by Amy Sparling
***
You know how they say animals can predict when bad weather is coming? In my last period athletics class, we’re forced to run track. I say forced because no sane person actually runs around a stupid football field twelve times for fun, right? No. They’re all crazy.
Anyhow, I’m jogging and my chest hurts and my leg muscles are screaming at me because I hate running so much, and then I see this squirrel in the grass. He looks positively terrified, as far as squirrels go.
I glance around, slowing my jog to a power walk. I don’t see any coyotes or animals around that might scare the poor squirrel. He’s just standing there on his hind legs, looking terrified for no reason.
I keep jogging and then I see a bird up ahead, standing on the track. He’s just right there in the way of everyone, practically asking to be stepped on. And that’s weird because he’s a bird. Surely he can just fly away and get out of the danger zone caused by a dozen running teenagers?
But he doesn’t. He just stands there, staring at us as we all jog by him. Now it’s making me think about how animals get all anxious when something bad is coming. It’s like they can tell before humans can, and they act weird to warn us. I look up toward the sky, but it’s all sunny and beautiful. A perfect, white puffy cloud day in April.
Oddly, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that something weird is going on. Maybe I’m just imagining it.
And then the final bell rings and I leave the locker room and run straight into Toby. “Whoa,” I say, stopping just short of slamming into his chest. “You’re not Ashlyn.”
“Am I supposed to be?” he says, a crooked grin on his lips.
“No, but she usually waits for me in this very spot.”
“I know,” he admits. “I kind of asked her to leave.”
My pulse quickens. “What? Why?”
He shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I wanted to talk.”
My heart is now a rock in my stomach. “Okay…” I say. It feels like my throat is about to close up. Now I know why those animals were freaked out. They must have sensed my impending doom. “What’s going on?”
He sighs, his eyes focused on the floor in front of us as we walk toward the parking lot. “Lana…”
He pauses, then takes a deep breath that makes my heart seize up even more. Then he just says it. “I don’t think we should date anymore.”
We’re all the way out in the parking lot, the sun warming my face, before I can say anything in reply.
“So…you’re breaking up with me?” I chuckle nervously. “I mean, I wasn’t sure we were even together…I guess we kind of were? But—I don’t know.” God, now I’m rambling. I shut up, clamping my jaw closed, my hands shaking at my sides. We’re at the Audi now, and Toby unlocks the doors with his keychain. “Let’s talk in the car, okay?”
“No, that’s okay,” I say, shaking my head. “I’ll get a ride with my friends.”
“Wait—” he reaches for me, his long fingers wrapping around my arm. “Don’t go. Let me take you home.”
I shake my head. “No, thanks. You just broke up with me. It would be more than awkward to ride home with you.”
“Lana, wait. Just…” he sighs. “I still want us to go to prom together.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Uh, why?”
He takes my hands in his, his height casting a shadow over my face. “I like you, Lana. I just don’t want to move too fast. I don’t really want a girlfriend right now, you know? But we’ve already planned prom and I’m really excited to go with you.”
“I don’t know…” I say, looking down at my feet. I do want to go with him to prom, but he just dumped me. That’s not exactly an ideal situation, the kind of prom date that every girl dreams of. “It would be awkward.”
“It doesn’t have to be awkward. I swear.” He squeezes my hands and gives me this reassuring grin.
“Okay, well, I’ll think about it.”
He nods once, and lets me go. “Can I take you home?”
I can feel the hot tears stinging my eyes, so I shake my head, choosing not to say anything because I know my voice will break. I turn around and walk quickly to Bennet’s car, hoping he won’t leave before I get there.
Chapter 18
13 days until prom
Maybe that’s why they call it unlucky thirteen.
Chapter 19
For the second time in my life, I lie to my best friends again. I can’t find the energy to tell them that Toby has broken up with me, which is kind of stupid on my part because they’ll find out eventually. It’s not like I can go on the rest of my life and never mention his name again. I know deep down that the quicker I tell them, the better off I’ll be, yet here I am avoiding the truth. It’s shameful and a little stupid because I know that my friends care about me and want to know what’s going on with my life, but oh well. I lie by keeping silent.
I guess I’m just ashamed at my utter failure with Toby Fitzgerald. I had him for such a short time it doesn’t really count at all. Two days go by and I avoid the topic of Toby by going into work after school and proclaiming that I’m sucking in chemistry and need to attend tutoring during lunch. It started out as the best excuse I could come up with, but it turns out to be beneficial for me as far as my studies go. Chemistry is hard but I’ve managed to squeeze by with a C all year. Now, after two days of hands on studying with my teacher, Mrs. Hernandez, I get a ninety-six on my test. Maybe I’ll come to tutoring all the time. Maybe I’ll never visit our old lunch table again, never being forced to answer the question about why Toby isn’t sitting with us anymore. I can just finish out my senior year in the chem lab.
Right.
Ashlyn is a bouncing ball of happiness after school on Friday. She’s grinning so hard she has to bite on her bottom lip to keep her smile from flying off her face.
“What’s up with you?” I say, eyeing her as if she might suddenly spin around the room like some silly cartoon character.
“Not now,” she whispers all conspiratorially as she hooks her arm around my elbow and walks with me to Bennet’s car. “This is top secret info.”
Once we’re safely in Bennet’s car, I lean forward from the backseat. “Okay, spill.”
“Yeah, what the hell is wrong with you?” Bennet says with a laugh. “You’re freaking me out.”
“Oh please,” Ashlyn says, waving her hand. “You guys act like I’m never happy.”
“Well…” I say. Bennet laughs.
Ashlyn brushes her hair behind her ears. “Okay, so, I have a date.” Her eyes go all wide and she watches us like she expects our reactions to be a lot more than they are.
“That’s cool,” I say, putting a little extra pep in my voice.
“Well, duh,” Bennet says, rolling his eyes. “You’ve been talking to this girl for weeks now. Obviously, you’d go on a date soon.”
Ashlyn crosses her arms and slumps into the passenger seat. “You guys are no fun.”
“Sorry, we’re excited for you,” I say, touching her shoulder from the backseat. “Aren’t we, Bennet?”
“Yup. Totally excited.”
“That didn’t sound very convincing,” Ashlyn says, darting her eyes to him.
He shrugs, pulling into his driveway. “Well, I am happy for you. You deserve a girlfriend you care about. And Lana deserves her boyfriend, and apparently, I deserve nothing.”
“Oh come on,” Ashlyn says as we climb out of Bennet’s car. “You can’t be like that! You’ll make us feel shitty for being happy.”
“Don’t feel shitty,” Bennet says. He flicks his head to get his hair out of his eyes, and then he looks at me. “You two are great people. You deserve happiness. I guess it just sucks that I don’t.”
“You deserve it,” I say. Guilt is rising up in my gut, threatening to strangle me. I should have told them that Toby broke up with me, then maybe Bennet wouldn’t be feeling so left out right now. Instead, I keep my secret to myself a little longer, and I wrap my arms around Bennet
’s waist while we walk up his driveway. I let my head rest against his side.
“You’ll find someone,” I say as I smile up at him. “Don’t worry.”
“So anyway,” Ashlyn says while staring at her phone. “I need help picking out a date night outfit. Bennet, I assume you want nothing to do with this?”
“You assume correctly,” he says. He grins at me and I let go of him.
“Guess that’s my cue,” I say. “We should get coffee first.
“The good coffee?” Ashlyn wiggles her eyebrows.
I stare at her like she’s a toddler asking for something she knows she can’t have. “Starbucks is too expensive.”
“I know,” she says with a groan. “But it’s so good.”
Starbucks is our guilty pleasure. Maybe once a month if we’re feeling particularly blah, we’ll waste the money and get a Starbucks coffee. It’s been proven to solve any problem we have, but we save the good coffee for special occasions. She and I both know that getting ready for a date is already a fun endeavor, so we don’t need the good stuff.
“Cheap gas station coffee,” I say, tugging on her arm. It’s only fifty cents for a huge cup.
“Okay,” she says with a sigh. “And then we pick an outfit!
***
By default, Ashlyn is the most laid back person I know. She’s naturally beautiful, so she doesn’t even have to try hard with her looks, and she’s a solid A student without ever studying. Since kindergarten, there hasn’t been a year where she’s not on the honor roll. People always like her (probably because she’s so pretty) so she’s never had to stress about making friends. If I didn’t love her as my best friend, I’d probably hate her because I’d be jealous of how cool she is both inside and out.
With that in mind, I think it’s absolutely hilarious when she turns into a stressed-out freak while standing inside her closet trying to find an outfit. “I have nothing to wear!” she says, groaning. Her face squishes up and she frowns at her closet, as if she’s judging every single piece of clothing in there as being inadequate. As if all the clothes that never bothered her before are now insulting her with their very presence.
“You have tons of clothes,” I say, trying to be reassuring. “Help me out here. What are you doing on the date?”
She lets out a huff of breath, angrily pushing her hair behind her ears. “Dinner and a movie.”
“Awesome. In the movie, it won’t matter what you wear, and at dinner, she’ll be focused on your pretty face,” I say, cupping her chin in my hand. “And not your outfit.”
Ashlyn rolls her eyes. “This isn’t helping.”
I laugh. “Okay then, let’s get to work.”
She tries on a dozen outfits and then a dozen more, and we finally decide on a pair of jeans. A single pair of jeans. An hour later and we’re still at just half of an outfit, but we have a solid maybe on a black shirt, and we’re considering a purple tank top. Ashlyn has never been this picky about anything in our lives. She must really like this girl.
I want to tell her she’ll look awesome in anything, but I know it won’t help, so I just try to be supportive and let her work this out herself. She has a real chance at a relationship here, and I hope it works out for her.
Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt.
Her phone buzzes from across the room. Ashlyn is currently tugging on a shirt that’s a little too tight so she asks me to check it for her. “If it’s Bethany, read it out loud!” she says.
I check her phone. “It’s just Bennet.”
“Eh, then I don’t care,” she says, her voice muffled from the shirt.
I read it out loud anyway. “It says, ‘are you done yet?’”
She laughs sarcastically while she tugs off the shirt and throws it on the floor. “I wish.”
I laugh too and set her phone down without replying. I watch her try on a few more outfits before finally convincing her to go with the purple tank top. She folds the outfit gingerly and sets it on top of her dresser in preparation of tomorrow’s big date, then she joins me on the edge of her bed.
“So what’s up with lover boy?”
I look over at her, and I guess I don’t put on a fake smile fast enough because she immediately knows something is wrong. “Uh oh,” she says, frowning. “Are things not going so well?”
“Depends on how you define the word well,” I say with a sarcastic snort.
“I need details.” She kicks a pair of discarded jeans across the floor. “Is he talking to another girl? Did he stop texting?”
“Maybe,” I say. “And yes.”
Her eyebrows shoot up to the top of her forehead. “Seriously? What a dick!”
“It’s not like that,” I say. My stomach twists into knots, and I’d really like to go back home and hide out alone, but it’s time. I have to tell her. Avoiding the topic any longer is just a betrayal of our friendship.
“The thing is,” I say, inhaling and then slowly exhaling, “He broke up with me the other day.”
Her eyes bug out so far I’m afraid they might roll onto the floor.
“What?”
Only it’s not Ashlyn’s voice that says it. It’s Bennet’s. I turn around and see him standing in the doorway, a shocked expression on his face. “Why the hell would he break up with you?” Bennet says, his nostrils flaring. “What kind of idiot would do that?”
Chapter 20
Now that both of them know my secret, I go ahead and tell them the whole story. Well, I leave out the part about that stupid kiss because some things you just have to take to your grave. Ashlyn and Bennet listen intently, as if my story is the most interesting thing in the world. Normally, I’d enjoy having all of the attention on me, but with this kind of drama, I’m just humiliated.
“So that’s that,” I say with a little shrug of my shoulders. “He dumped me.”
“It looks like best friend prom is back on,” Ashlyn says. “Now Bennet and I don’t have to feel bad for being dateless.”
I bite my lip. “Actually…”
“Oh come on!” Ashlyn says, interrupting me. “We have to go to prom together! It’s senior year! It’s a thing. We all agreed. You can’t bail out now just because of some guy dumping you.”
“She doesn’t have to go if she doesn’t want to,” Bennet says. He’s been watching me with this weird protective vibe ever since he walked in the room. “We can all blow it off if Lana wants.”
“No we can’t,” Ashlyn says. “Prom is a rite of passage and we need to go.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” I say, while I play with a loose string on Ashlyn’s quilt. “Toby said he still wants to go to prom with me.”
“What?” Ashlyn balks.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Bennet says, his brows furrowing. A little vein pops out on his forehead.
“He wants to go to prom, but doesn’t want to like, be my boyfriend, or whatever.” I wrap the string around my finger and then let it unravel.
“Won’t that be awkward?” Ashlyn says.
I nod. “He said something about how he already made a promise to me about prom and he didn’t want to break his promise.”
“Well, fuck him.” Bennet stands and begins pacing the room. “He doesn’t deserve to take you to prom after dumping you.”
“Bennet…” I feel my face heating up, but the more I think about it, the more I want to go to prom with Toby. I don’t even know why, other than the fact that my brain has been set on going since the day he asked me.
Bennet’s gaze narrows. “You’re not seriously considering going with him?”
I lift my shoulders. “He’s right. We’ve already made plans. He has his tux and all.”
“But you haven’t picked out your dress yet,” Ashlyn says as if that’s an excuse to bail on Toby.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll pick one.”
She crosses her arms and looks over at Bennet. The two of them are clearly on the same page right now, and that page is: Lana shouldn’t
go to prom with Toby.
I throw my hands in the air. “I want to go!”
“With him?” Ashlyn says.
“He broke up with you,” Bennet says, the disgust evident in his voice. “You shouldn’t waste your time on him anymore. He doesn’t deserve you.”
I can’t help the laugh that escapes me. “Yeah, right.” I run my hand down my forehead and try not to break into hysterics. “You are so full of shit. He doesn’t deserve me? You have that backwards. I would be lucky to go to prom with a guy like Toby.”
Ashlyn sucks in a breath through her teeth. I can tell she’s entered into negotiation mode. She always does this when Bennet and I are arguing about something and she just wants it to stop. Of course, those arguments are usually just silly disagreements over pizza toppings or Coke verses Pepsi. We’ve never disagreed over something so important before.
“Lana, we love you. We just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’m not hurt.”
“You looked hurt just a few minutes ago.”
I roll my eyes and they land on Bennet. He’s still standing even though Ashlyn and I are sitting on her bed. His fists are clenched, his shoulders back. It almost looks like he’s about to go off and fight someone, but Bennet is not a fighting guy. He’s normally calm and relaxed. Which is why it’s so very weird seeing him so pissed.
“Did he say why he broke up with you?” Bennet asks.
I shake my head. “Not really…” That horrible conversation Toby had with me on Wednesday plays through my subconscious, getting louder the more I try to mute it. I shouldn’t waste the time wondering why he doesn’t like me the way I want him to like me. I try to focus on Aunt Shawna’s words and remind myself that Toby wasn’t my true love, so he doesn’t matter. I’m still waiting for the right guy.
All of this mental pep talking doesn’t help. The fact is that Toby is great and handsome and fun and he dumped me.
He doesn’t like me enough. Prom is most likely a pity date for him. He feels bad for backing out so he’s still going just so he doesn’t ruin my senior prom by leaving me dateless. As much as I hate to do this, Toby keeping his promise means something. It means he’s a man of his word. That’s rare as far as normal high school guys go.
