The Prom Read online

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Chad Beguelin, Bob Martin, and Matthew Sklar

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  Based on the Broadway musical The Prom.

  For more information, visit theprommusical.com.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  Ebook ISBN 9781984837530

  Version_1

  I love you, Mommy.

  Thank you for giving me the world.

  — SM

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A chat with Dee Dee Allen and Barry Glickman

  Excerpt from a New York Times theater review

  1. Edgewater, Indiana: Emma

  2. Edgewater, Indiana: Alyssa

  3. Subterfuge: Emma

  4. Strategic: Alyssa

  5. Pitchforks Strongly Encouraged: Emma

  6. Camouflage: Alyssa

  7. Enter Stage Left: Emma

  8. The Invasion: Alyssa

  9. John Proctor Problems: Emma

  10. Mama Who Raised Me: Alyssa

  11. Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?: Emma

  12. Something Begun: Alyssa

  13. Razzle, Also Some Dazzle, Plus, Pound Cake: Emma

  14. It’s Raining on Prom Night: Alyssa

  15. On the Steps of the Palace: Emma

  16. The Nicest Kids in Town: Alyssa

  17. Step Out of the Sun: Emma

  18. Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes: Alyssa

  19. Their Voices Soft as Thunder: Emma

  20. Small Town in Slow Motion: Alyssa

  21. Look to the Western Sky: Emma

  22. For Good: Alyssa

  23. Pride in the Name of Love: Emma

  24. Begin Again: Alyssa

  25. Juliet in Converse: Emma

  26. Let’s Put on a Show: Alyssa

  27. Prom Night Again: Emma

  A chat with Dee Dee Allen and Barry Glickman

  Acknowledgments

  More about the musical, the show creators, and the cast of The Prom!Notes from Co-Writer Bob Martin on The Prom: the musical

  Interview with the creative team

  About the Authors

  Broadway Score! scores a chat with Dee Dee Allen and Barry Glickman on the set of their new show, ELEANOR!

  (cont. from this page)

  Glickman and Allen invite me into the inner sanctum, backstage at the Alliance Theatre. There are signs of the show in production everywhere. A row of foam heads sports the steel gray wigs and dental prosthetics Allen wears to transform herself into Mrs. Roosevelt, and of course, FDR’s wheelchair sits in a corner, its seat taken by a cigar (real) and a pair of glasses (prop). Despite the serious subject matter of the show, Drama Desk winner Glickman and Tony winner Allen are all laughs with each other—and us.

  BS!: What does it mean for one of Broadway’s grand dames—

  BG: I guess this question is for me, Dee Dee!

  DA: Just try to cut me out of the spotlight, honey!

  [We laugh and rephrase.]

  BS!: What does it mean for two of Broadway’s greats to come together on a show like ELEANOR?

  DA: I truly feel like I’m changing lives. Don’t you, Barry?

  BG: Indeed. I’ve come to realize that there’s no difference between a celebrity and the president of the United States.

  DA: By the time I get tuberculosis in act 2, even the people who are dead inside will be on their feet.

  BG: And knee-deep in tissues! If the audience doesn’t leave depressed, we haven’t done our jobs.

  DA: It’s power. Literal power.

  BG: Not to quote a certain show that destroyed a producer, a pop star, and a comic book hero—but with great power comes great responsibility.

  DA: And I think we’re great enough to handle it.

  Excerpt from a New York Times theater review

  If FDR Could Stand for This, He Wouldn’t

  . . . Dee Dee Allen inhabits Eleanor Roosevelt in the same way a demon inhabits the monstrous Annabelle doll from the self-titled horror film series, but with less grace and charm. Allen doesn’t so much present the first lady’s activism to the audience as she shoves it down their throat: a Molotov cocktail of American flag soaked in syrup and set on fire.

  One would think next to Allen’s shrill, scene-chomping antics that Glickman would offer a respite. One would be wrong. Glickman’s FDR just might be the most insultingly misguided and offensive performance this reviewer has had the squirming misfortune to endure. The aging Glickman has none of the former president’s fire or finesse, and the actor’s attempt at a mid-Atlantic accent is so laughably lost, it lands somewhere west of New Jersey.

  If you were considering buying a ticket, do yourself a favor. Find a way to contract tuberculosis instead. It’s a terrible way to go, but worlds better than watching this Eleanor hack herself to death in slow motion.

  1. Edgewater, Indiana

  EMMA

  Note to self: don’t be gay in Indiana.

  Actually, that’s a note for everybody else. I’m already gay in Indiana, and, spoiler alert, it sucks.

  I told the internet before I told my parents—on my YouTube channel, Emma Sings. It’s me, my guitar, and mostly cover tunes of whatever’s popular at the moment. People leave more comments if you sing songs they know, and I like that. I don’t have a lot of friends, so those little digital hellos make me feel less alone in the world.

  I’m not trying to get discovered or anything like that. First, that literally never works, and second, the idea of fame terrifies me. I already feel like everybody knows my business. Of course, that’s because they actually do know my business. One slip, and it was everywhere.

  So, this is what happened.

  Picture it: the summer before freshman year. Picture me: mousy and shy, with thick-rimmed glasses that give me owl eyes. I’m at a youth group picnic hosted by the Vineyard, which is a church. You know, one of those new churches with branding and youth pastors with drum kits.

  They really tick off churches like First Lutheran and Missionary Free Baptist and all the other traditional places of worship packed into Edgewater, Indiana. The cheesy signs in front of them that used to say stuff like WHAT’S MISSING FROM CH CH? U R! started to get very snarky when the Vineyard opened.

  Naturally, this means all the teenagers want to go there. High-level rebellion, right? No, Mom, I’m going to the cool church, where I can wear jeans during the service! And naturally, this means that all the youth group invites that used to lead to punch and cake parties in dingy fellowship halls suddenly lead to big outdoor picnics that sti
ll feature pretty unfortunate food, because it’s still a church pitch-in.

  That’s how I end up with a plate of mini meatballs in barbecue sauce. I’ve heard too many horror stories about potato salad and egg salad and macaroni salad and basically any salad that uses mayo as glue, and I’ve also read that baby carrots are rejected regular carrots that are bleached and shaved down, so those are also a big no.

  A Crock-Pot full of steaming hot meatballs doesn’t exactly say summer fun (maybe in Sweden?). But the contents seem safe. I loaded up on them, but now I’m trying to figure out how to eat them without making a mess. These things are impervious to plastic forks and knives, which is what I have on hand.

  There’s a line at the food tables, and I don’t really care to stand in it long enough to get a spoon. Also, I kind of don’t feel like drawing attention to myself by cutting in line with an excuse, Oh, I just need a spoon! Even extremely adorable people get side-eye for jumping ahead in the food line at a church potluck-slash-picnic, and I’m awkwardly cute at best.

  Additionally, who eats meatballs with a spoon? Meatball Spooner wouldn’t be the first name people ever called me, but in this moment, it feels like it would be the worst.

  Spoiler alert: it’s not the worst. But I’ll get to that.

  So, I’m standing there, trying to ninja food into my face, and she walks up. Wavy auburn hair, bronze skin, dark eyes, and she stops. I stop. The world stops. Probably the universe stops; I can’t explain the physics of it.

  I can only explain the magic, because in that moment, Alyssa Greene looks at me and turns into a goddess. A brilliant, kind, smart, funny goddess in shimmery lip gloss that I suddenly want to taste.

  You guys, I’m not surprised to find myself hard crushing on Alyssa Green. I’ve always liked girls. I was once a teeny, baby lesbian. In sixth grade, I was crazy into Madison from Talk to the Hand, and not because I wanted to be her friend. And now, I’m a regular, teen-sized lesbian. I have thoughts about Ariana Grande (impure thoughts), and I feel like if I could meet Lara Jean of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, I could help her start the sequel, To All the Girls Who Eclipsed Them.

  But I am surprised when Alyssa reaches past everybody at the dessert table and presents me with a giant skewer. With a blinding smile, she says, “This is the only thing that works.”

  I’m not surprised that she’s nice, but that she noticed me. That I’m somehow actually visible to the most beautiful girl ever to breathe air. The surprises keep coming, because she touches my hand. And stands with me while I impale meatball after meatball. She even lets me share one with her. RIGHT THERE. AT THE CHURCH PICNIC.

  On the lawn, people play cornhole—which is legitimately the name of a bag-tossing, target-hitting game—and Christian rock blares from a speaker, courtesy of Pastor Zak’s iPhone playlist. The sky is endlessly, perfectly blue, and Alyssa Greene puts her phone number into my phone. Then she makes me text her, so she has my number, too.

  That night, I recorded a TSwift cover for Emma Sings. Everything inside me was so fantasy and cotton candy that I told the world I was in love with a beautiful girl without a thought. Without the slightest hesitation. I uploaded, I picked a cover thumb that looked semi-decent, and I went to bed.

  My mother woke me up.

  I’m sure one day this will be a hilarious story, but she shook me awake and shoved a printout of my YouTube page into my face. And when she demanded, “What is this?” all I could say was, “I don’t know!” because I didn’t!

  “We didn’t raise you like this!” she yelled.

  “Like what?!” I asked, because again, literally woken out of a dead sleep with a piece of paper crammed halfway up my nostrils.

  My mother rose up to her full, not all that impressive height of five foot four. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Emma.”

  But I didn’t! They didn’t raise me to . . . sing on the internet? Post videos in the deeply awesome salmon jammies my nan got me for Christmas?

  I mean, to be fair, after a couple of seconds, the old brain kicked in. Last night, I posted a video full of shameless, unfiltered heart-eyes for a girl who’d given me a marshmallow skewer. (And an extremely passable rendition of “Our Song,” if I do say so myself.)

  And after I’d posted, someone in town must have watched it and—their delicate sensibilities inflamed—immediately informed my mother. (Mom printed out my profile page like it was a recipe for Crunchy Ramen Noodle Salad; there’s no way she found it on her own.)

  And in that moment, I guess I was too stunned to be scared of my parents, whom I knew, for a fact, to be lifelong members of a church that officially hated gay people but in practice was “too nice” to say anything about it in public. I must have taken silence for approval, which historically has been an extremely bad policy position. So I told the truth.

  “I just like her,” I said.

  “Well, you can just stop,” she snapped, as if I could cancel the gay like Netflix. “Not in this house! Not under my roof!”

  If this were a heartwarming, Chicken Soup-y kind of story, this is the part where I’d say, yeah, it was hard for a while. But eventually my parents remembered that I was their precious only child, and they loved me unconditionally. They joined PFLAG and started wearing really embarrassing T-shirts at pride parades that said FREE MOM HUGS and FREE DAD HUGS. I brought my girlfriend home, and by graduation, they’d stopped calling her my “friend.”

  Sorry. Your soul is going to go unsouped this time.

  They argued about it for weeks: conversion camp or eviction. And ultimately, they let me take my guitar and my school stuff, reclaimed my key to the house, and kicked me out. All my clothes, my laptop, the box of birthday cards I’d saved since I was six—well, I heard they burned what they couldn’t donate. What a couple of drama queens, right?

  So now I live with my grandma, Nan, two blocks from my parents’ house, in Edgewater, Indiana. I’m the only out queer kid at school, and it’s a good thing I still have my YouTube channel.

  It’s aggressively ordinary, and I know I’ll never go viral. But I do have subscribers, and their responses feel like friends. Like-minded, queer friends. I need them. I need them so desperately, I treat it like QUILTBAG Pokémon: I gotta catch them all.

  There are places where it’s in to be out. New York, San Francisco . . . imaginary places, in imaginary lands, far, far away from here. But Indiana is not one of those places. So yeah, that’s my advice to you: don’t be gay in Indiana, if you can absolutely help it.

  There’s nothing here for you but heartbreak.

  2. Edgewater, Indiana

  ALYSSA

  You’ve probably never been here, so let me tell you, Indiana is a beautiful place.

  Sometimes at night, the moon is so bright behind the clouds that the sky is pearl silk. I get up at five A.M. to go to school, and the roads are lined with silvery fog. Just before the sun starts to rise, as my bus makes a left onto State Road 550, everything turns purple, then lavender, then pink.

  In the summer, we have acres of fireflies. There’s a pond in the woods that’s clean enough to swim in. Raspberries and mulberries and blackberries grow along fences, free for the taking. Come fall, we have a riot of autumn color and apple orchards where you pick your own. Have you ever had a piping-hot fried biscuit with apple butter? Deadly good.

  We have the kind of winter you see on Christmas cards. Rolling fields, blankets of white, the whisper of snow falling, and nights so dark, you can see the Milky Way. On the clearest days, the fields drift on toward forever. It’s a silvered, glittering expanse, stretched until it surrenders to an icy blue horizon.

  Indiana is small towns, and Fourth of July parades, and basketball. A lot of basketball. Way too much basketball, actually. It’s the state sport-slash-religion. If you make it to high school without swearing allegiance to the IU Hoosiers or Purdue Boilermakers, they throw you
in a pit of voles for all eternity.

  (Special dispensation given for the Fighting Irish; you’re allowed to love Notre Dame, but you’re also a little suspect.)

  Supporting our school team, the James Madison Golden Weevils, is key in Edgewater. When we have homecoming, it’s not for the football team. Nope. They’re ranked third to last in the state; they’re dead to us.

  Homecoming is for the basketball team. The prom court is for the basketball team. The pep rallies, the bake sales, the wrapping paper sales, the industrial-sized-cans-of-flavored-popcorn sales, all dedicated to b-ball. Go Golden Weevils!

  Consequently, the basketball team is the reason that prom tickets are strictly rationed. Between varsity (first through third strings), and junior varsity (two strings), and freshman prep (four strings!), we have a guaranteed hundred and fifty athletes, with a probable hundred and fifty athlete dates, and the fire marshal says we can’t have more than four hundred people in our school gym.

  Thus, when the Future Corn Keepers of America set up their table to sell prom tickets in the Hall of Champions (aka the front hallway with all the trophy cases), they have three essential items:

  A cash box. This is a cash-only dance, and don’t even try to bring a check from your parents. The FCK spit on your mom’s Precious Moments checks.

  A stack of tickets designed by the one kid in school who knows how to use Photoshop well. (Well being the operative word; everybody around here knows how to filter for Insta, but when it comes to text, it’s like a subreddit got font poisoning and started puking Papyrus and Comic Sans.)

  The list. The list has two columns: Your Name. Date’s Name. They are inextricably entwined; there are no stag tickets to our prom. The list is the reason why I’ve been having a serious discussion about prom with my girlfriend.

  It’s our senior year; this is our last chance. And I do, I really do want to go and dance under a cardboard moon and aluminum foil stars. I want to look into her funny hazel eyes that sometimes turn blue and sometimes green, depending on what she’s wearing. I want to wrap my arms around her and let the whole world slip away.