by Lara Zielin
I kissed Neil softly on the cheek. He stirred and stretched a little. His hair was tousled, but still I reached out to put my hand in it, to feel its texture one last time before I went home. Neil exhaled but kept sleeping.
As quietly as I could, I pulled on my clothes, grabbed my car keys, and turned the knob of his bedroom door. Just as I was stepping out, I heard a voice.
“Is this what you do in other people’s homes?” Neil’s mom asked.
I felt a wave of nausea cresting somewhere in the back of my throat, and I swallowed to keep it down. I looked frantically behind me at Neil’s door.
“Don’t bother going back in,” Neil’s mom said. “I’ll get him up.” Her dark hair was pulled into a severe ponytail. Her cheeks were pink against her olive skin, not from blush but from rage.
“Go and sit in the kitchen until I get there,” she said, pushing past me and barging into Neil’s room.
Oh my God, I thought. Oh my God, oh my God.
With panic fishtailing through my body, I willed my legs to walk me into the kitchen.
A moment later, Neil stumbled in, groggy and a little stooped. I stared at him as he came in, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Sit,” Neil’s mom said.
Neil sat and stared at the place mat.
“Mrs. Bromes,” I started, but she held up a hand to cut me off.
She glared at me, then at Neil. I noticed she was fully dressed, like she’d been up for a while. Had she been sitting up waiting for me to leave? What time did she get up? I wondered, then swallowed. What if our groaning had been what got her out of bed in the first place?
Oh God.
“If you want to be sexually active,” Mrs. Bromes said, interrupting my thoughts and staring straight at me, “you’re not going to do it under this roof. You’re not going to sneak over here in the night and seduce my son.”
My lungs felt suddenly flat. Seduce her son? She had to be kidding. Except she wasn’t. Mrs. Bromes was laser-focused on me, like I was the only person in the room.
But then Mrs. Bromes did shift her attention to her son. “Neil, your father and I thought you’d broken up with Aggie. We didn’t realize you were still seeing her.”
“I’m not,” Neil mumbled.
Something holding me to Neil snapped free.
“Then I want this nonsense to end,” Mrs. Bromes said. “Right now. Do I make myself clear?”
Neil nodded, but I just sat there.
“Aggie Winchester, do I make myself clear?”
Nothing was clear at that moment. I looked at her, still silent.
“One more time, Aggie. Do I make myself clear?”
The truth was that no, Mrs. Bromes wasn’t clear at all. And neither was her son, for that matter. I’d wound up with my heart sliced to pieces all over again because I’d been stupid enough to believe Neil’s lies. He didn’t want me, he just wanted to see if he could get me. But the worst part was that I think I’d known, deep down, that he was full of shit. I just hadn’t let myself admit it.
The pink color in Mrs. Bromes’s cheeks got deeper.
“That does it,” she said. She marched toward the phone, and Neil glared at me.
“Just apologize,” he hissed.
I blinked back the tears that wanted to burst forth. “I will not,” I whispered, “when you should be the one saying you’re sorry.”
“I heard that!” Mrs. Bromes hollered, snatching the cordless phone from its cradle and stomping back to the table. Neil shot one last glare at me before Mrs. Bromes was back in our faces.
“Call your mother,” Mrs. Bromes said, handing the phone to me.
“What?”
“Call your mother. Tell her where you are, and tell her what you’ve been doing.”
I thought of my mom’s recent meltdowns, the way she’d leaned against the counter last night, the stress that the prom drama was clearly causing her.
“No,” I whispered, my voice hardly working. “I won’t.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Bromes said, shoving the phone at me. “Yes, you will do this, or I’ll damn well do it for you.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “My mom’s under a lot of pressure right now.”
Mrs. Bromes leered at me. “Oh no, Aggie, I do understand.” She flicked her head toward the far end of the kitchen table where Friday’s edition of the St. Davis Letter lay. It showed the front page, where yesterday’s prom story had run.
PROM UNREST AT ST. DAVIS HIGH SCHOOL
When today’s paper—the Saturday edition—hit mailboxes, how much worse would the text be? In part because of the conversation I’d had with Rod yesterday. I turned away from the paper and looked back at Mrs. Bromes.
“Either you call her and tell her where you’ve been,” Mrs. Bromes said, “or I’ll call her and tell her. And I’m no expert, but it would seem to me that it might be better coming from you than from me.”
I snatched the cordless phone away from her. My breath was coming in uneven gulps. I closed my eyes to try and clear my addled emotions before I dialed.
“Now,” Mrs. Bromes insisted. I dialed my home number.
“Hello?” my mom answered, half asleep.
“Mom,” I said.
“Aggie?”
“Yeah. It’s—it’s me.”
“What time is it?”
“Like, four A.M. or s-something.” I kept swallowing so my throat wouldn’t come unhinged.
“Are you okay?” My mom sounded fully awake now.
“I’m f-fine. I’m . . .”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“M-Mom, I’m over at N-Neil’s,” I hiccuped. “I got caught over h-here, sleeping in his bed. Mrs. Bromes is right here, and she ma-made me call and tell y-you.”
There was a deep silence on the other end.
“Mom?”
“Get home now, Aggie,” my mom said, and hung up the phone.
Mrs. Bromes wore a satisfied smirk on her face. I ignored her and turned to Neil. I wanted to kick him in the face and tell him what an asshole he was, but instead I just looked at him and said, “I’m so glad I didn’t have sex with you last night when you asked me to.”
Mrs. Bromes’s mouth dropped open, and Neil just stared at the kitchen table, unable to meet my eyes.
Without another word, I pushed my chair away from the table and bolted out the back door.
Chapter Twenty-seven
SATURDAY, APRIL 25 / 5:12 A.M.
When I got home, I walked into the kitchen but no one was there.
“We’re in the living room,” my dad called out gruffly. I shuffled to where he and my mom were sitting. My mom was curled into a chair, her legs tucked underneath her. My dad was on the couch. The Saturday issue of the St. Davis Letter was spread out all around him.
Seeing them sitting there, I suddenly felt like I had one of those hoods over my head, the kind they put on prisoners at Guantánamo. The insides of my nostrils felt scratchy.
My mom wouldn’t meet my eyes, but my dad looked directly at me. “Aggie, we need to have a very serious talk with you,” he said.
I nodded, noticing his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot.
“We received the paper this morning,” my dad said. He held up a section of it and shook it, the pages rattling. “Do you have any idea what it says?”
I shook my head no.
“It says Marissa Mendez isn’t the queen, but rather Sylvia Ness is. It says that there’s been complete inaction on the part of the administration, even though they’ve known about foul play since the vote on Monday. Mrs. Wagner alleges your mom told her to burn the ballots, and Rod Barris says he was able to confirm this information from”—here my dad snatched his glasses off the coffee table and peered at the text—“ ‘a source close to Gail Winchester.’ Now, who do you suppose that might be?”
The wave of nausea that had started rolling inside of me at Neil’s house suddenly came back with tsunami-like force. Shame and humiliation came heaving thr
ough my throat as I vomited all over the carpet.
My mom made a small strangled noise and got to her feet. She dashed out of the room, and I could hear her opening cabinets, grabbing cleaning supplies. When she came back in, I tried to take them from her, to clean up the mess myself, but she shrugged me off again and bent down.
I couldn’t look at her as she sopped up my mess, and I burst into tears. I hated crying like this, not to mention emptying my stomach in the family room, but I couldn’t hold it back. I’d been in trouble before, but this was different. The sheer disgrace of screwing up with Rod Barris, of Neil lying to me about getting back together, of Sylvia dumping me and then thinking I’d come crawling back to her—all of my emotions about it were now in a liquid mess in front of me that my mom was cleaning up.
“I—I’m s-sorry,” I managed to stammer, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. It was the only thing I could think of to say as I stood there watching my mom scrub.
The next thing I knew, my dad was standing next to me. I hadn’t even registered the fact that he’d gotten up from his chair.
“Okay, Ag, okay,” he said. His tone was totally different—it had gone from iron shavings to cotton balls in the space of one hurl. “Just come on over and sit down for a second, all right?”
I nodded and he led me over to the loveseat. My mom had finished cleaning but had left the spray bottle and towels on the floor when she resumed her position in the corner chair. Maybe in case I hadn’t gotten everything out of my system.
I sat facing them both, but I couldn’t meet their eyes. Instead, I busied myself with wiping my nose and tears with my sleeve until my mom handed me a tissue from her pocket. “Here.”
When my crying had stopped and I could breathe without hiccuping, I finally chanced a look across the room at them.
My mom stared at me with a mix of anger and concern. Her mouth hung open just slightly, and her eyebrows were somehow raised and pulled together at the same time. My dad just looked bone tired. His forehead was creased with weariness.
As if suddenly registering my staring, my mom cleared her throat and folded her hands together. “Are you well enough to have a discussion?” she asked.
I nodded.
She took a deep breath. “Then let me begin by saying that your behavior these past two days has been seriously disappointing. And not just disappointing, but dangerous. Both for me and my career, and also for your safety, since sneaking out in the middle of the night is hazardous, to say the least. You’ve jeopardized both my position at the school and our trust.”
I looked at the floor.
“There’s also,” she continued, leaning forward in her chair, “the very serious fact that you broke rules in the Bromeses’ house too.”
I nodded, picturing Mrs. Bromes waiting for me to sneak out of Neil’s room.
“Aggie,” my dad said, some of the iron shavings back in his voice, “we’re not opposed to you dating, but we can’t have you going out behind our backs to be with boys.”
“Especially when you looked me in the eye and told me Neil wasn’t your boyfriend,” my mom interjected.
“Neil’s not my boyfriend,” I said. I twisted my damp sleeves around my fingers.
My mom and dad exchanged glances.
“But you still . . .” My dad trailed off, fighting what I imagined was an enormous internal battle to find the right words. “You’re still clearly involved somehow.”
I didn’t even know how to begin to answer that. “It’s not what you think,” I said.
My mom cleared her throat. “Aggie, from our perspective, we’re very concerned. Especially in light of Sylvia. If you’re going to have sex, then we want you to be safe. We should probably get you to a gynecologist in the near future.”
My head jerked. “God, Mom, no. We’re not having sex. Why won’t you believe me?”
My mom didn’t look convinced. “Whatever you’re doing with Neil,” she continued, “we hope that you’ll take every precaution.”
“What’s more,” my dad interjected, “you need to be respectful of boundaries in other people’s homes. If you wouldn’t do something here, you shouldn’t do it elsewhere.”
I nodded, all too aware that I probably wouldn’t be doing anything in anyone else’s home for a long time. I figured I’d be grounded until college.
“The way you’ve behaved is unacceptable,” my mom said, as if reading my thoughts, “and you need to be punished for what you did. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Your mom is going to have to face grave repercussions for Rod Barris’s story, in part because of the information you gave him.”
My brain felt like watered-down instant oatmeal. “I—I was just trying to help,” I managed to say. “I was trying to tell the truth, and I thought Rod Barris was too. But he lied to me. I’m—I’m really sorry.”
My mom closed her eyes but didn’t say anything.
I turned to my dad. “And I’m sorry about the tournament,” I said. I knew that my dad had been looking forward to today’s bass tournament since opening day. Because this was a pairs tournament, if he showed up alone, or with a different partner other than me, they’d disqualify him.
My dad glanced at my mom. Ever so slightly, she nodded.
“Aggie, your mom has very graciously agreed that I should be able to enjoy an event that I’ve been planning for months now,” my dad said. “While she doesn’t like the fact that your presence is required for me to compete, she’s willing to let it slide.”
My head felt light. “Please go to your room,” my dad said. “The tournament is starting soon, but your mom and I need a moment.”
I nodded and left, but the minute I shut my door, I didn’t flop on the bed like my whole body was telling me to. Instead, I paced, thinking about Neil, about my parents, about school, about everything.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and cringed. My makeup was smeared, my eyes red, my hair a mess.
I cracked open my door and heard my parents still talking. As stealthily as I could, I tiptoed to the bathroom and grabbed a washcloth. Once the water had steamed up the sink mirror, I scrubbed my face until every last trace of makeup was gone. I put my fingertips to my face and knew my skin was shiny and pink, but I didn’t dare check the mirror to look at it. I didn’t feel ready to face myself just yet.
My dad poked his head into my bedroom a few minutes later. He solemnly announced that my “punishment would commence after the bass tournament” and that “the terms would be very severe.”
He didn’t go into details about it, and I didn’t ask him to. The way his mouth turned down and the way he looked past me, not at me, I could see he was still completely pissed.
Before he left, I spotted the St. Davis Letter tucked under his left arm.
“Dad,” I said, “can I . . . um, can I see the St. Davis Letter?”
“This really upset your mother,” he said. “I want you to truly understand that.”
I folded my hands together. My dad, perhaps mistaking my silence for thoughtful penance, handed me the paper.
I had to read quickly—the tournament was calling, and already we were running behind—but I had to find out what Rod Barris had written.
ALLEGED PROM COVER-UP SURFACES
AT ST. DAVIS HIGH by Rod Barris
More details, and more questions, have emerged regarding how administrators at St. Davis High School handled the election of prom queen this past Monday. Marissa Mendez was crowned queen, though a challenger, Sylvia Ness, has come forward, claiming administrators burned ballots with her name on them.
“This election has always been rigged,” Ness said, alleging that her “alternative looks” and current pregnancy kept high school officials from handing her the crown, even after the student body voted for her.
Amy Wagner, the high school cheerleading coach who counts the ballots every year, says that the votes cannot be retabulated because Principal Gail Winchester told her
to burn them. “After we announced Marissa was the queen, she told me to torch them,” Wagner says.
St. Davis administration officials have declined to comment on the subject; however, a source close to Principal Winchester confirmed that the ballots had in fact been burned on Monday and that Winchester knew about it. Since Monday, Winchester has taken no action to rectify the prom situation, leading some in the school to believe a cover-up is in the works.
This same source also alleged that Ness wanted the title of prom queen only because she was carrying the baby of Ryan Rollings, the prom king.
District Superintendent Paul Swanson said that in the next few days the burning of the ballots and election procedures would be investigated carefully. “We will get to the bottom of what happened,” he said.
Until further information was available, he indicated that Marissa Mendez would keep her crown and that the prom schedule would move forward as planned.
For St. Davis community reaction to the unfolding prom situation, please see the Letters to the Editor section.
God, I’d been such a moron to believe that Rod would have changed anything in his story just because I told him who the father of Sylvia’s baby was. The only thing he’d done was add that information, which had made everything worse.
With trembling fingers, I turned to the Letters section to see what more was written there.
Dear Editor,
The mystery about St. Davis High’s prom queen is about much more than a prom queen. It’s about caring about the opinions of others, even if they’re “just kids.” The principal and others there are hiding something, and the sooner they come forward, the sooner we can put all this behind us.—Alex Bartlett
Dear Editor,
If recent presidential and Senate elections have taught us anything, it’s that voting matters and that each vote counts. Why should a prom election be any different just because it takes place in a high school? What are we teaching our kids about voting if we don’t count their ballots?—Sasha James
