The beginning of this chapter has been reworked a great deal, so the "snippet" I published before the New Year may be unrecognizable. But this is a first draft, after all! I tried to cram all the goings on at the prom into one chapter, but that didn't work--there were too many things that needed to happen and be explored. So this is the first half of the prom night extravaganza, and I think it contains some very sweet and somewhat unexpected moments--one of them is related to the song above.

The end, as I've said often, is near. And these warm-hearted moments are what I'll miss most when I'm don writing this story. May we all find a Colton to brighten our lives--or BECOME the Colton who brightens the lives of others. Even better!

"Parents, if that limo went to pick up your kids from prom and discovered they'd run off to another prom, here's the skinny. Responding to a flurry of live feeds from kids attending the DeGrazia High dance fest, students from all over Arizona hit the road hoping the hits would keep on comin'. And they did..."

That's how they reported it on TV news that night. And yes, they said all over Arizona, not just Tucson. We had kids from miles and miles away dancing in the parking lot after a while. Cops had to put up road blocks, thanks to the damned Internet.

HuffPo called it "an impromptu EDM extravaganza," but it was crazier than that. See, some fool tweeted that Daft Punk was there. Yeah, like that would happen.

But the tweeter had seen another tweet showing this trick we played on everybody when we first arrived, me and my little prom crew. It was pretty dope, actually, and that's the first thing that got live streamed and YouTubed and Facebook'd to death that night.

We had the first DJ, just a local guy they'd already hired, make all this static like his sound system was having some serious technical issues. And then the whole place went pitch black. We almost couldn't get into our places on stage because we were cracking up so hard at all the kids screaming and running around. Only, after what happened at that concert in Paris awhile back—the terrorists shooting all those people--they were right to freak out like that, now that I think about it. What a horrible world we live in now, I swear.

But right after the lights went out, the Vegas DJs took over and played those notes everyone hears in their heads in that Close Encounters movie—that's the Daft Punk part that started the big migration. It's exactly how they started all their live concerts back after Coachella.

So some DeGrazia kids realized something cool was about to happen and started whistling and yelling, "Yeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" But there were still a lot of kids who were just totally terrified. Until they heard that eerie electronic voice go: "ROOOO-BOT!"

Now, if that was all you saw, maybe you would think Daft Punk was actually there. Except, if you know anything about Daft Punk at all, the one thing you know is they don't hardly play live, ever. And yet, everybody's always thinking they're playing somewhere—Burning Man got double burned one year, too, by rumors.

Just so you know, though, I totally get why everybody's always praying they'll show up somewhere. They're on a whole 'nother level. Nobody has ever dared to compare themselves to Daft Punk seriously. It'd be career suicide. You can't do what they do. You can't even figure out how they do what they do. You just can't. Best to just genuflect and move on. Don't believe me? Here's a link to the best concert of all time—don't even try to argue with me, just watch: https://vimeo.com/10851313

But basically, after that first "Robot," it goes:

"Eeeeeeuuuuumannnn

ROBOT

Eeeeeeeeeeeumannnnn

ROBOT"

...over and over 'til the beat kicks in and the joint gets to jumpin'.

That night, once the beat started bumpin' and the lights went back on, the kids hooted and hollered like banshees because me and my crew were up on stage with the DJs, robot walking toward the steps on either side of the stage in single file. And Lakesha's dress looked like it was part of the light show, the way the colors kept changing. That's something we didn't plan, but it was a big hit, that's for sure.

From then on, those Vegas DJs proved Che had been right about them. They mashed up everything from Parliament Funkedelic to Led-effing-Zeppelin into these sick EDM mixes that even the adults couldn't resist dancing to. We had cops out there with us after the first half hour or so. Which was probably the best way to keep an eye on us actually.

Better still, those crazy DJs had invented all these games and things to keep the party going full tilt. For prizes, no less. Runners up got a bigger swag bag full of all kinds of jewelry and electronics and fancy "toiletries" and whatnot but the folks who came in first place got those Beats and Monster headphones and even PlayStations, right? They didn't let that cat out of the bag 'til the first game ended, and man, from then on, nobody was "too cool" to play anymore.

My favorite contest was "Dance Dare." The idea was for students and teachers to pick teams of six to dare each other to do dances from any decades they chose. At first, I thought the teachers would win for sure, because the kids wouldn't have anybody who knew dances from 'way back, but the teachers had old folks and some young bloods they could call on to do all the new moves.

But it sort of backfired on the teachers, actually. First off, the hipster guy they'd picked to do the modern dances was useless. He just sort of rave bounced no matter what dance he was challenged to do. It was actually sort of funny after a while. He was a good sport and it also reminded us that not all Black people naturally know how to dance real good.

And then they got that assistant principal guy—the one who had such a crush on Wyatt--to do the DLow Shuffle but we couldn't really tell what he was trying to do. Dude just could not get those legs goin' at all. Looked like Frankenstein trying to get his dance on up there.

I knew damned near all the dances, so I helped our side cheat a lot. But I only did that because that guy who wolf whistled at me that first day in Wyatt's class, the one with all the makeup, started coaching the teachers.

He was wearing a tux, by the way, but it was very tight and looked sort of more like a pants suit a woman would wear. Blue, with black lapels, with blue glitter hair and eyebrows to match. I thought it was pretty fly, actually, but a few parents were mad that we didn't see that as a dress code violation of some kind. He was right on that line, since it was technically still a tux and therefore, "male' attire. Smooth move.

I one-upped his ass but good when they challenged the student team to do the Bop, though. I knew it really well because a lot of the pimps we used to hang out with would Bop to songs like "Green Onions" over at the diner we all went to late nights after the girls got off the pole.

Not the Bop we do today, by the way. The Bop that was the hip step back in the 50s and 60s in some of the big cities, I guess. They'd grab the girls and show me how to get 'em to "switch" that ass for you out on the dance floor.

I think that's the whole reason why they learned it, to watch women's butts wave back and forth. It's pretty clever, how that dance makes a booty move. This is as close as I've seen it on the Net, with some other dances thrown in: https://youtu.be/pU-DyZmzjCo

Anyway, I grabbed Lakesha and Maria both to show those people how it was done. And when I spun them, their big wide dresses fanned out like those Fred Astaire babes' dresses used to do. And people "ooooo'd" and "ahhhhh'd" and clapped, thinking we'd choreographed that, too, probably.

Best thing about that whole night, though—for me at least--was how Lakesha changed into this graceful, gorgeous woman right before our eyes. The brassy bitch I'd met the first day was still in there, I'm not gonna lie. But the dress and the hair and the makeup had shown her she could change into one helluva woman if she wanted.

And from what I saw the rest of the night, she was going to be a scaled down version of that woman from that day on. I guess it'd be hard to go back to the old one after you'd seen how the world just bowed and scraped to the new one.

I made sure I bowed real low to her and offered my arm as we left the floor. Just wanting her to feel a man's reaction, so to speak.

And Maria goes, "Well, just forget I was even out there!"

And the old Lakesha told her, "He only took you out there 'cause wun nobody else askin'!"

But I offered Maria my arm, too, and said, "I asked you because I knew you'd move like that."

And Maria stuck out her tongue at Lakesha as if they were still in class. Which made me laugh, of course. To be totally honest, I didn't want them to get all grown up on me just yet. It would've been a pretty boring evening for me if they had.

Okay, it couldn't have been a boring evening with the music and the contest and the celebs I'd promised taking pictures and signing autographs. They had CDs and pictures to give away, and some of them danced with people, too.

I have no idea who the hell they were, of course—you know how I am about current music. We've been through that before. But from what I could tell they were mostly new artists that the kids didn't know all that well, either. Which didn't stop them from making a beeline over whenever the DJ announced that somebody had arrived.

Got so crazy that we had to hit the slow jams to get everybody to finally go to their tables to eat something. And when we got to ours, Lakesha grabbed this big name card in front of her plate and started fanning like a church woman.

"I bet I look like sum outta the jungle by now," she said. "Hope they wun expectin' to get none o' them crystal things back tomorrow."

And Maria said, "Girl, they musta Super Glue'd that do. There's not a hair out of place yet."

"You lyin'! Lemme see!" Lakesha said. And both Maria and Carla held up compact mirrors so she could see the miracle Joie's make-up team had pulled off.

"What's this stuff?" another one of the boys, Victor, was his name, asked as the salad arrived. He picked up a piece of lacy looking lettuce from off the top and frowned at it like he'd never seen lettuce before in his whole life. Which given how bad the produce was over their way, he might not have.

"Just eat it, fool," Maria said. And then she looked at me and said, "It's rich folks food."

Lakesha took a big forkful, smiled at me, and said, "Well, I like rich folks food."

"Girl, you'll eat sum out the garbage," Carla said.

And when we all started laughing, she went, "For real. She see somebody thow away a sandwich or sum in them big garbage cans in the cafeteria, she dive right for it."

"These children will waste a whole tray fulla food!" Lakesha said. "How you gon' do that with all them people out there starvin' to death?"

"They cain't eat it if you eat it!" Carla teased her.

"Ladies, y'all hush'n' let the man eat his food in peace, please," this boy named Lamar said. He was good looking. Kind of thuggish around the edges, but I gave him extra points for having his name and graduation year cut into his fade in back.

Though this dude Brandon's long curly ponytail was the big girl pleaser. Besides me, he was the dude all the girls at my table wanted to get with, apparently. Which was sort of interesting because he was sort of quiet and shy and didn't say hardly anything. That might've been the appeal, given the crude dudes they were all used to.

But also, he was Blaxican, and that sort of boy band hot that any teenage girl would chase after. I remember he'd been the first person they ran after the day I bought their tickets, to make sure he'd be in our little party.

He had a date, though. The only white girl in our party, Renee. Who also didn't say word one the whole night, almost. Probably not wanting to get slammed for snagging the best looking brown boy in the room like a lot of Black and Mexican women really hate to see, still. But I think me being there with Lakesha sort of evened things out.

So I said, "I'm havin' a blast, actually. You guys likin' it so far?"

There was a loud "YEAH," from all the full mouths around me. But the dinners they got weren't all that fancy, actually. A healthy slab of prime rib or half a chicken and some kinda of oven baked potatoes--you know. Banquet stuff. We just hadn't had enough notice to get all bourgie about it. Those places have a set way of getting things done, so we just let them do their thing.

The girls were all thrilled that we got sparkling cider in champagne flutes. A few tables had spiked theirs, but we were playing by the rules for once. Except the one time we'd snuck out for a quick smoke, me and the boys. Bud was strong, too. Between that and the light show that DJ kept going the whole time, I'd been a mess for a few minutes. But it also made me really hungry so I demolished that banquet beef pretty quick.

And then as we were working on dessert—these parfait things they'd stuffed into more champagne glasses—Lakesha got all sad and stuck her spoon down in the goop 'way before she got to the bottom.

And she said, "Few weeks and we be grown'n' gone on out there...wherever!"

"We been grown," Carla said with a scowl. "Them lil' white babies out there, they the only ones had a childhood."

She meant those kids I introduced you to 'way back, the ones whose parents sent them to DeGrazia to be PC, sort of. They were all bunched up together as usual, but they were dancing a lot more than they did at the school dances because it was so EDM, which was just about their speed. I loved that they were having a good time and felt included, for once. I can still see the big grins on their faces. Their faces kind of glowed in the black lights, too, which made me laugh.

"Where y'all think we be nex' year this time, though?" Lakesha asked us. She was looking at me, though. And she looked real sad.

So I gave her a one-armed hug and said, "You know where I live."

"You be makin' movies and allat and you gon' stay here?"

And this kid Josue goes, "Can I come play wit your girls sometime then?"

"How you gon' ask the man could you come see his women, fool?" Lamar hissed at him.

"There go that Niecy girl takin' pictures. I don't like her," Carla said. It was one of the celebs I told you about, just heading over by where they were taking pictures. That's one they apparently knew pretty well.

And I said, "I've never even heard of most of these people."

"Cause you live in Tucson," Victor teased me. "Ain't nobody famous livin' here but you."

"That's not true," Josue said. "They fly in to them spas and dude ranches'n' stuff—there's some writers live here all the time."

"That one Beatle guy lived her for a long time," Maria said. "One whose wife wanted to die here. Had a big old ranch."

"Paul McCartney," I said.

"Oprah be here all the time—Denzel, too," Carla told us.

"And the damned Kardashians," I added, even though it bummed me out no end. I hate those people. Okay, not the people, just what they do. Or the fact that they didn't do anything to deserve all they've got. My women's asses are 'way finer than Kim's, too. I mean, seriously, Aisha's ass beats hers by a country mile.

Dudes actually wrote that on our Web sites, after the shot of Kim's butt that supposedly broke the Internet. They asked us to do something like that with all three of our ladies, just to put Kim in her place.

But we decided not to even go there. And yes, it's actually not like we're any better than them, cause we've been in the booty baring business for a looooong time—my looks got us to where we are now, too. Yes, I know. It's sort of unhealthy and hypocritical how I feel about them, but sue me for being human.

Carla must've agreed we me, too, because she went, "Oh, Lord, don't even get me started."

"You ever met them?" Josue asked me.

"Ooooo, Kanye wouldn' like you gettin' too close," Maria said.

"He ain't Black, though," Carla said, all frowned up.

And Lakesha went, "Honey, she may like 'em black but she ain't blind is she?"

And all the girls slapped each other five behind that one.

I just said, "I've managed to avoid it so far."

"Good," Carla said.

But Victor said, "I bet y'all party hearty, though, you'n' them three you got at home."

I hated to disappoint him. Wait—no, I didn't. I actually wanted to knock some sense into them about all that stuff.

So I said, "Not really. Our own, we'll throw, but we don't go to the ones you see in the mags and all very often. Unless we win something. That kind of thing."

"Well, I'd go," Lakesha told me. "Call me next time somebody sen' you a invite."

And Lamar said, "Me, too. Hell, I'd put on a dress to go to one o' them things."

I laughed with everybody else. But then I said, "You'd be into it for that hot minute when you first get there. But it's not all that. None of it's as good as you think it'll be. I mean, okay, you get the car, you get that damned watch the rappers all wear, and then what?"

"An' then you da man," Lamar said. And all the other guys went slapped five with him.

Which reminded me that I was sitting there with kids who lived in subsidized housing and stuff like that, trying to convince them that what I had wasn't all that. I was being like those white people who love do tell Black people about the two seconds they faced some kind of lame frustration or discrimination, too, to prove that they "understand."

I mean, I used to know their world. But I didn't live there anymore and I had no right to tell them how to feel about mine, either.

So I just pointed to Lakesha's parfait and said, "You better finish that, for sure. Somebody slaved all day to make those layers all perfect for you."

They got all into the parfaits, then, holding them up to see if they were really perfect. So I don't think anybody noticed when Lakesha took my hand and said, "Well, when you out there doin' all that stuff you gon' be doin', don't forget me."

Oh, my God, that hurt my whole heart, I swear. I couldn't even speak for a minute.

In fact, I think the expression on my face sort of embarrassed her, because she threw her napkin down on the table and said, "C'mon, let's go dance some more," and got up real quick.

But when Carla said, "Let the man finish his dessert, girl," I got up and offered my arm and said, "I got my dessert right here," and swept Lakesha out on the floor.

But that made us both uncomfortable, because they were still slow jamming at the time. And we hit the floor just D'Angelo started singing that "How Does It Feel," song he made That Video for. You know the one where he's damned near naked and cut like a diamond. I don't know one woman who doesn't get all hot and creamy watching it. And at first, I was sort of afraid that Lakesha wouldn't feel right about dancing up close to me to a song like that.

She put her head down on my shoulder and just let me rock her back and forth real nice and slow, though. It was the other kids who freaked out. I tried to just chillax and glide us through it, but you couldn't really miss all the stunned faces passing by. And the girls giving her the stink eye, too. That was hard to ignore.

So just to really mess with their minds, I put my cheek down on her head and got all into it. Puts me in the mood, too, that damned song, but to be honest, it wasn't doing it for me that night because I wasn't holding the right woman. But giving Lakesha a big "kiss my ass" moment like that made me happy, even so.

And I also thought about that girl at the hospital who died without getting to dance with a boy that way at her prom. So I tried to imagine it was her I was dancing with, like as if she might feel it wherever she was. And for a second or two I almost felt like there was somebody else there with us. That was one of the nicest moments of the whole night, too. That feeling that she was there with us.

But then they put on that "Earned It" song from Fifty Shades of Grey and Lakesha pulled back from me just when all the other girls started grabbing guys they wanted to act out a few scenes from the movie with later.

And she says, "You don't have to do this."

But I pulled her back up close and gave her this playful smile and said, "Shut up'n' dance, girl."

She smiled. And just clung to me and sort of relaxed, but not entirely. I could tell she was hiding her face from the others, too. Like she was embarrassed about whatever they might be saying about us. And sure enough, as soon as that song segued into another one, she pulled away and was about to go running off until I grabbed hold of her arm.

And I said, "What's up?"

And she stared at me for a minute. Which is when I heard the lyrics. Which went:

Sincerely I can say

That we should have met before today

But I am happy to have this chance

To be with you and I'm gonna make the best of it

This is more than joy for me

To feel like a family

And when we go our separate ways

This feeling will always stay....

It was this "All The Times" song with Faith Evans, Gerald Levert, Johnny Gill...all kinds of people singing their hearts out about how proud they were to have finally gotten a chance to say how they felt about somebody.

So I reeled her back in and said, "C'mon, don't be like that. This is your night. Enjoy yourself."

And she looked up at me like she really wanted to believe it. But then she put her head back down and said, "I'ma jus' be me again tomorrow though."

So I danced her over to the doors they'd opened up to this room with glass walls—there's a name for those rooms but I can't think of it right now. But I have a feeling that's the room where people get married instead of by the gazebo outside if it rains or something, probably. Cause it had a spectacular view of the mountains, sky and wide open desert. Perfect background for a wedding.

Which is why a lot of little couples were in there staring at each other. But a lot of adult eyes were on them, so they couldn't do what they'd probably gone there hoping to do.

I took Lakesha over to one of the big windows and looked up at the sky, to sort of let her off the hook a little.

But as I as gazing up at the stars, I said, "Tomorrow you'll be the woman I met that first day." And then I looked down and said, "And I musta liked her a helluva lot, right?"

She looked away from me, sort of down at her feet, and then up again, and said, "You the craziest boy I ever met in my whole life."

"We're talkin' about you now."

That made her look away again.

"Ain't nothin' to talk about," she said.

"I just don't wanna hear that bushwa about you only being you."

"Bushwa? What language you talkin' now?"

I laughed and said, "I'm being real. That's the only language I speak."

"Yeah, well, I'm bein' real, too. An' just so you know, I'ma be dreamin' about lookin' up at you like this for the rest of my life."

I gave her a big hug and said, "I doubt that."

"Oh, honey, you don't even know," she said. "I din' used to dream at all. Cuz wun no use dreamin'. But you done messed up my mind, son."

"Maybe it needs messin' up."

"Oh, I'll grant you that," she said. And then she looked out at the desert and said, "But me'n' you jus' live different lives, son. An' tomorrow I got to go back to mine."

I put an arm around her and said, "You've got a lotta life to live yet. And life has a way of surprising the hell out of you sometimes."

"Ain't nobody else like you out there, I can tell you that."

"Yeah, well, the one you're meant to be with is out there, though."

"Like who?"

"Like whoever! You'll know 'im when you see 'im. Maybe you already know 'im. Maybe he's pissed as hell at me for hogging all the slow jams with you right now."

She gave me this very stern stare and said, "Colton, first man I was wit was my uncle got holt of me one night after a party. Said ugly as I was I should be grateful."

I almost punched that glass window in front of us. I mean, I was so pissed that all these frustration tears welled up and made me look ridiculous, probably. I felt ridiculous.  But she smiled and wiped my face with her fingers.

And she said, "See there? What other man you know gon' start cryin' over me like that?"

"The one smart enough to see you the way I see you," I told her.

So of course they started playing that Whitney Houston song, "You Give Good Love" which made us both laugh. Only, I hoped I was showing her what those lyrics were about. But I knew one song wasn't going to cut it.

So I looked up at the stars trying to make my eyes stop watering. And then I sighed and turned her head so she could see herself in the glass full front, and said, "That's who I see."

And she smirked and said, "Yeah an' it took 'em all day to draw me a new face'n' stuff me in this dress."

I wanted to explode again. I said, "Goddamn it, Lakesha, the women under all that's what makes it work!"

She started laughing like mad when I got all mad like that. And then she threw her arms around me and said, "Ooooo, I hope they build a shuttle can take us to whatever planet that is you come from. Cause you a trip, son. You know that?"

So I pulled back, stared her in those glittery eyes, and said, "I'm your shuttle."

She let that hang in the air for a moment like she was trying to get all over, under, around and through it. Speechless, for once.

But then she smiled and said, "You better back up, son. Before ere'body gets the wrong idea."

"I just wanna make sure you get the right idea," I said.

"Oh, I got the idea, all right."

"Which is?"

She kissed me on the cheek and said, "I love you, too—not like that, don't trip. I mean, same as you love me. Like fam'ly or sum."

"Somebody's gonna love you like that, too, you know? Like the songs say."

She ran her fingers through my hair and said, "Well, I'll know it when I feel it, thanks to you."

I was so glad to hear that. In fact, I was just about to kiss her on the cheek in return when two kids ran smack into Lakesha from behind and spun her around just in time for us to see four headlights coming right at us on the other side of that glass wall.