by Nancy N. Rue
“See ya in an hour,” Patrick said, and I knew he grinned his way off the line.
I abandoned the Pop-Tart I’d put in the toaster and ran upstairs to simultaneously find something not Saturday-sloppy to wear and get Valleri on the phone. She answered in a stupor. Evidently not a morning person.
When I finally got through to her why I was calling, she said, in a voice thick as porridge, “Oh, I’m sorry, Tyler. We’re going to Albany today. I won’t be home until six.”
I sagged.
“But you and Patrick go ahead and meet. I’m more of a behind-the-scenes person anyway.” I paused.
“You still there?” she said.
“Yeah. You don’t think — I mean, it’s okay. Should I meet with him alone, just us?” “Why not?” “I don’t know,” I said.
Patrick arrived exactly one hour from the time I hung up the phone. He and my father pulled into the driveway at the same time. In true Dad fashion, my father introduced himself, shook Patrick’s hand, and had a good start on Patrick’s life story by the time they got to the front door.
“What do you two have planned today?” he said.
“We’re working on a project,” Patrick said.
“And we thought we’d do it down at Scarnato’s Cafe, if that’s okay.” I widened my eyes at Patrick. Though he looked a little puzzled, he nodded.
“That’ll work,” Dad said. “You have money, Ty?”
“I’m covered,” I said.
We were in Patrick’s Jeep before he said, “What was that about?”
“He always asks me if I have money when I go out someplace. He wants me to be independent, take care of myself.”
Patrick grinned. “Like he ever has to worry about that. I was talking about the going-to-the-coffee-shop thing. I mean, it’s fine — it’s great. I just thought you said we were working here.”
“We were. But then I thought it would be better …” I sighed. “Okay, I haven’t told him yet what I’m doing, and my mother already interrogated me about it this morning, so —”
“Gotcha,” Patrick said. “At least your parents give a rip what you do.”
“Yours don’t?”
“They do. When they’re home.”
I just nodded. This was actually a surprise. He seemed like a kid who came from a soccer family that went skiing together every Christmas, that kind of thing. Interesting.
It didn’t occur to me until we were staring at the menu board at Scarnato’s that I had no idea what to order at a coffee shop. Hot chocolate suddenly seemed unsophisticated, which led me to wonder why I cared whether I looked sophisticated to Patrick — so when the guy behind the counter looked at me, all I could say was, “I’ll have what he’s having.” Now that was sophistication at its highest.
I didn’t have time to decide whether I actually liked it, because we got right to work on the Prom Plan. I went over the questions Valleri and I had come up with, as well as the ideas from other schools that we’d already tossed out. I shook my head at the list, but Patrick was, of course, grinning.
“What?” I said.
“You already did all the hard stuff. No, wait. How would you say it?” He pulled his grin into a face I wouldn’t have mistaken for serious in a pitch-black room. “The difficult tasks have been completed at this juncture.” The grin reappeared. “How was that?”
“Very impressive,” I said dryly. “Do I really sound like that?”
“Nah. It sounds cool when you do it.”
My face felt warm. I turned abruptly to the list. “So you’re saying figuring out what to do next is the easy part?”
“Piece of quiche. Okay, take the tuxedo rental thing. My dad rents a tux, like, twice a month — I don’t know why he doesn’t just buy his own — but the guy he does business with? He’d give discounts in a heartbeat if I asked him. Plus, he’d probably do a drawing for a free rental —”
“We’d want it to be a contest, though, like whoever —”
“ — comes up with the classiest way of asking his date to the prom gets a free tux for the night.”
“Make it the most creative way. Classy sounds like money has to be involved.”
“Good call. Okay — done.” He put a large check mark next to that item. “What about dresses? Dude — what do you wanna bet Alyssa’s got closets full of them?”
“Why?”
“She’s all into the beauty pageant thing. She’s in, like, three or four a year.” “Has she ever won?”
“I think she’s made it to first runner-up. That’s why prom queen is such a big deal to her.”
I tapped the list. “So she’s got fifty designer gowns and most of the girls have zilch. Where are you going with this?”
Patrick talked with his hands. “My mom is like the charity queen, okay? She helps run this thrift shop to raise money for families that have somebody dying and can’t afford their medical bills or their rent or whatever.”
“Resurrection Thrift Shop.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“My mom donates to that. So, what, they have prom gowns for sale? How is that better than J. C. Penney?”
“We get girls like Alyssa, Hayley, all of them to donate their dresses they aren’t going to wear again — ‘cause, like, I’ve heard them say you can’t wear the same one twice.”
Which I didn’t get.
“And then girls that can’t afford to buy stuff like that — or even from J.C. Penney — can come in and pick what they want.”
“From things the Ruling Class brings in.”
“Who?” “What?”
“The Ruling Class?”
No — I did not just say that out loud. My face burned, all the way down to my neckline. Even I didn’t have the vocabulary to get out of this.
But Patrick’s smile was spreading. “You call Egan and those guys the Ruling Class?”
“Not out loud,” I said. “Until just now when I opened my big mouth.”
“So what qualifies a person for the ‘Ruling Class’?” “Could we just get back to the plan?” “Yeah, but I wanna hear this.”
I pressed my palm to my forehead. “It just seems to me that a certain class of people runs everything at Castle Heights. It’s not just the prom and the basketball team and the cheerleading squad — it’s what’s in and what’s not, who’s accepted and who’s not. That name just came into my head.”
Patrick was now nodding soberly, the way he did the day he interviewed me. “Am I considered part of it?”
“You’re the student council president,” I said, treading carefully. “And you hang out with all of those people. Girls would probably surrender their iPhones to you if you asked them to.”
I was starting to sweat.
“What do you think now?”
“I don’t have an iPhone.”
He blinked. “No, I mean, do you think I’m part of the Ruling Class now?”
“After yesterday, no,” I said. “And you were fair in the article, and — “ I held out both hands, now sparkling perspiration from every crease. “Here you are. So, I guess I misjudged you. I apologize.”
He shook his head, and my entire chest sank. Until he said, “You are so totally different from any person our age that I have ever met. Nobody apologizes when they mess up. They just try to find a way to make it somebody else’s fault.”
“And you?” I said.
Patrick parked his chin in his hand, elbow on the table, and looked into me. “I’m working on it,” he said.
“Hi.”
Patrick twisted to see who was behind him. I didn’t have to. It wasn’t Alyssa, but I could tell by the voice it was one of the aforementioned Ruling Class. Even a “hi” smacked of entitlement.
“Hi, Joanna,” Patrick said. “How ya doin’, girl?”
Joanna blushed prettily — something I could never pull off — and as she looked down at Patrick, I noticed how long her eyelashes were. There was actually nothing about this girl that wasn’t perfect. Alyssa h
ad nothing on her.
“So — what are you doing?” she said, only glancing at me.
“Working on prom,” Patrick said.
“Oh.” She looked at one of the extra chairs at our table.
“Do you want to sit down?” I said. “I can move my stuff.”
“No,” she said, as if I’d just asked if she’d like to share my toothbrush. She tugged at Patrick’s sleeve. “Could I talk to you privately for a minute?”
“Here’s fine,” he said. “You can join us.”
His smile didn’t change, but I could see the dancers disappearing from his eyes. If he was half as uncomfortable as I was, he could hardly stand to be in his own skin right now.
“Y’know, I really need to use the restroom,” I said. “You two chat.”
I didn’t look back at them as I scooted through the café, though I did look thoroughly at myself in the mirror when I had the restroom door safely closed and locked behind me. Bathrooms weren’t private places for me lately.
The face that looked back at me was definitely not Joanna Payne material. I’d never cared about that before. I really didn’t now, and yet I was thinking about it. This was what we were fighting — Valleri and Patrick and me — this constant comparing and competing and assuring ourselves that we were okay as long as somebody else wasn’t.
Did I do that?
No answer came to me, at least not before I’d spent enough time in there to have taken a complete shower. Steeling myself to see Joanna now planning the prom campaign with Patrick too, I opened the door and crossed to the table. But she was gone.
Patrick was doodling on the edge of my notes. He grinned when he looked up, but he didn’t look that happy. “I got you another latte,” he said. “Everything okay?” I said. “Depends what you mean by okay.” “What do you mean by it?”
He frowned into the foam at the top of his cup. “Joanna just informed me that there already is a prom committee and that we’re making Egan feel like he’s not doing a good enough job.”
“And that’s not okay,” I said.
“No. He’s a buddy of mine. And he does do a good job — I mean, everything’s gonna be, like, first class.”
“We’re not trying to make it second class. We’re just trying to make it so first class doesn’t exclude people.”
He was watching me the way a little kid looks at your lips when you’re telling him something he wants to understand. I suddenly felt like mine were huge.
“Okay,” he said, “got it. But we have to make sure he knows exactly what we’re doing. We have to put together this plan and then try to get him in on it.”
“Do you seriously think he’s going to do that?”
“Maybe not. I just said we have to try.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“We move on without him.”
“What about Joanna?”
“What about her?”
“You’re losing friends right and left over this.”
“What about you?”
I had to pause. “Yeah,” I said. “I have. But I’ve made one — Valleri.”
He pulled both shoulders up to his earlobes. “What am I? Chopped liver?”
“No. What is chopped liver, anyway?”
“I’m serious. Do you consider me a friend now?”
I fumbled around in my brain for a snappy little retort, but I didn’t find one, and I was glad. He was watching me again through the steam coming off his cup, and his face could only be described as hopeful.
“I haven’t had that many friends in my life,” I said, “so I’m not good at spotting them when they show up. But, given the information and experience I have to work with, I consider you a friend.”
“So was that a yes or what?”
“Yes, it was a yes.”
He poked at my notes with his index finger. “Then could we get back to the job here? Dude — you got me off track.” “Like you weren’t already halfway there. Okay — so, a ‘dress shop’ —”
We spent another hour going down the checklist, finishing each other’s sentences, embellishing one another’s ideas. We had everything covered but the photography; we still couldn’t come up with a way for kids to get professional pictures for a low price. Other than that, we couldn’t see why every junior and senior at Castle Heights High School couldn’t have a great night they’d still be talking about at the ten-year reunion.
“I’m feeling pretty good about this,” I said when Patrick dropped me off at my house.
“Oh yeah. We got it goin’ on now. I’m gonna call Egan and talk to him. Call me if you come up with any other ideas.” “I don’t have your number,” I said.
“Yeah, you do.” He gave me the day’s last grin. “It’s on your notes.”
Why that made me want to grin was a question I avoided as I forced myself not to dance into the house. When I saw my parents standing in the foyer, I was glad I’d opted against breaking into a samba.
“Your mother tells me you were supposed to discuss this project with me,” Dad said. Instead of hello.
“I said I would,” I said. Yellow caution lights went on in my head.
“Then why didn’t you say something before you left?”
“Because I didn’t want to get into it in front of my friend.”
“What made you think we were going to ‘get into it’?”
“That’s the way it seemed when Mom brought it up.” I hitched up my bag on my shoulder. “I’m trying not to take a ‘tone’ with you guys, but I don’t understand what’s going on. I never had to get your approval on every school project before.”
Mom leaned on the banister and folded her arms. “You’ve just never been this evasive about one before.”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“We’d love to hear.” Dad shoved his hands into his pockets. “Ty, we’re not trying to fight you on this. You’re just acting a little …” He looked at my mother.
“Out of character,” she said. “It just seems like this goes beyond a ‘school project,’ and that concerns us.”
Dad was nodding. “I read the article and I want you to know I’m proud of you — we both are. But the potential for this to blow up in your face is definitely there.”
“You always say effecting change always involves risk,” I said.
“Which is admirable if the change you’re trying to make is worth the risk.”
“Raising people’s self-esteem isn’t worth it?” I said. I had ceased caring what my voice sounded like.
“Does measuring up at the prom raise somebody’s self-worth?”
My father’s eyes were bright, and he was leaning toward me in that attitude of intensity that signaled he was warming up to the debate. Only I didn’t see it as a debate, and I didn’t want to argue about it anymore.
“So, bottom line,” I said. “Are you saying I’m not allowed to go on with this?”
They looked at each other. Some kind of conversation went on with their eyes, while the skin on the back of my neck prickled.
“We’re not going to stop you,” Dad said finally. “But we’d like to be kept apprised of your progress.”
“And if at any time we think it’s not good for you — “ Mom said.
“We’ll revisit it.”
My mother didn’t exactly agree with that part, judging from the way she pressed her lips together. They’d be having a real conversation about that later, I was sure. Meanwhile, I had to get away from both of them so I could try to make some sense out of what had just gone down. Either that, or I was going to go beyond mere tone.
“May I go, then?” I said.
My father’s eyes drooped, but he nodded. I took the stairs two at a time — and I was sure it wasn’t from all those shots of espresso I’d just consumed.
And nearly fell over Sunny at the top of the steps.
“Did you hear enough?” I said.
Her face looked genuinely blank. “I didn’t ‘hear’
anything. I was just going down to grab some lunch. You want anything?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I want you to let me handle my own business with my parents.”
The eyebrows went up. “You’re going to have to explain that to me.”
“You showed the newspaper article to Mom.”
“And that was wrong because …”
“Because they didn’t know about it yet, and now they’re all up in my grillwork because they think what I’m trying to do isn’t worth it — and it is. I’m sick of putting up with the way things are and I’m going to do everything I can to change it. So I’d appreciate it if you’d let me tell them what’s going on with that from now on.”
I stopped because I was breathing hard. And because I figured any minute I was going to see tears. All I needed was for Sunny to dip back into depression from me chewing her out.
But she tilted her head, and she smiled the way a person does when she finally gets quadratic equations.
“Well,” she said. “The kid that wrote that article was right: you do have passion. I’m glad to see it.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I apologize, sis. Won’t happen again.”
I watched her go down the steps and put my fingers to my cheek. That clinched it, then: everyone I knew had had a personality transplant.
Including me.
Chapter Twelve
Patrick seemed to have made meeting me at my locker his new before-school ritual. Only Monday morning he didn’t lazily start a conversation, arm leaning on the bank of lockers. He grabbed my arm and started off down the hall with me in tow.
“What’s going on?” I said, running to keep up with him. The boy had some seriously long legs, even longer and lankier than mine.
“We have an appointment,” he said.
“With who?”
“Mr. Baumgarten.”
I dug in my heels and brought us both to a lurching halt at the corner.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“I’m not exactly Mr. Baumgarten’s favorite student,” I said. “I’ve been in his office twice, and both times I made his scalp turn red all the way down to his hair follicles.”
I got the morning grin. “Have I told you how much —”
