The idea of searching through the racks at too-expensive stores to find a dress that I’d only wear one time in my hopefully long life made me want to puke over each price tag.

It’s like I’d be throwing my money in the wrong direction: my appearance and this experience that I may not want to remember at the end of the year.

Because a $200-plus dress won’t buy me happiness if it means I can’t pay my college enrollment deposit.

Yet, I found myself months later in the second store we’d visited at Grapevine Mills, pulling on and throwing off dress after dress after dress.

All but two made me want to cringe.

When I put on an all-blue, half-lace dress, I felt like Tinkerbell. Too bad my friends don’t think fairies can go to prom.

On to the next one.

As I look in the cheap mirrors of the smallest changing room I’ve seen, I laugh. This was never part of the carefully laid out plan for my high school career. I swore to myself I wouldn’t give in to the temptation, that I wouldn’t let my friends convince me to spend the cash that I earned selling bagels on, of all things, a dance.

But I can sense the desperation days away, girls and boys frantically running around for those last touches like, “Do we still have the limo?” and “What color corsage should I buy?” I can breathe it in. It makes me feel normal, like maybe we’re all feeling the same right now.

Nervous. Excited. Nauseous. Ecstatic.

I’ve been asked who’s taking me to prom. This must be codename for who-are-you-dating, but that is a mistake. I’ve never been on a date, let alone held someone’s hand.

Alas: “Ooo, who is this friend?”

“It’s a girl,” I said.

“Oh.”

Yeah. Oh.

Before the dance, I know some jerk will forget to buy his not-really-girlfriend girlfriend a bouquet of flowers. Maybe she’ll care. Maybe it doesn’t matter – not in the end.

If the DJ doesn’t play a cliché Fall Out Boy dance song, I’ll only cry a little. Don’t want that mascara to run on a night where the light is shining on me and my friends so beautifully.

Because I may not be up on that stage receiving a crown, but I’m the queen of the dancing floor even if I can’t complete the cha-cha sequence in the Cha-Cha Slide. My hips don’t move like Shakira’s no matter how hard I try to follow a beat, but I can do a mean sprinkler and Hokey Pokey.

The photos we’ll take won’t capture these moments the way I want them to. They won’t let me hear the laughter or see the awful sweat pouring down our faces, won’t let the sparkles shine on along with the misty eyes I’ll be sporting.

It’s the dance that has been displayed in every high school movie. The girl gets the guy. The guy gets the girl. People dance, someone fights, a nice girl has blood dumped over her head, and a recently-injured snob accepts her tiara.

While those are admittedly exciting events for a Saturday night, I’d like the simple route.

But there’s no script for this story, no set dialogue that I can spit out on cue. I don’t have a director in the corner watching my every move because this is my scene.

This is my movie and I make my own happy ending.

My dress was $87. Shoes were $15. I’ll do my own make-up but I’m doomed when it comes to hair. My best friend and I are going to eat at IHOP and spend the next day watching old Teen Wolf episodes for recovery purposes. And we’ll drink diet sodas because it’s the only liquid in my grandmother’s fridge besides milk.

The credits roll.

That night will be nothing close to perfect, but a taste of reality is so much sweeter than the artificial bite of fantasy.