don’t know what to say. My story isn’t 1000 words, so here’s a rant: I haven’t written anything in a while. I got a notification that someone new followed me and I am always so incredulous at the fact that real people are seeing my work and like it. I’ve been doing other, bigger projects lately, but I would love to come back to doing short stories every Friday! I hope you enjoy this extra short story. It was such a fun thing to write after working on things that never seem to end. So close! Ah I just need a few more words… There. Enjoy!

CW: Underage drinking and some minor swearing.

Perhaps the theme is a bit irrelevant. When you thought of a middle school dance you didn’t necessarily think: SAT themed dance. Sounds fun. This is particularly ridiculous since most of the students think SAT stands for Shit and Tits. They were exceptionally disappointed when they arrived to find the gym decorated with tests and not toilet paper and breasts. No one was quite sure where the theme had come from. the dance committee was made up completely of the AP, three girls who definitely pretended to like each other, a kid who got roped in for detention, Bloom and me.

The dance itself was a roaring success. The attendees had taken it upon themselves to redecorate, as well as add the uncontrollable variable of alcohol. It was a disaster on many counts. 1: half the student body got drunk for the first time in their lives. 2: all the bathrooms ran out of toilet paper. 3: Bloom disappeared. To be fair, I wasn’t entirely sure she had ever existed. I ask the dance committee if they had seen her. Their responses ranged from: “Who the fuck are you” to “I gotta pee.” I knew they were an unreliable source, but there wasn’t many other people I could ask.

As far as I know I don’t have many friends, and neither did Bloom. It was one of the things that drew me to her in the first place. I had no classes with her, and never saw her at lunch. The first time I saw her was at the first dance committee meeting. The only place I saw her was at the dance committee meetings.

Part of being in the dance committee was that we each had to find a date first. I found this rule to be extremely old fashioned and arbitrary. This was the only thing the AP had any sort of structure around. I, of course, had no one I could ask. Most people hated me, or at least they acted like they hated me. At this point I was pretty sure I was in love with Bloom. Not that I had any evidence to base that off of. My parents weren’t in love and hadn’t been since I’d met them. I’d never been in love before. Nor did I have a friend I could confer with. The extent of my knowledge was that Bloom was a pretty and smart girl and I wanted to go to the dance with her.

Another cleverly stupid rule was that you had to ask the person using something to tie it into the theme of the dance. For example: I suppose someone could give another person a fake test where the only question is: “Will you go to the dance with me?” Of course since the meaning of SAT was confused for Shits and Tits, there were a lot of bare chests, toilet paper, and some badly baked brownies that looked suspiciously like the aforementioned shit. Sadly the person with the brownies did not get a date to the dance. I wanted to ask Bloom, but I had no ideas besides the test one, and I refused to do something so bland. I did ask her everyday if she had a date yet. She always said no and then proceeded to look at me expectantly. To which I responded with a horrible thumbs up. It was as though I were saying: “So glad you’re lonely and have no friends. Hope you don’t get a date to the dance!” It was something that stayed in my head all night.

You can see how it would’ve been surprising to find a folded piece of paper in my locker one morning. On the inside of the paper there were hundreds of questions, followed by rows of tiny letters and circles. There was no name. In advisory that day, I filled out the test. Nothing happened for a while after that.

On the morning before the dance I stared at the paper in my underwear. The white suit I was going to wear hung on the mirror in front of me. Suddenly I saw the letters above the circles I had filled in. WILL U COME TO THE DNCE WITH ME. Then on the bottom row: BLOOM. I was ecstatic. I dressed in the suit faster than I had ever put on any pair of jeans before.

The dance was loud. Our hard work of decoration and party games had already been trashed by the time I arrived. The AP was practically in tears at the chaos. I saw all the people from the dance committee. I saw people I went to preschool with. I saw all the staff members. My favorite teachers. But Bloom was nowhere to be found. I cursed my preoccupied brain for not finding the message earlier.

The actual dancing part of a dance is a myth. They shouldn’t false advertise these things. Call it for what it is: a school sanctioned middle school party. I never plan on going to another “dance”.

Bloom wasn’t at school the next day. Or maybe she was and I just didn’t know since dance committee was over. I did dance committee again the next year in hopes that Bloom would too. But she didn’t.

I never saw her again.