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packing her things to go.
     
    “No. That was just decent of me,” I grunted as I shoveled pizza into my mouth.
     
    “Well, thank you—on Mitch’s behalf.”
     
    “So, are you going to let me take you to homecoming?”
     
    She flushed bright pink.
     
    “For real? Are you being serious right now?”
     
    “Sure. I don’t have anything better to do. It’s your birthday present. Mitch can come too.”
     
    She bit her lip. God, that was cute.
     
    Still my sister. Still my sister. Calm the fuck down, Damien.
     
    “Yes! I’ll definitely go with you. Thank you!”
     
    She pressed a kiss into my forehead and dashed off, catching up to Mitch as they disappeared into the throngs of students making their way to class. The cafeteria slowly emptied as I finished my salad and then, finally, started in on my homework. These quadratic equations weren’t going to solve themselves, after all.

 
    SARAH
     
    The next few weeks seemed to shoot by in a blur, but also creep along far too slowly for my tastes. I was so excited to finally be going to a high school dance—I had never been asked to home coming, never been asked to spring fling, and my junior year, I hadn’t scored myself a date for junior prom either.
     
    The day after Damien proposed going to the dance, I went shopping for a dress with Mitch. We ended up deciding on a light blue, tight little strapless thing that actually made my butt look great for once. I spun around in the shop dressing room, giggling with delight until Mitch started complaining.
     
    And then, finally, homecoming arrived, and with it, my birthday.
     
    My dad ignored the occasion but Maria was kind enough to bake a small cake, which she served to the three us of—Damien, Mitch, and myself—before we headed out to the dance.
     
    “Blow out the candles, birthday girl,” she cooed in her olive oil accent as she set the neat little white frosted cake in front of me, candles shining all over it: eighteen of them.
     
    “And don’t forget to make a wish,” Damien murmured off to the side. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye: he was already nicely dressed in a closely tailored suit, with no tie—he hadn’t bothered to put one on yet. Somehow, Damien didn’t strike me as the tie type.
     
    Mitch, on the other hand, wore a truly flamboyant suit: bright maroon, with a sparkling yellow tie to set it off. I took a deep breath and blew, wishing that we would have fun, wishing that this would be, somehow, the start of something new—the start of a better life, a life of having fun, of getting away from everything I thought I knew: from my father, from the house that made me feel so down and dreary, from Laramie itself…
     
    “One more surprise,” Damien announced suddenly as we were about to leave. “It’s not a present for you, exactly, but…”
     
    As we stepped outside, I gasped: a car stood in the driveway leading up to the house. And not just any car: a gorgeous, bright red Mustang, clearly very old, but well-cared for and well-loved.
     
    “I figured we should roll up to school in style,” Damien declared as he popped open the driver’s seat. “I went ahead and bought myself this sucker yesterday, finally, after my last check from Uncle Sam came in.”
     
    “Damien, darling, you should save your money…” Maria murmured from the kitchen window, but I could see a smile playing on her wizened face.
     
    “You can have first crack at the wheel,” he told me with a grin.
     
    And so, we cruised to the dance in style—just like Damien said. He sat in the passenger’s seat, Mitch was squished behind him in the tiny back seat, and I took command of the car all by myself.
     
    This being the first major dance of the school year, it was packed: our otherwise unimpressive auditorium was filled to the brim with revelers: young men in sloppily made up suits, girls in dresses that left little to the imagination, and our teachers, who served as less-than-enthusiastic