“Don’t do this,” Madison says, looking right at me.
“And the best part,” I continue, “is that that we already have a band lined up.” I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face.
“No,” she says, horrified. Her manicured hands touch her face like that famous Scream painting. “You promised,” she croaks.
“Yes,” Scott says from beside me, crossing his arms in front of his scrawny chest. God, I love him. And right now I love him more than I might love Madison.
I copy his stance, folding my arms and obscuring the image on my Tegan and Sara shirt. “Detonate the Gazelle will play our Unprom. It’s my band. Besides, when Janet and Monica heard about our idea for Unprom they were way on board.”
“Don’t do this,” she pleads.
“I won’t,” I challenge. “If you can convince student council and the Prom Committee to change their minds and throw a Purple Prom, then we’ll back down and my band will play yours. If you can’t then good luck finding a decent band.”
“Or a DJ,” Scott adds.
“You know I won’t be able to change their minds,” she says. I can hear the tears in her voice.
“I know,” I say. “And you know that you won’t find another band like mine.”
“I’m sorry,” she says again, her eyes glassy with tears.
There’s a twinge in my chest. “Me too.”
“What about the contract?” she asks. “You agreed.”
“Nope,” I say. “We never signed anything.”
“It was a verbal agreement,” she argues. “That has to count for something.”
“What are you, a lawyer?” Darren asks.
“Goddamn it, Avery,” she says hitting the table. Everyone jumps and stares at her slack-jawed.
“Shit, girl,” Jessica says dropping her pizza. “I didn’t know you knew how to swear. You kiss your Mama with that mouth?”
“Please don’t do this,” she says, softer. “Don’t do this to me. I want to keep things the way they were.”
“No,” I say. “You want to keep it a secret. You want to lead me on.”
“I wasn’t leading you on,” she protests.
“You’ve known about their decision for weeks and yet you still walked in here smiling like we were tight, like we wanted the same thing. But you won’t take a chance on this.” I gesture to the space between us.
Darren raises his hand, “Excuse me, Avery. Are we still talking about Prom?”
“Yes,” I snarl in his direction. Scott raises an eyebrow knowingly. I face Madison again. “You’re afraid of the outcome, of what your douchetastic friends will think.”
“How did you find out?” she sputters.
“It was all in the notebook I found when we accidentally switched bags. I saw all the notes.” I gesture to the club. “We all did.”
“BTW, that was a super dick move,” Jessica says.
Madison wipes away a tear. “I didn’t want to hurt you guys. I wanted Purple Prom to happen. Really, I did.”
“You hid it from us,” Scott says. “That’s what hurts. I thought you were my friend.”
Madison sniffs. “It’s not my fault. I was the only person on the Prom Committee to vote yes for Purple Prom. The only person. You’re going to ruin prom by throwing your own party,” she says pointing a finger at me and Scott. “And my chances as Prom Queen.”
Boom. My rage is white-hot.
“No, we won’t. The people who would vote for you as Prom Queen are not the same people attending Unprom.”
“Except you guys would have voted for me.” Madison scans the table looking for an ally. Everyone avoids her gaze. Darren stares at his hands. Jessica closes her eyes as she takes a bite of pizza. Maura traces the graffiti on the table. “Is no one on my side?” she asks.
“Nope.” Darren says. “We support Avery and Scott and Unprom.”
“You know no one will come to Unprom, right?” Madison says. Her cheeks are bright with anger.
“That’s what you think,” I tell her. “People would rather come to a free party and listen to a good band than pay to hear a shitty DJ.”
“Where are you going to hold your Unprom? It’s not like venues are free and you have to book in advance. We booked the hotel ballroom for prom last prom. Prom is in less than six weeks.”
“Don’t worry. We have it covered,” I tell her. “It’s amazing what you can accomplish in a few days when you set your mind to it,” I say. I stand up and my chair scrapes across the floor making a horrendous screeching sound.
Scott and Maura push their chairs back and stand up. Jessica follows suit and crosses her arms in front of her chest. Then Darren and Kristin and Alex. Even Allison, the new girl Maura recruited stands. Soon all of the members of Lion Pride except for Madison are standing with their arms folded in front of them.
“I’d say we’re done here,” I raise an eyebrow at Madison as though I’ve got it all together, even though I’m shaking from the adrenaline. I’ve been imagining this moment for days, but I didn’t know I’d feel like this. There is so much anger bubbling inside of me right now I don’t have time to feel sad that my relationship with Madison is over.
“Meeting adjourned,” Scott says and we all follow him out of the drama classroom leaving Madison alone at the table with Jessica’s half-eaten pepperoni pizza.
IT’S BEEN NEARLY two weeks since the showdown in Lion Pride. I’m still mad at Madison about lying to us and leading us on about Prom but I still miss her. My heart doesn’t totally believe that she dicked me over on purpose, but my heart got me into this mess in the first place. In Spanish class I stare at the back of her neck and remember what it was like to bury my face in her skin, in her hair, and smell orange blossoms.
Scott and I are eating lunch on a cement planter in the quad even though the sky is full of low, gray clouds. We’re risking the chance of a downpour in order to avoid the assclowns in the cafeteria. Ever since we went forward with Unprom, the gay bashing from Dylan and his crew has gotten worse. Yesterday they doored Scott before first period. Three days ago they hid Darren’s clothes while he was showering after gym. And all of our Unprom posters have been defaced.
Neither of us speaks. We’re transfixed by the seagulls dive-bombing a bunch of hacky sack players. Some kid’s sandwich gets stolen right out of his hand.
“Ten bucks says one of them gets shit on in the next thirty seconds,” Scott says.
“Ten bucks says it’s more like a minute.” And we shake on it.
My phone vibrates in the pocket of my hoodie. While Scott is counting down the seconds on his watch I sneak a glance at the text that arrived. Madison. We need to talk.
Why?
You know why.
Nope. Try me.
Can we meet after school?
I bite my lip. Don’t you have better things to do?
Please. I really want to c u. Can we meet or not?
I want to tell her that there is no way in hell I want to talk to her. There is nothing to talk about.
Yes, I type back.
Ok. C u @ ur car. :)
The phone is barely back in my pocket when Scott yells, “Boo-ya!” A seagull has indeed shat on the blonde dreadlocks of one of the hacky sack slackers.
“Pay up, Brown.” I demand.
“No way. I won.”
I pull out my phone and check the time. Madison first texted me at 12:27. It is now 12:28. “It’s been a minute and you know it.” I hold out my hand.
“You rigged it,” he says opening his wallet.
“How the hell would I do that? You think I can communicate with a bird to crap on some kid? If that was the case, I’d have orchestrated a whole flock to shit on Miles and Dylan and all of those asshats.” Another seagull poops nearby and just like that I’m transported back to that February day in the carwash with Madison. My heart aches at the memory of her tender kiss.
“You are kind of witchy,” Scott says pulling me back to the reality where Madison has shit
on my heart. My heart aches in a different, angry way. He hands me a five. “That’s all I have. I owe you.”
“I’ll add it to your tab. And don’t you mean bitchy?”
Scott wraps his arm around me and hugs me close. He smells faintly like Axe body spray even though he doesn’t wear it. “I’m the bitch, you’re the witch,” he says.
I laugh into the shoulder of his sweater. This is why I haven’t signed the lease on the apartment yet. No one else gets me like he does. If he was graduating with us and moving to Austin, it would be much more doable. He could help Monica keep the peace between me and Janet. And if I were to move to Austin without him, who would protect him from all the Dylans of this world? When I pull back I notice the sky has grown black and the wind has picked up. We’re about to have a serious storm.
“Shitballs,” Scott says grabbing his bag as the first drops start to fall.
“Do you think this is a metaphor?” I ask as we run for cover under an open hallway.
“You think everything is a metaphor.”
“Isn’t it?” The spray from the rain is cool against my face.
Scott smiles. “Only if your name is Taylor Swift.”
THREE HOURS LATER Madison and I are back at the place where we began. The rain has driven everyone else away and my car is the only one at the Bluff. The drive over here was silent except for the soundtrack of sad love songs on my iPod and my windshield wipers moving back and forth against the glass. The car windows have fogged up but not from the heat of kisses and heavy breathing.
“No one wants to come to Prom. All anyone can talk about is your party.” She sighs and a tear slips down her face. It’s cinematic and sincere and I can feel my anger fading. I have to sit on my hands to keep from touching her.
“We’re just trying to make the school a better place.”
Madison sniffs and wipes at her nose. “Can’t you see how this is dividing us? We don’t even talk anymore.” She pauses. “Are we even still together?”
I don’t answer because I don’t know.
“I thought we had a good thing.” She reaches for my hand.
I pull away. “We did.”
She pauses for a long moment. “It’s like you care more about Unprom than you do me.”
“You care more about being Prom Queen than me,” I counter.
“No, I don’t,” she says reaching for my hand again. This time I don’t pull away.
“This is important to me and to Scott. And to everyone involved with Lion Pride.”
“And Prom is important to me,” Madison says.
“So you can be crowned Prom Queen.” I drop her hand and run my fingers through my hair.
“That’s not just it,” she defends. “You know it’s a big deal in my family. I wanted to continue the tradition and make them proud of me.”
“They’re proud of you no matter what.”
“Are they?” she asks.
“Yeah. You’ve got awesome grades and a soccer scholarship. Why wouldn’t they be proud of you?”
“I don’t even like soccer that much,” she mutters.
“Then why play?”
“Because it makes them happy. And I’m good at it.”
“You shouldn’t do it if it doesn’t make you happy. I’m sure you could find something else you were just as good at—”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t happy,” she interrupts. “It’s not like you and your music. You do it because you love it. I don’t have that. I do soccer because I want to make my family happy.”
“What is this really about?” I ask. “You’ll be crowned Prom Queen no matter what. The people who support your Prom will show up anyway. I think you’re afraid of taking risks.”
“I’m not afraid of taking risks. I’m afraid of letting next year’s class and student council down.”
“How?”
“I underestimated the impact losing your band would have on our ticket sales. Now that you’re playing Unprom our ticket sales are down. The location of next year’s prom, which we book a year in advance, hinges on how many students attend this year. If only handful of kids come, we won’t have enough money to finance next year’s prom.”
“I don’t think it’s going to come to that.” The rain is coming down even harder now. I have to raise my voice to make sure there is still sound coming out of my mouth. “I’m sorry your ticket sales are down.”
“It’s not that I don’t support your idea of Unprom, it’s that it is happening at the same time as Prom. We shouldn’t be competing against each other. It’s only making the lines between tolerance and ignorance more apparent. Unprom would be brilliant if it was held a different night.”
“You should have been honest with me from the beginning.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you and tell you that student council laughed at the idea of Purple Prom.”
I want to kiss and hit her at the same time. “You hurt all of us.”
“It hurts me, too. If I hadn’t agreed to be the liaison for Lion Pride, then I wouldn’t be in this position. I wouldn’t have fallen for you. And then I wouldn’t have made a joke out of myself asking Prom Committee to consider your suggestions for Purple Prom. I also put myself on the line and hired your band when they wanted hire a DJ. I fought for you to play and now they’re really upset at me for DTG backing out. I don’t want to let next year’s student body down and have this year’s Prom be an epic fail because it is competing with a much better party and an awesome band.”
“But you let us down by hiding the decision from us. That’s why we came up with this idea,” I say. “There are worse things than a couple of sucky proms. Things like homophobia and bullying. Unprom is important.”
She swallows hard. “I know it is. It could be just as important on a different day. And I don’t like not being with you,” she says. “I miss what we had. Can’t things go back to normal?”
“Sneaking around like we weren’t together wasn’t normal. Faking a college boyfriend to avoid lesbian rumors wasn’t normal. Hiding student council’s decision from me and Lion Pride wasn’t normal.”
It’s quiet except for the rain thrumming against the roof. The green numbers on my dashboard clock change. After three minutes Madison’s eyes light up. “We can fix this. We can fix us.”
“How?”
“Cancel Unprom. Scott can do it next year on a different night than Prom.”
“Why would you ask me to do that?” The thought of it makes me want to vomit. “No.”
“Please think about it.” Madison’s hand is on my leg now. It’s been weeks since we last fooled around. By the way my body tingles at her touch it could have been yesterday. Madison takes a deep breath. “If you cancel Unprom we can go to Prom. Together. As girlfriends.” She smiles at me genuinely.
I let her words sink in. I can picture her as my date. My vintage tux. Slow dancing. “You want me to back out of a promise with my best friend and all of Lion Pride in order to save your dance?”
Madison squeezes my leg. “It’s what you want, right? For us to be a couple in public?”
“It’s not what you want.”
“I want to be with you. The school year is almost over. We’re graduating soon. And I keep thinking back to what Scott said about Prom being for straight couples. If you’re my date, you can show that prom is for everyone.”
“Is that what you really want?”
“I think so. I want Prom. I want to have everything I worked so hard for, Avery.” There’s a long pause before she continues. “There are only a couple of days of school left after Prom. Maybe I can deal with everyone knowing for a few days because then we’ll have graduated and it will be over.” She nods to herself. “Yes, it’ll work. We’ll just keep everything a secret until Prom and it’ll work out just like I planned. You’ll see.”
I shake my head. “You don’t really want to bring me to Prom.”
“Yes, I do. This is your chance, Avery. If you want for everyone to know I chose
you as my girlfriend, my date for Prom, cancel Unprom.”
MADISON’S ULTIMATUM RINGS in my ears. She wants me to choose between her and Unprom. Her and Scott. Her and Lion Pride.
Being with Madison in public is what I’ve been wanting and waiting and wishing for.
Madison makes me a better person. I like who I am when I am with her. Now I can fully comprehend what Taylor Swift sings about because Madison makes me feel all of those things and more.
Madison traces circles on my thigh, leans in and whispers, “Please, Avery. Please,” in that same voice she did that afternoon in the girl’s bathroom. “Detonate the Gazelle can still come play prom. I’ll cancel the DJ. He’ll keep the security deposit. It’s worth it to have your band there. It’s worth it to have you there. With me.” There’s a long pause before she says, “You keep talking about making a difference in the school. This could be it. Two girls showing up as dates to Prom is a bigger statement than all of Unprom. Especially if one of those girls is crowned Prom Queen.”
I hesitate and her hand moves higher up my thigh into the danger zone. “Please. We can go out to dinner someplace nice on the beach. We can slow dance when your band isn’t playing. We can rent a hotel room for after.” Her voice lingers on that last word.
I bite my lip. High school hasn’t been kind to me, but I’ve always wanted to have a real prom—the kind of prom from the movies. If I pass this up, I’m passing up the only chance I will ever have to dance with a prom queen. Madison cups my cheek with her free hand. She tilts my head so that our gazes are locked. Her eyes are so sincere. The choice is easier than I thought.
“Okay,” I say.
“Really?”
I nod, already picturing us dancing under fairy lights. “I’ll go as your girlfriend. I always wanted to go to prom with the hottest girl in school.”
Madison’s now holding my face with both hands. “Thank you,” she says before kissing me. Her hands grasp my hair as she pulls me closer. Her lips find the sensitive spot below my ear, and I don’t even care that the parking brake is digging into my rib cage. Eventually she pulls away, traces my swollen bottom lip with her thumb. “I love you.”
Secret Heart Page 14