In June of 1987, the last dregs of high school were slipping through the drain. Abigail "Thunder" Rosina Rowe, Alexander Hua, Harvey Taylor Hughes, and Joanne Margolin, best friends, co-conspirators, and partners in crime, went to senior prom and never came out.

When they tried to leave, what they found was both not the parking lot and too many parking lots. It was too much everything. The world had vanished, replaced with a supermassive structure of their own high school warped and twisted into some kind of strange nightmare underworld with seemingly no end in sight. Stairwells form chimneys to nowhere, outdoor walls fold inwards and indoor walls and reams of lockers form bridges and stack like skyscrapers. Piping spiderwebs between the Home Ec classroom and the arts classroom that used to be on different floors. There's too many floors. There's too many doors. The only way to go is down.

They'll get out sooner or later. They can't put off graduation forever.

Alex wants nothing more than to do right by his parents.

Nervous, reticent, pedantic, often awkward, and mostly a square. Cautious and devoted to the point of stubbornness.

As far as alcohol and such goes he's abstinent as ever, but many of his inhibitions about danger have been broken in the Prom Perpetual; yes, he'll take the ten foot leap over a gaping chasm, thank you, and yes, he'll carry around a Real Human Skull He Found to see if it does anything when he throws it in the giant punch pool, and yes, he'll wipe blood across his face as an intimidation tactic. He has killed more than one puppet in the Everprom. He tries not think about the way they break and bleed the same way normal people do. Anger and paranoia come to him a little more easily than it did before.

Alex is a triple threat piano, violin, and composer prodigy, with skill in cello and a shaky grasp on many other instruments. He is no professional virtuoso (yet), but he is incredibly proficient and has invested tens of thousands of hours of his life to these skills--and so have his parents invested tens of thousands of dollars in him.

It is something he loves, but also something put upon by his parents at a very young age, and at this stage his pursuit of success and scholarship is in no small part propelled by his want to pay back his Chinese immigrant parents for all that they've sacrificed for him as their oldest son. Besides, if he can be the one to make the family proud, then God willing his younger siblings won't have to have so much pressure on them too. It seems to be working so far.

Within the Eternal Prom, Alex has been determined to keep up his skills. He's raided the best violin out of the band room and sits in the practice rooms with the pianos when he can afford to; both instruments are subpar compared to what he's used to, but they work, and he has to keep up something while he's stuck here. He can't afford to let his skills atrophy. This isn't just about music. It's about keeping up with the future. It's about scholarship. It's about making his parents proud, becoming what they dreamed of and paying back an impossible debt. It's about making sure he can actually follow this career, because of how much time he's put into it, at this point he can't see himself finding a job anywhere else, or being anyone else.

He's had a one-track road his whole life. The road now is clear: graduate and go to the conservatory he's been accepted into. It should be so easy, so why is he still scared?

For a while, the Infiniprom is a reprieve. The clocks are all frozen; Gail treats it as a vacation from her family and her home life. Joanne sees it as the last chance she gets to actually be with her friends. Harvey's glad to put off the future when he doesn't know what he'll do when he gets out. Alex treats it as time he can take to practice and get ahead of his peers when he finally has to leave. And besides... like this, they can squeeze water from the rock and spend more time together when it's easy, before all of them have to go.

- My man plays a mean violin.

His parents are his parents. Strict, beloved, and devoted. Being with them is often difficult, but Alex wants desperately to do right by them.

Abigail "Thunder" Rosina Rowe is his lifelong best friend. Belligerent, angry, and crass, she's a "pink barbarian" and earned her title as the Thunder by rocking the shit out of a former principal without getting expelled, then doing the same to a quarterback the day she came back from suspension. She is no-nonsense and no-bullshit. Raised Catholic and resents her parents. Wants to escape town. Alex finds comfort in her presence, because not only does she like him, but her sharp insight and brusque nature cuts straight to the heart of things and lets Alex stop fumbling with his words.

Harvey Taylor Hughes is one of Alex and Gail's "real world" friends and classmates since freshman year. Harvey is a jock; kind, confident, and teasing. Harvey is nice enough and his parents chill enough to work around Alex's intensive out-of-school practice schedule; he has a habit of sneaking up to Alex's window. He still does not hold a candle to Gail, who shows up almost every other night because she hates her house and fights with her parents. A baseball kid and the "face" of their little band of weirdos.

Joanne Margolin A girl of the humanities, namely history. She is sweet as daisies with the mouth of a sailor, with bouts of intensity. Deeply charitable and somewhat opinionated. Simultaneously one of the most understanding people she knows. She, like all of Gail's friends, is among the only people who are relatively unaffected by her surface temperament, and Gail is incredibly grateful for and desperate to pay back the seemingly endless kindness, patience, and understanding that Joanne gives to a girl like her.