Paper Lanterns

Chapter three

1989 - May

Prom. Junior prom. It was the only thing I could hear from every corner of the classroom. The girls were giggling with their friends as they chatted animatedly about their dates and their dresses. The boys seemed to be a bit more interesting as they were talking about who was going to spike the punch and what afterparties they were going to hit up afterwards.

But at the end of the day it was a lame junior year prom. Senior proms are sappy enough, but a pointless junior prom? Hard pass by me. It's not like anyone really wanted me to go anyway.

A lot had changed throughout my junior year of high school. My circle of outcasts had disbanded and were swallowed up by different friendship groups. Tayla was one of the ones who joined the popular kids.

It wasn't like the movies where a former loser becomes popular and turns on her old friend to make their life a living hell. It was a bit anticlimactic really. She started sharing a class with one of the girls in that circle and eventually sat with them everyday at lunch. We weren't enemies, but we weren't really friends anymore either. It was all very neutral and boring.

Her new friends were still a pack of bitches though. One time before Tayla had fully broken away from my friendship circle I had sat next down to her at lunch. Her friends then all got up in a dramatic fashion and encouraged her to leave too, leaving me alone and humiliated in front of the entire cafeteria. They had also found out about Eugene and I, so I was now known as the desperate loser with an even bigger older desperate loser for a boyfriend. But I guess that wasn't a lie so I couldn't completely fault them for those rumours.

"Are you going with anyone to prom, Tayla?" I heard one of the girls pipe up from the other side of the classroom.

"Yeah, I am. I'm going with a pretty amazing guy." I heard her voice swoon from behind me.

For some reason this conversation was unbearable to listen to. Hearing Tayla talk about Mike was depressing. I guess it reminded me of how much I took a fleeting moment in my life for granted. I had only known Billie for two years, but the first year of our friendship was nothing short of magical. We seemed to have a special bond that was similar yet completely different to what Tayla and Mike had. Tayla gushing about Mike was a glaring reminder of how I had been fucking up my friendship with Billie Joe lately.

Tayla wasn't the only friend that I had been drifting apart from. Billie and I pretended we were still close as ever, and I don't know about him but I certainly knew that wasn't true. Billie stopped voicing his criticisms of Eugene as he promised. But he wrote a song about it instead.

You see, the very first song he ever started to write was a number called 'Why Do You Want Him?' which is about a girl who is dating a boy who isn't very nice. This was before I met him so I'm not sure who it was originally about, but it was only ever partially written. Apparently my relationship with Eugene inspired him to finish it and the song was now about us. Billie sent down a shitty quality cassette tape of the song recorded in someone's garage. The audio was distorted but the lyrics were clear enough.

Eugene found out about the song when I played it to him one day during a fight. I found evidence that he had cheated on me with some beastly looking closer-to-his age college girl. I blasted that song through my walkman headphones to show him there was recorded proof of others thinking he was a fuckwit. We eventually made up when he claimed to me that he only hooked up with her before we were together, not after. I'm not entirely convinced that's true. I also have a hunch he's hooked up with one of my outside of school friends called Kat, but I have no proof.

Billie feeling passionate enough to pen a song about my crappy relationship was proof it disturbed him and the unspoken truth was that it was causing a strain on our friendship. We rarely called each other anymore and our letters were far less frequent.