Soul Sisters Playlist:
'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?' Lykke Li
'Dust to Dust' The Civil Wars
'Seven Devils' Florence & The Machine
'Breath of Life' Florence & The Machine
'Atlas' Coldplay
'Dante's Peak Main Title Score' James Newton Howard (Inspiration for the destruction of Ewen High School and the town of Chamberlain)
'Flawed Beautiful Creatures' Stacy Barthe
'My Immortal' Evanescence
Sam and Tommy asked them on Thursday, during lunch and they found themselves nervous as hell. Both girls sat together at a table with two piles of books. Tommy had a tray of food as Sam had his in a small brown paper bag.
"Hey Carrie." Tommy nudges gently on her shoulder.
"Ohuh?"
She looked up from her books with a startled wince, as if expected a blow.
"What do you want Tommy?" Charlie said in a slightly annoyed tone along with a glare.
"Me and my buddy here Sam," Tommy points to him, he gives a slight awkward smile. "were looking for you guys at the library-" Tommy picks up the book. "Telekinesis: Unlocking The Mind? Cool, is this something to with mind control? Cause me and buddies-"
"Get to the point Ross," Charlie growls.
"Prom is next week and..." Sam began.
"And?" Charlie said, raising a eyebrow.
"If you guys don't have a date for prom, would you guys like to go with us?" Tommy asks.
Now they blinked. "What? What?" Carrie spoke.
"Prom? Do you wanna go?"
Tommy waited for an answer. Instead both girls got up and started to leave, Charlie forgetting her hoodie on the table.
"Carrie! Charlie!"
Tommy and Sam chased them in the hall. Carrie stopped and turned and he saw dignity in her eyes, although he was unsure if she was aware of it.
"We don't like to be tricked." Carrie said.
"We're not trying to trick you guys." Tommy pleds. "Tell them, Sam."
"He's telling the truth."
"I can expect this from you Tommy Ross but..." Charlie looks at Sam. "...I thought you were different from everyone. Do you people think you can go around playing tricks for the rest of our lives?!"
"Don't you go with Sue Snell?" Carrie questions.
"Yes but she doesn't wanna go."
"Why doesn't Sue wanna go?" Charlie questions.
Tommy signs. "She just don't wanna-"
Sam interrupt him. "I promise you both we are not playing a joke. Me and Tommy really want to escort you both to the prom. I give you my word, Charlie."
His eyes stare directly into hers.
"Alright, we'll go." Charlie said. "Why is it so important you asked us?"
Tommy swore he saw Sam's cheek turn fifty shades of red. "B-Because you said my poem was...beautiful and you like it..."
Charlie grin a bit.
"Yes. We'll go." Carrie said. "But we need to be home by ten-thirty."
"Okay, we'll be here at seven." Tommy said.
"Fine," Carrie whispers. "Thank you." She looked as if she might swoon.
Sue Snell sat in study hall studying for her Calculus and then felt someone standing behind her. She turns around to a very pissed off looking Charlie White.
"C-Charlie what are you-"
"Is this some new game you and Chris came up with?" She whispers angrily.
"Okay what are you talking about?"
Charlie's nostrils flared up. "You know damn well what I'm talking about. You had your boyfriend and Sam ask me and Carrie to prom."
Sue signs, standing up. "It's not a trick if that's what you're thinking."
"Oh I find that hard to believe." Charlie said. "You are part of the 'in-crowd'. You're friends with Chris Hargensen. And believe me when I say I don't trust you."
"I felt bad for I did to you and Carrie-"
Charlie gave a dry laugh. "Oh I get it now. You felt 'bad' about throwing tampons and telling us to 'plug-it-up' and now you wanna be Saint Sue. If you're doing this just to make yourself feel better...you're no better than Chris."
Sue had look down, feeling as if she had been exposed to the entire world completely nude. Charlie was somewhat right, she was doing it to ease her own conscious. Somewhat.
"I don't blame you for hating me. Or not trusting me." Sue said, looking at Charlie. "But please know it did hurt me that I done that to you and Carrie. We didn't know she didn't know she was having her period..."
"Are you fucking kidding me? Have you not been paying attention? She thought she was bleeding to death!" Charlie exclaims. "If it wasn't for that crazy bitch of mother who always locking us in a prayer clo-"
"What? Locking you in a what?" Sue questions.
"Nothing." Charlie mutters, walking away.
Sue stood there, somewhat in shock of the new information Charlie White had accidently slip out. Everyone in school Mrs. White was a bit of a fanatic. She maybe have realized how much of an fanatic she really is...
From The Shadow & Catalyst Exploded (pp 76-7)
Probably no other aspect of the Carrie White and Charlie McGee affair has been so misunderstood. second-guessed, and shrouded in mystery as the part played by Thomas Everett Ross and Samuel James Conner, Carrie and Charlie's escort to the Ewn High School Prom.
Morton Cratzchbarken, in an admittedly sensationalized address to the National Colloquium on Psychic Phenomena last year, said that two most stunning events of the twentieth-first century have been the September 11 attacks in 2001 and the destruction that came to Chamberlain, Maine, in June of 2013. Cratzchbarken points out both events were driven home to the citizenry by mass media, and both events have almost shouted the frightening fact that, while something had ended, something else had been irrevocably set in motion, for good or ill. If the comparison can be made, then Thomas Ross and Samuel Conner played the part of the terrorist of the catastrophe. The questions remains did they did it willingly or not.
Susan Snell, by her own admission, was to have been escorted by Ross to the annual event. She claims that she suggested that Ross and Conner take Carrie and Charlie to make-up for her part in the shower room incident. Those who oppose this story, most lately led by George Jerome of Harvard, either claim that this is either a highly romantic distortion or an outright lie. Jerome argues argues with great force and eloquence that it is hardly typical of high school age adolescents to feel that they have to "atone" for anything-particularly for an offense against a peer(s) who has been ostracized from existing cliques.
"It would be uplifting if we could believe that adolescent human nature is capable of salvaging pride and self-image of the low bird in the pecking order with such a gesture," Jerome has said in a recent issue of The Atlantic Monthly, "but we know better. The low bird is not picked tenderly out of the dust by its fellows; rather, it dispatched quickly and without mercy."
Jerome, of course, is absolutely right-about birds at any rate-and his eloquence is undoubtedly responsible in large part for the advancement of the "practical joker" theory, which the White/McGee approached but did not actually state. This theory hypothesizes that Ross, Conner and Christine Hargensen (see pp. 10-18) were at the center of a loose conspiracy to get Carrie White and Charlie McGee to the Prom, and, once there, completely humiliate them. Some theorist (mostly crime writers) also claim that Sue Snell was an active part of this conspiracy. This cast both Mr. Ross and Mr. Conner in the worst possible light, that of a couple of practical jokers maneuvering two unstable girls into a extremely stressful situation.
This author doesn't believe in likely of the character of Mr. Ross or Mr. has painted them as the "dumb jock" and "Peeping Tom nerd" to express his views of Tommy Ross and Sam Conner perfectly.
It is true that Ross was an athlete of above average ability. And Conner had a slight above average intelligence, especially in math and science. But Ross had a GPA of 3.9 (hardly fitting the "dumb jock" image) and Conner was very active in basketball (hard the "Pepping Tom nerd").
Their surviving classmates gave them both high marks, and this is significant. There were only fifteen, including Conner, of what has become known in the popular press as Prom Night. Those who were not in attendance were largely the unpopular members of the junior and senior class. If these "outs" remember Ross and Conner as a couple of friendly, good natured guys, does not Professor Jerome's thesis suffer accordingly?
