Seventeen-year old Heidi Leiter scrutinizes herself in the mirror on the back of the closet door, one minute pleased with her appearance, the next minute totally discontent. She's so nervous about attending Osbourn High School's senior prom tonight that she hasn't been able to eat. "I feel like I'm getting ready to play the biggest district-tournament game of my life," she says.

"I feel like I'm drunk or something, in these high heeled shoes!" says her 20-year-old friend Missy Peters, walking unsteadily around the bedroom in the two-inch-high pumps she borrowed.

"Missy in heels," says Candi Schleig, a friend who has come to watch the preparations. "I never thought I'd see the day."

"You guys look great," another friend, Tammy Stephens, says supportively.

"Where's Dad?" Missy asks, brightening, ready for pictures.

"He's sort of hiding," says her mother, Mary Ellen, monitoring the scene from the edge of the door frame.

"Well, tell him he better come up here!"

It could be mistaken for a timeless Norman Rockwell sketch of small-town American life. But today this two-story house in Manassas, Virginia, is the set for something quite unlike your standard-issue prom night.

      Heidi and Missy are a lesbian couple, attending tonight's prom as each other's date. And instead of chiffon or taffeta, their outfits will be tuxedos, with lavender cummerbunds and high heels.

      "I can assure you, no one in Manassas has ever done this," says their friend Camille Carroll, shaking her head.

      "Y'all definitely have guts. I'll say that much," says Missy's older sister Maureen.

      Coming out to parents and peers in high school in Manassas, Virginia, a conservative community 30 miles outside Washington D.C., would seem—for most people—too much to handle. And yet, after months of planning and agonizing, after quietly getting permission from school officials, after enduring whispered rumors at school about their relationship, Heidi and Missy will be making their status as partners official.

      "Everything should be easy after this," mutters Missy, as she nervously straightens her gay-pride-lavender bow tie for the fifteenth time.

      "Well, I hope people at the prom come up to talk to us," says Heidi, waiting for the leased limousine to arrive. She is the graduating senior; it is her high school classmates who will surround the couple for the next three hours, their verdict the girls await. "If just one person comes up to say hello, I know I'll be all right." Like the trained athlete she is, she inhales deeply, shakes her arms, blows the breath out and tries to relax.

Heidi and Missy have grown up in a small city that couldn't be more American mainstream. The site of two Civil War battles, Manassas is home to numerous antique shops, a trailer park and an historic "Olde Town" dotted with tourist restaurants. The surrounding Prince William County is one of the fastest-growing areas in the country, yet ultra-urban sophistication hasn't quite arrived. Manassas' main thoroughfare is still lined with electrical supply houses and auto body shops. At the fanciest hotel in town, room rates start at $44 a night.

      "A lot of people don't think they know any gays, but they do," Heidi says.

      "They'll be sitting there saying they don't know any gay people, and I'll be thinking, 'Oh yeah?'" says Missy.

      "That's one reason we're going to the prom," Heidi says, "to let people know we're out and we're just like everybody else."

      "Like the saying goes," Missy adds, "'We are everywhere.'" These two young women want to be counted.

      Since Heidi is younger than Missy, some people assume that her lesbianism is an experiment or a transitional part of her sexual development. As the eldest of three children born to John Leiter, a communications technician, and Kay Leiter, who works for an elite agency of the federal government, Heidi is actually something of a straight arrow. At age 4, she learned to twirl a baton and was a majorette until she turned 12. At Osbourn, where her average is 3.65, she is co-captain of the girls' basketball team, president of the Police Science Club and sports editor of the yearbook. She's been a lifeguard and once gave CPR to an elderly woman who passed out behind the wheel of a car in front of hers. In a few months she will be a freshman at Radford University in Radford, Virginia, the same college where Missy is working on a degree in physical education.

      Telling her family that she found women appealing emotionally and sexually was an ordeal. Heidi's mother vehemently opposed the idea of Heidi going public with her gay life-style. She also didn't want Heidi choosing Radford on account of Missy, when bigger-name universities had approached Heidi about joining their women's basketball teams; some had offered scholarships.

      Heidi's sister, Tammy, now 16, was unable to speak to Heidi for some weeks when she first found out. "I didn't know how to act around her," Tammy says now. But after talking it over with school psychologist Larry Shireman, and consulting her fiancé, Aaron (a 19-year-old whom Heidi used to date), Tammy softened.

      Heidi's father has been her most reliable ally. When she told him that she was gay, he was quite for a moment, then said he'd "sort of known it all the time." But he too expressed the wish that Heidi give heterosexuality a chance. As a military man who had to spend a lot of time overseas while his kids were young, Mr. Leiter is working hard these days to keep communication channels open.

      Neither one of Heidi's parents was keen on the girls attending the prom together. But Heidi did not let that inhibit her. Walking into the prom with Missy was something she felt she had to do for herself, despite the protestations of concerned family and friends.

Where Heidi is plainspoken and studious, Missy is gregarious, more aware of life's hilarity. She raises her voice expressively, laughs a bawdy laugh and plays Costello to Heidi's overly responsible Abbott.

      On leave from Radford for the spring, Missy is living at home and working one job at a day-care center and another at a recreation center because she doesn't want to keep driving four hours back to Manassas to see Heidi every weekend. Her father, the owner of a small computer company, is glad to have her off the highway.

      Mr. and Mrs. Peters have traveled great psychic distances with their five children. Missy came out two years ago in a way that shocked the family. She was caught kissing another girl by the girl's parents. The events that followed were so traumatic for both families that Missy went to live in Alabama for a while with an older sister and finished high school there.

      It was a heart-wrenching year for the Peters family: Missy's grandmother was dying in a nursing home and Missy's parents were struggling with a revelation: Their 30-year-old son Tommy, who'd told them years earlier that he was gay, was now battling AIDS. Family gatherings had become strained and emotional since Tommy, visiting from Washington D.C with his steady boyfriend, always wanted to talk about his illness in both political and personal terms.

      "Initially, the family was like, 'We love you but we don't want to hear about it,'" recalls Steve Shifflett, Tommy's lover. "They didn't want to think he was ever going to die."

     Then Missy let the family know that she too was gay. It was too much. "I'm about out of tears," says Missy's Mom, Mary Ellen Peters, sitting in the family room under a Madonna framed by dried palm leaves from Palm Sunday mass. "You can't control your children's lives as much as you'd like to. You really can't."

      As Tommy Peters got sicker, the family grew closer, and questions surrounding Missy's sexuality fell into perspective. By the time Missy got into a steady relationship with Heidi in 1990, Missy's parents were just relieved that she seemed to be settling down. "I can't understand parents who disown their kids. I don't know how they do that," says Mary Ellen Peters. She has prayed many hours for guidance on how to handle this. "The bottom line is: Your child is your child."

Missy and Heidi had been acquainted as basketball teammates for more than two years before they fell in love. Missy was a forward, Heidi a guard. By the time Heidi was a sophomore, both girls were traveling regularly with the team.

      Missy kept in touch with Heidi while she was living in Alabama. When they got together upon Missy's return on the day after Christmas 1989, both young women realized that they cared for each other in a way that was new. A short time after their relationship become a sexual one, Missy told Heidi, as they slow-danced to a Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville song, that she loved her.

      They began taking turns sleeping at each others house, and their families knew of their relationship. At the Peters' they could sleep in the same bed without anyone making a big deal out of it. At the Leiters', Heidi's mother peeked in periodically to make sure that one of them was on the floor.

      Before long, Heidi was going to Mass with Missy's family, her photo was in the frame next to Missy's on the family room bookshelf, and a local newspaper clipping about her basketball triumphs ("I've never had someone that could take control of the team on the floor like she has," reads on quote from a coach) were tacked onto the Peters' refrigerator.

      When the two girls disagreed, they found they could hash things out and come to a consensus. This made their relationship feel like a tremendous advancement for them both. They always made up. And their attraction intensified.

      Missy says, "I look at her and say, 'You don't have any faults.' and she doesn't take anything out on me."

     Heidi says, "If I wasn't with Missy, I know there'd probably be someone else but it just wouldn't be the same at all."

     Committed to the idea of staying together for life, Heidi and Missy often daydream about the future.

      "Mom, when Heidi and I get married, we want to have the ceremony right here in the backyard and have the priest stand here," Missy says, pointing to the backyard deck.

      "You won't be married by a priest, my dear," says her mother calmly. "The Catholic church is not ready for that!"

By the summer of 1990, Missy's brother Tommy was seriously ill but still experiencing periods of energy and exuberance. Once Missy told him she was gay, he introduced her to the gay boulevards, pubs and bookstores of Washington D.C. He had sensed years earlier that she might be a lesbian but had spoken about it only to his boyfriend. As the months went by, he politicized Missy and Heidi by encouraging them to join groups like the Federation of Parents and Friends and Lesbians and Gays. He took Mrs. Peters and both girls to see the famous AIDS quilt. Just before Christmas, Heidi and Missy decorated his apartment for the holidays. He was confined to a wheelchair by then.

     Around that time, Heidi read in a self-help book for gay people about a 1980 federal court ruling that allowed a Rhode Island youth to take a male date to his prom. It occurred to her then that she'd like to take Missy to hers. Missy was keen on the idea right away. Because of her stay in Alabama, she'd missed the prom her own senior year.

     When they told Missy's brother about their plans, he beamed. Gong to Osbourn's prom together was a true act of gay pride, Tommy said; their decision made him ecstatic.

     When he died in the middle of January, going to the prom assumed another layer of significance. In the months that followed, he was often on their minds.

Heidi checked with Osbourn's school psychologist Larry Shireman to make sure that the authorities wouldn't kick her out of the dance if she brought Missy along. Shireman then met with the Osbourn's principal, Dr. Marian Stephens, and later told Heidi that while no one was exactly pleased, the couple couldn't be prevented from going. The principal's only obligation, she'd said, was to give other students as nice a prom as Osbourn kids had enjoyed in previous years.

     In other words, the coast was clear.

     But other things could still go wrong. Heidi and Missy wondered if one or two redneck males among Osbourn's 240 seniors might threaten them in some way. Would going to prom start a fight?

      "At our school, nobody's mature about things like this." said Tammy Leiter, concerned not only for her sister but also for herself since she and her fiancé, Aaron, would be going to the same prom.

     Mary Ellen Peters didn't approve of the prom plans and feared more for Heidi, in the end, than for her own daughter. "I wasn't sure what they were in for," she said later.

     But the more Heidi and Missy discussed the prom, the more they wanted to go.

      "Every generation blazes a trail for he next generation coming through," Missy said. Heidi agreed that if they went to the prom together, it wouldn't be so scary for someone else to do the same the next year.

     In February, they sealed the deal by going to Mitchell's formal Wear Shop in the mall where Aaron worked. They spent two full hours marveling at all their options, finally getting fitted for dapper black cutaways with tails.

      "We didn't want to role-play by having one of us in a tux and one in a dress," Heidi explains. (Dresses were out from the start since they both disliked them.) They decided to have a range of footwear available at the Peters' house so they could choose the best shoes at the last minute. This was also their way of postponing an argument: Missy thought they could get away with wearing sneakers without laces, but Heidi thought the prom deserved something better.

     They called a limousine service that advertised in Washington D.C.'s gay newspaper The Blade and reserved a car for three hours. The total cash outlay for the evening was about $500, which Missy points out, is "a lot when you figure you might not have as good a time as you want." Heidi started life guarding at the recreation center to raise extra money She and Missy opened a joint saving account to start saving for the prom as well as next fall's expenses at Radford.

Rumors of the girls' plan began to flutter around Osbourn's lunchroom and corridors. Some of the kids had already surmised that Heidi was gay. For one thing, she'd presented a paper on gay rights in Mrs. Sheridan's English class in junior year. That raised eyebrows. Then, when Missy began to pick Heidi up after school, it was like adding two plus two. Since high schools haven't yet become bastions of political correctness, anti-gay chatter had fluttered about the hallways all year.

     Having been in the limelight before—as a much-admired basketball player—Heidi was surprised how different this felt. Instead of seeing approving faces down the long rows of hall lockers, she glimpsed pointed fingers and laughs behind hands.

      "Is that the girl taking another girl to the prom?" she heard someone whisper to a cluster of classmates. Once, as she left the building to go home, she heard a boy cry out, above the din of a departing school bus, "Dyke!"

      "Yes, and proud of it!" Heidi shouted back. "

      In general, the girls at school seemed to be having a harder time with Heidi's homosexuality than the boys. The chagrin cut across socioeconomic lines: "Preps" from established Manassas families had pretty much the same reaction as less-well-to-do students did. Some classmates thought Heidi was bringing Missy to the prom "just to get attention." Some suggested nominating the two girls for King and Queen of the prom.

"I'm shocked," said 18-year-old senior Angie Brice, summing up what seemed the prevailing mood. "It's nobody's business but their own, but Heidi doesn't seem the type."

"It's a little odd," said 18-year-old senior Brace Wachter. "But it would be much harder to take if they were guys."

"Oh gross! It makes me want to puke," said a young woman who refused to be identified.

      Rumors about the prom plan hit the basketball coach's office, and she was concerned, fearing for their welfare and also for the team's reputation.

     A reporter form the D.C. Blade learned about Heidi through a mutual friend and wrote a short article about Heidi's perceptions of being gay at 17. In the article, Heidi mentioned that she was taking her girlfriend to the prom. This alerted a Washington Post reporter to the story, and Heidi and Missy agreed to be interviewed, as long as the article ran no earlier than the morning of the prom. Missy feared that the more time people were given to contemplate what she and Heidi were doing, the more elaborate the schemes might be to sabotage their party.

     But as the prom date grew nearer, the mood seemed to change and an increasing number of students started telling Heidi they were on her side. One boy approached her in computer science class and said, "I think it's great that you're standing up for your rights." Another young woman, struggling to find her way through the sexual-identity maze, began writing Heidi notes, confiding that she, too, was feeling she might be gay and was looking up to Heidi as an example. A senior who worked on the yearbook told Heidi that she had gone dancing with a male date at a gay bar in D.C. one night and that she thought gay people were as normal as everyone else.

     One teacher spent a whole period discussing homosexuality and gay rights, and asked students what they might do if Heidi and Missy sat down at their prom table. Reactions ranged from outspoken disapproval to total acceptance.

Heidi and Missy awoke the morning of the prom with their own conflicting feelings. "I feel like I'm getting married," Missy said.

      "Good morning, celebrities!" Mary Ellen Peters called out as the two walked downstairs. There on the dining room table was the Washington Post article. The headline read: "A Rite of Passage, a Matter of Rights." Now everybody knew.

     Their pre-prom entourage was growing, but that was how they'd wanted it; both girls knew that at the eleventh hour they would need the support of friends. So Missy's two 19-year-old roommates from Radford—Candi Schleig and Tammy Stephens, both of them straight—came to Manassas for the weekend. Camille Caroll, a friend and fellow member of the Prince William Gay and Lesbian Association, was scheduled to stop by Missy's house in the early evening. Tammy Leiter and Aaron had promised to come over in their prom clothes for family pictures.

     At 12:30, Heidi and Missy went to Mitchell's to pick up the tuxes. In the long line, they were the only women. Then they stopped at the Flower Gallery to collect their lavender sweetheart rose boutonnieres. At 3:00, they checked in with Heidi's mother and were stunned to be given $225 in cash to help with prom expenses. While they knew that Mrs. Leiter had cried as she read the Washington Post story that morning, the money seemed a sign of some acceptance.

     Heidi's mother and brother John, as well as Tammy Leiter and Aaron (in prom clothes) stopped by the Peters' house at 6:00 P.M.—two hours before Heidi and Missy had planned to get dressed. They ran upstairs for quick changes, then modeled their tuxes for the family.

      "You look so handsome," nine-year-old John Leiter told his sister.

     At 6:45, Heidi and Missy went back upstairs to shower and embark on the goofy routine of getting dressed all over again. While Candi and Tammy waited patiently downstairs, the girls had their hair styled by Missy's sister Maureen.

      "It's really, really puffy, Heidi," Missy teased.

      "Shut up!"

      "No, it's notŠ" Maureen said soothingly.

     Ready at last, Heidi went into the Peters' kitchen to call her father, who was in Chicago on business. He told her he'd been so worried about the prom that he hadn't slept the night before.

      "He said that if I could open up to The Washington Post, he hoped I'd be able to open up to him a little more," Heidi said after hanging up, her face soft. She told him that she loved him, and wished him a safe trip home.

     Just as she'd hoped, prom night was enabling her to make closer connections.

The limousine arrived at 9:00, but it was not the flashing white sedan they had ordered, in keeping with the prom's "Hollywood" theme. Worried about negative publicity, the limo company had subcontracted the job. "I told them that as long as my clients are orderly, I don't care who they are," said the driver. This car was black and quite conservative.

     Missy's sister-in-law took family pictures. Then Candi, Tammy and Camille piled into the limo on either side of Heidi and Missy, and the car eased down the quite street, leaving Missy's parents arm in arm in the yellow porch light.

     For the next few moments, all five young women distracted themselves by experimenting with the limo's interior lights. Then the prom angst hit again.

      "This is much worse than a wedding," Missy said, holding her stomach. "A lot of people are going to thank you for this someday," said Camille.

     When the bright lights of the school became visible in the distance, Missy said, "Uh-oh, we're getting close. Maybe we should go around in circles."

      "You guys are going to do great," Camille said.

      "Oh shit," said Heidi, seeing the long, canopied promenade that the prom's decorating committee had modeled after the walkway leading into the Academy Awards. A set of bleachers was positioned off to one side so parents and siblings could watch the arrival of the promgoers.

     The chauffer shifted the sedan into "park." "Now, nobody opens the car doors but me," he said sternly.

      "We love you guys!" Candi and Tammy squealed as Heidi and Missy stepped out.

A heavyset woman snorted with laughter when she saw the two young women walk briskly down the floodlight steps. School principal Dr. Stephens looked glum, said "Good evening," then scratched her nose. Another woman standing nearby put her hand over her mouth in apparent horror.

     Walking hand in hand into the Osbourn's gym—the same gym where they'd both earned Most Valuable Player status their respective senior years—was the most deliberately thought-out thing they'd done in their relatively short lives. But as Missy walked down the promenade, she felt as if she had blinders on; she felt more "zoned out" than any time she'd ever stood at the free throw-line. Neither girl looked up to see what anyone else was doing; hearts pounding, they focused only on putting one foot in front of the other.

     Larry Shireman was one of the first to walk up to them. "If you've made it this far, you can do anything," he said. An undercover police officer observing the prom as a chaperone also came up to say the thought they were brave.

     Feeling dazed but slightly less nervous, Heidi and Missy walked over to a display of Hollywood stars on the wall where students were supposed to sign their names and trace their handprints under the headings "Leading Man" and "Leading Lady." Heidi crossed out the word Man without worrying too much, writing Lady in its place. As they traced their handprints onto the wall, Missy murmured good-naturedly, 'How long do you think it will take this to get destroyed?"

     Some necks were craning as sophomores offered Heidi and Missy prom delicacies like "steak on a stick" and nonalcoholic punch. Missy was too nervous to eat.

     Tammy and Aaron came over to say hello, just as they'd promised. One of Heidi's friends stopped by, but since her date had told her he thought gays were gross, she didn't introduce him. A teacher whom Missy had known years earlier came over and kissed her, saying, "I'm behind you 100 percent."

     There wasn't too much more to be scared of. "Smile when you stare at people!" Heidi whispered to Missy as she watched her survey the crowd.

      "Heidi," Missy said, feeling gleeful. "We're making history sitting right here on our butts."

When the band started to play "A Groovy Kind of Love," they decided to dance. They walked to the dance floor, put their arms around each other and swayed back and forth. They didn't kiss. "We didn't want to make people uncomfortable," Heidi said later.

     When they finally checked the time, they were shocked they'd been at prom for a whole hour. Thirty minutes later, they were home again.

      "We did it!" Missy shouted once inside her own house. Her father looked up from a late-night phone call and seemed relieved. Her mother was already upstairs asleep, but when Heidi and Missy scrambled up to the bedroom to excitedly debrief her, she woke up fully and started to cry. "I don't know if they're brave or stupid," she said, wiping her eyes.

      "This is the biggest thing we've ever done," Heidi said, smiling. "By going to that prom I've done more in my life than people three times my age."

      "We've conquered something that's never been conquered before," said Missy.

     Then they got back in their limo and went to McDonald's. The chauffeur, realizing by now that this was a night of slightly historic proportions, broke company rules and let them eat their burgers in the car. And then, prom night was over.