The Prom Queen by R.L. Stine Page A

audience with unblinking fury.
    Ghoulish faces. In beautiful gowns.
    The five prom queens stepped toward the audience, staggering forward stiffly.
    Closer. Closer.
    Until the smell of rotting flesh choked everyone in the gym.
    The girls all raised their heads in silent, hideous laughter.
    And as they raised their heads, their blood red eyes flaring, their necks were revealed. Their necks, their shoulders were covered with slithering white worms.
    I woke up screaming.
    I screamed so loud I also woke up my parents and my aunt Rena.
    All three of them came bursting into my bedroom, their still sleep-filled faces tense with alarm.
    â€œSweetheart,” my mother said, plopping down on the side of my bed, “you almost gave me a heart attack.”
    â€œBad dreams are just bad dreams,” my father said, patting me on the head.
    He’d been saying the same thing to me since I was four. I didn’t mind. If I ever have kids of my own, I’ll probably tell them the exact same thing.
    If only the nightmares would go away.
    If only I could sleep one night without being reminded of my lost friends.
    My parents and my aunt went quietly back to their rooms. I stared up at the ceiling, trying to erase the worm-covered prom queens from my memory.
    The next day at assembly I’d have to give my speech for prom queen. I forced myself to go over in my mind what I had worked out to say. I was going to talk about Rachel and Simone.
    â€œThe two people you should vote for aren’t heretoday,” I planned to start. “Rachel West and Simone Perry.”
    But as soon as I said their names, I saw their faces. Not the way they had actually been, but the way they were in my dream.
    Just a dream, Lizzy, I told myself once more.
    Just a dream.
    Wipe it away. Away.
    Of course, this one time my dad was wrong. This one time a bad dream was not just a bad dream.
    This time the dream was real.

Chapter

17
    â€œY uck! What’s that?” I asked.
    I was staring into a steamtable container of baked muck. I could make out yellow kernels of corn, old spaghetti, mashed potatoes that had gotten stiff, greasy hamburger meat, pale green peas, and a little of every other awful meal the school had served us during the week.
    â€œIt’s shepherd’s pie,” Mrs. Liston, the cafeteria worker, told me with a blank face.
    â€œLooks more like something the shepherd stepped in,” cracked a familiar male voice in my ear.
    It was Lucas.
    I pushed my tray along without answering. I wasn’t really hungry, at least not for shepherd’s pie.
    Lucas hurried to catch up. Steam rose from thelarge glob of shepherd’s pie on his plate. “Go on,” he said, “take a taste.”
    â€œLucas, for the last time. Bug off.”
    â€œOr else?” he said with that little smirk of his.
    â€œOr else you’ll end up looking like shepherd’s pie,” I said. There, I thought. My insults are getting better.
    I paid for my container of yogurt and salad and headed for an empty table. Elana waved to me. She was sitting with Dawn. I nodded back but kept going. I didn’t feel like sitting with them right then.
    The prom was only eight days away, and there we’d be, the three remaining prom queen candidates, all sitting in a row at the table like ducks in a shooting gallery. Just waiting for some maniac out there to take a shot.
    I found a seat across from some nerdy-looking freshman. He looked stunned when I sat down.
    â€œAnyone sitting here?” I asked.
    He was unable to answer.
    â€œT.G.I.F., right?” I said, digging into my salad.
    â€œYeah!” he said.
    He glanced down the long table. There were a bunch of seniors staring our way. When I looked back at my lunch date, he was puffing out his chest and smiling proudly. I winked at him.
    For ten straight minutes he slurped on an empty carton of chocolate milk and told me how much he hated gym. “I’d like to kill that gym