Her name was Melissa Garber. Mel. Melonhead, as we liked to call her. While we liked to let boys hold our books, she liked to hold doors open for them on the way in to school and the supermarket.
On a Tuesday in mid-March, she volunteered to be the head of the Washington High School prom committee. We all chuckled as she raised her big man-hand into the air.
What is she doing?! we thought.
Oh, that poor girl, Ms. McCrary thought. She shook her head.
Melonhead was the kind of girl who would never get a date for prom because she wasn’t attractive enough to be asked and had so close a relationship with her grandmother that she wouldn’t dream of asking a boy herself. THE HORROR!
We watched her with open mouths as she voiced her opinions on what perfect prom decorations should be… all the yellow pomping and the golden balloons and the twinkling Christmas lights. We saw her lips moving, but her voice was muted by our surprise and terror.
Anyone but Melonhead! our exasperated minds shouted. ANYONE!
“Any more volunteers?” Ms. McCrary asked. Surely someone else will raise their hand.
Someone else MUST have prepared a plan, the rest of us thought.
We looked to Candy Loveall, captain of the cheerleading squad. She shrugged. We sat in stunned silence. Eyes darted, faces glared, but no hands rose desperately into the air. THAT is how Melonhead Garber became the president of the prom committee.
~
The next week, Candy announced at lunch that she was not going to prom. We all stared at each other from across the table over half-steaming piles of our uneaten “manager’s specials” and winced.
“I’m not going to go with that stupid Melonhead in charge of it all!” she declared, her green and blue ribbons whipping through the air with her emphasis on the “st” in “stupid” and the “h” in “head”. Tiny droplets of her spittle landed in our eyes and on our cheeks, but we didn’t mention it. She walked away, and some of us wished we could be Candy with her long legs and short skirts. Boys simply wished they could be with her, enjoying her invaluable assets. We kind of wanted that too.
Maybe we won’t go either, we thought. Like one of those “boycotts”.
~
The next day, we bought t-shirts and scrawled “Boycott the Prom” across the chests in Puff-paint. We hesitated – just a bit – as we put them on in our bedrooms the next morning, and walked the WHS halls wearily until we saw Candy by her locker sporting hers proudly (and tightly!) over her green and blue cheerleading uniform.
Oh, Candy, we thought. An inspiration to us all.
We watched in disgust that afternoon as Melonhead dragged a large folding table out into the middle of the commons. She unfolded it, the muscles in her arms bulging larger with each loud clank. She sat the table upright, and we cringed as she unrolled a piece of yellow butcher block paper that read, in slanted, manly handwriting “Prom Tickets. Prom Royalty Nominations.”
How hideous, we thought. Surely, if the prom looks anything like that sign, it will blow. We looked at each other and laughed as we walked away from the table, secretly figuring out when and how we would purchase tickets without being seen by Candy or each other.
~
“You have to be going to prom to nominate anyone for prom royalty,” Melonhead croaked in our faces, a wicked smile splitting her pock-marked face as she recited the declaration to each of us individually as we snuck towards the table.
Oh no! If we nominate Candy, she’ll know we’re going to go to the prom!
We were exasperated. We turned to Melonhead and smiled with baited cordiality, acknowledging the cleverness of her insidious plot. We purchased our tickets, but none of us put Candy’s name into the ugly brown box labeled “Prom Royalty”.
~
She sat across from us in the pow-wow formation on the floor of the Holiday Inn’s Presidential Ballroom as we pomped yellow centerpieces with canary yellow tissue paper and embossed little golden picture frames with the prom theme in glittery yellow letters: “THE BEST IS YET TO COME”. It was the night before prom.
What a crappy theme, we thought.
Melonhead eyed us all and let out a short, deep chuckle. Candy Loveall sat in a far corner of the room sniffling as she helped Ms. McCrary fill yellow balloons with Hi-Float and helium.
Poor girls, Ms. McCrary thought. She shook her head.
~
We entered cautiously into the middle of the ballroom the night of prom, an ocean of yellow.
This is kind of pretty, we thought. “This is nasty,” we said. We looked around the room and found a place to go and take our heels off. We sat around a table drinking sparkling white grape juice and chewing on mixed nuts as we watched the sea of our classmates dancing in the center of the room to Unchained Melody. When the song ended, Ms. McCrary walked to the middle of the stage.
“I will now announce this year’s prom royalty,” she said. We stood up and looked hopefully to the stage. We could see Candy and her date at the other corner of the ballroom with her date. She looked sad. Ms. McCrary announced the prom king, and soft applause rippled across the room.
“And our prom queen is…” she paused and looked out into the audience, “… Melissa Garber.” The entire ballroom froze in silence. Loud horse-clop footsteps emerged from somewhere in the yellowy shadows behind us. Melonhead emerged. Her hair was up in a tight bun, flecked with gold glitter. Her dress was the color of dirty lemons… layers of yellow chiffon floated down her square frame, making her look like an old piece of cake. She beamed as she marched bowlegged across the stage. She looked out into the silent crowd and found our eyes. She smiled.
“Thank you all… so much.”
