The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian Page A

but by a quarter to eight, Morgan and I and most of the other juniors and seniors from our high school were still stuck in our cars, engines running and headlights shining through the gray, waiting for the rain to let up enough to make a run for the gym. I’d never seen it come down so hard in my life. The rain made talking difficult, the sound of it thundering on the roof of Morgan’s car. Which was fine. I was honestly too nervous to talk.
    So far there’d been no sign of Jesse. When would he get here? What would happen between us tonight? His two texts from earlier were my asthma inhaler. They kept me breathing. I must have reread them a hundred times.
    â€œKeeley.”
    â€œWhat?”
    Morgan gently guided my hand away from my mouth. I hadn’t realized it was there. “Your nail polish is going to chip before we even get inside.”
    At eight o’clock, the janitor propped the doors open, as if that were the thing keeping us out. I saw inside the gym in brief but steady flashes each time Morgan’s wipers crossed the windshield. Coach Dean spread some towels from the locker room across the wood floor. The other chaperones—Mr. Landau, Ms. Kay, Principal Bundy—stood in a circle and talked for a while, but then opened up some folding chairs and sat in bored silence. Only a handful of students were inside, the ones on Dance Committee like Elise, or kids who’d had their parents drop them off right at the doors. Someone had built a soda can pyramid on the food table. A few guys tossed a Nerf football across the empty dance floor. Two girls swayed to music we couldn’t hear.
    The rest of us were trapped.
    It sucked for everyone, but way worse for us girls, I think, because the guys were in khakis and button-ups, nothing special. The girls were the ones who were dressed up. And we’d dressed for how May weather was supposed to be, not what it actually was. That meant we had the heating vents pointed at our bare legs, legs that had been bronzed with either lotions or light bulbs, but not the sun. Even though our fingers and toes were painted juicy watermelon pinks and strawberry reds, they were numb from the cold. We had spritzed on too much perfume, blooming flowers and freshly baked angel food cake, because our whole school still had that dry, overcooked radiator smell left over from winter.
    Worst of all, we were smothering the prettiest spring dresses with our winter coats.
    My down parka definitely showed the extra two months of wear and tear. I’d lost the belt that kept it from looking like a sleeping bag with sleeves. It needed to be washed, but I was too afraid it wouldn’t survive the spin cycle. Already, every time I sat down, a few stray feathers poked free, as if I were not a sixteen-year-old girl, but a molting goose.
    We would all soon learn that the cold temperatures were partly to blame for what happened later on. The ground hadn’t ever fully thawed from winter. It was still frozen five inches down, the dirt as hard as concrete. There was nowhere for the rain to go, nothing to soak it up. I didn’t know that at the time. And even if I had, I doubt I would have cared. I was just annoyed that I had to cover up my dress in the first place.
    Morgan let her head tip forward until it was resting on the steering wheel. “What if it doesn’t stop? Do you think they’ll cancel it and send us home?”
    I feared that too, but I shook my head like the idea was crazy. “They’d better not! Bundy can see everyone out here waiting. Plus, we don’t need the rain to stop. Just slow down a little.”
    Although I’d gotten more and more excited as the night passed, Morgan drifted in the opposite direction. I was a bottle of soda shook up, while she defizzed on her way to flat.
    Morgan had planned to wear her Spring Formal dress to Wes’s prom. It was strapless, mint green, with a pleated sweetheart bodice that snugly wrapped