For our February Book of the Month contest, we asked you to tell a fictional or non fictional story about going to prom — OR about your anti-prom activities. Today, we’re delighted to share the two winning entries from our contest. Both winners will receive a signed copy of Prom & Prejudice from author Elizabeth Eulberg.
Our first winner is Maria M., who broke out of the traditional format and wrote a cute, clever poem:
A-lways more of a lone wolf,
N-eeding to go to prom, well,
T-hat was just not my style.
I-nstead, I used myP-rom savings to buy my surfboard Sid.
R-iding the waves
O-n that prom weekend, was
M-ore fun than dancing with any boy.
Our second winner is Sandy L., who wrote a sweet piece about the many contradictory aspects of prom:
I am kind of afraid of prom, and I am aware of how ridiculous it sounds.
Prom is fun as an idea, an abstract thought in the future. It’s the thought of pretty dresses and shiny limos that makes it exciting. When really, you pay money to sweat together with a roomful of your classmates.
I recalled looking at my reflection through my pink Disney princess dresser mirror before I left the house. Dolled up in make up, I was surprised at what I saw: a stranger, yet I could relate to her somehow. She wasn’t quite an adult yet, but she wasn’t quite a child.
I step out of the limo after my friends, trying to pretend my legs are shaking from walking in high heels.
I want to be excited for prom, have been excited prom for a long while, have raved on about it to my friends – but I am still afraid.
The dimly lit room is a flurry of shiny sequined dresses and ugly pressed ties, girls and boys scattered across the dance floor dancing and bumping and grinding. I follow after my friends, smiling, but I still feel so confused. What I see, here and now in this moment, is an ending. When this night ends, the magic will be gone. The conclusion to my high school years, to the life I’ve been living all my life, and the beginning of something new that I don’t have a name for – I can only hope that there is something beautiful waiting there.
The music slows, stops, and shifts. And then that song comes on. That song that is full of such nostalgia – the one my first boyfriend once sang to me, the one my friends belted at the top of our lungs on long car rides, the one that won us regionals at choir, the one that still draws me in now as I gaze at the dance floor.
And when my friends extend a hand and ask, “Wanna dance?”
I relent and decide to live in the magic of now.
Congrats to our winners!
Novel Novice 
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