by Kieran Scott
All four of us cracked up laughing.
“Yeah. That was not one of our plans,” Annie said, reaching for her lemonade.
“Talk about depressing,” David added.
I took my first bite of food. Eating that Famous Amos had made me hungry. Or maybe it was simply laughing that had made me feel better. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Please?!” Faith begged, grabbing my arm. “Shannen won’t do it and Chloe’s MIA. Without a good Crestie contingent the Norm crazies have taken over!” She glanced around the table at my friends. “No offense.”
“Isn’t it interesting how people only say that when they’ve already caused offense?” Annie said.
Faith scrunched her nose at Annie, who stuck her tongue out in response. I sighed and pushed my potatoes around on my plate. It had been almost a month since Chloe had given birth and she hadn’t returned any of my calls. Hadn’t returned anyone’s calls. Shannen’s mom had told her that Chloe’s parents had hired a district-approved tutor so Chloe could finish the year out as a home-schoolee. As far as Orchard Hill High was concerned, she’d pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth.
But not entirely. Because people were still gossiping about her. Still telling bad jokes. Still making up stories. And every time I overheard something, I got even more depressed. This was Chloe Appleby. She was supposed to be living up her senior year, running the prom, planning a huge graduation party, walking at the front of the class as valedictorian. But instead she’d become one big joke.
“Anyway, please do it?” Faith begged. “It’ll help you take your mind off things! Maybe it’ll even knock you out of this weirdo daze you’ve been in.”
My jaw dropped and Marshall hid a laugh behind a cough—very badly. Even Faith had noticed?
“Honestly, someone has to help me or I’m not gonna have the votes to kill this insane idea they have for the theme.” Faith sat back in her chair and crossed her slim arms over her chest.
“What insane idea?” I asked.
She lifted her hands wide. “A Postapocalyptic Prom!”
I gagged on my mashed potatoes.
“Sweet!” David squeaked.
“Yeah. Very romantic,” Faith said sarcastically. “They want the backdrop for prom pictures to be one of those nuclear bomb mushroom-cloud things,” she said, shuddering dramatically. “So. Will you help?”
“You just convinced me,” I said.
Not that I thought I was going to be having my prom picture taken, considering the fact that I was dateless, uninterested, and uninspired. But that didn’t mean I shouldn’t help the rest of the senior class avoid having their memories look like something out of the Hunger Games movie. And maybe Faith was right. Maybe this would help knock me out of my daze. Something had to. If everyone was noticing it and talking about it, it must have gotten pretty bad. I tugged out my phone and opened it up to the calendar.
“When’s the next meeting?”
Faith squealed and clapped her hands, bouncing around in her seat. “Omigod! Yay! You are so not going to regret this. Throwing yourself into a new project is always the best therapy. Right?”
She looked to the table for confirmation. David shrugged and ate a cookie. Marshall shrugged and ate a chip.
“Just for the record? I liked the kidnapping Jake idea,” Annie said, lifting her pudding spoon.
Faith shot her a wary look as I typed into my phone. As if on cue, Jake’s laugh rose up from a table two rows away, and when I looked over, some sophomore with too much cleavage was gazing up at him like he was a god.
“You know what?” I said, glancing over at Annie as I hit save. “Let’s go back to the shopping-spree plan. That definitely sounded like something I could get behind.”
jake
This was my last chance. My last shot at an athletic scholarship. I’d been wait-listed at Rutgers, Ramapo, and William Patterson, and almost everywhere else had flat-out rejected me. The Richmond lacrosse coach was holding on to my application because he hadn’t finished recruiting yet, just like Rutgers, and both schools had sent scouts out to see me today. I had to show them my skills. I knew this. I knew my life basically hung in the balance.
I just couldn’t seem to actually care.
On autopilot, I ran upfield at a sprint, grunting as my legs pumped beneath me. The sun was warm on my face. I could feel the dirt under my fingernails. Sweat prickled my skin and slipped down my back. In the stands, Shannen and Hammond and even Quinn screamed my name. My brother shouted with the rest of JV. This was actually happening. I was actually here. It just didn’t exactly feel like I was.
Connor passed me the ball and I made a clean catch. That was when I saw Ted Langer barreling down on me. First team all-state last year. Bigger than the biggest guy on our football team. His tree-trunk of a forearm was gunning for my chest. If I didn’t move, I was pancake.
I glanced at the scouts. The one from Rutgers had his hand over his mouth, like he was already imagining my gruesome death.
Fuck that. I still had some pride somewhere in me.
I juked left and spun right. Langer threw himself at me and caught air. Shannen screeched so loud I felt it in my spine. I half tripped, half lunged toward the goal and hurled the ball. Saw the net punch out. Heard the whistle.
“Score!” Connor shouted, racing toward me. He almost tackled me to the ground, but I managed to stay on my feet.
The whole team was grinning and slapping me on the back. I’d basically just won us the game and I couldn’t even put on a smile. I ducked my head and jogged back upfield. Saw the scouts making notes on their clipboards. Saw this girl Lucy I’d been stalked by for the last two weeks jumping up and down with that look on her face. Like I could go over there right now and tear her clothes off and that would be fine by her. She’d been dropping hints about the prom for the past two days, and everyone was telling me to ask her. She’d look hot in a prom dress, and she was more than willing to do whatever I wanted after. Score and score. Just like my life was supposed to be. Just like it was before Chloe, before Ally. I was back to being what everyone expected me to be.
But Ally wasn’t there. She wasn’t there and I couldn’t smile.
It was amazing, really. Amazing how everything could look so perfect and normal, when everything was so very not.
ally
Someone was going to get strangled with a roll of black tulle. I wasn’t sure whether it was going to be my mom, who’d gone into full-time bride mode; Faith, who had somehow gotten the prom theme changed from Postapocalypse to the equally cheesy, though far less dark, Springtime in Paris; or Quinn, who had convinced my mother that we should both wear pillbox hats with our bridesmaids dresses. Apparently they’d started studying the Kennedy years in her history class and now she was obsessed with Jackie O. Why that meant I needed an old lady hat and a veil in my wardrobe I had no idea, but my mother had decided it was just retro-funky enough for her tastes, and now I had an actual hatbox in my closet.
Sigh.
So when my mother dropped off forty bags of custom M&M’s in my room and told me it was my job to fill hundreds of tiny boxes with them and tie them with bows and tags for favors, you can imagine what I wanted to tell her to do with them. I mean, she didn’t even say “please,” which was basically the number one lesson she’d drilled into my brain my entire childhood. But instead of pointing out this hypocrisy, I took a deep breath and allowed her to leave my room unharmed. She was, after all, my mother. And I had basically no speech prepared for her wedding, since I’d thrown out my two-thousand-five-hundredth version yesterday. As maids of honor went, I was already turning out to be a huge disappointment.
I leaned back on my throw pillows and sighed, staring at the cardboard crates full of yellow and white ribbons, waxy plastic boxes, and bags of candy. This was going to take me hours. Why couldn’t my mother have just gone high-end and ordered Godiva boxes instead of trying to be cute? Maybe I should ask Quinn to help. She was very into this bridesmaid
thing. But that would mean spending hours alone with the princess of pep herself, and I was just not in the mood. I needed to call in reinforcements. Someone who wouldn’t happily chat my ear off. Someone on my wavelength.
I sat up straight. I knew exactly who to call.
Twenty minutes later, Chloe and I were sitting on her bed, facing each other over a pile of plastic boxes, quietly munching on yellow and white M&M’s that read MELANIE & GRAY and TRUE LOVE and attempting to tie the slippery silk ribbons.
“Thanks for doing this,” I said. “I would have lost it if I had to do this by myself.”
“No problem.” Chloe added a box to the “done” pile. “I do tie a kick-ass bow.”
“It’s always been one of your special talents,” I replied with a smirk.
Chloe reached for another box and held it between her thumb and forefinger. She looked better than I had expected. Her baby weight was almost gone and she wore the tiniest bit of mascara and lip gloss. Her room was another story, though. It looked like she hadn’t left it in weeks. Her laptop was open on her desk, surrounded by teetering piles of books and papers, and a line of empty water bottles. The garbage can was full of college brochures, and the chair by the deck was covered in a mound of rumpled designer clothes. Workout DVDs were strewn on the floor in front of her TV, and an exercise ball, mat, weights, kettleball, and running shoes were tossed in the corner near her closet.
So at least she was working out. Depressed people don’t work out. Right?
“So, I have news,” she said suddenly, starting to fill the next box.
“Yeah?” I tied a ribbon, badly, and tossed the box in the done pile. Chloe fished it right out and started to retie it. “What’s up?”
“I got into Brown,” Chloe informed me.
“Omigod! Really?” My eyes widened. “That’s your dream school!”
“I know.” Chloe’s lips twitched into a small smile. “I actually got the letter back in March, but I wasn’t really opening mail then. I got into Duke, too. And Dartmouth.”
“Chloe! That’s unbelievable!” I said. I leaned over all the crap between us to give her a half hug. “You must be so excited.”
Even though she didn’t look it.
“Yeah,” she said, lifting her shoulders and letting them drop. “I guess life really does go on.”
She tossed my now perfectly bowed box in the done pile and sighed. My heart felt heavy against my ribs. This was just not right. When someone worked their ass off as hard as Chloe had her whole life, she should be able to enjoy getting into all these amazing schools. But instead, she looked like she’d been rejected ten times over.
“Chloe,” I said, ripping open a new bag of M&M’s. “You have to come back to school.”
She chuckled and shook some M&M’s into a box. “Why?”
“Because … you have to,” I said lamely. “What are you getting out of locking yourself up in here twenty-four-seven? You should be hanging out with us, planning the prom, going to graduation practice. You’re missing out on the best part of senior year.”
I felt fake even as I said it, because it wasn’t like I was exactly enjoying myself. But Faith had been right about joining the prom committee. It might not have entirely snapped me out of my funk, but it had been distracting. I was no longer focused on Jake and lost love and feeling sad for Chloe. That crapioca was still there, yeah, but it wasn’t running my life anymore.
“I don’t know, all that stuff … the prom and everything … it just feels so, like, shallow now,” Chloe said. She pushed her hands into her hair, then hugged her knees. “I’d feel like a poser or something, pretending I actually cared.” Her gaze flicked up tentatively. “Besides, I can just imagine what everyone is saying about me.”
She had a point there. Making up lies about Chloe Appleby had become the number one pastime at Orchard Hill High. But that was mostly because she wasn’t there to defend herself.
“Who cares what they’re saying?” I replied. “How great would it be to go to the prom with Will? I mean, he’s, like, one of the hottest guys in our class. You could get some sick prom dress that’ll make everyone salivate and show them how totally fine and not fat you are. Don’t even try to tell me that wouldn’t feel good.”
For the first time, Chloe smiled for real.
“It would actually be kind of nice to see Will in a tux,” she said, blushing.
“See? There you go!” I reached for a box and filled it with candy. “So … you’ll come back?”
Chloe bit her lip and narrowed her eyes. “I’ll think about it.”
“Cool,” I said.
As I slipped another ribbon from the pile, something inside my chest seemed to loosen. For the first time in a while, I felt like I’d done something good.
jake
When I drove past Ally’s house for the third time, I saw the curtain on her window shift. Fuck. I floored it and took the turn at the end of the street like a NASCAR driver. Had she seen me? Was that the first time she’d seen me? Did she think I was just driving over to the Twins’ place or did she know I was basically stalking her?
I lifted my fingers from the wheel, trying to give my sweaty palms some air. This was totally effed up. I couldn’t be one of those guys who drove by a girl’s house just to see if she was home. Those guys were pathetic. They were the guys who wrote poetry in the back of their Trig notebooks and got their asses tossed into that gross shower stall at the dark end of the locker room with the cold water turned on and the door jammed closed with a broom handle. Definitely not me.
I headed toward town and tried to think. The problem was, Ally’s birthday was coming up. Her mom’s wedding, too. I didn’t care so much about missing that, but the idea of missing her birthday … I couldn’t deal. Last year that had been the day I’d turned it all around. Shown up at her house with the perfect gift. Gotten her to say she’d go out with me. I didn’t know if it was because of that or what, but lately I’d started feeling like her birthday was kind of a deadline. Like if I didn’t find a way to get her back by then, I never would.
But was it even possible? How many times could I make some “grand gesture” as Chloe had once called it, and get my sorry ass forgiven? Besides which, I was out of ideas. Getting her championship ring for her last year had been genius, if I do say so myself, but this year, I had nothing. Not a clue. And I was desperate.
I stopped at the corner of Orchard Avenue and Elm. Up ahead, the lights of the strip mall where Ally worked were all on. My jaw clenched. There was one person who could definitely help me. I just wasn’t sure if she would. And I also wasn’t sure if I could stomach the idea of groveling to her. But then, I’d already decided I was desperate.
The light turned green. The car behind me honked. I hit the gas and lurched through the intersection. Five minutes later I yanked open the door of CVS. Annie Johnston was behind the counter, her black hair sticking out from under a black-and-white-checkered visor, and she was blowing the most massive gum bubble I’d ever seen.
“Hey,” I said.
The bubble popped. She stared at me as it deflated over her chin. Her eyes were round. I could tell she was trying to come up with something rude to say.
“I need your help,” I blurted.
Very, very slowly, Annie peeled the gum off her chin and stuffed it back into her mouth. Then she did something that almost knocked me over. She smiled.
“It’s about freaking time.”
may
I just heard that Chloe Appleby is coming back to school.
What? I thought her mother sent her away to a convent.
Do people really do that?
I heard it was Catholic school.
Right. Because Catholic school girls never hook up.
Can we focus, please? I can not believe she’s coming back!
Do you think she’s still with Will?
Maybe she’ll get back together with Jake.
After the way he treated her? Please. Girl has some p
ride. I don’t know. She’s probably hella huge. And her stock has definitely dropped. Jake Graydon could turn that right around.
God. Sometimes I’m glad I’m not popular. It sounds like a pain in the ass.
I heard that.
ally
“These are your order forms for your caps and gowns,” Dr. Giles announced, walking up the aisle in the auditorium the first Friday in May. He handed a stack to the person at the end of my row and the forms were passed along. “They are not difficult to fill out,” he shouted, his voice filling the room. “You simply supply your name, your homeroom, and your size. Therefore, when I say that the deadline to hand these in is this coming Monday, I expect to receive each and every one of your completed forms this … coming … Monday.”
“Wow. Someone’s in a good mood,” Annie whispered to me as she picked at her chipped blue nail polish.
Behind us, a few girls kept snickering and texting. I glanced sideways at Chloe, who sat on my left. It was her first day back and already her cheeks were red with embarrassment. So she thought that snark fest was about her too. She noticed me looking and tried to smile.
“I’m just glad we don’t have to wear maroon like the guys,” she said nonchalantly. “No one looks good in maroon.”
“Too bad they don’t have a double XL in the girls’ column,” someone said in the row behind ours. “Some people might need it.”
My heart plummeted and I glanced at Chloe. Her expression darkened and the order form crumbled in her fist atop her thigh. Part of me wanted to grab her and just walk out of there. But then she lifted her head and turned around with a bright smile, hooking her arm over her seat in a casual way.
“Excuse me, Denise, but have you actually seen this body I’m rocking lately?” she said, flicking her fingers in an up-and-down motion. “Because I happen to weigh less than I did before I got pregnant.”
