The Real Prom Queens of Westfield High Read Free

repeating Grace’s clever comment over and over. By the time school let out everyone was in on the joke and I’d been forever christened the Elf Ucker.
    The whole thing stayed in everyone’s minds, not just because it was wonderfully humiliating, but because it was a shining moment for Grace Douglas, a girl who I assure you does not lack shining moments. She’s so epically popular that, in spite of everything she’s done to me, even I wrote her in as number one on my Prom Queen Survey. Obviously some sick impulse to get a perfect score on my anonymous pop quiz.
    I think I maybe could’ve lived the whole Elf Ucker thing down if I was the type of girl to just get over it and pretend nothing happened. But for days afterward, I was so aware of people laughing at me that I couldn’t make eye contact with anyone. And then, just when I started to think things might go back to normal, the first elf showed up on my desk in homeroom.
    When I walked through the door, the creepy-looking thing was leering at me with his long green legs bent at odd angles. I actually screamed when I saw it. Some quick wit called out, “What’s the matter, Depola? Your elf hookup coming back to haunt you?” So then that story was the highlight of everyone’s conversations. It must’ve been a pretty slow week among the popular clan.
    After that, it became a solid running joke for everyone to sneak elves into my locker and backpack. The creepier-looking the better, and occasionally with added phallic appendages. Ick . The holidays were a freaking nightmare.
    Grace and one of her lackeys named Deena approached me by my locker one December morning and politely serenaded me with a Christmas Carol that had been rewritten called “We Wish You a Tiny Pecker.” They wiggled their pinkies at me the whole time they sang it and ended with “We wish you a tiny pecker, on an elf who’s not queer.” Despite the song’s obvious lack of creativity and hint of homophobia, it inspired widespread humming of the chorus wherever I went. Grace even managed to get it on the morning announcements.
    I still remember the way my big ears perked up when I heard, “This next message is for Shannon Depola.” I couldn’t believe it when the school’s a cappella group started humming a harmony of the tune over the loudspeakers.
    After the holiday break, I came back feeling hopeful that the teasing was behind me, only to be greeted by a floppy elf flung at my head as soon as I walked through the school doors.
    It was when the mocking surprise gifts started to include garden gnomes with drawn-on permanent marker penises that the brutal fantasies started.
    They began with a rather generic image of my hand slapping Grace Douglas across the face. Next it graduated to me pulling her shirt over her head and shoving her down the school’s stairwell. Eventually, in my mind, I was pretty much beating the shit out of Grace Douglas every day.
    Of course, I continued to submit to her in real life, practically bowing in reverence as she strode down the hallway. Hunky boyfriend, Luke, on her arm and an entourage of worshipers at her back. Grace Douglas was as untouchable as I became. Except her untouchable was in the holy sense and mine was more like what happens when you’ve got an extremely contagious disease.
    My friends started fleeing in acts of social status preservation that I really couldn’t blame them for. Marnie was the only one who never distanced herself. I started trying to look as plain as possible, since wearing something as simple as lipstick or a cute pair of shoes would instigate a fresh round of teasing. “Ooo, Depola,” I’d hear, “all dressed up for one of your special little friends?” It’s really no wonder I was driven to wearing aggressive footwear.
    The final straw was when some clown hacked my profile, changed my status to “in a relationship,”