Prom Queen in a Podunk Town by Mina Thorsen

No one was surprised that I won.

I was the prettiest girl in our little oil town and my daddy could afford to take me to get my highlights done in the city. I knew the natural order of things. Momma always kept her hair curled and her nails painted cajun. I had subscriptions to all the fashion magazines. I studied the makeup and the styling. I kept my tool belt stocked like an arsenal, weaponized my looks.

I put on my satin dress, slid it over my secrets, over underwire and lace. Drove shotgun toward the gymnasium in my boyfriend’s pickup with the rims shined and the seats vacuumed. He prepped it like a chariot. He had aspirations for tonight, aspirations for his future. My little scholarship boy, adrenaline seeker. Flask in his waistband, hand on my thigh, driving down the windy roads he memorized like the curve of my lower back. I took a swig, something sharper than sweet tea hit my lips. We rounded the bend and two pricks of eyeshine stood frozen between the lines, piercing through the moonlit black.

I stepped onto my stage, illuminated by the red, blues, and whites. The sirens and the shrieking, my applause. The crunching crackling of broken glass beneath my pumps as I walked to say my thank-you’s over microphone static.

They crowned me, dripping in antlers and velvet.

---

MINA THORSEN — Mina is a writer living in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, where there are more antlered animals than people. She was never a candidate for prom queen. @minathorsen.bsky.social

Art by MADASON McCOMBS — Madason is a writer, artist, and x-ray tech from Texas. While her writing focuses on motherhood, creation, and healing, when painting she finds the most joy in the surreal.