Love in Lost Places
(Continued)
A brief relief set in when Jameska got home from the dollar store to start getting ready for prom. Tammie had taken Terry and her rambunctious little sister Roxy down to grandma's house. She flipped on the country music channel on the television in the living room and on the one in her bedroom. The band Thompson Square's song reverberated off the drywall and created a cloud of noise.
All I could think about was my next move
Oh, but you were so shy and so was I
Maybe that's why it was so hard to believe
When you smiled and said to me...
Are you gonna kiss me or not
A few weeks earlier, Jessica and Jameska broke up. Going to prom was not a romantic initiative. Jameska's date for the night was her best friend, Nikki Barnhart, a spunky 17-year-old confident enough to take Jameska's bossy demands to do her hair and make up for her. During the three hours they spent changing dresses, switching hairdos from curly to straight and then curly again and trying to put eyeliner on each other, Jameska was glued to her cell phone.
Soon after her break-up with Jessica, Jameska started texting with Floyd. He tried flirting with her a few years back, but she had someone else at the time. Finding herself single again, she pursued the interest, despite the fact that Floyd, jobless at 21, and with a vague interest in enrolling in college, recently had a baby with his girlfriend. Since sharing a kiss with him on her front porch, she thought that he would be the next one.
"I like him because he's got a kid," she said while ambling around town one day. "I really want to have a kid one day and I like that he's got a baby girl."
With prom time approaching, Jameska felt proud that she had convinced Tammie to let Floyd come over after prom. In phone calls and texts to him, she boasted this accomplishment. She said Tammie had stopped treating her like a kid for once. The girls decided that they would only stay at prom for an hour, if the music was good, so they could come home and meet up with him.
Moments before heading to prom with her friend Nikki Branhart, 17, Jameska steps away from the excitement of her cousins and her mother, right, to continue arranging her plans for afterwards. Her hopes were to cut her time short at the prom and convince a boy to come over and hang out.
This year's theme was "Under the Sea." After a quick stop to take pictures in her grandma's car-part-littered driveway, they made their way to a transformed middle school gym. Glouster is in Ohio's poorest school district, but the evening's decorations took them away from the poverty, beneath a poly-fill canopy made to resemble waves, lined with balloons and fake tiki bar decor.
After paying $7.50 at the door, Jameska only took her attention away from her cell phone long enough for a trip to the chocolate fountain set up at the end of the buffet table. Floyd had agreed to come over that night, but now he was starting make excuses. He said that he was going to a party with his cousin; that Jameska had not been answering his texts quickly enough.
Both girls had stopped going to the high school whose prom they were attending two years ago. They were getting bused into Tri-County Career Center just up the road in Nelsonville, where they were receiving a vocational education in health technology. Now at prom, they felt out of place. They had fallen out of touch with their friends. After 20 minutes, they decided they were done.
They trudged back up to Jameska's house, already dismantling their evening's presentations. Uncomfortable shoes in hand, Jameska was yelling at Floyd on her phone.
"Why are you copping a freaking attitude with me?"
As she walks through the living room, absorbed in the imminent disappointment of her night's plans falling through, Terry yells at her for leaving the side door open. Unimpressed with the volume he was taking, Tammie yells at him for trying to show off.
It takes three minutes to undo the work the girls had put three hours into. Jameska changes back into a gray tank top and ripped jeans, make-up and hair still intact, and takes a breath. Floyd was supposed to be her after-prom date. She calls everyone she knows who owes her a favor to see if they can pick him up from his mom's house 45 minutes away. If he did not get a ride, she would not be with him tonight.
At 10 p.m., with two hours left at the prom they ditched, Floyd texts her to say that his cousin will give him a ride, and that he is on his way. Jameska's mood improves. Giddily she reacts to every set of headlights she sees drive by and every text she receives. She chews on her press-on nails and dangles her feet.
"Does this look sexy?" Jameska asks, perching her plastic fingernail on her lip. The long french manicured tips with starry glitter details are glued over her chewed-down nubs. She can barely handle the keypad on her phone as she texts Floyd at 11:30 p.m. to see where he is.
He never showed.
After a day of cleaning, babysitting, walking around town and texting, Jameska lays in bed watching the country music channel. "I know I'm only 17, but I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life..." she said.
