Absent (Katie Williams)

a guess, “Lucas Hayes. He’s gotten so weird.”
    “Good move dumping him.”
    “Kelsey always knows which way the wind is blowing,” someone whispers with acid, but when I turn to see who has said this, a camera phone is in my face, and two other ponies have appeared giddily at my side. “Here they are,” the pony photographer announces, thenlowers the camera. “Kelsey, you’re still not smiling. Let’s try again: Here they are, the prom court!”
    “Well, except for Usha Das,” another adds.
    “Wait,” I say, “Usha was nominated?”
    “Yeah, she’s the fourth nominee.”
    “Wow,” I breathe, smiling. Yes, the whole thing is still absurd, but if someone is going to be prom queen, it should be Usha.
    “Yeah, wow,” one of the ponies says to me. “My reaction exactly.”
    “Of course, you know why,” another adds.
    “Why?” I ask.
    “Because of you know.”
    “She means pity,” the first one says smoothly.
    “Pity?” I say.
    “People feel sorry for her because her friend killed herself.”
    I cock my head. “And what about us? Why are we nominated?”
    The other nominees look at each other.
    “Because people like us,” one of them says slowly.
    “Do they really?” I ask. “I don’t think they do.”
    “What’s gotten into you?” the other one says, nostrils flaring.
    I shrug. “Call it honesty.”
    The ponies look like they have a decisively different name for it. I smile innocently at them. Kelsey is nominated for prom queen? Fine. Let’s see if she wins.
    “What happened to your regular clothes?” one of the bolder ponies asks as I join them in the cafeteria line an hour later.
    The others outright stare at the wrinkled T-shirt and sweatpants I pulled out of the lost-and-found bin in the locker room. Kelsey had stormed and bucked inside me, but I forced her feetthrough the elastic cuffs of the sweatpants, her head through the dank cotton of the shirt. I’d gotten the idea for the clothes from Greenvale, though I’d refrained from throwing Kelsey’s original outfit in the toilet. Just.
    Anger runs through me and, with it, a sense of rightness and power. I’ve been thinking about it all morning. I know that I can’t make Kelsey say anything she wouldn’t say herself, or she’ll just take it back as soon as she’s herself again. But I can make Kelsey do things, things that she can’t undo later. Kelsey ruined my reputation? Well, I can ruin hers right back.
    The sweatpants Kelsey now wears are a stained (with what? don’t ask) baby blue, elastic at the ankles. The shirt advocates for some team called the Fighting Pelicans, though it’s not clear what type of sports team the Fighting Pelicans are or even that the large-beaked bird is a pelican. He looks more like a vulture with a top hat. Kelsey’s hair? In pigtails. High ones. Kelsey had resisted me again and again, especially when I yanked on the sweatpants, but I’ve gotten good at planting my feet on the ground of my own will. It’s like standing still in the middle of the hall just as the warning bell rings. Shoulders bump you on every side; some people will even run smack into you, but you have to stay standing.
    “What? You don’t like it?” I try not to show my amusement as the ponies struggle to find the right answer for this question. Come on, you can say it, I think. It’s hideous. Even strangers are turning to look.
    “Is it a Spirit Day?” a pony asks hopefully.
    “Nope. I just thought I’d try something different.”
    “It’s different, all right,” one whispers to another.
    “Actually,” one of them says, “my sister’s friends at Bard dress like that.”
    “They do?” I ask. “Really?”
    “I’ve seen it. It’s, like, the kind of style where you don’t try too hard.”
    “Besides, you’d look good in anything, Kelsey.”
    They all nod in agreement. Ponies. The worst part is that they’re right. Kelsey looks okay—maybe better than okay, maybe hip, daring, cute, even—in wrinkled lost-and-found gym clothes.
    “The line’s moving,” I say, and sigh.
    I let the ponies go ahead of me, gathering their salads and soft pretzels. When I get to the counter, I slap down dessert after dessert—slabs of brownie with cracked sugar tops, squares of cake thick with frosting, two wavering towers of soft-serve ice cream—until my tray is laden with small circular plates. Kelsey rages around inside me, and for a moment, I lose my grip on the tray and drop it with a splat.