Slipping off course now wouldn’t achieve anything. Weston’s need to explain and make this right was about him, not me. Justice was not his, it was mine. I had been the one surviving since the fifth grade.
Spanish with Miss Alcorn was uneventful, but I spent the entire period worrying about the next one. Weston sat right behind me in health class, and I dreaded any snide remarks from Brady. Since the deaths of the Erins, he wasn’t quite as vocal, but he still had his moments.
As I walked to class, Weston appeared next to me. We walked together in silence, and I didn’t acknowledge him when I sat down. It seemed all the worrying I’d done the hour before was for nothing, until five minutes before the dismissal bell, when familiar fingers grazed my shirt.
“Erin,” he whispered. “Please.”
“Quit begging, Gates,” Brady said from the back of the class. “You’ve turned into such a pussy. She found out. Just give it up already.”
I kept my face pointed forward. Coach Morris looked up from grading papers. His eyes darted to Brady and then to Weston.
“Is there a problem?”
After a brief pause, Brady spoke up. “No problem. Weston just won’t leave Erin alone, even though she wants him to.”
Coach Morris’s eyes quickly moved to me. “Is that true?”
I swallowed and then shook my head. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
Weston’s fingers touched me again, and I leaned forward.
Coach Morris noticed.
“Weston,” he began.
“It’s really nothing,” I said, begging him with my eyes not to call attention to me.
Coach considered my silent request and conceded, going back to his papers.
“I’d say Weston lying to you, pretending to like you, making you think he’s into you enough for you to say yes to prom so Alder could pour shit soup over your head in front of everyone is something,” Brady said.
A collective gasp echoed throughout the class, and then the whispering began.
I closed my eyes and then turned. I had to see the expression on Weston’s face for myself. I needed to hear him deny it.
His teeth were clenched. He was breathing through his nose, his nostrils flaring. He hung on to his desk as if his life depended on it, his knuckles red and then bright white.
I could feel tears burn in my eyes.
“Say it’s not true,” I whispered so softly that I practically breathed the words.
“It’s not true,” Weston said through his teeth.
“You’re a damn liar,” Brady said from the back, a smile in his voice. “I was there when they planned it.”
As if he knew what was about to happen, Coach Morris jumped over his desk at the exact moment Weston left his.
Weston wildly swiped and grabbed for Brady, held back just in time by the coach.
“You spoiled, repugnant, miserable piece of shit!” Weston screamed.
Brady sat back in his seat, watching Weston with wide eyes.
Coach Morris struggled with Weston all the way out of the classroom, and moments later the bell rang. The other students gathered their things and rushed out so they could see whatever scene was happening in the hall.
I sat in my desk, unmoving, feeling raw and exhausted. Brady was packing his backpack slowly. The anatomy posters and charts would be the only witnesses to whatever salt he was about to pour in my wound.
“Erin,” he said, his voice low and soft. “I’m a dick. I work pretty hard for the title. I’m also just low enough to know that the best way to get back at Gates is to go to prom with me.”
I froze. That wasn’t even the last thing I expected him to say. Asking me to prom wasn’t anywhere on the spectrum of things Brady Beck might say to me. I looked up at him, and for the first time, he wasn’t glaring at me with hatred or disdain.
“You…don’t have a date to prom?” I asked.
He tried somewhat of a smile, but it ended up being a small, indifferent shrug. “Not yet.”
After a long pause, I stood up, still meeting his eyes, even though he was a head taller than I. “Maybe that’s because everyone else thinks you’re a spoiled, repugnant, miserable piece of shit too.”
I walked away and didn’t look back.
EVERYTHING FELT INSIDE OUT. EVEN MORE THAN USUAL. Sam had rearranged his schedule with the hospital so he was home more, and because I was down to only a couple of evenings a week at the Dairy Queen, the hours after school were spent watching movies on the couch between my parents, playing Monopoly at the kitchen table, and driving Julianne to Ponca City to shop for shelving and décor for my future dorm room.
One night, sitting between Sam and Julianne on the couch while watching The Princess Bride, Sam reached behind my shoulders to twirl Julianne’s hair. She leaned into his hand.
“How did you two meet?” I asked.
They looked at each other, and Sam paused the movie.
Julianne smiled, but Sam spoke first. “In high school.”
“You’re high school sweethearts?” I asked.
“Yes, we are,” Julianne said, looking at Sam with the same love in her eyes that I’d seen in their wedding photos.
“Even through college?”
“Yep,” Sam said. “We both went to Oklahoma University.”
“Oh,” I said. I knew that. I’d seen Julianne’s diploma framed in the study.
“But we barely saw each other. I was a Kappa Kappa Gamma, your Sam was Sig Ep, and we both had a heavy workload. We agreed that our college experience came first, and if it was meant to be, we would stay together. We experienced things on our own, but my best memories were the things I experienced with Sam.”
Sam pushed up his glasses and grinned. “Really?”
“Really.” She leaned over and patted his knee and then looked at me. “You are going to have a great time at OSU. It’s a beautiful campus.”
“I’m looking forward to it even more than before,” I said, looking down at my hands.
Julianne turned her body toward me, settling against the back cushion of the couch. “Have you talked to him?”
I shook my head. “I can’t think of anything nice to say.”
“Still angry?” Sam asked.
Julianne wrinkled her nose. “Of course she is. Still against prom?”
“I don’t really…I’d never planned on going before.”
“Maybe you could ask someone?” Sam asked.
I shrugged. “There’s no one I really want to go with.”
“What if…,” Julianne began, but then she decided against it.
“What?” I asked.
“What if we went shopping for a dress, and if you decide to go, you’re prepared. If not, we’ll sell it, or you can keep it for a formal if you join a sorority.”
“I won’t join a sorority,” I said with certainty.
She shrugged. “Then we’ll sell it.”
“Maybe,” I said.
My phone lit. It was Weston. Again. It was always Weston. I put the phone back on the coffee table.
Sam and Julianne traded glances, and then Sam lifted his arm, pointing the remote at the television and pressing the play button.
On Monday I was in a strangely good mood, and I decided it was because I was scheduled to work. Weston had stopped trying to explain things to me days before, but he looked miserable. Just as I gathered my things in front of the mural and headed to my car—which was parked on the one end of the small group of cars parked in the lot, while Weston’s truck was parked on the other end—Weston jogged up beside me.
I tried to ignore him, but as I reached for the handle, he grabbed my hand, putting a folded note in my palm.
I crinkled the notebook paper in my fist.
“Please read it. I won’t bother you anymore, if you just read it.”
With the tiniest movement, I nodded once and then opened my car door. The drive to the Dairy Queen from the mural was just a couple of minutes. I parked and walked into the s
mall building, note in hand.
“Hey, stranger,” Frankie said, smiling. She was on the phone, and I could tell immediately that she was talking to her mother about her kids.
I smiled at her, leaned against the counter, and fingered the paper in my hands. After several minutes I finally unfolded it, my face crumpling as I read the two simple sentences.
I TOLD MY DAD ABOUT DALLAS. SEE YOU AT SIX ON PROM NIGHT.
LOVE YOU,
WESTON
I crumpled the paper in my hand and held my fist to my chin, supporting my elbow by resting my other arm across my stomach.
Frankie watched me warily. “I’ve gotta go, Mom. Kiss the kids for me.” She hung up the phone and took a few steps toward me. “What’s that?”
“A note from Weston.”
“Is it bad?”
“We aren’t together anymore.”
“You’re not?”
“No. He…I found out he was planning to help Alder get me to prom so they could embarrass me.”
“What?” she shrieked. “No. Weston wouldn’t do that.”
“It’s in her journal. He didn’t deny it. Brady knew about it.”
The color left her face. “There has to be an explanation. There has to be something else you don’t know.”
“There is. I was stupid,” I said, wiping the ridiculous tears falling down my cheeks.
“But…she’s dead. Why would he continue with the plan?”
“He told her he would? I don’t know. I knew there was more to it. I knew he wouldn’t just suddenly have interest in me. I just…I wanted to believe it,” I said, my voice breaking.
“What’s in the note?” she asked, horrified.
I held it out to her, and she scrambled to read it. Then she looked up at me. “What does it mean?”
“I promised him that if he told his dad he wanted to go to the Art Institute of Dallas instead of Duke, then I would go to prom with him.”
“You don’t think he’d still go through with it. He’s…Somewhere in the midst of all this, he had a change of heart, Erin. He fell for you, and now you know the awful truth, and he wants to fix it. He isn’t the type of person to go through with something so cruel.”
I shrugged.
“You don’t have to go with him. If you’re afraid of what will happen, don’t go.”
I lifted my chin and wiped my cheeks once more. “I’m not afraid of them. I refuse. No matter what they do to me, I am in control of the way others make me feel. They can’t hurt me if I don’t let them.”
Frankie handed me the note, and I took it, folding the wrinkled paper into the same square it was in when Weston gave it to me. As I did so, the paper sliced my finger, and a small dot of blood pooled from the tiny cut. I shoved the note into the front pouch of my apron and wiped the blood on the closest napkin.
“They can bring whatever they’ve got. The joke’s on them,” I said, opening the window when the first car slowed to a stop in front of the shop.
Frankie watched me, shaking her head in awe. “You’re so close to graduation. So close to being free.”
I turned to fill a cup with soft serve and dumped in bananas and caramel, holding the cup up to the mixer. “I am not Easter anymore. I won’t hide.”
“You want to go with him.”
Her words hit me with such force, I crouched to my knees, barely holding the cup on the counter.
“Is she all right?” the woman on the other side of the window said.
Frankie rushed over to me, kneeling down.
“I’m a high school senior who wants to go to prom. I’ve got one chance to see what that feels like. Screw ’em. Screw him. Screw ’em all.”
“Attagirl,” Frankie said, holding her palm to my back. “To hell with ’em. And if he does anything to embarrass you, even so much as acts like a fool, God help him. Because your parents and me will nail him to the wall.”
I stood, holding the cup in both hands. “You won’t have to worry about that. I am writing my own story. And in my story, I get a happy ending. No matter what happens, they can’t touch me.”
I pulled my cell phone from the front pouch of my apron and texted Julianne.
Do you have plans tomorrow?
No. Did you have something in mind?
I’ve been asked to prom. Kind of.
Yay! Who?
Weston.
Are you sure?
Not really. But I’m going.
Okay, then. We’ll discuss this turn of events later. But you’re going to need a dress.
Tuesday after school, Julianne met me at Frocks & Fashions downtown. I just sort of stood around while she looked at the dresses. She would show me one, and I’d shake my head.
After several noes, she approached me. “What’s your favorite color?” she asked.
“All of them.”
“That’s convenient.” She chuckled.
“What about this one?” she said, holding up a sea-green dress with a full skirt and a bunched bodice. I shook my head again.
“What do you dislike about it?”
“The big skirt. The color. The fact that it’s strapless.”
She nodded. “Got it.”
A few minutes later, she held up another dress, her eyes animated. “Look at this one!” She took a closer look at the tag. “It’s your size!”
It was blush pink, the long skirt soft and flowing to the floor, with a thick, gathered empire waistline that sat below a transparent bodice. The see-through fabric went over both shoulders, and hundreds of small silver rhinestones grouped together to cover the breast area and then broke apart as they traveled up to the neckline.
Julianne turned it around. The back was see-through like Alder’s dress, but the rhinestones lined the outer edges instead of grouping at the bottom.
“Do you hate it?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s kind of pretty, actually.”
“Yeah?” she said. “Why don’t you try it on?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I’d be wasting your money if I don’t go.”
“Phooey. Come on,” she said, pulling open the curtain to one of the dressing areas.
I took the dress from her hands and went inside, closing the curtain behind me. I pulled the dress from the plastic and stepped into it, pulling it up and slipping my arms through the holes.
“I found the perfect shoes!” Julianne said.
I tried zipping it up, but couldn’t maneuver my hands far enough up my back. “I think I need help with the zipper.”
“Can I come in?” she asked.
I pulled back the curtain, and she gasped. “Gracious,” she said quietly, lowering the shoes in her hands.
I looked down. “It’s nice.”
She took me by the hand and cupped my shoulders, facing me toward the three-paneled mirror. She zipped the back up the rest of the way and handed me the shoes.
“This is not nice,” she said. “This is spectacular.”
I caught Weston watching me dozens of times the rest of the week, always seeming like he was on the edge of saying something, but he never did. The green eyes that I used to long to connect with became a source of conflict, as I hoped to see them and dreaded seeing them at the same time. Finally, on Friday morning before class, he met me at my locker.
“It’s my last game tonight. You said you’d go.”
“We’ve both said a lot of things.”
He winced, and then he forced a nervous smile. “What…what does that mean? Are you really not going to go to prom after I told my dad about Dallas? It was a big deal. He yelled. Then he talked for hours about how much I’d grown up. After he accepted it, of course. I was scared outta my mind. But I did it.”
I kept my eyes on the back wall of my locker.
“I enrolled online for Dallas yesterday.”
I still didn’t speak.
“Please come to my game. I’ll make you a deal. Double or nothing. If we don’t win tonight, you don’t have to go to
prom with me.”
I looked up at him. “Why? Is it really so important to you that you carry this out for Alder?”
His brows pulled together, and he shook his head. “Nothing is more important to me than you. I don’t know how to say I’m sorry. I would do anything to take back agreeing to Alder’s plan. I wanted to go with you. I wanted to spend time with you. The rest could have been avoided.”
“You want,” I glared up at him. “It never stops being about what you want, does it?”
“I guess so. I don’t want regrets. I want to hold the girl I love in my arms during the last dance. I want her watching my last baseball game. I want those last memories of high school, but I want them with you. But that’s all I want. I swear it.”
I shut my locker.
“Come to the game. If we lose, I’ll take back my tux and cancel your wrist corsage.”
“You ordered me a wrist corsage?” I said, dubious.
“And a white limo,” he said, his eyes hopeful.
I took my biology book and left Weston standing at my locker alone. As I walked to class, something close to nausea set in while I choked back the debilitating mix of emotions swirling inside me.
THE TONE BUZZED ONCE AND THEN AGAIN. My hand felt sweaty against the cell phone in my hand as the BMW made its way to the baseball field.
“Hi, sweetie,” Julianne said when she answered.
“I’m…I’m driving to the baseball field. Weston’s last game is tonight.”
“Oh?” she said without judgment.
Her lack of surprise surprised me. “He asked me to come. He also reminded me that I promised to go to prom with him.”
“This is beginning to make more sense,” she said, trying to sound positive. “As a mother, I’m not sure I’m okay with coercion.”
“Tell me to come home.”
“You don’t want to go to the game?”
“No. But yes. But no.”
Her breath blew into the phone. “Can I come?”
“To the game?”
“Yes. Your Sam is here. I bet he’d like to go to Weston’s last game too.”
Happenstance: Part Two (Happenstance #2) Page 8