And so on... (DHS)

When Mr. Jando tells me he wants a favor, I assume it's of the murderous variety. Instead I'm standing in an twenty-dollar, ill-fitting cocktail dress I grabbed off the sale rack at JC Penney. I have a pink carnation corsage on my arm and am standing next to a boy who has way too much cologne on. The flash on Mr. Jando's fancy digital camera goes off. His two youngest boys are still in high school, twins, and both thin around the ankles and thick around the neck like their father. They share a girl, a small blue-haired pixie named Tammy, who smells like she smoked through an entire carton of Marlboro's in the last hour. She has her hands cupped around both JJ and TJ's butts, but she keeps giving me a wink that's making me very uncomfortable. I am TJ's date, or maybe JJ's. It doesn't really matter, I'm just there for propriety's sake. Why don't I ever get the good jobs, like organ pinching? Or smuggling crack in my nether regions?
"Now, behave. Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Jando snaps one more picture, then points at me, "And you, be back here by midnight."
I see far more of Tammy in the limo than I've ever seen of myself.
When we get to the school, we meet up with a bunch of other kids all swathed in designer dresses and migraine-inducing fragrances. We all pile into the gym. I get the fish eye from one of the chaperones. I can't tell if it's my face or my cheap dress that's giving me away. I grab TJ's hand and put in around my waist and bury my head in his shoulder.
As soon as the lights dim, and the DJ starts spinning, I head to the restroom to get my tools ready. The smell of industrial cleanser makes me nostalgic for my days of hiding out in my high school's bathroom forging signatures and crying my eyes out. Soon I hear the clickity clack of a dozen sparkly stilettos hitting the tile. I emerge from my stall, gear hidden in a stylish velour bag I found by the socks at Walgreens. I whip out a lipstick and reapply the red gash to my face. The girls hardly notice me; they are too busy retucking their trial implants, and checking out each other's asses for cellulite. I disappear easily into the hall.
I break into the Vice Principal's office too easily. Any of these kids could have stuck one of their credit cards in the frame and gotten in. The password system on the computer is a little more complicated, but I manage to break through in a matter of minutes. From there it's a cakewalk, I sub out Fs with Cs and improve the twins attendance. It's nothing Mr. Jando couldn't have accomplished by threatening a few lawsuits, or a few visits from his older sons. He's just doing this to make me sweat because I caused him a bit of embarrassment last year. When I'm finished with the twins' records I jump in and out of a few others, peppering the honor roll students' perfect records with suspensions and near failures, just for old time's sake.
I'm shutting the whole thing down when a shadow crosses the window. I duck underneath the desk just before the fluorescent lights flick on. I get orange carpet fibers all over my new dress.
"Who's in here?"
I shrug my shoulders instinctively. A hand pulls away the desk chair, the only thing protecting me from revelation. There's a pause. A clicking of the tongue. And then:
"April? What are you doing here?"