The Gay Girl's Guide to Ruining Prom

by Siera Maley

  She took one look at me and I knew that we both understood what was happening tonight. She chewed on her lip and couldn’t look me in the eyes, and we only shuffled toward each other when my father ushered us all into the living room for group pictures. Chelsea’s friends were tense with me, too, and Gina especially could barely hide her disdain when she looked at me. Still, I played dumb and made myself take Chelsea’s hand, and she let our joined hands hang loosely between us. “Say cheese!” Dad called out, and we forced ourselves to smile.

  And then we were in the limo and off to the venue, which was really just the same gym from Brooks that Chelsea and I had danced in back when she’d first brought me there. It wasn’t long before Ian was passing around flutes of champagne. Chelsea’s hand found my knee at some point, but it was like she’d had to force herself to put it there. The rest of her wouldn’t touch me at all.

  I took a flute from Ian but didn’t drink from it until everyone else had already sipped theirs too, paranoid about what punishment awaited me tonight. None of them spoke directly to me, but I tried to chime in on group conversations, worried if I said too little, they’d know that I knew something was wrong. Only Chelsea seemed to realize I’d caught on.

  Finally, while everyone else was absorbed in their own conversations, I gathered the courage to look at her and asked her, “Are you okay?”

  She glanced back at me and shook her head, rolling her eyes. Her answer was simple. “I’m thrilled, obviously.”

  I felt my heart sink, aware that she was being sarcastic. “That’s fine,” I said, wanting her to know that it was okay to be upset with me.

  She furrowed her eyebrows and looked disappointed. “That’s all you have to say? Really?”

  “Chelsea, I have so much more to say than that,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry about everything, but I wasn’t lying about how I felt about you.”

  I tried to keep going, but Gina spotted us from the other side of the limo and suddenly waved to get Chelsea’s attention, as though she didn’t want us to speak to each other too much. “Hey, I heard Jasmine’s getting Prom Queen this year. Who are you gonna vote for, Chels?”

  “Definitely not voting,” Chelsea replied, though she seemed distracted, like what I’d said had stuck with her. “You know better than anyone how much I want to avoid Cole.”

  “He’s manning the ballot boxes tonight,” Gina explained to me with an edge to her tone. “So that’s where he’ll be all night.”

  “Okay,” I said, too distracted with Chelsea to pay Gina any attention. Marie gave me a judgmental look and then leaned over to whisper something into Gina’s ear. I took the opportunity to face Chelsea again. “I’m not the kind of person you think I am,” I told her.

  “Yeah, that’s clear,” she mumbled, busying herself with another flute of champagne. I sighed and sat back in my seat, frustrated that she seemed unwilling to say more than a few words to me at a time.

  Ian, who’d spent the second half of the ride with his torso through the sunroof, suddenly descended back into the limo and declared, “We’re here!”

  We pulled up to the entrance and clambered out of the limo, and as we presented our tickets at the front and entered the gym, I took in the scene around me.

  We were far from the first group to arrive, and music was already blasting from speakers that hung from the balcony above the stage on the far end of the room. On one end of the stage, a line had formed to take pictures. I took notice of a figure on the balcony, just above where the pictures were being taken.

  Chelsea and her friends wanted to head directly to the line for pictures, but I took hold of Chelsea’s wrist to get her attention and, trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy, asked her, “Do you mind if I grab something to drink?”

  “We’re getting pictures,” she told me shortly, not looking at me.

  “Then I’ll meet you there,” I said. “Do you want anything?”

  She looked like she wanted to protest further, but instead she just shook her head. She left with the others and I saw Gina murmuring something intently to her and looking past her in my direction.

  Eager for the moment alone, I wound my way through the crowd to the punch bowl and used a ladle to pour myself a cup. I took deep breaths between sips of punch and tried to keep my head on straight. Tonight wasn’t going to be fun, but it was happening, and there was no turning back now. The few moments of shame I’d be put through couldn’t be worse than what I’d made Chelsea feel. And once she got revenge, we’d be closer to even and maybe she’d finally let me explain myself.

  “Hey! Zoey!”

  I deflated visibly when I swiveled around toward the source of the shout and saw Cole making his way through the crowd toward me. I tried to leave, but he reached out and grabbed my arm, forcing me to face him.

  “Seriously? You guys had me going nuts, just freezing me out like that. What the hell happened this past week? You might need my help tonight.”

  “It’s over, Cole,” I told him, rolling my eyes. “Move on. From this, from Gina, from everyone you’re angry at because you feel entitled to someone who doesn’t want you back.”

  He scowled at me. “What do you mean; it’s over? You’re here. So the plan’s still on, then.”

  “Skylar already told Chelsea everything. She knows what we did, and I’m just here to get what I deserve. And I told my parents that you’re not my boyfriend. So, please,” I told him, exhaling heavily, “stay the hell away from me.” I yanked my arm from his grip and ducked back into the crowd, leaving him behind.

  When I settled into the line beside Chelsea, Ian was saying, “I’m sure Xander will meet up with us soon. I guess he’s a little busy right now.” Sab elbowed him and made a shushing motion and he grinned in response, and I looked away from them and pretended I hadn’t heard them. Chelsea looked over at me and stiffly took my hand.

  “I saw you talking to your new friend,” she muttered to me.

  “He’s not my friend and I told him to never come near me again,” I replied. “Not everything Skylar said to you was true.” She pursed her lips and looked uncertain, like she wasn’t sure whether to believe me, and didn’t say anything more.

  The line moved slowly, and it was impossible to really talk to Chelsea with her friends surrounding us, so I just stayed quiet and focused on keeping my breathing even, anxious about whatever was in store for me. There was a microphone sitting onstage for when it was time to announce the Prom King and Prom Queen; maybe Chelsea or one of her friends was going to tell everyone what I’d done. Or maybe it was something simpler, like breaking up with me via microphone. Both ideas put a pit in my stomach. I squeezed Chelsea’s hand instinctively, hoping to find comfort in the action, but she didn’t squeeze back, and instead it just served as another reminder of how badly I’d messed up.

  Soon we were next in line for photos. Gina and Marie went first to do a few as a couple, and after those were done, they each got a couple of individual photos as well. Then they ushered us in as a group. As I forced a smile for another photo, I heard Ian mumble jokingly to Gina, “What’s your favorite horror movie again, Gina?” Again, he was shushed. The flash went off and I put two and two together, remembering the figure on the balcony above us. I knew what was coming.

  “Okay, just Chelsea and Zoey now,” Gina insisted when the group photos were done. She practically shoved everyone else out of the way and then smiled brightly at us. It was so obviously fake that it hurt to have to pretend to believe her when she added, “Aw, what a perfect couple.”

  I moved closer to Chelsea and made myself smile, and she put an arm around me half-heartedly. The flash went off a few times in rapid succession. “Next!” the photographer called out.

  “Wait, they need individual ones, too,” Gina told him, brushing him off. “Zoey, you go first.”

  “Yeah, give Zoey some time alone, Chels,” Ian chimed in, grinning again. I took a deep breath and braced myself, but Chelsea looked back at them nervously
and didn’t move from my side.

  “Chelsea,” Gina told her pointedly, waving her over. “C’mon.” But again, Chelsea just looked back and forth between me and them, chewing on her bottom lip.

  “Hey,” I told her quietly to get her attention. When she turned to face me, it was clear that she was overwhelmed. “It’s okay.” I nodded once, trying to reassure her that I’d be fine, that I was ready, and when she just stared at me and looked like she wanted to argue, I said, “I’m so sorry for everything. It’s okay, Chelsea.”

  She looked back at me for a long moment, and then back at her friends, and at me again. Her mouth opened, at first as though she wanted to say something to me, but then she turned back to them. “Guys, I don’t think we should—”

  One moment, I was watching Chelsea speak to Gina from right beside me. The next, I was covered in something red and wet. And so was Chelsea.

  Gina screamed and her hands flew out in front of her like she had somehow hoped to catch the bucket that had fallen to the ground beside us, and that caught the attention of everyone around us. In an instant, all eyes were on me and Chelsea where we stood onstage together, covered head to toe in red paint.

  “Xander!” Marie screeched, looking up to the balcony. Next to her, Ian was gaping at us, his mouth wide open in shock and amusement. Sab’s hands were covering her mouth and she looked absolutely horrified. When I managed to tear my eyes away from them, I looked out around us and saw that everyone else in the crowd was laughing.

  Gina and Marie rushed forward first. They went straight to Chelsea and surrounded her, forcing us apart, and gingerly tried to wipe the paint from her hair. “I am so sorry, sweetie,” I heard Gina telling her.

  Beside her, Marie was insisting, “I’m gonna kill Xander.”

  They kept going like that for several seconds, murmuring reassuring words and apologies to her, and I could see her trying to say something to them, but they were too distracted with trying in vain to fix her hair and dress to listen. I saw the moment she snapped. “Stop!”

  They froze immediately and stepped backward, their hands stained and their own dresses ruined with red paint smears. Chelsea turned to me and looked me up and down, then reached out for my hand. “C’mon,” she told me shortly, and I let her pull me from the gym, choruses of laughter still echoing at our backs.

  Chelsea showed me to the girls’ showers next to the gym and even turned on the water in one of the stalls for me. I watched her carefully as she moved away and then entered a second stall, where she repeated the action inside. Then, while we waited for the water to warm up, she ran a hand through her hair and grimaced as paint splattered to the bathroom floor. For a moment, we just looked at each other.

  “You look a character out of a horror movie,” I told her, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Yeah, that was the idea.”

  “Yours?” I guessed.

  “Gina’s.”

  “Oh.” I watched her reach into the stall in front of her and feel the water. Apparently she deemed it warm enough, for she entered the stall without saying anything more, pulled the curtain closed behind herself to shut me out, and then I heard the splash of the water hitting her body instead of the tile floor. I followed her lead and entered my own stall, then looked up and let the water wash over my face and hair and dress. Red paint pooled at my feet and I watched it go down the drain. I wanted to say something to Chelsea, but I was scared that this was as good as it got: that showering paint off together in a gym locker room was the last halfway fond memory I’d have of her. Even if Xander hadn’t meant to drop the paint on the both of us, ultimately she was here because she’d refused to leave me to get humiliated on my own. That had to mean something.

  “Skylar filmed you so that she could send it to me,” I said at last. “She wanted to hurt both of us.”

  Chelsea didn’t answer at first, and I began to second-guess myself. Maybe she’d felt too guilty to follow through with Gina’s plan but still didn’t want to speak to me ever again.

  But eventually, she spoke up. “I thought she was your best friend.”

  “She was.” There was a glob of paint that’d dried on my shoulder and I rubbed at it hard to make it go away. Then I pulled my dress up and over my head and abandoned it just outside of the stall, content to shower in just my undergarments. “Then I ruined everything when I started to actually like you.”

  I took a deep breath and tilted my face up into the water, half-wishing I’d just drown like that. Chelsea was quiet for a long time again. I heard cloth rustling in the next stall over and knew she was taking her dress off, too. “That’s not how she told it.”

  Frustrated, I turned around to face her stall from within my own, letting the water wash the paint off of my back. “Like I said: She lied.”

  Chelsea’s answer came quickly this time. “So did you. So why should I believe you?”

  “These past few weeks, I fought her as much as I could without losing her,” I said. “And eventually more than that. I chose you. So she made me pay for it before I could explain myself to you.”

  “Even if that were true, you agreed to it in the first place.”

  I reached out and turned the water off, then rested my forehead against the wall and sighed. “But not like she said.” I lifted my head and asked her, “Can I come see you?”

  I could feel her hesitating. “I don’t know.”

  “I want you to be able to look at me,” I insisted. “I’m telling the truth.”

  The water kept running, but I heard more rustling and I knew she’d moved the curtain aside. “Okay,” she finally said. I left my stall and stepped over our dresses and then into hers, where she wrapped her arms around herself self-consciously, clad in only a bra and underwear, just like I was. She stepped back to give me room.

  I joined her under the water with a deep breath. “I’m not saying that what I did wasn’t horrible and that I don’t deserve to have you hate me, because I do. But this wasn’t eight weeks of me lying to you to try to hurt you. If you decide that you hate me, I want you to do it knowing what actually happened.”

  She wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “So tell me.”

  I exhaled, relieved she was willing to hear me out at all. “When Skylar first asked me to do this, I only said yes because I knew you. I thought there had to be some good reason why you’d done what you did to her, because you were so nice in middle school. I just wanted to find out what that reason was and give my friend some closure. She wanted me to hurt you, but that wasn’t the plan for me.”

  “Until it was,” she guessed coldly.

  I nodded, ashamed. “Things only changed after your party, after what happened in your bedroom, because then I thought you might be as bad as Skylar thought. I thought maybe you did deserve it, and I was worried you were playing me just as much as Skylar wanted me to play you. But I started changing my mind the more I spoke to you, until eventually I was defending you to Skylar and trying to get her to call everything off. But she was the only person I thought could repair my friendship with the ex I told you about, so I had to make a choice between them and you.”

  “And you chose them,” she cut in. “Obviously.”

  “Not forever,” I corrected. “Eventually I was willing to give them up, too. I wanted you.” I reached out for her hands and she moved them away. I let out a deep breath, trying not to let it show how much the rejection hurt. “Chelsea, I chose you. I decided it was worth the risk and just hoped you’d choose me back.”

  She averted her gaze upward for a moment, not looking at me, and finally shook her head and decided, “I don’t know how I can trust you, Zoey. I mean, what you did with Cole…?”

  “I did seek out Cole, but only to ask about your exes,” I admitted. “I was scared that you were lying to me. I know that crossed a line, but I never brought him into any kind of plan. He found a picture of me and Skylar together and forced his way in. He told me if I didn’t let him help, he’d out me to my parents, w
ho thought he was my boyfriend. Everything was real for me after we kissed. Probably even before that. The night we met I remember wishing it didn’t have to end. Everything else after that was just me trying to convince myself that having feelings for you wasn’t inevitable, because I knew how messy this all would wind up if I did have those feelings. But everything was real, even when I didn’t want it to be.”

  “Everything?” she echoed. She looked like she didn’t want to believe it.

  “Yes,” I insisted. “It was horrible liking you so much and knowing that I was going to hurt you. You would tell me how much you trusted me and I felt like a monster, but I couldn’t do anything about it because the damage had already been done. I tried to tell you what I could that night in your car, when I was upset with Skylar. I said that I was doing things I didn’t want to for my best friend. I just thought it’d be the worst thing in the world to lose the only friend I had left, but losing you would be so much worse, Chelsea.”

  She looked away from me and sank back beneath the water, and I bit my lip, watching her. “You knew how badly you were already going to hurt me, and you still slept with me,” she accused distantly, still not looking at me.

  “That was the only time I finally did what I wanted to do all along,” I confessed. “I felt terrible after. I knew I’d crossed a line. But what I went through with my parents that night was real, and everything I said afterward about how being with you made me feel was true.”

  She forced a laugh, shaking her head. “And our fight? You made me feel so terrible about some dumb thing I said when I was drunk, knowing all along that you were going to do this to me.”

  “I know, but that wasn’t like Skylar said, either,” I explained. “I was supposed to be pretending to like you for Skylar, but those feelings were real, and so then I couldn’t tell either of you the whole truth. And then I was lying to my parents on top of that. The one honest thing I thought I’d figured out was how you felt about me. And then suddenly that was up in the air again, and I felt so lost. The instant I saw how sorry you were I knew you weren’t lying to me. I almost broke up with you then.”