I never should have gone to prom with Willie Joe Bassen. He smelled bad, touched girls without permission, and because of him, I was kidnapped and sent into space on a firecracker rocket.

Let me back up. That's how it started. It was my last year of high school, and I thought, hey, I should go to prom. Usually, I avoided all the school dances by having babysitting jobs, but prom is the Big Dance. I decided it would be a good experience, you know? I could wear a pretty dress and feel like a girl for one night.

I'm not a tomboy, but I'm not fancy. I don't wear makeup or comb my hair every five minutes. Once in a while, I'll put on some lip gloss. Dressing nicely was never important to me. I'm not sure what was important to me back then; I just floated along. I applied to a few universities to make mom happy and worked at a restaurant to make dad happy. I just coasted, you know?

So when one boy out of the four hundred boys in school asked me to go with him to prom, I thought, why not? It would make somebody happy, right? 

It started out ok. Willie Joe showed up on time, we took pictures in the garden, and then we drove off to meet some of Willie Joe's friends for dinner at a nice fried chicken shop. It's not as bad as it sounds, really.

The dance was... a dance, I guess. There’s not much to say about it. The girls were being mean about each other’s dresses and hair, the guys were pretending they didn't feel foolish in suits or tuxes, and couples were either dancing without touching or becoming one blob on the dance floor.

It was fun, I guess, even though I had to remove Willie Joe's hands from my butt at least a dozen times. It was when we were leaving that the kidnapping happened. The firecracker rocket came soon after.

We got to his truck, and he helped me get inside (I think my dad had talked to him about that). He got in and started the engine, then turned to me. He was probably going to suggest kissing or something, but strangers in ski masks surrounded the truck before he could say anything. One of them did something to my door, making a loud banging sound, while another yanked open the driver's door and pushed Willie Joe almost on top of me. By the time I got him off me, the masked man was driving us away from the school.

Willie Joe tried to stop him, but the man was as strong as a brick wall. He didn't respond to questions, threats, or even punches. Willie Joe tried to grab the steering wheel, but the man held out an arm and pinned him to the seat. I tried to open my door when we slowed down at an intersection, but the other stranger had sealed it shut. We tried to get out the back window of the cab, but there were three masked men in the back of the truck.

We realized we weren't going to get answers, so we settled in for the ride. Willie Joe was being brave, reassuring me that we would be ok. I was a littlescared, of course, but not nearly as scared as he seemed to think I was. I had to remove his hands from my legs a couple of times before he got the idea that I was fine.

The ride wasn't too long, just to the other side of town, at one of the private air strips out by the ranches. We pulled into the hangar, where a couple of two-person planes were parked. More ski-masked guys waited for us. The driver stopped, got out, and hauled Willie Joe out by his jacket. When another man reached for me, I told him I was coming and to please give me a moment. For some reason, he did, so I got out of the truck by myself.

There weren't a lot of lights in the hangar, so I'm not sure of the details. It seemed like a dozen of these strangers surrounded us and marched us to the back of the hangar. We passed by some offices, and one of the men opened up a room and took us inside. They didn't turn on any lights, so I don't know what was in there.

The next thing I knew, someone opened a can of something, and I was covered in foam. But it wasn't exactly foam. It was something stretchy but strong. When I got to look at it later, it reminded me of the plastic fencing you see at construction sites, only white instead of orange. They wrapped Willie Joe and I up separately. When we fell over, they dragged us out of the room and through a back door.

I couldn't see well through the wrapping, but I guess it was a launch pad they'd set up. They tied Willie Joe to what looked like a giant firecracker and put me on another. I couldn't talk with that stuff covering me, and I could barely breathe. Willie Joe was fighting, but I could tell he wasn't succeeding.

They lit the rockets, and up we went.

I've been in cars driven fast; my brother likes to pretend he's a driver for NASCAR, you know? This was so much more. It would have to be, right, to get us out of the atmosphere? I felt smashed into the netting as it dragged me higher and higher. The worst thing is that I couldn't even appreciate the scenery from up that high.

After maybe ten minutes, we were out of the atmosphere. How NASA didn't see us or the Air Force didn't catch us, I don't know. Don't jets fly a thousand kilometers in only a few minutes? Anyway, we were soon in space, and all I could think about was, how could I breathe when we were in outer space? I did wonder if my dress was wrinkled, but mostly I thought about breathing. The stuff they wrapped us in was multi-purpose, I guessed. Since I couldn't move my head much, I didn't see what happened next. But the rockets turned off, letting us coast for a few minutes before something else pulled hard on us. That almost broke my neck, more than the rocket boost had.

Lights, clanging noises, and we fell onto a metal floor that was really cold.