I never paid any attention to what Ava said, until a girl in my fifth period science class tapped me on the shoulder. Her face was sincere with heartfelt eyes. “Do you have herpes?” she asked.
“What?!”
“I have some cream, but don’t tell anyone.”
“No! I don’t,” I said, raising my arms to protest. “Who told you that?”
I’d only recently lost my virginity, there was no way I’d contracted an STD in that amount of time, especially since I’d used protection and it had only been with one person. I waited for her response. She chewed on her bottom lip, glancing down at the science book.
“So?” I nudged.
“Ava tweeted it,” she said. “Over fifty retweets.”
“So the truth is in retweets now?” I turned my back on her.
I tagged her in a tweet, reading aloud. “Ava goes to the sexual health clinic so often she might as well apply for a job.” It wasn’t tasteful, I didn’t even know if it was true, except for once, when she thought she was pregnant, but she had really bad gas.
Within minutes of posting it, people were already asking if it was true, and how many times she’d been. I told myself I should’ve left it, but I knew them, they’d take anything else as defeat, and I was not going to let them win.
Zoey Jensen is so desperate to cling to popularity she sleeps with a cheerleader’s sloppy seconds. Char had posted, without the decency of tagging me. I left it for a moment before frustration set in. School was out and I sat in my car, thinking of something to reply with. It had to be well-thought out, playing on Dylan and her baby.
Kaleb jumped into the passenger seat. “What the hell?” he said. “I saw those posts. Is this because of us?”
“Tell me what you think about this,” I said, quickly tapping into the post box on Twitter. “Charlotte Brooke is so desperate for a guy, she stole mine, the sad thing is, the baby isn’t even his. Hashtag oops!”
He cracked a smile, and before he could object, I’d posted it. “The engagement is still going ahead,” he said. “On Facebook it says she’s engaged.”
“He doesn’t have the balls to break it off,” I said. “Maybe if he did, I wouldn’t have heard he cheated on me from her, maybe he would’ve been upfront.”
Kaleb kissed me. “He lost something special.”
My face flushed. “Me?” I smiled. “So, what happened with your GED?”
“I have practice papers,” he said. “They gave me stuff to work through, apparently I have adequate high school education, but not the credits. I test well, just not essays.”
Where he was lacking, I was good. I aced essays, but tests were time-controlled and I developed sweat patches in awkward places during tests.
“I’ll help you study,” I said, kissing him again.
My parents welcomed the news. They were happy. When we were younger, because we were the same age, our parents had decided Kaleb and I would be together. Our families had been the best of friends, but it was a little preemptive of them to say we would get married. For the moment, having him there was all I wanted.
My mom pulled me aside. “I know I don’t monitor you girls, but—” she sighed deeply, pulling out her phone. “I saw these, and it was incredibly hurtful for you to say.” A sensitive soul, my mom once cried over a fabric softener commercial about an owl wrapped in a blanket, she believed it couldn’t fly.
“Did you see what they wrote about me?” I asked, justifying myself.
“Honey, you know, fighting fire with fire,” she began. “In the end, it’s not worth it. None of this matters.”
“You were prom queen, right?”
She nodded.
“And that mattered?”
She nodded.
“It matters to me,” I said. “I want that.”
The one thing that really truly stuck with me from when I was a child, was that if you want something, and you really wanted it, you would do anything to get it. Morals and feelings were an afterthought.
“You make me smile,” I told Kaleb as he laid on his stomach beside me, reading from a GED textbook. “If I don’t win prom queen, which, is doubtful because it’s fixed, it’ll be nice to go with you.”
“But instead of fixing it,” he said. “You’d win anyway.”
“If Char wins, I’d—”
“You think she would?”
I nodded.
“You’d definitely get more votes though,” he laughed. “I overheard some of the cheer squad earlier, they were talking about removing her as captain.”
“I guess that baby is taking her life away, and now her cheer captaincy, maybe she wants to be crowned,” I said. “But what she’s done to me, she’s not getting anywhere close to that crown.”
Monday morning was the start of their smear campaigns. It wasn’t unheard of, each senior year had their part to play, and in the end nobody was friends.
Mila tugged my arm to follow her. Kaleb followed me, naturally. We walked into one of the copy rooms. Mila brought a few already made templates to stick around the halls. Granted, smear campaigns were meant to be light hearted.
“Don’t vote Char, she kills rabbits in her spare time,” Mila said, below it there was a picture of a dildo—the ones with the bunny ears—a rabbit.
Kaleb burst into a fit of laughter.
“That’s one way of putting it,” I said.
“So?” Heather asked, her finger ready on the copier. “I say 100.”
“Make it three.” I held my fingers up. “Hundred.”
“Let me take a picture,” Kaleb said. “Do you wanna pose with it?”
I shook my head, so did Mila and Heather.
“Just a reminder, Marin County, at the end of the week, we’ll be holding a ballot to see who you want running for prom king and queen,” the voice over the PA called out. “And respect your fellow students, this is prom not a warzone.”
The voice was wrong. This was war, and every student at Marin County High School knew it. They prepared, they’d been preparing since the start of senior year, saving up all the dirt they had and selling it to the highest bidder—those who were campaigning, the guys usually backed away from the drama.
A freshman girl tapped me on the shoulder at my locker. “Is it true?”
“What?”
“That you’re a virgin,” she said loudly.
People around stopped to wait for my response.
I threw my head in laughter. “Would it matter?”
Her hesitant face looked back at me. She fidgeted to grab something from her pocket. I snatched it from her. “I’ve got to give you this,” she said. rushing off with her head down.
It was a folded piece of paper, a picture of myself asleep. I knew exactly where it was because I was beside one of the oversized teddy bears Char had in her room. The caption above read You want a Prom Queen with Experience, and the caption below read Perhaps One who’s NOT a Virgin. I looked up from the sheet to see the stop-motion of everyone waiting on my response, waiting for me to react.
“It’s a love letter,” I said, sticking it up on my locker. “Cute.”
My phone buzzed with a flood of texts. Hannah and Libby told me they didn’t know anything about it. Followed by Mila’s advice at getting back. She had an idea.
She was outside the AV room. Inside there was a small booth were the PA system sat. Only members of the AV club could go inside, but Mila, as student body president had access to everything and the studio was empty.
“You can go one better,” Mila said.
Kaleb ran to us, panting. “You sure?” He breathed heavily, a hand on my shoulder. “There’s no going back. What if you get in trouble?”
“You won’t,” Mila said. “Ok, you might go to the principal’s office, and you’re grade average is great, he’ll chalk it up to getting into the spirit of prom. Trust me.”
I did. I gave Kaleb a kiss on the cheek. “She won’t see it coming.”
Inside, Mila locked the door.
She knew how to operate the machine and make sure every room in the school was listening. I sat in the booth. There was a microphone in front of a podium for notes. I didn’t have anything prepared, it was all off the top of my head.
“Prom is around the corner, and you have to ask yourself, do you want Charlotte Brooke, the former cheer captain who disgraced her team, and has so far lied and cheated her way through school—do you want someone like that to be your prom queen?” I said. There was silence in the booth. Of course, I couldn’t hear anything anyone was saying through the sound proofing. I turned to Mila, she held her thumbs up. “Who knows, she could’ve slept with your boyfriend too—he could be her baby daddy—even Jerry Springer couldn’t sort out her mess.”
Kaleb laughed and Mila gestured for me to wrap it up. I turned the switch off on the machine and left the room, feeling exhilarated. Kaleb pulled me into his arms.
“Let’s see what they’re saying,” Mila said, opening the AV Club door.
There were no crowds, waiting for us, although from the classrooms, the spark of laughter moved fast.
“I guess that’s better than any poster,” I added.
“That last bit,” Mila said, smiling, “was genius.”
It wasn’t long before Principal Sanders called me into his office. His aide sat at her desk outside, her eyebrows arched and her arms crossed.
“Can I go in?” I asked her.
“Can you?” she replied.
“Well?”
“Yes, go in.”
I knocked to hear his voice call out. It wasn’t too intimidating, although my body was doing somersaults, experiencing a new level of vertigo.
“Do you know why I’ve called you in?” he said, offering me the seat at his desk. “I’ll cut to the chase.” I nodded as he paused awkwardly.
“Because I used the PA?”
“Because you used the PA,” he said. “That’s exactly it. I’ve seen you grow these past few years. You were part of a successful cheerleading squad and you’ve been spiraling since you dropped out earlier this year.”
I nodded along with what he was saying. “You know why I did that?”
“Enlighten me.”
“Char hooked up with Dylan. Char got pregnant, she told me it was Dylan’s, and then it turns out she’s too far along for it to be his because apparently she was pregnant already,” I said. “So, that’s what’s happened, and within all of this, I found myself.”
He rolled his hand to keep me going.
“And just so you know,” I said. “It was Char who spiked the punch. We can’t rule anything out now, can we?”
He huffed. “Zoey, we understand your situation,” he said. “But you really shouldn’t be going in the AV room or using the PA system without express permission of a teacher, or the club.”
“So, nothing about the punch?”
“That’s been closed now,” he said. “You should’ve told us sooner.”
“You know I did everything to stop my dad from suing—I mean,” I placed a hand on my chest, “what if I did something I wasn’t ready for.”
“That’s enough of that,” he said, clapping his hands together. “I think we’ve done all we can for now. Go back to your class, and I hope that’s the last of this behavior.”
I nodded. “Truly,” I said, again with my hand on my chest. “I hope they get what’s coming to them.”
“Please,” he said. “If you girls can’t get along I’ll cancel your prom.”
My heart pounded through my chest. Almost an out-of-body experience as I spoke. Principal Sanders was probably bluffing, but they’d canceled our winter formal in December, so I took it as a warning.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They announced the four girls and four guys on the ballot a few days before prom. You didn’t have to be a couple, but it helped. I was up against Char, Ava, and Mila, but the votes didn’t count anyway.
My mom sat at the table looking through her prom pictures. She still had the tiara they’d given her, in great condition, she placed it on her head.
“My head’s grown since then,” she chuckled, removing hair from the comb inside the tiara. “You’re going to take plenty of pictures for me?”
I nodded. “Of course, and you’ll take some of Kaleb and I before we go,” I said. I was lounging around after my shower. I’d tried the dress on, it fit perfectly, but I wanted to make sure I ate beforehand. Nerves brought out the worst in me, and I’d probably spill food over the dress.
“After tonight, you’ll only have a few more weeks left,” she said. “You’ll have your yearbook, the exhibition, finals, graduation, and finally college.”
“I haven’t heard back from any of them,” I said. “I sent off the applications and even submitted some art.”
She kissed my forehead. “Don’t stress, you’ll be at college come fall.”
I nodded. “Where’s dad?”
“Upstairs talking to Kaleb,” she said. “Putting his suit on.”
I’d never seen him in a suit. He wouldn’t show me when he was trying them on, much like I wouldn’t show him the dress, it was probably why he was doing it.
We didn’t see each other until we were called down for the limousine my parents had hired. My dad came into my room. I held tight to the white rose boutonniere I’d bought for Kaleb. I swayed in the mirror. I had a pair of nice white satin heels, some my mom had grown out of, and a white pear; necklace.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“Thanks, mom did my make up.” I smiled.
The night had been planned differently all those months ago. All the girls were supposed to be here, we were going to do each other’s faces and make sure we were perfect when our dates came. I’d already picked out a suit for Dylan, something that would match the dress I had, but the one Kaleb had bought was perfect. It was a boat neck with a detailed chest of sequins and stones. My mom had a perfume that glittered on your skin. I applied several coats, and the smell was delicious.
“Kaleb’s waiting downstairs,” my dad said. “You’re really growing up.”
He waited for me at the bottom of the stairs. He was in a gray suit with a coral tie, the same color as my dress. He twisted a corsage between his fingers, holding out a hand for me. I took the last couple of steps with his hand in mine. I locked eyes with him. He’d had his hair cut, it was combed and styled.
My dad watched us from the top of the stairs and my mom and Maddie were in the kitchen, their hands covering their mouths to stop themselves from crying.
“I got you this.” He presented the corsage as I held out my wrist.
I gave him the boutonniere, the same white rose, completely coordinated. He took the back of my hand and kissed me.
“The car awaits,” he said.
“Aw,” my mom broke her silence as she sobbed. “Have fun.”
They waved us off as we climbed into the back of the white limo. We took seats and sat silently for a moment, my heart skipping several beats. The driver put smooth romantic music on, almost on cue. He didn’t speak.
“I’m lost for words,” he said. “How you make me feel, it’s—it’s like I’ve never been here before, I don’t know how I should feel right now, but it’s nice, and I want to always feel like this.”
I kissed him. “You make me feel like all the bad shit was worth it.”
He smiled. “I think so.”
“I love you,” I said, moving my head to kiss him.
“You drive my body crazy.”
Strobe lights were visible in the sky from the school. It was the beginning of summer, days were becoming longer and it was much warmer. The driver dropped us off at the doors. One of the teachers, Mrs. Harkness stood outside like it was the entrance to an exclusive club. She had a clipboard in hand.
“Have fun,” the chauffer said as we climbed out of the car.
“Zoey Jensen,” I said as she scrolled a finger down.
She ticked my name off.
“Kaleb Delgado,
” he said.
They’d really increased the security at school since the last dance. Prom was mainly for the seniors, unless you were dating a senior. The theme was Guilty Pleasures.
We walked through the hallway, guided by the lights of the main hall. We walked in to music from a live band, singing songs from romance movies. There was also a photo booth and the professional prom photographer. We went through both to have our pictures taken. It was essential they had options for the yearbook and my mom’s scrap book.
“They have a chocolate fountain,” Kaleb said in excitement after the photos.
“Not in this dress,” I said, twirling.
I stopped him from heading over when I saw Char standing next to it. She wore a maternity style prom dress. She was almost about to burst out of it, I hadn’t seen her weeks, we’d avoided each other for so long now, she was double the size of the Char I knew.
“You can’t hit someone if they’re pregnant,” Kaleb said. “Just FYI.”
“I wasn’t going to. Maybe I thought about it.”
“Good.” He took my hand. “Let’s get a drink before she spikes the punch again.”
I’d waited so long for this night, and now it was here. I wanted everything to be perfect. I danced with Kaleb. Libby and Hannah were there with their boyfriends, and Mila had found herself a date, from wherever he was hiding—in her basement.
“This is Rick,” she introduced. “We’ve been seeing each other for a few months.” They kissed. “It was on the DL, but prom is here.”
“Hey,” we said.
“Do I know you?” Kaleb asked.
“If you smoke pot you might,” he laughed. I didn’t notice it in the strobe lights but I could see his eyes now. He was definitely high.
“Guilty pleasures,” Mila said. “Tonight is going without a hitch. Everything is in place.”
“It is?”
She nodded. “I can’t wait to see you up there,” she said. “Don’t forget to submit your ballot cards.”
“Where are they?” I asked.
She pointed to a desk beside the photo booth. “Give your name and they’ll give you a card. Principal Sanders brought in a few teachers to watch over it.” She chuckled.
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