On the dock of a lake in a tiny town at the corner of Nowhere & Nowhere, he sits counting the seconds until his high school graduation—at which point Arthur M. Flood intends to leave his hick life far behind in the brown Kansas dust. That's the plan. Until . . . up from the lake's muddy depths swims a girl. She's not a mermaid, but she is the one who shakes up Arty's life, makes him mad and mad for her, and helps him find a pathway to his past, his future, and where his heart truly lies. Teens will recognize their own emotional landscape in this steamy, funny, coming-of-age tale in which the heart tries to hide, only to be utterly exposed by love and lust, lost and found. It's 1988 in Harker City, Kansas, population "1,700 smiling faces," and Arty Flood's one goal after graduation is to leave town. There are a few complications, however: His employer owes him $1,400 in back wages, he's having a steamy affair with his art teacher, the local sheriff has blackmailed Arty into dating his daughter, and the family's funeral home is failing. Then the girl of his dreams literally swims into his life. Vanessa, a California girl with problems of her own, helps Arty to see Harker City through an outsider's eyes. Vanessa is a bit too perfect, but her role as a catalyst works well, pushing Arty's first-person perceptions to shift from self-centered and one dimensional to a more mature view of his small town—a place so clearly evoked that readers will find themselves craving those Frosty Queen Zip Burgers. Though the chapters are short and fast paced, there is a lot going on in this first novel, including explicit sex and salty language; but older YAs will respond strongly to Arty's breezily narrated yearnings for life outside of his "hick" hometown. Rutan, Lynn “Uhlig’s evocation of small-town life is perfect . . . echoed in changes, at turns poignant and dramatic.” —School Library Journal “Raging hormones, angsty rants and reckless behavior fuel this accomplished black comedy.” —Publishers Weekly From the Paperback edition. Richard Uhlig is a former-and-ever smalltown boy who now lives with his wife and family in New York City. He makes a striking debut with Last Dance at the Frosty Queen. I wheel the Death Mobile onto Broadway, my hometown’s main drag, and head west. Pierre, my bosses’ standard poodle, sticks his delighted-doggie head out the window, his tongue flapping. The digital thermometer on the savings and loan blinks 93 degrees—and it’s only May 6. They say it’s going to be a scorcher this summer, and the air-conditioning in my hearse is fatally busted. A big white banner flutters overhead: harker city, kansas—celebrate our one hundred years this memorial day weekend! Celebrate what? Here it is 1988, and if you’re in the mood for McDonald’s, Chinese food, a movie, or even a stoplight, you’ll have to drive thirty miles north and swing a right at Junction City. Our Broadway might not have much in the way of shows, the cheesy promotional brochure in City Hall tells you, but we make up for it in our traditional small-town friendliness. Harker City’s slogan is “1,700 smiling faces—and yours!” Of all the things this burg lacks, dateable girls would have to be at the top of my list. My class, the seniors, has twelve girls in it, right? Three have children, two are pregnant (say what you will, but we yokels know how to entertain ourselves), one is my cousin, one is becoming a nun, one is morbidly obese, and the decent-looking remainders date football players. If you don’t play football in Harker City, you don’t exist (I don’t exist). I drive past our house, the plain-looking two-story white clapboard with a big front porch. Carrie, my sister, wants to paint the exterior Victorian rose with sky blue trim, but Dad’ll never go for it. Way too flashy. The sign on the lawn says flood & son funeral home, serving harker city since 1922. Dad added this a few years ago, when those awful Larsons moved to town and built a sprawling new Southern Colonial–style funeral home across the street. The Larsons, beaming yuppies with giant white teeth, live in a big house with a swimming pool out by the country club. The “son” in Dad’s sign is my big brother, Allen, whose official title is assistant funeral director, a position that allows him to lie on his bed all day and smoke pot. My dad, the bald guy who looks like he might be expecting twins, is in our driveway washing his new used hearse. He’s growing that grizzled beard for the Centennial. Five minutes later, hot wind whips my hair as we zoom past the rusted marquee of the old Chief Drive-in Theater. Town soon gives way to wheat fields as my speedometer hits seventy. The stand-up twenty-four-karat-gold wreath-and-crest hood ornament reminds me that I am driving a genuine Caddy. A gift from Dad on my sixteenth birthday, this black 1965 hearse, with its rusted frame and chrome-draped grinning face with dual headlights, accelerates like a cement truck going up Pikes Peak