Promised by Prom

by Jessica Bucher

  By the time I had wiped the water from my phone enough to turn it back on, the magic of the moment was gone. Replaced instead, by a stern looking Addy, hands balled into fists on her drenching wet hips.

  Her eyes travelled to the clock that hung at the far end of the pool. “Shake dry, guys. Our senior prom is over in fifteen minutes, and we have one supremely corny photo to take.”

  Max grinned from ear to ear. “You’re really going to go through with this? The six of us are just going to march onto the dance floor after having taken an unsanctioned afterhours swim?

  “Lest we not forget, smuggling a seriously slacking member of student council in,” added Gray, nudging Max in the ribs.

  Addy’s shoulder’s sagged a little. “I know it seems very silly.”

  “Very,” said Simon, one eyebrow raised at Lucy as if he hoped she would come to her senses and tell Addy no. He clearly hadn’t been dating Lucy long enough. We never told Addy no!

  “The thing is,” said Addy. “This is our last opportunity to do something big together. Next year we’ll all be in different places,” her eyes met with Gray’s. He had been awarded his dream scholarship a few weeks ago, and his departure loomed over their relationship, like a massive black cloud, both drawing them together, and wedging them apart all in one.

  Gray slid his hand into hers and looked to the rest of us. “I’m in. How about you guys?”

  Max and I didn’t need convincing. We were the whole reason the six of us were dripping wet in the first place.

  “What if we just took another selfie?” pleaded Simon.

  Lucy batted her eyelashes at him. “Come on, Simon, don’t you want to have something to hang your hat on here at Delinki High? One big memory to stand out among the others?”

  Simon threw back his head and laughed. “One, Lucy? Every moment of my high school career has been colored by you, both the good and the bad. I’m willing to do this for you, but let’s not pretend I’ll be remembered for a soggy wet prom picture.”

  Max clapped him on the back. “You, my friend, will be remembered for your amazing Harry Potter fan fiction.”

  “Exactly!” proclaimed Simon with a heavy eye roll.

  “What are we waiting for?” cried Addy, and with that the six of us stepped out of the pool room and headed down the long corridor to the gym. The boys dress shoes squeaked along the linoleum, the water in their socks squishing as we walked past our peers. Some snickered, covering their hands with their mouths and looking genuinely appalled, while others cheered, positive this was all part of an elaborate prank. One last stooges act.

  We didn’t really care what they thought. When we looked back on our time at Delinki High we weren’t going to think about the people that sat beside us in class. We would remember sleepovers in the barn, crying into a pan of brownies when boys made us sad, kicking Max out of the den when we needed to talk about serious stuff and the way we could always count on one another, no matter what sort of trouble we had gotten ourselves into.

  The photographer was bent over packing his supplies to go home when Addy tapped him on the shoulder.

  “I know you’re ready to go. But…”

  He took one look at us and smiled. “Oh I’m taking this photo” he laughed, motioning for us to step in front of the backdrop.”

  “Yikes, pyramid number three is a mess,” I laughed, winking at Max.

  The six of us squeezed in front of the backdrop. Gray, Simon, and Max in the back, us girls in the front leaning into their wet tuxedos, save for Max, of course. The photographer snapped away as we alternated between sweet smiles, and funny faces.

  When the photos came back we would laugh ourselves silly at the irony of us standing dripping wet in front of the pyramids of egypt, our corsages wilted and hair plastered to our shoulders and foreheads.

  It was the greatest night of my seventeen-year-old life, and as I leaned back into Max’s shoulder, I knew without the slightest hesitation that he was the reason. I squeezed the hand that encircled my waist a little tighter, reveling in the feel of his lips resting a kiss in my damp hair.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Max

  “But there’s no music.” Not Joey stood next to me with a look of utter confusion on his face. In front of us, a horde of Delinki seniors were gyrating and spinning on the makeshift dance floor in the middle of his restaurant. And he wasn’t completely wrong.

  “The music is in the headphones, old man,” I said as I put an extra set on his head.

  After a moment of listening, he finally cracked a smile and nodded along with a Coldplay remix. “Groovy!” he yelled at me, while he proceeded to move his hips from side to side.

  “Don’t break anything, please,” I muttered so he couldn’t hear me as I turned away.

  I didn’t get one step away before there was a beautiful blonde with pigtail braids clinging to my neck.

  “Happy ninety day anniversary,” she whispered before landing a kiss square on my cheek.

  “That’s it?” I grimaced, which earned me a playful jab to the side.

  “Don’t pretend with me, Max Altman.”

  I pulled her closer and wrapped my arms around her waist. With a lingering kiss, I thought about the last ninety amazing days with Nora. I would never tell her this, but ninety days was easily the longest relationship I’d ever been in. The last month and a half flew by so fast, I started to wonder if this was what a happy relationship was supposed to feel like. We were the same Nora and Max as before, best friends and comfortable enough with each other to poke fun and tell it like it was, but now there was an added layer of making out a lot. And the prospect for a future.

  “What am I going to do without you next year?” I whined into her neck.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You won’t be at school.” I kept my fingers laced around her waist, letting my head hang back like being without Nora eight hours a day was the worst situation I could be in. With graduation next weekend, this was the last weekend Nora and I would have before she was officially a college girl dating a high schooler, and full disclosure—that idea scared me a little.

  She grabbed my face and held it firmly in her hands. “That’s nothing compared to what Gray and Addy have to face. They’ll be a thousand miles apart. And Lucy and Simon have to navigate college life together. You and I…” she looked up at me, her mouth just inches from mine. “We’re golden.”

  “We are golden, aren’t we?” Then I leaned in and kissed her again. This girl never failed to settle my worries. Some days I wondered how we went so long without being a couple.

  “Separate yourselves so I can open my eyes, please.” Addy was standing on the other side of the counter, her headphones draped around her neck. As usual, her hands were plastered over her eyes like seeing us kissing would turn her to stone.

  “What do you want?” I groaned. I was literally counting down the days until my sister left for MSU and would stop popping up to complain every time I got close to my girlfriend.

  I tried not to be too harsh though, since I knew it was only one more month before Gray took off for California and she would be a whole new brand of annoying, the mopey, heartsick kind.

  According to Nora, they were still solid, ready to tackle the long distance thing, stronger than ever. But still, a little piece of my heart broke for her. If someone tried to take Nora away for a semester at a time, I’d lose my mind.

  “Don’t look now, but Hailey Yi is flirting, and it’s unsettling.” Lucy popped up right behind my sister. She had a smile on her face that only hot goss could manifest. Simon stood with his hands in his pockets, still bobbing to the music in his headphones, while he casually tried to distance himself from the juicy details his girlfriend was about to spill.

  Our eyes all followed her less-than-subtle head jerk toward the pinball machines where Hailey forced her normally stern face into a teeth baring smile. It was...how should I say...painful to watch, and yet, none of us could turn awa
y.

  Then—collective gasp—we spotted the tall college boy who still needed a haircut laughing too hard at what she was saying.

  “I can’t believe you even invited him,” Gray said with a wide-eyed expression.

  “Tell me about it,” Nora muttered, rolling her eyes.

  “What can I say? He found me on Facebook, and it turns out he’s impossible to dislike,” I said with a shrug. It was true. When my new relationship status posted, he was the first to congratulate me.

  “I can’t believe you still use Facebook,” my sister muttered, and I scowled at her playfully.

  “I can’t believe this is our last weekend as seniors,” Nora said, changing the subject.

  “It’s been a crazy year,” Lucy answered.

  Addy looked up with a hopeful smile. “We’re going to need goals for college—”

  “NO,” the rest of us answered in unison.

  Nora

  “Those goals are literally the reason the six of us are together,” said Addy. She worked her away around the circle, penetrating each of us with a deep stare. Simon glanced sideways at Lucy before slowly easing the two of them backward into the mix of dancers.

  “Smooth,” I mouthed to Simon, careful not to let Addy catch me commiserating with the enemy.

  “He probably doesn’t even have the volume on in his headphones,” she growled. “Maybe you’ve outgrown your goals,” tried Gray, tugging Addy by the waist toward the dancefloor. “You got your happy ending.”

  She probably would have continued arguing if it weren’t for the fact that Gray was twirling her under his arm like he had a bronze bust somewhere at the square dance hall of fame.

  “I didn’t know Gray could dance like that.” I laughed, looking up at Max.

  “I didn’t want to know Gray danced like that,” laughed Max.

  We were the only two left standing on the sidelines, and as we witnessed our friends bouncing up and down, grins plastered on their faces, I started to feel a little sad.

  “You won’t have to miss me next year at school. I’ll be fifteen miles away at community college. But them, this could be the last time we see the four of them together.” I said, jerking my head toward Lucy, Simon, Gray, and Addy.

  “I’m going to miss my dumb sister,” said Max with a sigh, his eyes fixed out over the black and white checked floor of Joey’s. “And her dumb boyfriend. Possibly even Simon,” he added, chewing on the corner of his lip, like he hadn’t quite made up his mind on that one yet.

  “How do we make it stop?” I asked, knowing full well that, that wasn’t a thing in our power.

  “We could start by switching the song from this honkey tonk junk to something decent.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said, leaning into Max’s shoulder.

  “I know,” he said, popping a kiss on the top of my braids.

  “The thing is, to get the good change, you have to accept the bad change too. You can’t have golden days that last forever or they wouldn’t stand out.”

  It was a nice way of looking at it, but it didn’t make me feel any better about the fact that years of close knit friendship was about to become something we talked about fondly, but could never really feel again.

  “It’s just so weird knowing what I’m doing with my life. We’re all on the path now. College, career, etc. Last summer, Lucy, Addy, and I were still making choices. The sky was still the limit, you know?”

  Max gave a half smile. “I’ve still got a whole year to lose all the things you’re talking about, but I think you’re looking at it all wrong.” As he spoke he led me out onto the dancefloor, carving a space between Simon and Lucy and Addy and Gray, he pulled me in close so that his words didn’t have to carry over the thunderous sound of fifty some odd shoes jumping and gliding to a song we couldn’t yet hear. “Something is definitely ending. But you don’t have a clue what things are just beginning,” said Max. “Maybe you and me. Definitely you and me, Nora. We are the start of something new worth loving, you just can’t see it yet.”

  Only, I could see it. This wasn’t our first Squad Goals sleepover. We weren’t jumping into a giant pile of hay, our hands clasped and our hearts full of hope for our first year of high school, but who knows, maybe four years from now, I would be looking back on tonight and thinking how sad it was that I couldn’t relive this moment a thousand times.

  I felt a tear squeeze from the corner of my eye as Max raised my headphones from their place around my neck and placed them over my ears. I could be sad and miss my friends later. Right now, I had a beautiful song in my ear, the boy of my dreams in my arms, and the best squad imaginable dancing on either side of us.

  Epilogue

  Nora

  In the morning, Addy and Lucy would head south for Minnesota State University. At first when they got assigned to dorms across campus from one another they were disappointed, but as the summer wound to a close they both started to realize a little space was probably for the best. It would be hard to make new friends when they each came with a bestie tucked in their back pocket. Even so, they agreed if they needed each other, they would be there, no questions asked, any hour of the day or night.

  I hated that it would take me a three hour drive to do the same. Whenever I started to worry about that, Max would wrap his arm around my shoulder, tilt his forehead to mine and remind me that I had a built in carpool buddy, all I had to do was ask and possibly spring for snacks.

  We were ready to go our separate ways, but we still didn’t know what to do with the Squad Goals Book. “We could burn it,” suggested Lucy.

  “Throw it off the dock,” chimed Gray, poking his head in from the other room where he and Max were playing Skyrim and yelling at one another.

  “No,” growled Addy. “We have to do something special. This book has been with us through the good stuff, the bad stuff, and the incredibly dumb stuff.” We all laughed, thinking of school assemblies, Halloween parties, sleepovers, failed talent show attempts and a long three months spent scooping ice cream for Delinki teenagers.

  “We could pass it on,” I suggested.

  Addy’s eyes lit up. “That’s perfect. Just because we are all separating doesn’t mean Squad Goals has to end.”

  The way she said separating made me want to curl into a ball and cry. What would Delinki be like without Addy’s quirk and Lucy’s good advice?

  “Who to?” asked Lucy. She glanced toward the other room where Max was jumping up and down proclaiming himself the victor.

  “Don’t even think about it,” warned Addy. “He may be younger, but he is also evil. Besides he doesn’t have a squad. He’ll never have a squad, he’s too weird for other people. No offense, Nora.”

  “None taken,” I said, winking at Addy. Since Max and I had become official, the three of us had come to terms with the fact that Addy could not be expected to start seeing her brother as a boy. He would just have to remain Max, which meant she got to tease him, whenever the mood struck, which was often.

  “I was thinking maybe Nina,” I offered, looking to both girls for approval.

  Lucy’s face ripped into a smile. “She’s basically already an honorary member. She helped with my make-under.”

  “And let’s face it,” laughed Addy. “That girl could use some goals.”

  “And a squad,” laughed Lucy.

  “Then it’s settled,” I said, standing and swiping the Squad Goals notebook from the table. “Get in the truck, I’m texting Nina to meet us in the barn in five.”

  Lucy shook her perky blonde head. “You’re gonna make us jump, aren’t you?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I sprinted toward the truck, not bothering to let Gray or Max in on where we were going. They knew about the book, but they didn’t know about the ritual, and it was probably better that way since neither seemed capable of not making fun of us, every time anyone mentioned anything about Squad Goals.

  When we arrived at the barn, Nina was standing outside, looking Nina a
s Nina could be in overalls, a straw hat to keep the sun from turning her cheeks into a connect the dots of freckles, and Crocs. She was wearing actual Crocs. I honestly loved her a thousand times more for her oddness. I wouldn’t know what to do with a sister who wasn’t a touch weird.

  “What’s this all about?” she asked, cautiously. In the past Nina had suffered from a prank or two at our hands. Primarily, water balloon tossing from the loft so we couldn’t blame her for being a little nervous at the three of us wanting to meet her too far from the house for Dad to hear if she screamed.

  “We have a gift for you,” said Addy. “And it must be delivered in the barn.”

  Nina cocked an eyebrow in my direction.

  “Just climb into the loft,” I said. “It’s a good gift I promise.”

  The four of us climbed up the ladder to the spot where we used to have our summer sleepovers. Addy rushed to the window, plopping down just below it so she got the only breeze, if there even was one. It felt like it was a million degrees up there today.

  “Ahem,” coughed Addy, motioning for Nina to sit down and turn our triangle into a square.

  “We have brought you here today to pass along an important tradition. Nora?”

  I pulled the book from my bag and handed it to Nina.

  “Seriously?” she asked, “You guys are giving away your Squad Goals book?”

  “Not giving away,” said Addy, “Passing on. Through you, the goals live to see another year, or four, or forever if you give it to someone else.” I could tell Addy was getting excited about the idea. Nina, however, looked more antsy than excited.

  She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t think I can take it,” her eyes met mine as she set the book in the middle of our group.