A Prom to Remember

by Sandy Hall

  Cora wasn’t exactly what you’d call a runner.

  She liked the idea in theory so much more than in practice, but even if she jogged for a minute or two here and there, and walked the rest of it, she’d at least feel more productive than she did at home.

  On her way down the street, she spotted someone walking a dog and almost diverted to the other side, since the dog seemed to be a little out of control.

  Cora wasn’t afraid of dogs, but that didn’t mean she wanted it to jump on her, and she definitely didn’t want to get muddy dog prints on her brand-new running sneakers that she’d just pulled out of the box.

  As she was jogging across the street, she realized the person walking the dog was actually Jacinta Ramos. She stopped and waved.

  Jacinta waved back and was promptly tugged off balance by the dog as he lunged in the direction of a squirrel, and landed in a heap on the nearest lawn.

  Cora went off course again, in the middle of the street, and ran over to Jacinta.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, putting her hand out to help Jacinta up.

  “I’m fine,” Jacinta said, dusting off her butt. “This dog, though, is not going to be fine.”

  Cora was pleased to note that it didn’t jump up on her; seeming content with causing Jacinta to have fallen down, the dog was now sitting on the sidewalk panting.

  “Do you need me to get anyone or call for help?” Cora asked.

  “Really, I’m fine. I’ll have a bruise on my ass, but whatever. I don’t know how I get talked into these things. I’m dog sitting for a neighbor, and taking Rocky here for a walk seemed like a good idea.”

  Rocky panted and smiled his doggy smile.

  “What’s up with you?” Jacinta asked.

  Cora shrugged. “Want me to walk with you? In case he decides to declare mutiny again?”

  “That’d be awesome, but I don’t want to interrupt your run.”

  Cora scoffed. “It was a fake run. I don’t really run. I’d rather walk with you any day.”

  Jacinta grinned and they set off in the opposite direction.

  “Hey, so remember that time that we had synchronized emotional breakdowns?” Cora asked.

  “Hmm, yeah, that sounds familiar,” Jacinta said.

  “Does the offer still stand to talk more?”

  “Yes. That was a forever offer,” Jacinta answered, even as Rocky nearly ripped her arm out of the socket while he ran to sniff at a telephone pole. “So what’s up?”

  “So on top of wanting to break up with Jamie, I feel like college has been sort of ruined and I’m not sure I even want to go to Boston anymore,” Cora announced.

  “Wow, that’s big. That’s a big deal.”

  “I know. And I haven’t said it yet, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to today, and holy crap it feels so good to say it out loud!”

  “What about—”

  Cora held up her hand. “But I don’t want to talk about it in terms of other people yet, just in terms of what the reality would look like if I didn’t go.”

  “All right. I think I get it,” Jacinta said, nodding. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? My parents already put money down. I took placement tests; I filled out the roommate survey. What can I do?”

  “You can go for the first semester or year and then transfer. That’s always an option.”

  Cora nodded. “Yeah. I keep reminding myself that, but it’s like my brain is being super dramatic about all of this.”

  “Well, let’s think about this logically. You could find out if any of the other schools you applied to have later deadlines for accepting admittance. You’d still lose your deposit, but maybe that would work?”

  “Maybe,” Cora said. “I hadn’t really considered that.”

  “Is there somewhere you have in mind instead?”

  Cora shrugged. “No. And it sucks because Boston was my idea. I shouldn’t have to give it up for Jamie. See, my cousin went to Harvard and we went to visit her there once when I was ten. And I knew that was where I wanted to go to college. But it became pretty apparent that I wasn’t going to get in, you know, when I realized that I was just a normal overachieving student and not a supernova overachieving student.”

  Jacinta nodded. “Ah yes. That realization.”

  Cora smiled. “So somewhere along the line, Boston became the new dream.”

  “Have you considered talking to him about this?” Jacinta asked. “I know you said before you didn’t want to talk about this in terms of anyone else, but you brought him up and really he’s pretty entwined in all of this.”

  “No, I know. But I’m not going to talk to him until after prom. It feels really terrible to break up with him beforehand. Just way too mean, no matter how much I’m sort of over him.”

  “I can see why you needed to get this off your chest.”

  “Right? It’s been eating away at me all day. I swear I was about to get an ulcer.”

  Jacinta smiled. “And who knows, maybe you’ll like it and won’t want to transfer. Maybe it’ll suit you. Or maybe Jamie will transfer.”

  “I appreciate your optimism.”

  “And really, it’s so silly to change your plans for just one boy.”

  “I know. Thanks for listening.”

  “You’re welcome,” Jacinta said as they turned a corner. “Well, this is Rocky’s stop. But seriously, if you need someone else to talk about this, text me anytime.”

  “I might take you up on that,” Cora said. She gave Rocky one little pet, and then Jacinta walked up the long driveway to the back door of her neighbor’s house.

  Cora turned on her heel and started to run. She felt freer than she had in years.

  Then she got totally out of breath and decided to walk.

  But she still felt pretty free.

  Now she had to make it through prom.

  Chapter 23

  Cameron

  Things were seriously looking up for Cameron during the week leading up to the prom.

  For starters, on Tuesday before school he’d had an actual conversation with his stepdad over breakfast. It wasn’t anything earth shattering or life changing. As usual they were the last two to leave the house before work and school, but rather than sit in silence they talked about baby names.

  Richard had been in an increasingly good mood since Cameron’s mom had announced her pregnancy, so it wasn’t even really that shocking when he struck up a conversation with Cameron. And yet, Cameron was mildly shocked.

  “Your mother thinks we should name the baby Richard Jr. and call him RJ.”

  Cameron wrinkled his nose but didn’t say anything, not wanting to offend his stepfather.

  “I feel the same way,” Richard said. “If I’d wanted an RJ that’s what I would have named Landon.”

  “And we don’t even know if it’s a boy yet.”

  “We don’t. She just seems to think it’s a boy.”

  “I don’t know,” Cameron said, finishing off his last spoonful of Frosted Flakes. “Might be nice to have a girl.”

  “I said the same thing!” Richard exclaimed. “And your mother seemed surprised that I had this opinion.”

  Cameron smiled. “And what would she want to name it if it was a girl? Richardette? Richardina? Is there a female version of Richard?”

  “I honestly have no idea, but hopefully with both of us working together we can talk her out of this one,” Richard said.

  Cameron put his bowl in the dishwasher and was halfway out the door before turning around. “Have a good day at work, um, Richard,” Cameron said.

  “You, too, Cam,” Richard said.

  Between the good interaction with Richard and his conversation with Henry over the weekend, Cameron decided to take a chance sitting with the baseball guys at lunch that day.

  After some gentle ribbing along the lines of, “Cam? What the hell? I thought you moved or something,” the guys all settled in and acted like it wasn’t ev
en a little weird that Cameron was there.

  Henry smiled as he took the seat next to Cameron.

  “Are you lost?” he asked Cameron.

  “Maybe. I feel like I time traveled back to last year,” Cameron said honestly.

  And that’s really how he felt. Like he had gone back in time. Or maybe like he was finally stepping out of a fog; all those terrible, sad feelings that he didn’t know what to do with were starting to fade away.

  In English class, he was relieved to see the laptop cart. There was a time when not having a new message waiting from Laptop Girl would have made him worry she didn’t like him anymore. But not today, not for new and improved Cameron. New and improved Cameron was logical and figured they probably just hadn’t used the laptops in her class.

  And he was grateful to get one more shot with laptop 19 this year. Ms. Huang hadn’t been bringing the cart in much, and Cameron really wanted a copy of the document preserved for him. He put it on a flash drive and shoved it deep in his backpack.

  He didn’t want to sit around reading the document every day for the rest of his life or anything, but he thought maybe if he found it in five or ten years, it might be something fun to read.

  Or he might want to delete his awkwardness.

  He’d let future Cameron work that out.

  After that, the week kept getting better.

  He didn’t have to work Thursday after school because Eddie felt so bad about making him come in on Friday. The good news was that Eddie didn’t know all the seniors got out of school at twelve thirty the day of the prom or Cameron was pretty sure his boss would have asked him to come in for the lunch shift, too.

  But not having to work on Thursday meant he had time to go to his mom’s first ultrasound with her and Richard.

  The whole experience was weird, but he was glad not to miss it.

  And he might even take Richard up on his offer to pay to fly Cameron home from college for the baby’s birth.

  Maybe.

  The last thing he did Thursday afternoon before heading home after his mom’s doctor’s appointment was stop at the florist to pick up a matching boutonniere and corsage for him and Laptop Girl. They were both lime green.

  He thought for sure he’d get a weird look when he ordered them, but apparently lime was a very popular color this year.

  Cameron stood in his bedroom making a list of everything he needed to take with him to school the next morning to go from school to work to prom. It was going to be a crazy day, but twenty-four hours from that moment, he could be with Laptop Girl.

  He couldn’t wait.

  Otis

  Otis sucked in a deep breath as he walked into school the morning of the prom. It was time to confront reality and actually talk to Luke face-to-face. He’d been dodging him for the majority of the week, even faked sick on Wednesday just to avoid the awkwardness between them.

  He had halfheartedly tried to talk to his parents one last time that morning, but Otis knew when to quit. The irony was not lost on him that after not wanting to go, now that he wasn’t allowed to go, he sort of wanted to go. Especially now that he’d heard their private hotel room had turned into a slumber party with Lizzie and Madison. Why couldn’t that have always been the plan?

  “Oh, hey there,” Luke said, grimacing when he saw Otis. “I was starting to wonder if your parents had locked you in the basement and I was never going to see you again.”

  “I’m so sorry about the prom!” Otis blurted out before he could lose the nerve. “I thought I could talk my parents into commuting my sentence or something, but I couldn’t. It’s over.”

  Luke blinked at him and then frowned. “I guess I was hoping for a last-minute reprieve, too. Because it was literally one time. One mistake. You have a clean record otherwise! You’re a first-time offender!”

  “I know that, and you know that, but apparently it’s about learning that actions have consequences.”

  “But don’t you already know that?”

  Otis shrugged. “I thought I did.” The guilt was likely to eat Otis alive. No wonder he’d been avoiding Luke.

  “Well, this sucks so hard. I don’t want to go to the prom without you,” Luke said, taking Otis’s hand.

  Somehow all of this was worse because Luke was so sad instead of angry. Otis was prepared to take on the wrath of Luke; he wasn’t prepared to take on sad, disappointed Luke.

  “You’ll still have fun with Lizzie and Madison and them,” Otis said. “At least you get to go.”

  Luke’s chin wobbled, making Otis feel a million times worse. “I know, but I’m going to be thinking about you all night long. Maybe I shouldn’t go, either. Would your parents let me come over and hang out with you?”

  “I don’t think that’s part of my grounding,” Otis said. “I don’t know how long I’m grounded for, mostly because I’m afraid to ask, but I promise I’ll make this up to you.”

  Luke sighed. “The prom is a one-time thing. There’s no way to make it up to me, not really. We either go to the prom or we don’t. And we’re not. So there’s sort of no way to make it up to me.”

  “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry,” Otis said, fiddling with the dial of the lock on the locker next to Luke’s. “I owe you a grand romantic gesture when I’m finally not grounded.”

  “You know, I just … I wish you hadn’t gone to the movies with Madison. Was it really that important to sneak out and ruin this?” Luke asked.

  “It wasn’t. There’s no way it was. But I wasn’t really thinking like that. Who could have guessed that the punishment for sneaking out would be no prom? This isn’t the way my parents usually handle these things.”

  LIES! the angel voice in Otis’s head screamed. It seemed to be the only word it knew.

  “You know. This is like the one time in high school I thought I was going to have this, like, perfect high school moment that I’d actually want to remember. Us in our tuxes, taking a limo, slow dancing, getting a hotel room. I know some of that stuff didn’t work out, because limos are ridiculously expensive, but it was still mostly going to go as planned. It was still going to be this whole memorable event.”

  Otis frowned; he really didn’t know what to say. Although he was kind of relieved that Luke seemed to be getting angrier the longer this monologue went on. Angry Luke made sense in this situation.

  “I thought after like a couple years of homophobic garbage my boyfriend and I were going to have this awesome prom experience. But no. And like, you kept telling me everything would be fine, so I kept my hopes up. But you must have known you were in such bad trouble, and it took you a week to finally admit it to me.”

  “I don’t know what else to say besides I’m sorry.”

  Luke’s nostrils flared. “Yeah, whatever.” And with that he stormed off.

  Luke didn’t look back.

  Which made Otis feel even worse. The pit in his stomach grew larger. He couldn’t believe how terrible he felt about disappointing Luke. It was beyond anything he could have imagined.

  Everything would be fine. Otis didn’t have to go to prom and he would totally make this up to Luke someday.

  Someday he’d come up with the perfect grand romantic gesture.

  He promised himself he would find a way.

  There had to be a way.

  Chapter 24

  Paisley

  Paisley heard the buzzer for her condo go off several hours earlier than Henry had said he’d be there. She figured it was the mail carrier getting confused about unit numbers again. Luckily, Paisley’s mom was home to get the door and she didn’t have to pause what she could only describe as “Hair Jenga.”

  Paisley was using bobby pins to create what she hoped was a stunning updo, but it might actually have been the world’s tiniest bun. It was impossible to create an updo from a growing-out pixie cut. On the other hand, it’d be great if the prom got attacked and she could just yank out a couple of bobby pins to use as weapons. That seemed like something that could feasibly hap
pen at prom.

  Paisley could hear Henry and her mom exchange pleasantries in the living room, followed by Henry’s plodding steps down the hall before he stopped and knocked on her bedroom door.

  “Come in,” she said, realizing in that moment that she didn’t have anything like an appropriate bag or purse for a formal event.

  When Henry walked in, her head was stuck in her closet, where she was looking for a small canvas bag that she bought on the Internet a while ago. It had a rainbow unicorn on it and would have to do for a clutch.

  After thinking about it for a minute, she decided it was kind of the perfect clutch.

  She leaned out of the closet.

  “Hey!” she said. “You’re like three hours early and you’re not even dressed.”

  He threw himself down on her bed. “Maybe we don’t have to go?”

  “Henry, come on, we’ve been over this.”

  She stood up and dusted herself off, holding the canvas bag.

  “You look nice,” he said. “Especially your hair.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t lie to me, Henry Lai.”

  “I’m not lying!” he said, holding up his hands defensively.

  “Well, fine. Your hair looks nice, too. More formal or something.”

  He touched it, as if he forgot he’d gelled it back. “Yeah, I thought it would look fancier this way. I don’t know if I really like it, though.”

  “So why so early?”

  “I’m nervous.”

  “Aw, poor buckaroo,” Paisley said. “Where’s your tux?”

  “Hanging in the living room,” he said.

  “So you’re gonna watch me get ready? ’Cause that’s not creepy.”

  “I didn’t think I’d watch you get dressed,” Henry said. “But I couldn’t stay in my house for another thirty seconds. I kept pacing around. My mom was way too enthusiastic, and my brother kept asking stupid questions. I had to get out of there.”

  “I have to figure out my hair mess,” she said, handing him her laptop. “As usual, you are not permitted to check my browsing history.”

  Henry lounged on Paisley’s bed while she got ready, in and out of the bathroom, around in circles in her room, digging deep into her closet in search of the shoes she had only bought the other day but that had become buried in the interim.