I Should Have Known

There weren't always dragons in the Valley.

Sometimes, in the recurring daydream that I'd have— some may have called them episodes— there were big cats. Their giant paws would pad around me as I lay motionless in the forest, and their rough sandpaper growls would lull me back to sleep. Other times, there would be stags. Their magnificent antlers would glow and pulse with different colors every time I saw them, bathing me in blue, pink, orange, red...

There weren't always dragons, but when there were, I would feel terrified.

I don't see any dragons on prom night. In fact, on the day of the dance I'd hardly had any episodes at all, I realized as I smoothed down the pink tulle in the passenger seat of Tom's Toyota.

“You look great,” he laughs, “Don’t be nervous."

It’s easy for him to say, considering he’s probably the only one around here who doesn’t think I’m different. That’s how people say it around here, except they add the slight inflection in their tone and a pause, indicating that they didn’t really mean different at all, they meant odd. Strange.

Tom comes around the front of the car and opens my door for me, offering me his arm. I can’t stop blushing; I truly never thought this would happen to me. I mean, I guess I knew that Tom had liked me for a while— unlike the others, he didn’t sigh when he was assigned to be my partner in BioChem— but this, this is a pure and simple moment. A gorgeous, perfect moment.

Tom is handed a ticket by the valet and he leads me up the red carpet, the one our school has set up in front of the hotel’s ornate double doors. I can see people through the glass inside looking out at us, wondering who we are. I’ve never felt more important in my life.

In an instant, as if yanked to a halt by an invisible force, I stop walking: my head feels like ice. It's not just my head, either, everything feels sharp and painful. I rest my palm against my forehead and look down to catch my breath, only I’m not looking down at my pink tulle prom dress, I'm looking down at an ornate white ball gown with black lace trim.

Wait a second, I think to myself, this isn't right.

I’m in a ballroom. Where am I? This is almost like a memory, but it's an image I've never seen before. My hand is still on Tom’s arm but I look over at him and it’s not Tom, it’s someone in a dark blue coat with a pelt of fur draped across his left shoulder and a medal hanging down from his neck like he’s some war hero or something—

And then the pain stops, and I’m back. Tom is patting my shoulder.

“You all right?” he asks, and I can see in his eyes that he’s wondering if the others are right to be bothered by these short bursts of mine; these breaks from reality I attempt to disconnect from.

“I’m sorry,” I try to laugh it off, “Ice pick headache. They’re the worst."

His shoulders sink in relief.

“Oh,” he winces, leading me forward again, “Those are the worst."

I try to forget. I’m wearing pink, not black and white, and Tom is Tom and he’s in a tux, no medals or fur. This is real. This is my prom, and I’m here, and nowhere else.

Tom’s friends already have a table, but the boys are standing in a circle beside it while their dates gossip in the delicate white chairs festooned with fake lilacs. They all look up at us as we approach.

“TOM!” His friends cry out, and he releases my arm to join the throng of boys laughing about something I probably don’t want to know about. I look down at the girls, who are looking up at me expectantly, like I owe them something. They look nice enough, at least.

I lean down to one of the girls nearest to me and say, “I’m going to the bathroom!” I have to yell over the music, and then I point to Tom, “Will you tell him if he asks?"

She grins, maybe relieved she doesn’t have to begin the small talk with the newcomer.

“Sure!” she shouts back, and pats my hand.

The bathroom isn’t crowded yet, thank god. So far, it seems no one yet needs makeup touch-ups or emergency hair recoveries. I’m all alone.

I run my hands under cold water, focusing on my wrists. This always helps me calm down after little episodes, bad migraines, the works. I tell myself it was just an episode. Tom thinks it’s a headache. It’s nothing. I rest my palms on the side of the sink, take deep breaths, and focus on my reflection.

You are not going to be what they think you are tonight, I tell myself, Tonight, you’re different.

I take a few more deep breaths and run a finger through my loose curls that are already beginning to fall limp. My hair is usually straight as straw. I check my mascara and make sure it’s starting the night off right. I reapply my lipstick, even though it doesn’t need it.

Why are you here? A voice in my head whispers.

And then, I smell it.

It’s heady and thick, like sweat and animal fur mixed together. It’s the kind of smell that doesn’t smell bad but a smell that you'd know meant trouble. It’s the zoo, but inside the lion’s pen.

Something’s not right.

I'm not sure how I recognize it. Maybe the things that people said about me were right after all: that I'd spent so much time with dogs, I was actually starting to become one. Maybe I already had a nose like one. I hated it when people said that; ever since I'd correctly predicted that a rabid racoon had gotten loose in our school's cafeteria when I had been across the campus in Mrs. Luellen's 2nd grade classroom. It wasn't my fault that my Grandma ran an animal shelter. It wasn't my fault that those animals were the only ones that didn't look at me like I was crazy.

I walk back into the ballroom, but the smell is even thicker. It should smell like over-applied cologne and flowery corsages, not this.

I don’t know that my face is all screwed up until a guy taps me on the shoulder. It’s not Tom, it’s Mark, a lanky guy who’s always on the bench at basketball games and, honestly, cleans up pretty nicely.

“Are you okay?” he asks me.

“Do you smell that?” I have to know. Is it just me?

He laughs and looks around nervously. “Uh. Smell what?"

“It smells…” I pause and sniff. Now, looking back at this, I realize I must have looked like an idiot. I finish, “…dangerous."

His eyes grow wide. He looks even more nervous, and for a second I think he understands.

“Are you coming on to me?” he finally asks.

I snap out of my stupor. “What?"

“Because, I don’t know if you knew this, but I came here with Rebecca Veritas and I don’t know, I just—"

“God, Mark, no. Never mind. Go away.” I walk away from him and back towards my date’s table. The smell lingers, but I don’t dare pull another stunt, not like the racoon incident, where I'd run to the front of the class and yelled, "RACOON ATTACK!" until they finally brought me to the principal's office.

“There you are!” Tom cries when I approach, and I notice that he’s been left alone at our table.

“Everyone else is dancing,” he explains, “Want to join?"

I do. We get really close because it’s a slow song; the kind of song where all the couples show off the fact that they were actually able to get dates for the prom and, look, everyone, at how good at high school we are. The singletons sulk at the edges of the dance floor, waiting for the bass to drop.

“That’s kind of a weird smell,” I try to say as casually as possible, “Right?"

Because we’re so close, I don’t see the reaction on Tom’s face. “My cologne?” he says quietly, “You think my cologne is gross?"

“No, no,” I laugh, trying to reassure him, “It’s something else."

“I don’t smell anything,” he says, and settles into the crook of my neck.

But the bad feeling in my stomach grows. I can’t shake it. I won’t ruin my prom, though, my last normal high school experience before graduation. I won’t do it. I’ll push the feeling down to the bottom of my stomach and enjoy my slow dances and try to feel beautiful. That’s what’s important.

___

When the local news covers the story that night, they leave out a lot of the gory details. They leave out the fact that the enraged, wounded mountain lion wandered up to the valet stand and took a chunk out of the shoulder of the same valet who had parked Tom’s Corolla.

They leave out the fact that the manager of the wildlife park down the road released the cat on purpose after shooting the poor thing in the foot. However, they do include the part where the manager kills himself.

The hotel where the prom was held was not far from the park and concierges often referred tourists there since it was such an odd part of the makeup of the town— a wildlife center right in the middle of Holdall, Colorado. The cat had been hurt, afraid, and hungry. Hotel security had not been outfitted with the right kind of ammo to take out a giant, aggressive lion...and why would they be?

The local news told the story of how the mountain lion entered the ballroom, and how people didn’t really notice at first because of the darkness and the music and the general social atmosphere. Then, someone screamed, someone threw a cup at it, and the cat, as if realizing its true nature in an instant, began to go crazy.

A lot of people were injured. A couple of them died. It was a massacre, and basically, it was my fault.

I had a feeling. I smelled him coming from a mile away.

I tell myself sometimes that even if I had acted on it, even if I had hopped up onstage and yelled into the microphone that something wasn’t right and we all needed to evacuate, no one would have listened. People would have laughed at crazy Imogene, at it again with her episodes of insane animalistic tendencies.

Still, though, being laughed at would have been better than spending my prom night crouching on the floor in one of the janitorial closets, waiting for the screaming to stop.