by Sandy Hall
But there was one thing that had been nagging at the back of her mind.
She rang up the customer, and he walked off in search of a burger to go with his chili cheese potato. It seemed like overkill to Lizzie, but she tried not to think too hard about it.
She turned to Paisley. “Do you think you’ll ever regret not going?”
“Um, no,” Paisley said, checking herself out in the reflective paper towel dispenser and fixing her visor. She turned to Lizzie.
“Aren’t you on the prom committee? Isn’t it your duty to go?”
“I’m only there for something to put on my college applications. Do you think you’ll go?”
Lizzie’s shoulders fell. “Never in my life have I ever wanted to go to prom. I didn’t understand the romance of it, or what the point was in general. But now, it’s like something has changed.”
Paisley gave her a knowing look. “I’m going to assume this is about Mystery Boy.”
Lizzie buried her face in her hands. “Yes,” she said, her voice muffled.
“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Paisley said.
“It’s not?” Lizzie asked, peeking out from behind her hands.
“Of course not. Just because I’m dead inside doesn’t mean that everyone has to be.”
“You’re not dead inside.”
“Fine, I’m not dead inside, but sometimes I feel dead inside. Like I never have the feelings that other people do,” Paisley said.
Lizzie stood up straight, preparing to defend her friend from herself, which was a confusing situation but one Lizzie felt quite strongly about.
“You are totally awesome,” Lizzie said.
“Oh, I am. But I’m pretty sure that’s what my problem is with all of this. I don’t get it, you know?” Paisley said.
Lizzie shrugged. “I don’t get it, either. I’m sure we don’t get it in different ways, but that doesn’t make you an emotionless robot.”
“I mean, I might be an emotionless robot. I don’t even feel anything about graduating from high school. Like, nothing.”
At that moment, someone cleared their throat from the other side of the cash register.
Lizzie turned around, plastering her best Hot Potato smile on.
“Oh, it’s you,” Lizzie said when she saw her friend Madison standing there.
“Damn, I can’t believe how fast your customer service smile faded when you saw me,” Madison said.
“It didn’t fade, it was overtaken with relief that I didn’t have to stop being lazy and actually help a customer.”
Madison looked over to Paisley, who nodded. “It’s true. We’ve had a quiet evening, so it would suck to have to, you know, do our jobs.”
“What if I actually wanted a potato?” Madison asked.
“Do you want a potato?”
“Nah, I had dinner,” Madison said as she slid across the counter. “So what did I miss with you two?” She sat on the little stool in the corner out of the line of vision of anyone passing. Someday Paisley and Lizzie would get in trouble for letting their friend go behind the counter, but hopefully tonight was not that night.
“Lizzie’s in love with Mystery Boy,” Paisley said.
“Paisley’s an emotionless robot,” Lizzie answered as Paisley threw a piece of bacon at her and missed.
“Don’t waste that!” Madison said. “Bacon is delicious and shouldn’t be wasted. Also Paisley’s not an emotionless robot. But Lizzie is totally in love with Mystery Boy.”
“Aw, thanks, Madison,” Paisley said as Lizzie hit her square in the face with a limp piece of broccoli.
Chapter 4
Otis
Otis Sorenson was doing his calc homework Sunday afternoon. At least, his calc homework was open on his desk in front of him. If you wanted to get technical about it, he was paying far more attention to the conversation he was having via text with his friend Tag.
Tag was having girl trouble. Or “women problems” as Tag liked to say.
Before Tag’s answer came through, Otis heard a few strains of music. He checked the volume on his computer, but it seemed like the noise was actually coming from outside.
Otis might not have even bothered to check, but it was a really familiar song. A song he couldn’t quite put his finger on. At least not until he looked outside.
Otis’s bedroom window faced onto the street, and standing outside, leaning against his car, was his boyfriend, Luke, holding up his iPhone that was hooked to his car’s speakers and blasting Peter Gabriel’s seminal classic, “In Your Eyes.”
Otis couldn’t help but laugh as he opened his window, stuck his head out, and looked down at his dark-eyed, smooth-skinned, awesome-haired boyfriend. “Like a young Ricky Martin,” Otis’s mom once said in passing. So Otis then googled young Ricky Martin and was not disappointed.
Luke had used what Otis hoped was masking tape to spell out the word PROM on the roof of his car. If it was not masking tape and it took the paint off, then Luke was definitely going to be in trouble. His parents were sticklers about that car. They were better than Otis’s parents, though, because Otis didn’t even have a car and instead was forced to share with his older sister whenever she deigned to come home from college for the weekend.
Otis leaned his elbows on the windowsill and smiled down at Luke, who grinned up at him.
“Have you ever even seen Say Anything?” Otis asked, knowing full well that the answer was no.
“No, but I know an iconic romantic scene when I see it, even if it’s only a GIF on Tumblr. And I know you love this no matter how much you want to pretend that you don’t.”
Otis’s smile only grew, like he couldn’t even contain it on his face. He’d had braces for a ridiculously long time, and his teeth were incredibly straight thanks to that, but when he smiled, he still had a tendency to keep his lips pressed firmly together. But right now, even after seven years of braces and being embarrassed about how terrible they looked, he smiled so wide, he had no choice but to open his mouth.
“I wasn’t expecting this,” he called out to Luke while waving at a neighbor walking his dog. “It’s completely awesome.”
“Good, I’m glad you think so,” Luke said. They’d been together for about six months now but had been friends much longer. Back in middle school they were on the same baseball team and they hung out sometimes. But in high school Otis got super into baseball and Luke drifted toward the theater kids. They didn’t spend much time together in high school. At least not until they were at a party junior year and Luke drunkenly told Otis that he was gay.
Otis, at that point, had no idea he himself was gay. But when he realized he was into guys last fall, the first person he wanted to tell was Luke. They’ve been together ever since. Sort of.
It took Luke a few tries to crack Otis. Not so much because Otis didn’t like him but because even though Otis was out, he wasn’t sure how out he wanted to be. It took him a little while to find a balance. And once Otis went looking for the balance, he found a lot of support.
It helped that there was some other major high school drama going on around the time Otis and Luke started dating publicly. (The vice principal resigned out of nowhere, and there were tons of rumors swirling around about the cause.) By the time everyone got around to noticing Luke and Otis, it didn’t feel like a big deal.
All of Otis’s worries were for nothing. There wasn’t any hate or homophobia to be found. Not within the senior class, at least. There were some underclassmen who seemed intent on making Luke’s life a bit of a nightmare, but a few well-placed words and some intimidation from the guys on the baseball team fixed it right up. Otis wasn’t sure how he got so lucky.
Luke and Otis were, for all intents and purposes, a happy couple. Both content to go on dates and hold hands at school, to text for hours or just watch TV together. It was a low-maintenance relationship.
What Otis worried about in the dark corners of the night when he woke up suddenly and couldn’t fall back to slee
p was what if all they had in common was an appreciation for cheesy movies and, you know, being gay. Because while Otis knew he liked Luke a lot, he had a feeling Luke might be in love with him. And Otis wasn’t sure if he was there yet.
He worried a lot about the day that Luke would tell Otis he loved him and Otis would say something terrible like “Thank you” or “I’m quite fond of you, also.” It would be embarrassing and so disappointing for Luke.
But it was easy to forget worries like that when Luke showed up on a sunny spring evening to make a grand romantic gesture.
And pretty much all of Luke’s gestures were grand and romantic. Otis tried to keep up, but he often felt like he fell a little short. Though he would make up for that on Monday morning when Luke opened his locker for his own promposal.
Otis was still smiling when he said, “Come on. My mom owns Say Anything on DVD. You should get indoctrinated.”
“I’m going to assume that’s a yes to prom, then?” Luke asked.
Otis picked up his notebook and scrawled the word YES across one of the pages in big bold letters, and showed it to Luke, before he closed his window and raced down the stairs.
Otis met Luke on the front porch, kissing him long and slow, before pausing to smile at him, just because he felt like smiling.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many teeth in your mouth. I had no idea you had this many teeth,” Luke said, threading his arms around Otis’s waist and kissing him some more.
Jacinta
Sometimes being the youngest of five meant that Jacinta’s life was a circus. People coming in and out at all hours, loud noises, booming voices, other people’s agendas. She learned at a very young age that she was definitely not the center of the universe.
Other times, being the youngest was strangely quiet. Because of all those people having their own agendas, it often meant that Jacinta was left in the dust.
For example, one Sunday night in mid-April it was only Jacinta and her mom eating dinner together since the rest of the family was off living their lives. Technically, they were all running late for dinner.
“I thought they’d be home by now,” Jacinta’s mom said as she took the chicken out of the oven. “We’re going to eat without them because I don’t want the food to get cold.”
When they sat down at the table, it was no shock to Jacinta that she was in her mother’s crosshairs. There were no other children to pester.
“What’s going on at school lately?” her mom asked.
“Pretty much the usual,” Jacinta said. “The other day in prom committee we decided to have a prom court along with electing a prom king and queen.” It had been a pretty good discussion for once. No arguments or tears or bloodshed. Everyone, even Amelia Vaughn, seemed happy with the compromise.
“Oh, prom,” her mom said with a big grin.
“Yes, prom,” Jacinta said.
“Is there anyone you want to go with?”
Jacinta glanced up from her plate where she had been concentrating on chasing a piece of corn around with her fork. It did not want to be eaten. She almost admired its will to survive, and then remembered that it was literally just a piece of corn.
“There is not,” Jacinta said.
“Oh, there must be someone. I know you have lots of eligible boys in your class.”
Why her mother knew anything about the boys in her class was a mystery to Jacinta, considering she didn’t even know about the eligible boys in her class.
“So when is it exactly?” her mom asked, unperturbed by Jacinta’s reticence on the subject. This was not her first trip to the rodeo with children who didn’t want to talk about something. And while Jacinta was in fact quite excited about the prom, there was something leading about her mom’s questions that made her hesitate to give too much information.
“It’s June first.”
“And where is it?”
Jacinta put her fork down and took a sip of her water. “Mom, I told you all about this months ago. I’ve been working on the prom since sophomore year. I helped them pick out the venue and the date and all of that right from the start.”
“I can’t always keep track of everything!” her mom insisted.
“I know, but this is old news. It’s at the Sheraton, the first Friday in June.”
“Oh, that’s a beautiful venue. Your cousin Elena got married there. Remember?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when tickets went on sale?”
Jacinta blinked at her mother. “I had no idea you were this interested in the prom.” She decided to turn the tables on her. “Why are you so interested in prom all of a sudden?”
“I guess I was worried that you weren’t talking about things because you felt neglected in the face of Flora’s wedding. She’s kind of taking over. I know she is, and I don’t mean for you to get lost in the middle of everything.”
“Oh. I appreciate that,” Jacinta said, going back to her food.
“Do you need money? For anything? A dress or a limo with your friends? Did you buy a ticket?”
This was far more attention than Jacinta had received in years, or at least that’s how it felt.
“I don’t need money. I didn’t buy a ticket. I’ll let you know when and if I do. I don’t really have anyone to go with at the moment.”
“I was thinking,” her mom said, placing her fork down on her plate. “I bet Henry Lai doesn’t have a date. He flies under the radar like you do. You could go with him. I could talk to his mom about it at work tomorrow.”
“Oh my god, Mother,” Jacinta said. But before she could argue the point further, the front and back doors opened simultaneously and most of her immediate family poured in, including her dad, her sister, her sister’s fiancé, and two of her brothers.
Her conversation with her mother was definitely over.
Her family was loud, and Jacinta had never learned to be loud enough to be heard over everyone else’s din. She never minded getting talked over, but she hated trying to compete for her mother’s attention. She’d rather not even try than to lose out to her older siblings, which was pretty much what always happened.
Jacinta took the opportunity to slip out of her mother’s focus and let the rest of her family take over the spotlight. It was in fact one of her greatest talents.
The next morning in school she approached Henry at his locker.
Henry Lai was an interesting person, in Jacinta’s mind, made less interesting by the fact that their moms seemed to constantly want to push them together. When they were kids their moms wanted them to be friends and as teenagers it had been implied on more than one occasion that they should date.
It left things between Jacinta and Henry awkward and weird.
Not to mention that he’d had a surge in popularity during their senior year that made Jacinta feel like he was out of her league.
“Hey,” Jacinta said as she got close to him.
Henry looked up and smiled when he saw her. “Morning,” he said.
“Um, so I think you need to be aware that my mother is likely going to talk to your mother about the prom today at work.”
“Oh god, it’s so embarrassing when this happens,” he said, squeezing the bridge of his nose like this whole concept gave him an instant ice-cream headache.
“This is completely my fault. I take full responsibility this time,” Jacinta said.
He put his hand on her shoulder. “You really don’t have to. It’s our meddling moms’ fault.”
“All I did was say the word prom, and she was offering to set us up.” Jacinta bit her lip and looked down. “But listen, just in case this, you know, keeps going on with our moms, I was thinking I should have your number. I could have texted you last night to warn you.”
“Good idea,” Henry said, pulling his phone out of his backpack.
They exchanged numbers and set off in the direction of homeroom
“It’s actually so weird that I don’t have your n
umber,” Henry said. “We could have been presenting a more united front against our moms for all these years.”
“At least we finally came to our senses,” Jacinta said as she turned to go into her homeroom.
“Yeah, it was about time. See you later,” Henry said with a grin as he continued on down the hall.
“See you,” Jacinta said.
Maybe Henry wouldn’t be a terrible prom date, Jacinta thought as she walked away. But if she ended up at the prom with him, she would do it on her own terms and not her mother’s.
It was definitely worth considering.
Chapter 5
Otis
Otis bounced on his toes as he and Luke walked into school Monday morning, that’s how excited he was for Luke to get to his locker.
He could barely speak for fear that he’d give away the surprise he’d left for his boyfriend on Friday. He’d worried that after Luke’s promposal that all the fun would have gone out of his own gesture, but now he couldn’t wait for Luke to see it.
“I’ll meet you back here after homeroom,” Luke said, pausing to give Otis a quick kiss on the cheek, but he came up with nothing but air because Otis had continued on in the direction of Luke’s locker.
“Nah,” Otis said casually as he kept going.
“Are you being weird?” Luke asked, catching up with him. “I feel like you’re being weird.”
Otis shrugged and did a little shoulder shimmy when they got to Luke’s locker.
“Okay, I’ve never seen you do anything like that before. You’re being totally weird, and I am totally weirded out by your weird,” Luke said with a hand on his hip.
Otis gestured toward Luke’s locker.
“What?”
He gestured more emphatically.
“I guess I should open my locker?” Luke asked.
Luke took his time going through his combination as if he knew every second Otis had to wait was pure torture. When he finally popped it open, several containers of orange Tic Tacs popped out and an avalanche of them waited inside Luke’s locker.