Senior Prom night. June, 1997
Everyone around her was mute, as if too stunned to say a word.
It was the eeriest, most menacing silence she could imagine.
Calm down, Jessica, she begged herself. Calm down and try to think clearly. If you let yourself drown in a mindless panic, you'll never get yourself out of this. You'll just end up in an even worse situation.
A worse situation than this. Really? Is that possible?
She slowly rose to her feet, knees stinging from the fall she'd just taken. She'd somehow also managed to lose her shoes in the tumble.
Not that three inch heels with flimsy ankle straps were going to be of much use to her in that moment. Even if they had cost what felt like an obscene amount of money.
Her ribs had also started aching down her right side. The ache had become familiar - a reminder of the fall she'd taken not long ago at cheerleading practice.
Was that only weeks ago?
Her life had been, well, normal back then.
The life of a regular teenage girl stuck in a small town. A best friend and an annoying, overly nosy mother. A new boyfriend. A bitchy rival in her cheer squad. Nothing she couldn't handle.
Nothing like the clusterfuck I'm facing now.
What I wouldn't do to go back to a few weeks ago and make different decisions. To have my life go back to being dull. I'd never complain about it again.
Jessica looked around at the expressionless faces surrounding her, her breath tearing from her lungs in short, harsh bursts.
Why are all of their eyes so empty, she thought? Or have they always been like this and I just never noticed before?
Then she looked down by her feet.
The body was sprawled face down on the dusty ground, face completely hidden by long hair.
Dead? Alive? Jessica couldn't tell. She nudged the body a couple of times with her toe but it didn't move.
She pushed her own loose hair back from her eyes and stared again at the silent faces around her.
I guess my hair's a total mess now, she thought with dark amusement. Mom spent an hour styling and spraying it to perfection, only for it to now probably look like a bird's nest. How very unglamorous of me.
No wonder I didn't end up being crowned Prom Queen.
Isn't that the story of my life, though? Jessica Eden Heath - good at a lot of things but not quite good enough? Pretty, popular, a good student.
But never the best. Not quite.
And speaking of Her Majesty the actual Prom Queen… Jessica swung her gaze to her best friend.
Clair stood there, looking utterly frozen with shock. Even after everything that had happened, she was still wearing the silvery plastic crown. It was still nestled in her dark hair, although it was now crooked. A strap from her shimmery dark red gown had slipped down one of her shoulders.
Jessica remembered the day Clair had bought that dress with her father's credit card.
It was a strange memory to be recalling, given her life had since spiralled into such an absolute shitstorm.
Still, she remembered how the two of them had spent a day giggling as they tried on dress after dress at a fancy boutique in Carson City. How the moment Clair had put on the dark red one, she'd immediately decided it was the dress.
"Holt shit, Clair. What are you trying to do? Give the school faculty a heart attack when you show up to prom looking like that?"
Clair had laughed at her words, eyes dancing with mischief, as she'd examined herself in the store mirrors. Even the snooty boutique saleswomen had been almost stunned silent.
The red dress had clung to her slim figure like liquid, with its low cut neckline and slit to the top of her thigh. It was a dress designed for a more mature woman, not for a teenager. A woman old enough to know the true power of her allure.
And yet, Clair's one of the few who can somehow pull it off, Jessica had thought that day, half admiring and half envious. She looks like a siren in it. A dangerous flame.
The two girls now locked eyes. Clair opened her mouth as if to say something to her. No sound came out.
The most confident and assertive girl at Abbot Springs High School seemed, for once, to be completely lost for words. Clair who always had a snappy comeback for everything, stood there looking terrified. She suddenly seemed far younger than her age.
"Jess…" Clair choked out before fading into silence again.
Jessica pushed another loose lock of hair back from her face. It felt strangely wet. When she looked at her fingertips, she could see them stained red. There were also red stains on the petals of the orchid corsage on her wrist.
Not that it mattered much. The flower was now terribly crushed, the petals a jarring white against the blood.
Vivid crimson blood. Almost the same colour as Clair's traffic stopping dress.
Huh. I guess I'm bleeding, Jessica thought dully. I must've smacked my head without noticing.
She accepted the fact with a strange calm, almost as if it was happening to someone else instead of her. Usually, seeing blood would make her feel like throwing up. Now, her usually weak stomach didn't even react to the red on her hand and the sensation of blood running slowly down the side of her face.
Probably because it knows I've got way way bigger problems to worry about right now than a little head bump.
How the fuck did we all get here, Jessica asked herself in despair?
A Night to Remember.
That had been the theme of the Senior Prom, hadn't it? Banners with those words had been draped all throughout the school hallways.
A night that was supposed to symbolically close one chapter of their lives and open a new, exciting chapter.
This is definitely going to be a night to remember, Jessica thought bleakly. For better or worse, I'll never forget it.