A Prom to Remember

by Sandy Hall

  Luke picked one of the containers up off the ground. It said on the side, “You + Me = Prom?”

  Luke laughed so loud he shocked the freshman girl who was passing at that moment.

  “Oh my god,” Luke said. “Did you Juno me?”

  Otis smiled.

  “Ugh, I’m so mad at you for doing this.”

  “I put them in on Friday after baseball, but then you scooped me with the invite yesterday. I figured there was no reason to come get them all out of your locker early this morning, though. It would have been such a waste. Also because Madison would have killed me since she’s the one who helped me write on all of them.” Otis knew he was babbling, but Luke wasn’t saying enough so he needed to fill the void.

  Luke stared at one of the containers and grinned. “This is really so fantastic.”

  “Thanks,” Otis said, feeling a little shy. “I figured I owed you since up until now my grandest gesture was surprising you with your favorite Slurpee.”

  “A Slurpee I cherished,” Luke said, putting his hand on Otis’s arm. “And mango isn’t always available in this area of New Jersey, so it was extra thoughtful.”

  Otis shrugged, still sheepish.

  “Although you realize I’m going to have to eat all of these myself, right? Because if I give them to people they’re going to think I’m asking them to prom.”

  “You definitely have to eat every single one yourself,” Otis said. “It’s like a demonstration of your commitment to us.”

  Luke studied his locker, counting the containers with his eyes. “My god, how much did you spend on these? I mean really, except I don’t mean that at all and please don’t tell me.”

  “You can buy them in bulk on the Internet. It wasn’t too much, I promise.”

  “But still! There’s like a hundred boxes.”

  “A hundred and twenty, technically.”

  It was Otis’s turn to laugh loudly. “I’m glad we’re going to prom.”

  “Me too,” Luke said.

  “I just really appreciate you.”

  “Aw, I love it when you’re sincere.” Luke closed his locker. “We should probably go get your stuff now.”

  Otis nodded as they turned to walk down the hall. He made quick work of grabbing what he needed for his morning classes, and soon they were off to homeroom. “We should go on a date soon. Like a good date,” he said.

  “I am always up for a good date,” Luke said, waving at someone as he passed. “Or a bad date, even. Let’s go to McDonald’s.”

  “That sounds like the perfect plan,” Otis said, threading his arm through Luke’s as they continued on their way.

  “Or, you know, I was going to surprise you, but I talked to my cousin and he works at the Holiday Inn Express. And he said he could get us a room for prom night.” Luke raised his eyebrows and grinned.

  “Wow,” was all Otis managed to say as the shock of the statement settled in.

  A hotel room.

  With Luke.

  On prom night.

  He had to think about each of these concepts individually before he could handle considering them together.

  “Should be awesome,” Luke said, squeezing his arm in a wordless goodbye as Luke entered his homeroom.

  Should be awesome, Otis thought to himself, standing in the hallway stunned. But there was also something vaguely terrifying about the idea.

  He continued on to homeroom by himself, thinking about what a hotel room, one with Luke, on prom night entailed.

  He should be totally psyched, right?

  Someone would need to tell that to the pit of anxiety that was growing in his stomach.

  Cora

  Tuesday night and Cora was doing her best to avoid her homework. At this point in her senior year, was there really any reason to do it?

  The answer was of course yes, but that didn’t exactly motivate her to get her work done. When her phone chimed from her bed she leaped for it, as gracefully as one can leap from sitting cross-legged on the floor up and onto a bed.

  Technically Cora wasn’t allowed out after dinner on school nights unless it was for a school-related event or responsibility. But maybe if she spun a quick little lie and breezed out the door before her parents caught on she might be able to make a run for her car. She grabbed her keys and shoved her wallet in her backpack along with a random book that she could use as a cover story.

  Her mom and dad were in the living room watching the news.

  “I need to run over to Jamie’s for a second. We accidentally switched textbooks at lunch,” she said, patting her backpack for extra emphasis.

  Her dad’s eyebrows knitted together, and Cora could tell he was about to say no, but her mom pressed a hand to his chest.

  “You have an hour on the dot, and you better be careful driving my car,” she said.

  Cora grinned and raced out of the house before her dad could start lining up his arguments. As Cora had recently pointed out to them, sooner than later they were going to have to get used to the idea that she was an autonomous person. That she certainly wasn’t going to be calling them from college to ask about going out.

  She dropped into the driver’s seat of her mom’s sedan, and put on her seat belt before carefully pulling out of the driveway. She couldn’t see her parents watching, but she could feel them, so it was worth it to be on her best behavior behind the wheel.

  She pulled onto the main street and realized that this was kind of an odd request from Jamie. There was a spontaneity to the situation that should excite her.

  But it didn’t.

  And she couldn’t put her finger on why.

  They weren’t exactly a booty call couple, and definitely not on a Tuesday night. Normally she would have just said no, she wasn’t allowed out, but that was how bored she was with her AP Spanish homework. He probably needed help with his trig and was trying to be coy about it. That had to be why she wasn’t excited. He was so predictable.

  For a long minute at a stoplight, Cora considered blowing Jamie off and texting Teagan and Josie to meet her at Starbucks. It was a feeling she was experiencing more and more lately. Unfortunately, she rarely had time to examine feelings like that.

  Cora pulled up in front of Jamie’s house and sent out a quick “I’m here” text. She was surprised when she got an immediate response telling her to go around to the backyard, only making her more curious. Homework alfresco? That didn’t sound like Jamie.

  When she walked around back, Jamie was standing on the edge of the deck. The sun was starting to set, and he had lit what looked like at least twenty or thirty votive candles and lined the ledge of the deck with them.

  “Hey,” he said with a grin.

  “Hey,” she replied. “What’s going on?”

  “Come on up,” he said, gesturing with the grace of a game show host.

  Cora slowly walked up the stairs, taking in the whole scene. The word PROM was spelled out in roses on the picnic table, and Cora couldn’t help shaking her head.

  “You’re sort of ridiculous, you know that, right?” she said.

  “Oh, totally. I have no qualms about my ridiculousness,” he agreed. “But I also knew you would yell at me if I dared to pull something like this at school.”

  “Well, yes. And all these candles would definitely be frowned upon.”

  He nodded, running a hand over his short dirty-blond hair. “So what do you say, Cora?”

  “Oh,” she breathed out.

  In that moment Cora saw the boy who she’d loved for almost as long as she could remember. Cute and perfect Jamie, who did everything so cutely and perfectly.

  She and Jamie had been dating for over three years. It would have been longer than that if they started counting from when they first held hands at the planetarium on their seventh-grade field trip.

  The two thirteen-year-olds would have definitely declared their undying love to each other then and there, like a contemporary Romeo and Juliet minus the suicide, but Cora’s parents
were strict with their rule about not letting her date until she was fifteen. So, instead, they counted from Cora’s fifteenth birthday.

  “Will you go with me?” he asked, his expression uncertain due to the length of her silence and probably the look on her face.

  “Of course I’ll go with you, you big goof,” she said. He pulled her close and kissed her. She cut the kiss off quickly, telling herself his mom was probably watching from the sliding door in the family room.

  “You really didn’t have to do all of this,” Cora said. She looked down at their intertwined hands, his light fingers woven through her darker ones.

  “I didn’t?” he asked. “Oh snap. Then I take it back. I was going to ask Teagan to the prom, so I guess I’ll do that.”

  “You’re completely ridiculous, you know that, right?” Cora asked.

  “I am, but you like that about me, right?” he asked. She threaded her arms around his waist, and he pulled her in close. He was a few inches taller than she was these days. It was pretty funny to think that back in seventh grade when she first kissed his cheek while standing in the gift shop at that same planetarium, mere minutes after they’d first held hands, she’d had a solid two inches on him. But he caught up, as boys tend to do.

  “I do like that about you,” she said.

  “Good,” he said, squeezing her close.

  Cora closed her eyes and pretended she felt safe and happy instead of a little bit claustrophobic. If she ignored the feeling maybe it would go away, particularly since they’d made their college plans together. In the fall, they’d both be going to Boston University. Jamie had decided to go there since it was Cora’s dream school.

  The future was set for them. She had to hope she’d get past whatever this feeling was in her gut.

  “And did you notice I haven’t called you babe once?” he asked.

  She was thankful that her face was still pressed up against him so he couldn’t see her expression.

  Chapter 6

  Lizzie

  Lizzie let out one short sigh of disappointment on Wednesday afternoon when the laptop cart was nowhere to be found in the English classroom.

  But there was no time to wallow. As soon as the bell rang, Ms. Huang told the class to break into pairs and work on the discussion questions that she was passing out.

  Jacinta and Lizzie looked at each other knowingly and pushed their desks together as fast as they could. They had a silent agreement that anytime there was group work they would pair up, in part because they knew they could trust each other to hold up their side of the bargain. The rest of the class, not so much.

  Having a similar work ethic, both girls opened to clean pages in their notebooks and got right to work while the rest of the class meandered around, trying to find partners and pens that weren’t completely out of ink.

  Lizzie and Jacinta were already moving on to question two when Ms. Huang got called into the hallway for a moment. The class had been unsettled before that, but as soon as the door closed, they were even less settled.

  Lizzie leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. Jacinta propped her elbow on her desk and turned to Lizzie.

  “So are you going to the prom?” she asked.

  “Ugh,” Lizzie said.

  “Does that mean yes or no?” Jacinta asked.

  “The prom and I have a complicated relationship at the moment.”

  “Is it really cheesy that I want to go?” Jacinta asked.

  Lizzie smiled and sat up, not wanting Jacinta to think she was judging her. “Not at all. It’s more common than not wanting to go.”

  Jacinta nodded. “It’s just that my three brothers and my sister went to their proms and it always seemed so glamorous to me. Like the height of what it meant to be eighteen and graduating from high school, as if you were finally sophisticated enough to own a really pretty dress and have a boy in a tuxedo whisk you away in a limo.”

  Lizzie nodded.

  “It’s just super corny, right?”

  “No, honestly, I do feel a little more inspired to go. Because you’re right. There’s something like closure that comes along with going to the prom. It’s like a rite of passage in our society.”

  “Exactly! So tell me about your complicated relationship with prom.” Then Jacinta’s eyes lit up. “I forgot about Mystery Boy. You should totally ask Mystery Boy!”

  “I know.” Lizzie grinned. Jacinta had caught part of their conversation one day when Lizzie had left it up on the screen. “It’s a little weird and a little complicated, but I really want to ask him.”

  “I love weird and complicated stuff. What’s weird and complicated about it?”

  “I need to figure out how to even approach this idea,” Lizzie said. “How do you ask someone to meet you somewhere when you’ve never met them? When you don’t know what they look like, and they don’t know what you look like? How do you find each other in a crowd?”

  “Maybe you should see if he says yes before getting too bogged down by the logistical details.”

  “But logistical details are all I have to hang onto right now,” Lizzie said. “Otherwise I fall apart imagining meeting him. Maybe he’s only good on paper. Maybe I won’t like him in person.”

  “Do not fall apart. We have this under control,” Jacinta said, flipping to a clean page in her notebook.

  “What about the assignment?”

  “We could do that in our sleep!” Jacinta said. “We only have two more questions to answer. You need help more than we need to answer those questions.”

  “Thanks, Jacinta.”

  “Now we just need to figure out what to say,” Jacinta said, tapping her bottom lip with her pen.

  By the end of the period, Lizzie had a short message written out that she could type up quickly the next time she had an opportunity to use laptop 19.

  Luckily the next day the laptop cart was in the English room. Lizzie wasted no time typing up her prom invite to Mystery Boy.

  So, I was wondering. If maybe perhaps. She paused. She wanted desperately to delete what she had just typed. It’s a good thing she had a rough draft to go by, because this was harder than she expected.

  I’m going to leave that stuff there so you can see that I’m a little nervous about this. But I wanted to ask you to the prom. Or at least ask you to meet me at the prom. I want to meet you, and I feel like prom is the perfect time to do that. I don’t know who you’re attracted to, maybe you’re not into girls and that’s cool. But I wanted to at least ask. So, thank you and please consider meeting me. If not at the prom, if that doesn’t feel right, then some other time? Maybe? I don’t want this friendship to end.

  Lizzie quickly saved the message and then closed the document before she could talk herself out of it or add more awkward rambling.

  Jacinta looked over at her and raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question. Lizzie gave her a thumbs-up.

  Her heart was beating a mile a minute.

  Paisley

  During Paisley’s tenure as a potato technician in the mall food court, she had learned many things. One was that people talked a lot in the food court, and, because of her uniform and visor, Paisley was nearly invisible to them. Customers would continue talking to their friend or on the phone about personal things even while Paisley stood there waiting for their order. On top of that, due to a fluke in the food court’s architecture, she could also hear conversations from several yards away in a nearby alcove.

  She’d heard way too many stories to keep them all to herself. She’d often text Henry the best of them during her shifts.

  For example, she had heard quite a few terrible stories about sex over the past few months. At the moment there was a group of college-aged girls sitting in the magical acoustic alcove talking about STDs.

  She was frantically typing their conversation to Henry.

  Henry rarely even responded to these texts, but that didn’t stop Paisley from sending them.

  Paisley paused in her transcription to loo
k over at the table and get a better look at each of the girls. Was this what she had to look forward to in college?

  Her phone lit up and got her attention.

  Paisley considered this for a moment.

  Paisley stacked napkins and refilled the utensils so that her boss wouldn’t have anything to say when he came in to help with the dinner rush. Even though what Hot Potato experienced during dinnertime could hardly be considered a rush. Paisley was happily surprised when Lizzie came in at five thirty.

  “Hey,” Paisley said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight.”

  “John needed to switch, and when he told me you were working I jumped at it.”

  Paisley grinned. “Well, you’re in luck because it’s been a super quiet afternoon and it’s sure to be a super quiet evening.”

  As if on cue, three people got in line for potatoes. It was in fact the rushiest rush that Paisley had ever seen at Hot Potato.

  After the girls finished helping the customers, there was a lull.

  “That was more people than I’ve ever seen here,” Lizzie said.

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Lizzie was quiet for a beat. “I asked Mystery Boy to the prom.”

  Paisley whipped her head around to look at her from her place at the fixin’s bar. “You what?!”

  “I asked him to the prom,” Lizzie said, obviously trying to hold back a grin.

  “Oh my god, Liz,” Paisley said. “I could tell you really wanted to go.”

  Lizzie shrugged. “We’ll see if he says yes. I don’t think he will, and then it’ll be a moot point.”

  “But if he says yes, you’ll have to actually go to the prom.”

  “I know. It could be fun. Jacinta Ramos kind of talked me into it.”

  Paisley shook her head and wiped up around the melted cheese container. At that moment, Amelia Vaughn and her lackeys took a seat in the area with the acoustical flaw.

  “Well, well, well,” Paisley said. “Look who’s here.”