It was Wednesday. The clock in the middle of the suit shop was broken. And my girlfriend wanted to win Prom Queen.

"Can't you stand any straighter?" Nadya snapped, as the stylist wrapped his tape around my waist. Twenty-eight inches. I'd lost weight---a lot of it, at Nadya's request. Can't have the Prom King looking chubby, she'd insisted, and because my feelings for her were already teetering on the edge of love, I'd upped my gym-going to three times a day and replaced solid meals with powdery protein shakes.

The problem with Nadya's dream was that she couldn't do it alone. For starters, the title had to be won as a pair. A couple---not just one person---had to be crowned Prom King and Queen, as heteronormative as it was. And besides the need for a duo, Nadya had never been particularly noticeable. She was always just---there. Hovering in the gap between reputation and reclusionism. It didn't stop her from dreaming of being Prom Queen all the same. And so, it was me she turned to. Me, tiptoeing on the fringes of popularity. One push and I'd fall over the line, but as I hadn't crossed the edge yet, I was still approachable.

Truth be told, I'd always found Nadya pretty. Almost underwhelmingly so, but pretty nonetheless. And I wasn't the best-looking guy---before Nadya's appearance into my love life, I'd been about a kilo or two overweight. The life of the party, if the party involved twenty people or less. So when Nadya came bounding up to me with a bubblegum-bright smile and her shiny dark hair wrapped around her index finger, I thought she was pulling my leg.

"What do you even see in me?" I'd asked, after she'd been making her interest in me very clear for about a week.

"I like guys who work hard," she'd replied.

We'd started dating a week after that. And two months later, she had me putting up posters.

I supposed Nadya was right when she said I worked hard. Because I did, promoting her like it was my full-time job. I tirelessly hung up posters with her beautiful face on them, singing her praises to anyone who would listen. Vote for Nadya for Prom Queen, I kept insisting, over and over, usually met with the confused reply of, Who's that? Your girl? I'll vote for you if you want, man.

Nadya got pissed when she learned my efforts had been leading to more votes for me than her---even though they did technically contribute to her votes too, since we were a duo. "You're not trying hard enough," she told me every time someone stared at one of her posters, mumbling something about don't know who that is, but she's got a pretty face. "There are eight of us gunning for the spot, and I have to be the winner."

So I tried harder. I lost more weight. I put up more posters. I endured the almost daily visits to the haberdashery as the stylists tightened their tapes around me and Nadya shrieked at colour schemes in despair---she wanted cerulean, and they kept giving her azure. I wanted to make her happy. It seemed harder to do that, nowadays. Still, I tried. After all, that was all I was good for in Nadya's eyes. As the days dragged by, my own eyes turned into Nadya's eyes too, critical and so sharp that they burned whenever they gazed into the mirror.

It was fitting, somehow. Dealing with Nadya felt like pressing my hands against a mirror---so close, and yet so far, space between my reaching fingertips, a cool sheet of glass barricading away my reflection the same way Nadya barricaded away her heart.

I knew she didn't love me long before she showed up at my house the evening before prom. She'd walked the whole way. A small candy bar trembled in her hands as she slipped it into my own sweaty palms, and she wasn't quite able to meet my eyes. Nadya never brought me gifts, and she certainly never looked down.

She hemmed and hawed for about ten minutes, the icy breeze tossing her curls off her shoulders and raising goosebumps on her bare arms. When the chill finally reached my own bones, I told her to spit it out.

Nadya looked almost relieved as she mumbled, "I'm going to prom with Billy."

I'd ignored the signs. The text messages I saw whenever I happened to catch a glimpse of her phone over her shoulder. The compliments she always had for Billy Baxter from the next class, compliments she'd never once held for me. The way she seemed to pull away every time a new pimple cropped up on my face, or when I didn't hit a weight goal fast enough. All the flags had been there, flaring scarlet in the wind. Still, I'd ignored them, put them to rest. Because I loved her. But there was no pushing aside this one, especially when it was crushed into my face like this. I'd lost twenty pounds in a month and my girlfriend was taking another guy to prom.

It was a rough breakup. I might have screamed loud enough for any nearby birds to scatter. I couldn't remember. Instead of going to the gym yet again, I ordered pizza and spent the entire night alternating between crying and stuffing my face---and sometimes, crying while stuffing my face. Then I watched TV until I fell asleep on the sofa, effectively forgetting about Nadya.

I was obviously a masochist, because the next day, she was back on my mind.

When the clock hit six, instead of dancing the night away at prom with my gorgeous girlfriend, I was hunched on my bed in a fetal position, sobbing my eyes out. Of course she'd ditch me for Billy. He wasn't all that popular, but he was handsome---something which I definitely wasn't.

The misery turned to worry once I'd calmed down. Billy...wasn't all that popular. He'd never be able to rack up the amount of votes needed for Prom King, and if he couldn't be Prom King, Nadya wouldn't be able to win Prom Queen. She'd be heartbroken. All her dreams, smashed to smithereens.

Internally, I knew I was being a massive idiot. She'd dumped me---brutally---and I was still thinking about fulfilling her wishes. Nevertheless, some part of me was still her idiot, whether I liked it or not, so I found myself squeezing into my suit at eight. My parents didn't need to know, I told myself. I wasn't going for Nadya, I insisted. I just wanted to have a good time at prom by myself, I tried to convince myself. But of course I was going for Nadya. Over the past few months, everything I'd done had been for her.

So I got in my car and drove. I drove until the breeze nearly ripped my jacket off my back. I drove until the tears running down my face had long turned to ice. I drove until the streetlights blurred white, then black, and finally red, a new supernova in the sky.

They weren't supposed to be red.

But they were, and I watched in horror as what had once been my school burned.

Smoke clung to the wind, wrapping a tight fist around my lungs and squeezing. I choked, coughing harshly, but still, I couldn't move. My feet felt rooted to the spot as the bright crimson flames flickered in my vision. My head was spinning.

A flash of blue tore my gaze from the burning building.

No. Not blue.

Cerulean.

Nadya.

"Nadya!" I shouted as I ran towards the blot of colour, arms open. As I got closer to the figure, I realised something was...wrong. There was a strange stench in the air, like charcoal on the grill. It was acrid, stinging my nose like a million needles. The sound that accompanied the smell crackled as if it had been tossed onto a hotplate, lightning arcing through the air.

When I was near enough to see Nadya, I realised why.

Flames lit up the edge of her gown, and even pressed against the backdrop of the fire behind her, she was still the brightest thing in the universe. Her hair, frizzy and wild, crumbled at the ends. I couldn't see most of her face---her palm, blistering and bubbling and spilling startling vermillion, was clasped to her cheek.

But what made my skin crawl was her legs. Skin, blackened to ash, sloughed off them in droves. I could see glints of white if I peered hard enough, sequestered amongst sizzling, peeling blisters. Whatever wasn't gone was a fiery, angry red, as red as the flames haloing her stumbling figure, as red as the liquid splattering her dress.

A silver tiara sat on her head.

"You weren't supposed to be here," she rasped, voice hoarse and choked.

I froze, before realising that Nadya needed me. "Doesn't matter!" My hands scrabbled for my phone. I didn't know what I was going to tell the police other than my girlfriend is on fire, but I had to call them. I had to save Nadya.

"Don't!" Nadya shrieked suddenly, reaching out. I instinctively recoiled. "Don't. Everyone---everyone's gone. Don't call them. Don't call the police. They'll arrest me!"

My phone slipped from my slick palm. I quickly bent over and picked it up, carefully inching away from Nadya's lumbering form. She'd been so graceful just hours before. So beautiful.

"Please---Thomas---" Nadya was sobbing now, eyes wild. The crown balanced precariously on her fried hair wobbled, ready to slip off her head. "I---I took Billy because I didn't want you to come---you did so much for me, and I didn't want to kill you too...I had to be Prom Queen, Tommy, but I wasn't winning---"

Before my petrified stare, the school burned.

I ran.

When I startled awake, I was in my bed. It seemed far too easy to explain everything away as simply a bad nightmare. The bloodshot eyes were from sobbing over Nadya ditching me. The tangled, smoke-scented hair was from rolling around in bed aimlessly. The piss stains on my trousers were from my own dreams, so vivid I hadn't been able to hold my bladder.

But then I got the email.

Dear students, we are sorry to inform you...

The days that followed were bleak, full of black ink on greying pages. The newspapers detailed the massacre that had befallen our school with callous indifference, speaking of how an unknown murderer---still at large---had brutally stabbed seven girls to death before burning down the place. They listed the names of the seven, too. Rachel. Hana. Eleanor. Naomi. Yuna. Melody. Christine. I didn't need to look at their grainy, smiling faces to know they were the other seven Prom Queen hopefuls. It wouldn't matter. I could only see in black and white, nowadays. The only times when the monochrome inflections of my mornings receded from my vision was at night, when the flickering sear of orange and red would burn through my dreams. I would always wake up drenched from head to toe in icy sweat, Nadya's staggering form dissipating into thin air.

They found Nadya two days later, in a stream near school. Her cerulean gown had been singed off her body, her skin charred to ash. Some accounts said she was smiling, delirious from the heat. Some said she was grimacing, face contorted in agony.

But what they all agreed on, was that when her corpse was pulled from the creek, she was still wearing her crown.