by Megan Stine
“Do you want to dance?” he asked shyly, nodding toward the mass of moving bodies.
“I want to dance so bad, I’m going to have a stroke if I don’t get out there!” I said with a huge smile.
We pushed our way through the crowd and hit the dance floor just as the DJ switched to a throbbing, pulsing, ’70s reggae number. “Oh, yeah!” I said, starting to shake it.
Who cared if David was a slightly pudgy geek in a slightly sweaty tux with pants that were an inch too short?
He was a sweet guy, and we were dancing!
Okay, I’m using the word “dancing” loosely.
So geeks can’t dance to save their souls. So what?
We boogied, more or less, for the next few songs, during which I noticed that 80 percent of the guys on the dance floor were checking me out. On the third song, some guy I didn’t even know asked me to dance, and David went off to hang with a physics teacher who was chaperoning. It was fun dancing with someone else for a while—someone who actually had a sense of rhythm.
But, believe it or not, after a while, I actually started missing David!
Then Tyler asked me to dance, and I was almost tempted—he looked so hot in his navy blue tux, with a tiny little white boutonniere.
He had that I’ve-been-a-bad-boy-but-I’m-ready-to-make-amends look about him. He knew he was a jerk for treating me the way he had. But I turned him down. I mean, come on. He might not be the scum Joey was, but he had asked me out for one reason only—to get into my pants. And frankly, I wasn’t so sure he didn’t have the same thing on his mind right now.
When the DJ took a break, Emily and I found each other again, and she told me who she’d been dancing with. Eric somebody, Jordan, Adam somebody, and even Jacob was hitting on her, although he was there as Becca’s date.
Now that’s just not nice—but I was happy for Emily anyway.
“And guess who else tried to get me to dance?” she said, smiling smugly. “Tyler! I told him to bite me.”
“Ahhhh!” I screamed, laughing at the idea of Emily Pendleton telling anyone to bite anything.
“Yeah. He was shocked.”
“So who do you like? Who’s this Eric person?” I asked, gazing around the room so she could point him out, since I still didn’t know half the seniors at Norton.
“Eric Papageorge. He’s okay, but Adam’s the one I’m into. He’s so . . .”
Her voice trailed off, like she was dreamy in love.
“Which one is he?” I scanned the crowd, and she pointed out a guy with longish curly blond hair—kind of a ’60s surfer look—wearing a very cool tux with a pink shirt and no tie. “Wow. Stylish.”
“Yeah, he seems more like your type than mine,” she said, almost apologizing, like she wasn’t sure she deserved him. “He’s nice, and he’s really funny. And he looks cool, doesn’t he?”
Yeah, he did. He had this hot fashion thing going on, kind of like Ryan Phillipe.
“You go, girl,” I said. “Ask him to dance when the DJ comes back.”
“Me? Ask him? Do you think?”
“Absolutely!”
“That makes me have to pee,” Emily said and disappeared toward the restroom, looking totally happy. As she pushed through the crowd, about five different guys were staring at her, checking her out.
I was dying of thirst, so I wandered out toward the refreshment table to get a club soda and lime. Molly, Natalie, Isabel, Ursula, and Amber were in a clump, drinking Cokes which, from the size of the handbag Ursula was carrying, had probably been spiked with rum. (Give me one other good reason to carry a bag that big to the prom, other than to hide a flask in it.)
Wow, I thought, suddenly realizing which dress Molly had chosen. It was the pink one, with beige lace trim on the bodice over top of the pink silk, and a full, layered skirt. Very retro, very Prom Queen from the ’50s. Probably a Betsy Johnson dress, if I know what I’m talking about, and trust me, I do.
It looked great on her, now that I could see it close up.
I had to laugh, though. No matter how fabulous she looked, she was still Prom Queen without her King.
I glanced up at the clock in the hallway. It was ten, and Joey hadn’t shown up yet. I’d heard from Ariel that a bunch of Joey’s buddies had put together a posse and gone out to look for him, but they hadn’t come back.
“Hey,” a voice behind me said.
I whirled around and saw David standing there again.
“Hi,” I said.
“You want to hang out? I know I suck as a dancer, but we could go somewhere and make a pie chart about how many times Molly looks at you with her own special combination of guilt, loathing, and envy.”
“A pie chart?” I blinked at first, and then realized he was totally kidding, making fun of his own geeky image.
Funny! Who knew he had such a sly sense of humor? “Could you work up a PowerPoint show for me?” I played along.
“I have an even better idea,” David said. “If you really want the icing on the cake, we could go back to my house, hack into Joey’s blog, and post something about tonight that would totally embarrass and humiliate him.”
Ha!
“You’re even worse than I am!” I said, meaning it as a compliment.
We hung out for the next half hour, talking about everyone at the prom. David was hilarious, the way he saw through all the crap in Norton’s social cliques and tore them apart, bit by bit.
Then it was time to crown the Prom King and Queen. Mr. Hornersham waited till 10:45, hoping that Joey would show up, but when his posse came back empty-handed, they had to go ahead without him.
Molly walked up to the stage alone, with the King’s and Queen’s Court trailing behind her—but there was a big, empty throne sitting next to her when they took the pictures for the yearbook. She could barely force a smile.
If my life were a movie, I thought, Molly would get up onstage right now, take the microphone in her hands, and say, “I think we all know we owe Carmen an apology tonight. We’ve treated her terribly all year, especially the past few weeks, and it’s my fault as much as anyone else’s. So I want Carmen to come up here and take this crown from me—you’re the real Queen of the Prom, Carmen Salgado!”
Then everyone would burst into applause, and I’d cry, and the music would swell . . .
But my life isn’t a movie. Instead, I just looked around at everyone there, and I could see from the way they were treating me and from the guilty looks on some of their faces that they all knew I wasn’t a slut. They knew I hadn’t slept with Joey or Tyler, knew I’d given both guys everything they deserved.
Which was all I needed—all I’d ever need from this crowd, to tell you the truth.
When they played the last slow song at midnight, I glanced around and saw Molly standing all alone, off to the side. Other guys had been dancing with her earlier in the evening, but now she had no one to take her in his arms.
God, I thought. I wonder if Joey really did get eaten by coyotes. He should have made it back to school by now.
Then I realized: he probably didn’t want to come back. Didn’t want to show his face now that I’d humiliated him. He’d probably gone straight home to bed.
I danced the last dance with David and put my head on his shoulder. I could feel him sort of trembling inside, or at least his heart was beating really fast, I’m not sure which.
That’s sweet, I thought. I’d had an awesome prom—I wasn’t in love with David, of course, but we’d had a really good time together, and I was glad he was there.
When the music ended, he looked into my eyes and said, “Do you want to come back to my house?”
“Now?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “My parents are asleep. They’ll never hear us.”
Oh, no, I thought, my heart sinking. Not him, too!
Chapter 24
“Uh, David, I thought you understood. I’m not . . .” I started to say.
A look of total mortification flashed across
his pink face, and I thought he was going to start stammering again. “Oh, no . . . not . . . no, that’s not what I meant,” he said, blushing. “I just wanted to show you how I could hack into Joey’s blog and mess with him. Like I said, it would be so easy.”
Oh! Phew. Wow. Close one.
“Okay, great,” I said. “If you really think your parents won’t mind.”
“Yeah. We could get some beer, maybe, too. Do you have a fake ID?”
I shook my head.
“Me, either,” he said, “but I could make one pretty fast on my computer. I mean, we can’t do an after-prom party with nothing more than a twelve-pack of Gatorade.”
He was being so cute and considerate.
“What about Emily?” I said.
“What about me?” Emily said. I whirled around and realized she’d snuck up on us without my realizing it.
“Hi! You want to come over to David’s?” I said. Then I noticed that Adam what’s-his-name was standing beside her, looking all bedraggled from dancing like a maniac all night long.
They were holding hands.
Awwwwwww.
“Yeah, you guys want to come hang out at my house?” David said.
“Why not?” Adam said, smiling and looking at Emily to see if she agreed.
She nodded, beaming at him like she’d just won the lottery.
“I’ll stop and buy the beer,” Adam said. “I’ve got creds.”
“Cool.”
When we got to David’s house, the porch light was on, and so was one light in the family room in back. But as advertised, the rest of the house was dark, and his parents were already snoring away. (For real. I know, because when I went to the powder room in the hall, I heard them.)
“There’s a ton of stuff in the fridge,” David said, flipping on lights. “Help yourself—I think my mom made some spinach dip last night, and there’s chicken wings, and a bunch of leftover quesadillas. And I could order pizza. Anyone want anything other than pepperoni?”
“Veggies,” Emily and I both requested.
“Sausage,” Adam ordered. “Tell ’em I’ll pick it up on my way to get the beer.”
David called Alforno’s and ordered the pizza while Emily and I looked through his parents’ DVD collection to see if there was anything good.
Nope. Not unless you call sixteen hours of documentaries about bears and the Alaskan pipeline good.
Not on prom night, thank you very much.
Oh, well. Who cared? We kicked off our shoes, put on some music, and danced on the heavy wooden coffee table in our stocking feet until Adam came back. David pulled out a camcorder and shot a few minutes of us rocking out, which was awesome. I mean, this had been the best night of my life. I definitely wanted some video to remember it by.
After we pigged out on pizza, David disappeared and came back carrying his laptop computer.
“Oh, man, it’s prom night,” Adam said. “Don’t tell me you’re whipping up one of those PowerPoint shows now.”
David didn’t flinch or blink; he just opened his computer and started typing.
“What are you doing?” Emily asked him point-blank.
“You’ll see,” he said.
“Maybe he’s buying graphing calculators on eBay,” Adam joked, making fun of David’s geeky image.
“No, they’re having a sale on hair gel. I’m ordering you a case,” David shot back.
Adam laughed.
Way to hold your own, I thought, proud of him for tapping into his real, inner personality—the guy who had things to say about something other than probabilities and parametric curves. It was cool to see David being himself around someone like Adam, who was way cooler.
Emily leaned over David’s shoulder and peeked at the computer screen to see what he was doing.
Adam and I just sat staring at each other, clueless and curious.
“I don’t believe it! How did you do that?” she screamed.
“Ta-da.” David turned his computer to face us, and I saw that he was on the opening page of Joey’s Joint. “Now I have control. I’m logged on as him. I told you I could hack into it easily.”
“Are you kidding?” I sat bolt upright.
“Not kidding,” he said. “We can write whatever we want, or load pictures—whatever. And it’ll look like it came from him. I can even lock him out of the site now, so he can’t delete anything we put up. All I have to do is change his password.”
“Oh, do that!” I screamed.
David typed a few words and then looked up at us with a smile. “In case you ever need it, his new password is prick. And it’s case-sensitive.”
“Perfect!” Emily cheered.
“So what do you want to post on his site?” David asked, waiting for me to answer.
“Too bad you don’t have a picture of him walking down that dirt road,” Adam said.
I thought for a minute about all the things Joey had posted on his blog over the past few months—all the ways he’d bragged about himself, all the great exploits he’d described, even the story about his butt sticking to the saucer sled.
Had any of it been true?
After the lies he’d made up about me, I wondered.
“We should just write another entry, like it’s from Joey, about what happened tonight,” I said. “Only this time, we’ll tell the truth. The flat-out truth.”
“But make it sound like him.” Adam was liking this idea. “Do a total parody of him, only tell the truth.”
“Exactly!” I said.
Emily’s eyes lit up, and David got an approving but sneaky little grin on his face, so I knew this was a great plan.
For the next hour, we worked on it together, writing it until it sounded as arrogant and self-important as everything else on Joey’s Joint. We were tossing back some brews at the same time, so it might not have come out as brilliantly as we thought. But it felt pretty damn good at the time.
When we were done, David posted the new journal entry to Joey’s blog. It read:Subject: An Asshole-Kicking Night
Yo! Don’t look now, but I got my tail whupped tonight by the hottest chick at Norton—the only one who wouldn’t put out for me even when I begged for it.
Yeah, can I help it if Carmen was so pissed at all the bullshit I wrote about her, she wrote her own ending to my pathetic story?
Don’t blame me for falling for her bait, either. Just because I’ve got such a big head, doesn’t mean there’s anything in it. But if anyone says I was too embarrassed to come back to the prom, tell them to shut their traps. That’s total bullshit. Everyone knows I’m too stupid to be embarrassed. More like I got lost walking all the way home from some frigging farm road.
But who the hell cares? When you’re as big a stud as I am, with a girlfriend as stupid as Molly, you can stand her up on prom night and still get plenty of nooky the next day . . . okay, week. Month. Whatever.
“Yes!” Adam cheered when we saw the new entry on Joey’s Joint.
“Do you think he’ll see it tonight?” Emily asked.
“Who knows,” I said. “But just the thought of Joey sitting home on prom night diddling with the Internet is enough to make my whole sucky senior year worth it.”
Adam opened another beer and raised it in a toast to David. “To the right guy for the job,” he said, slightly drunk but totally sincere.
“To mad geek skills,” I agreed, toasting David and meaning it in the nicest possible way.
“To getting the hell out of high school,” Emily said, tossing back a big swig of Rolling Rock.
David raised his bottle of beer and stood up on the coffee table. I think he was a little trashed by then, but who knows. Maybe not.
“To Carmen,” he said, “the most original person I’ve ever known, who did a complete makeover on Norton High School, and showed us all how to be our best possible selves.”
Even slightly drunk, everyone knew that was a seriously corny line.
“Are you kidding?” Emily blurted out, staring a
t him like he had lost it.
“I’ve been planning to write that in your yearbook,” David said. He turned to me, as if we were the only two people in the room. “But I thought, why wait? I’d rather tell you tonight.”
“Cute.” Emily nodded her approval.
“Whatever,” Adam mumbled skeptically.
I had to smile. Was this a spectacular prom night or what? I mean, here I was with David Ulster, the last person on earth I thought I wanted to spend prom night with, and yet here he was making me feel like the most special, most valued person in the world.
And suddenly I flashed back on what I’d told Ariel and Emily a week ago.
Yeah, I thought. I’d gotten what I wanted, and turned my life around, and it had worked for one reason only: because sometimes, when your life sucks, the only way to make things right is to take the big risk . . . really go for it . . . stand up for yourself and do something you’d never had the nerve to do before. Go all the way.
Because why not?
You have nothing else to lose.