Surviving High School

couldn’t handle the worried look on her mom’s face right now.
    “Fine,” said Emily’s mom as she turned and left. “Fine.”
    As soon as she was gone, Emily’s father returned to his tirade.
    “The idea that you’d throw away everything I’ve worked for, all for some idiotic, schoolgirl crush—”
    Emily wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. Ben was more than just a crush, and what did her father mean by “everything I’ve worked for”? But what was the point in speaking up? It wasn’t like he would listen.
    “Starting tomorrow,” he said, “you’re telling that boy it’s over. I’ll be up all night, figuring out a new schedule for you, and maybe, just maybe, I can get you in good enough shape to make it through Thursday’s Quals.”
    “Please,” she said, and she felt hot tears beginning to swell under her eyelids. “Please—”
    “Give me your phone,” he said, and Emily, scanning the room, realized he’d already taken her computer. Once the phone was gone, her last link to the outside world would be gone. “Now.”
    She dug her cell out of her jeans pocket and handed it to him. After he’d scanned her last few texts, Emily’s father shook his head disgustedly and slipped the phone into his pocket. She wondered if she’d ever see it again. Then he turned, slamming the door behind him. Emily sat on her bed and brought her knees to her chest. It wasn’t until then that she remembered the blue homecoming dress. She’d left it right there on the bed. Now it was gone.
    She leaped up and frantically searched the far side of the bed, hoping against hope that it had fallen into the crack between the mattress and the wall. No luck. She pulled off the sheets and quilt. Still nothing. She riffled through her closet—maybe her mother had hung it up. She flipped through theclothes, hoping to toss aside her ugly T-shirts and come up with a handful of soft blue fabric.
    No. No. No!
    She reached the end of the closet, turned back, and searched the rest of the room one more time before she finally gave up and collapsed into a ball on her barren mattress. In her gut, she already knew it: Her father had taken the dress.
    Ancient religions had predicted an apocalypse in 1000 AD . Scientists had warned of massive computer malfunctions in Y2K. Others predicted that the end of the world would come in 2012. For Emily Kessler, the world ended one cold November day.
    At least, that’s what it felt like.
    The apocalypse began before the first bell even rang. Emily opened her locker, found a bouquet of roses, and turned around to find Ben smiling at her.
    “Don’t look so surprised,” he said. “Compared to hacking the school’s computers to switch that newspaper headline, figuring out your locker combination was easy. I was worried when I didn’t hear from you Sunday, so I decided to—”
    “It’s very sweet,” she said. “But—”
    “But you’re allergic to roses?”
    “No.”
    “But the color red fills you with inexplicable, boiling rage?”
    Why did he have to make this so impossible?
    “But I can’t go to the dance with you.”
    Now it was Ben’s turn to be surprised.
    “You can’t—what?”
    “Saturday night when I got home—my dad was waiting up for me.”
    “He knows?”
    “Everything.”
    “Okay,” he said, still smiling. “This is okay. We’ll deal with this. Sneaking around is going to be a little tougher, but I’ve always managed before.”
    “Ben,” she said. “No.”
    “We’ll make it work. You’ll see. We’ll come up with something. I know we can figure out some ‘class assignment’ for you to do the night of homecoming. I can probably even get you a teacher’s note or something. And then for our weekday dates, we can just play it by ear.”
    She shook her head. “You don’t get it. It’s too hard, Ben. I can’t go on like this. Look at me, I’m a wreck. I can’t be with you and still be the person I want to be.”
    A small crowd of students was starting to gather as they talked. They watched Emily and Ben and whispered to one another.
    “So that’s it?” asked Ben.
    “I know I messed up. You worked so hard the last couple of weeks catching up on homework and studying for tests so you could take me to this stupid dance—”
    “It’s not stupid,” he said. “I don’t know why I ever said that. The truth is, I really want to take you.”
    “Ben, you don’t understand. I can’t.”
    “You won’t even try to go with