by Laura Preble
He exhales as if he’s inflated his argument balloon and I’ve popped it with a pin. “Could you repeat that?”
“I said, maybe I can talk to Becca about having Geek Prom on a different night.”
“Wow.” He clears his throat. “That’s great. Okay, so keep me posted.”
“So now that you’ve woken me up, I suppose you’d like to take me out to breakfast?”
“I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.” The receiver clicks.
Euphoria has, as usual, been listening in on the whole conversation, something I’ve repeatedly talked to her about. “Shelby,” she says as she rolls back into the room, “you know that Becca won’t change her mind, don’t you?”
I rummage through my dresser drawer to find a clean T-shirt and jeans. “What do you mean?”
Euphoria snorts, not a pleasant sound. “I would think you’d know her better than I would. Do you think she’s going to compromise on something like this?”
“Well, if I know her better than you do, why are you arguing with me?” The truth is, I do have a suspicion that she won’t like the compromise idea. I am conveniently tucking that little doubt into my little doubt closet, the one at the very darkest, dustiest part of my mind, in the same place that I keep old television show plots and the memory of public humiliation.
“Pardon me for exposing the obvious.” My robot sounds condescending. I don’t think most people can actually say that, but I can.
“I’m sure Becca will listen to reason,” I say. “And I’m going out to breakfast with Fletcher. He should be here soon, so can you tell Dad that I’m going out?”
“Why don’t you tell him?” she snips.
“Because I’m getting ready,” I say, running a brush quickly through my hair. Not bad, I think as I look in the mirror. For just rolling out of bed, especially not bad.
“I’ll tell him. But mark my words, young lady. This will bring trouble.” It’s weird getting social advice from someone related to our Volvo. As I apply lipstick and a light coat of mascara, I say, “You sound like a nanny out of an English melodrama.”
“Do you really think so?” she asks eagerly. “I’ve been watching some of the old nanny movies, and I’m trying to copy their speech patterns. I’m so happy you noticed!”
“There are nanny movies?” Who knew.
I’m barely ready by the time the doorbell rings. Slipping on my tennies (the ones with no laces . . . too difficult to tie on a weekend), I grab my purse and head for the door. But when I open it, it’s not Fletcher. It’s Becca. And she looks very upset.
She marches in with her mom, Thea, trailing behind her a few paces. Thea drives her around in an old Jeep, and lately has been spending a lot more time at my house, mostly because she and my dad started to kind of hit it off. I didn’t even meet her until months after I met Becca; she’s an artist and she holes up in their mansion, making mosaics out of broken dishes and stuff like that.
She has a nose ring, too, something that took some getting used to. There are not a lot of moms with nose rings. “Honey, I really don’t know why you’re so upset,” she’s saying as she closes the door.
“Really, Thea? You really don’t know why I’m so upset?” She throws her purse into the corner and flops down on our couch. Thea touches my arm and nods in the direction of the hallway to my room. I follow her.
“Shelby, I think she and Carl had a fight.” Thea glances over my shoulder to see if Becca’s still on the couch, which she is. “He called this morning, and the next thing I know, I hear her screaming from her room. I ran up to see what was happening, but she’d already hung up. All she said was that he was a traitor. Do you know what happened? Did he cheat on her or something?”
A cold feeling wells up in my stomach. “No, I think I know what it is.” Think, think. What to do? First, get rid of the mom. “Hey, Euphoria, could you tell Dad that Thea’s here?” I grab her arm and lead her toward the kitchen. “Could you leave us alone for a minute?”
Becca’s lips are pursed so tightly that they look like two white half-moons pushed together. Her hands are balled up in fists, and she’s compulsively picking at the fringe on one of our throw pillows. She’s already plucked off a couple of tassels. At this rate, our pillows will be bald by lunchtime.
“Hey,” I say softly.
Tears start to spill down her cheeks. “Carl said he has to take me to the prom or else.”
“Or else what?”
“Or else we’re through, I guess.” She reaches for a pillow and dabs at her eyes.
“Why would he do that?”
She bites her lower lip, denting one of the half-moons. “It’s probably because I told him that he was a slow-witted moron with delusions of grandeur. And that we were having the Geek Prom on the same night as the real prom.”
“Why does everyone call it the ‘real’ prom?” That’s starting to really bug me. “Anyway, why did you call him all those names? Oh, and by the way, Fletcher is on his way over here to take me out to breakfast. You want to come?”
“Ha!” she gestures helplessly. “See? It’s all about the guys now. Whatever they want, right?”
“Hey, to be fair, I didn’t know you were coming over.” I do feel bad about leaving her in tears, but I’m hungry, too. And since I appeased Fletcher and made him feel better, I want to get the benefits of doing a good deed. I can feel like a real girlfriend. Except for this nagging feeling that I’m somehow betraying Becca.
“Sure.” She has stopped crying for the moment. “I’ll find Thea and we’ll just get out of here. Sorry I bothered you.” She stands up, shoulders stiff with anger.
“It’s not a bother.” I put my hands on her shoulders and push her back down to the couch. “Listen, let’s just do it on a different night from the other prom. Then we can have two. What’s wrong with that idea?”
“You’ve been brainwashed!” she screeches, frustrated. “You’ve gone over to the dark side!”
“Please.” I sit down next to her on the couch. “I’m just being practical. You’re being stubborn. End of story.”
“No, not end of story!” She punches a pillow in frustration. “Don’t you see why this is so important? We have to have it on the same day because that’s the point. We want to give people an alternative to the tuxedo-and-taffeta world of traditional prom.” She grabs her purse and rummages, producing a pad of paper and a pen. “Tuxedo and taffeta,” she mutters. “That’s good. Gotta write that down.”
“I understand what you’re trying to do, but why can’t their alternative just be on another night?”
“Look at you.” She crosses a T viciously. “You’re going to go to both, aren’t you?”
“Well, I—”
“Yep. That’s my point. There won’t be an alternative, just an addition. The special prom for the special people. But we can all wink at each other and go to the ‘real’ prom to let everybody know we’re still cool.”
Since the timing in my life is nearly always awful, the doorbell rings. Fletcher opens the door. “Shelby! Let’s go. I’m starving!”
Becca stares coldly at me, daring me to have French toast while she’s in crisis. “Uh, just a minute,” I call. He’s already in the living room, and from the look on his face, I can tell that he has figured out that high drama is going to ruin our morning.
“Hi, Becca.” He acts casual. Only a highly trained boy watcher like myself would know that he’s really strategizing, trying to find a way to sway the situation to his advantage.
I guess Becca knows it, too. “Hi, Fletcher,” she says with an edge. I feel like I should go put on my bulletproof hoodie.
“Would you like to join us for breakfast?” he asks formally.
“No, but thank you very much,” she answers.
Silence fills the room, that awkward silence when everyone has too much to say and no one says anything. As the person caught in the middle, I guess it’s my duty to break the ice. And there’s definitely a glacier forming in my l
iving room.
“So, I guess if you don’t want to go with us, we’ll just get going,” I say as casually as possible. The glare I get from Becca lets me know that she does not approve of my decision.
Fletcher doesn’t have a high tolerance for pretending, so he says, “Let’s just stop this right now. What is your problem, Becca? Let’s just get it out in the open.”
“My problem, Fletcher, is that you and your friend are trying to sabotage our Geek Prom instead of helping and supporting us. If you guys really cared about us and what we do, you’d be the first in line to buy a plaid tux or something.”
“Never mind the fact that I would never wear a plaid tux for anyone,” Fletcher says, “but if you stop for a minute and try to think past what you want, you might see that there’s a larger issue here.”
This is just like earlier this year. For a while, the two of them were fighting because on one particular Saturday Fletcher wanted me to go to a party and Becca wanted me to work on a project with her. It was so bad that I actually ran away from both of them and locked myself in my room after school. They chased me down, of course, and then there was a big fight, and it was not pretty. I have to stop this train wreck.
“Look, the problem is that you don’t support us—” Becca begins.
“No, the problem is you don’t think there might be any other point of view than yours,” Fletcher says, his voice getting louder.
As the volume increases, the gap between them decreases; in a minute they’re nose to nose. “Why is it so terrible for me to want to go to a prom and be part of the regular school culture?” Fletcher asks.
I try to interject. “Well, maybe we could just—”
“What’s so wrong about trying to be different, and not going along with all the robot people who run the school?” Becca matches his volume.
I try to butt in. “Hey, maybe we ought to—”
“You just don’t think anyone else could be as cool as you!” Fletcher is yelling now.
“You just think you’re too cool for everyone else!” Becca is yelling, too.
I meekly raise my hand and say, “Hey, I think—”
“Shut up!” They both yell at me.
I stare at them, stunned. “Shut up?” I ask.
They exchange glances, knowing that they both blew it, and that generally it’s not a good idea to tell your best friend or your girlfriend to shut up. “Sorry.” Becca smiles apologetically. “We just got carried away.”
Fletcher nods uneasily. “Yeah. Sorry.” He puts his arm around me; I know this will infuriate Becca, because it’s that boyfriend-trumps-best-friend thing. It’s like he’s staking his claim to me since we have a sort of physical bond that Becca and I don’t have. Not like we’ve really physically bonded, I mean in the literal sense. It’s just that he can put his arm around me, and generally that’s not something girlfriends do. Plus, it makes my toes melt. Anyway, I know it makes her mad.
“We’re going to breakfast now,” Fletcher says calmly, steering me toward the door.
“This is not the end of it!” Becca calls after us.
Over coffee and eggs, Fletcher drops another bomb on me. He waits until my mouth is full of toast to say, “They’ve asked me to be in charge of decorations for the prom.”
“Oh, that’s fantastic,” I mumble through the crust and crumbs. “Why did they ask you? You’re a guy.”
He looks offended. “What, a guy can’t be good at decorating? Only girls have the genetic coding for stringing crepe paper?”
“No, I’m not saying that. It’s just kind of unusual, that’s all. Who did you say asked you to be in charge of decorations?”
“I didn’t say.” He grabs his coffee mug and slurps a big gulp of avoidance.
“So . . .” I gesture, encouraging him to continue.
“So what?”
“So who asked you to be in charge of the decorations?”
He sighs heavily. “Okay. It was Samantha Singer. But don’t jump to any conclusions!”
Samantha Singer. You’ve seen her, or someone just like her, because in every high school in the world, this rare creature exists. She is born with a golden tan, perfect white teeth, a shiny curtain of never-fuzzy hair, amazing muscle tone, and a closetful of clothes that never cling or ride up or gap. Usually, she excels at some nonsweaty sport like tennis or gymnastics. She has a flawless grade point average, and runs the student government. And her goal in life is simple: to conquer every aspect of high school life and to make every guy fall in love with her. That’s Samantha Singer. She is our archenemy.
She also has a very large crush on Fletcher. Last year, when the Queen Geeks took over the spring dance, she nearly managed to steal him from me by roping him into being the “king” while she was the “queen” of the event. Luckily, Fletcher had better taste at that point. But who knows now? Samantha Singer is older and wiser, and has worked on her strategy for a year. I have no doubt that this is a way for her to get close to Fletcher. And I have no idea if this time he’ll be able to resist her witchy charms.
But if time has taught me anything, it’s that telling a guy not to do something is the best and surest way to push him into doing it. So, instead of freaking out and telling him to resign immediately from crepe paper duty, I act as if I couldn’t care less. “Well, if she thinks you can do it, I’m sure you can. What’s the theme this year?”
He’s eyeing me as if I might jump across the table and stab him with a butter knife. “Uh . . . I think it’s something to do with Mardi Gras.”
“Oooh. Beads and feathers and oversized heads. Sounds like fun!”
We finish our breakfast in relative silence; he spends most of it staring at me, trying to figure out why I haven’t snapped his head off for mentioning Samantha Singer.
Breakfast finished, Fletcher drives me back home, and as he steers the car onto my street, I check to see if Thea’s Jeep is still in the driveway. With relief I see it is not. I get a momentary reprieve.
“Bye,” I say, giving Fletcher a peck on the cheek. Even being that close to him causes my hormones to rev. He grabs my arm. “What?” I ask.
“Why are you being so nice about the decoration thing?”
I pretend to be surprised. “What do you mean?” I try batting my eyes at him, but I think it just looks like I have an eyelash stuck or something.
“You’re planning something.” His eyes narrow. “Are you going to sabotage the real prom?”
“Please stop calling it the ‘real’ prom!” I start to lose my composure, but then smile brilliantly. “Why would I do something like that?”
“Why?” He snorts. “Because Becca will tell you to do it!”
“Becca’s not the boss of me.” He thinks I just do whatever she says? That’s not very flattering, I must say. “Besides, we all make our own choices. You make yours. I’ll make mine.”
“That sounds kind of threatening.” His reddish eyebrows are scrunched over his green eyes like angry caterpillars waiting to pounce.
“Threatening?” I laugh, carefree. “How could I threaten you? You’re a big jock prom king and I’m just a humble freak. You have all this decoration expertise, and I can’t even draw a straight line. You—”
“Enough!” He revs the engine and peels out of the driveway.
As I watch the car jet angrily down my street, I realize that I’ve just signed up for another episode of teenage drama. Well, what else is there to do?
Becca refuses to answer her phone. I call like twenty times and she won’t pick up. So instead, I call Amber. “Hello?” she yells into the phone. I can barely hear her over the pounding bass of some punk band.
“Can you turn that down? It’s Shelby!” I yell.
The music cuts out. “Hello?”
“Geez, Amber, you’re going to go deaf.”
“Oh, hi, Shelby. What’s up?”
“Has Becca talked to you about this prom thing?”
She pauses. I can hear her mind maneuvering, w
hich means that Becca has, in fact, told her about the prom thing, and probably also about my going over to the dark side and supporting my boyfriend. “Well, she did mention it.”
“Uh-huh. What did she say?”
“Oh, you know, I don’t want to—”
“Come on. Just spit it out. I’m going to find out anyway.”
Amber sighs heavily, as if I have asked her to reveal to me the sacred secret of the pain-free bikini wax or something. “She says you’ve been brainwashed by your sex hormones.”
Sex hormones! What?! “Go on” is all I say through tightly clenched teeth.
“She says that you’ve betrayed the Queen Geeks because you’re going to help Fletcher with the real prom.” I hear her exhale, as if that took a lot of effort.
“Okay. That’s kind of what I thought.” I have to think of a way to open lines of communication so I can set things straight. “Listen, can you call her and let her know that I’ve got a plan? So she’ll talk to me?”
“I guess.” She doesn’t sound too sure. “Do you? Have a plan?”
“I will. Thanks.” I hang up and flop down on my bed, waiting for Amber’s phone call to work its magic. As expected, my phone rings about ten minutes later.
“Traitors R Us. Can I help you?” I answer.
She laughs in spite of herself. “Funny. What’s this great plan of yours?”
The truth is, I don’t have a plan. All I know is that I am feeling torn again, yanked on one side by my loyalty to Fletcher and what he wants, and pulled on the other side by Becca and what she wants. I’m trying to play the whole thing on both sides, but I sort of doubt that’s going to work for very long. At some point, I guess I’ll have to choose, but for now, I’m going with avoidance.
“My great plan. Well, I’d love to tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Right.” A large, chasmlike pause fills up the space. “So, what is it?”
