by Sandy Hall
Lizzie rolled her eyes. She knew all about Paisley’s personal vendetta against Amelia. “Hopefully she says something truly damning this time and not that she doesn’t like brussels sprouts.”
Paisley narrowed her eyes at Lizzie. “I love brussels sprouts. And that Amelia hates them just goes to show that we are perfect enemies. Now shh, I need to watch my programs.” Paisley pulled the stool up to the counter and chewed her lip. Lizzie stood next to her.
Amelia was saying something about prom, of course.
“Oh man,” Lizzie whispered. “I can’t believe Drew broke up with her.”
“Yeah, they were a match made in high school,” Paisley said with an eye roll.
“If only they could have been together forever,” Lizzie said mockingly.
When talk turned to Amelia asking Henry to the prom, Paisley’s ears perked up. “No,” she hissed. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“Because you want to go to the prom with Henry?” Lizzie asked.
“You know I don’t,” Paisley said. “I just don’t want Henry to get stuck with her. Like she’s just not his kind of … person.”
Lizzie nodded.
Amelia and her friends left soon after that. Paisley debated texting Henry what she had overheard, but knowing Henry it would keep him up all night and it really might be nothing. Best to err on the side of caution for now.
But Paisley would be sure to monitor the situation closely.
Chapter 7
Henry
Henry had been tiptoeing around his house since he got home from baseball practice an hour ago. So far this week, his mom had yet to bring up the topic of prom or Jacinta Ramos.
But as soon as he sat down for dinner Thursday night he knew his mom had an agenda. The whole family, his mom, dad, and younger brother, Deacon, were all present and accounted for.
She smiled over at him, and he knew his luck was up.
“So, Henry, I hear the prom is coming up,” his mom said.
He silently thanked Jacinta for warning him about this moment. Otherwise he wasn’t sure what he would have said in the face of this type of mom-vaguery. At least he knew where she was probably going with this topic.
Deacon made barfing noises.
“Stop that,” their dad said. “No disgusting noises at the dinner table.”
“Are you thinking about going?” his mom asked, undeterred by Deacon’s little outburst.
“I’m not sure,” Henry said, not looking at his mom and stabbing a cherry tomato. He’d show that cherry tomato he was the boss. Even if Henry felt like he wasn’t even really the boss of his own life. He could be the boss of the cherry tomato.
“You should ask Jacinta Ramos.”
And there it was. His mom and Jacinta’s mom were in mom cahoots. The situation was so dire he couldn’t even think of a better word than cahoots. Thank god no one could read his mind at the moment.
He panicked. He wasn’t exactly sure why he panicked. Probably because that was his usual reaction to most suggestions that involved him having to socialize.
He had been pretty cool during the whole conversation with Jacinta the other day, but when he got to homeroom his hands were shaking. Even now, several days and hot showers later, he felt like his mom could smell the flop sweat on him.
“There is no way Jacinta wants to go with me,” Henry snapped.
“No one wants to go anywhere with Henry, Mom,” Deacon added.
Henry shot him a look.
“Oh, come on, it couldn’t hurt to ask. You’re friends. You’ve been friends for a long time.”
“No. You’re friends with her mom,” Henry said, frustration overtaking his worry. “That doesn’t make Jacinta my friend. We get along fine, but I don’t think she’s even a little bit interested in going with me.”
His mom smiled, ignoring his tone for once. Normally there would be a lecture about how it wasn’t so much what he said but how he said it. And that he really needed to watch the way he presented himself.
But tonight of all nights, his mom was ignoring his usual coping strategies and staying doggedly on message.
“How could you possibly know that if you don’t even bother asking?”
Mom logic. Mom logic could always get the better of him and leave him spluttering for words even when he’d had a perfectly good argument lined up until that moment.
“I talked to her the other day,” he said, instantly regretting it. They were never supposed to admit to their moms that they had any contact at school. And it was rare that they did. But Jacinta had sought him out and warned him and now he was stuck at the dinner table trying to dig his way out of a hole of his own making.
“Oh, that’s good news! See, she wants to talk to you—you should ask her.”
He needed an excuse. “She didn’t seem like she was interested in prom.” It wasn’t a complete lie; they just hadn’t discussed her desire to attend.
“But you could try!” his mom said.
He was already exhausted by this topic, and she seemed like she could go another ten rounds at least.
“I’m going to go do my homework,” he said, using his only way out.
“Fine, fine, just bring your plate into the kitchen.”
He did as he was told and then stomped upstairs as she called after him, “And at least consider it! You never know unless you try.”
He closed his bedroom door behind him and threw himself face-first on his bed. All he really wanted in that moment was to go to sleep and maybe not wake up until graduation. Maybe even sleep all the way until he had to leave for college. That wouldn’t be so bad. At least he wouldn’t have to talk about any of this again.
On the other hand, he would fail his finals and maybe Penn State would rescind his acceptance.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes.
He could do this.
He had to forget everything he had talked about with his mother. He sat down with his homework and tried to concentrate.
Except, three problems into his calc homework and his brain was running in circles.
His mom was right; he wouldn’t know if he didn’t ask.
But he didn’t want to ask Jacinta Ramos to the prom.
He didn’t want to go to the prom, period. There was not one little cell in his entire body that had any interest in going to the prom. He would really have to want to go to the prom to ever work up the courage to ask someone.
He didn’t see that happening anytime in the near future.
Whatever. He had work to do. He moved on to the next problem.
His phone buzzed next to him, and he half expected it to be Jacinta since he had been thinking about her so much. More likely it was Paisley. She’d been texting him before dinner with ridiculous stories from the mall food court.
Instead it was Amelia Vaughn.
They had exchanged phone numbers a while back when they were doing a history project together. But she’d never texted him without a reason before.
He should probably shoot Jacinta a text while he had his phone in his hand, since he had her number and all.
He hit send before he could think about it anymore, and then threw his phone under his pillow before getting back to work.
He had calc homework to do and plenty of other things to worry about.
Cameron
It was only 7:45 a.m. Friday morning, and Cameron was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It had all started when he’d woken up from a dream where he met Laptop Girl in real life and she laughed in his face when she found out who he was. So that wasn’t the best way to start the day.
Then he got in the shower and Landon had used up all the hot water. That was not a rare occurrence. His stepbrother seemed to enjoy his water temperature to be approximately Earth’s-core hot.
But on top of that, there was no more orange juice for breakfast, and when he went out to his car it wouldn’t start.
It seemed like the battery had died.
Of course
, Landon had already left for school and his mom had left for work, which meant there was only one option.
He’d have to ask Richard for a ride.
Cameron went back inside, and Richard was sipping the last of his coffee at the kitchen table while scanning his iPad.
“Hey, um,” Cameron said. He never knew what to call him. In his head, he liked to call him Dick, but his mom called him Richard and everyone else in the world seemed to call him Rich. Cameron stuck to “um” most of the time.
“Yes?” Richard asked, straightening his tie.
“My car won’t start. Would you mind dropping me off at school?”
Dick looked over at the clock. He didn’t have to be at the office until nine, Cameron knew, so this would mean having to leave the house and come back after dropping Cam off, or going into work early.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, grabbing his keys.
Cameron followed him out the door and to the car, desperately wanting to sit in the back seat. The thing about Richard was that he probably wasn’t a bad guy; he wasn’t abusive or mean to Cameron or his mom. Cameron just couldn’t stand the way his mom acted around his stepfather. It was like the second she met him she had gotten a personality transplant.
Cameron’s dad died when he was seven, so it had just been him and his mom for almost ten years. Until last year when she met Richard on a dating site and the next thing Cameron knew they were getting married. Mere days after announcing their engagement, Cameron’s mom was selling the house that Cameron had grown up in and they were moving in with Richard and Landon, in a much, much nicer part of town.
But there weren’t much, much nicer people to go along with their nicer part of town. Cameron found them cold and weird.
Richard silently drove him to school. Cameron thanked him as he got out of his car, and Richard merely shrugged before driving away.
Cameron gave the car the middle finger before turning to walk into school.
He passed Henry and Paisley on the way in, and, rather than saying anything to them, he looked away, staring at the lockers next to him like they were the most interesting thing in the world.
Cameron didn’t know how to handle anything in his life, but especially not the situation with Henry. It would have been easier to have had a fight with Henry, something that he could have apologized for. But now wasn’t exactly the time to stress out about his ex–best friend.
He didn’t know how to talk about his family stuff with anyone. Everything seemed to be happening all at once, and more than anything he wanted to focus on leaving Richard’s house after graduation and never looking back.
So at the beginning of the school year, he quit the soccer and baseball teams, took two jobs, and totally stopped talking and hanging out with his friends.
Henry Lai was the hardest to stop talking to. Cam hadn’t wanted to ghost him. They’d been friends since they were kids, always playing baseball together, but Henry didn’t seem to understand that Cameron had other things to worry about now.
Not that Cameron tried very hard to explain it all to Henry. Henry should have just understood. He wasn’t much of a talker, either.
More and more it felt like Cameron had made a mistake becoming a hermit his senior year. But it was the only thing he could think to do in the face of all the crap going on at home. He needed something to look forward to, and it was so much easier to cut ties with everyone early before they would all be inevitably cutting ties with one another in June anyway.
Cameron went about his day as he always did, staying quiet in class, eating lunch alone in the library while he scrambled through his homework, and then more classes where he barely spoke.
Except for English.
Except for Laptop Girl.
When he got to class the cart was waiting there. He snagged number 19 as he walked to his seat and couldn’t wait to see what Laptop Girl might have left for him.
The very last thing Cameron expected when he opened the document was an invitation to the prom from Laptop Girl. There may have been things he expected less, but he couldn’t come up with any, no matter how hard he thought about it.
He had to keep himself busy thinking about other things that would have surprised him, because he was completely unprepared to face the reality of being asked to the prom. Not once during this entire school year had it seemed like the prom would be in the realm of possibility for him, even if he wanted to go.
But now, this girl that he honestly really liked, even though he’d never seen her or met her, wanted to go to the prom with him. And he wasn’t sure how to say no to that offer. He wasn’t sure how to pass something like that up. It was enough to make him forget the dream he’d had the night before.
Ms. Huang was explaining what they would be working on that day, so rather than spending a lot of time typing up a new message, Cameron just changed the background on the computer to say YES in huge lime green letters.
His terrible, horrible, no good day was actually looking up.
When Ms. Huang set them to work independently, Cameron typed out a quick message to Laptop Girl.
This is awesome. I never even thought to ask you to prom. We’ll have to figure out how to recognize each other. Like both have something lime green on our person, so we can easily tell each other apart from the crowd. I don’t have a lot of time right now, but I just wanted to say thanks. And yes. I am into girls.
Cameron hit save and got started on his assignment, unable to wipe the grin off his face for the rest of the period.
Chapter 8
Cora
Cora was desperate for a new coping mechanism.
Over the past week, her feelings about Jamie had shifted.
A lot.
For example, his latest text made her cringe.
She rolled her eyes so hard at the “not-babe” thing. How hard is it to just not mention it? She was allowed to have preferences for what people called her. On top of that, the thought of driving with Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick to the game that was almost an hour away sounded exhausting. Jamie’s parents were really very nice, but his dad got a little … overheated about baseball and his mom just wanted to feed her hot chocolate the whole time, even if it wasn’t cold out.
No one wants to drink hot chocolate when it’s above sixty degrees, and it very well might be that warm by then, seeing as how it would be the beginning of May.
Basically, their relationship had gone from steady and non-contentious to Cora pretty much hating everything Jamie did. But how do you break up with a guy after being with him for three years? How do you break up with him when he likes you so much that he decided to go to the same college as you?
After all these years, she finally appreciated her parents making her wait to date Jamie, if only because it was less time they were official. Any way you cut it, three years was a long relationship, but it sounded better than five.
She knew she shouldn’t break up with him just because she wanted to all of a sudden. She wanted to at least consider her options a little longer. It could be a passing feeling.
In an attempt to keep her mind busy, Cora had also been trying to keep her body busy. Cold showers and long runs, trying to crochet, listening to audiobooks. Her schedule was overflowing already, thanks to all of her extracurricular activities, but it was like she needed even more hobbies and activities in her life to take up all this brain space.
And now, it all left her even more overwhelmed.
Which was how she ended up alone in her room Saturday night when she normally would have been out with her friends or Jamie. She couldn’t deal with even one more minute of socializing.
Her phone buzzed with another text.
He attached a selfie of himself frowning dramatically. She blinked at her phone.
He didn’t reply.
Rather than letting this semi-fight eat away at her, she downloaded a meditation app thinking that might be a good thing to try. So, instead of wallowing all night, she got right to it. She read the
introduction and directions for the app. She really hoped she’d be able to clear her mind. The whole situation was starting to feel pretty desperate.
As she was about to start the app and the beginner’s guided meditation session, there was a knock on her bedroom door.
“Come in?” Cora called, a tone of confusion in her voice. She didn’t even know anyone else was home.
Her mom walked in. “Hey, sweetie. I didn’t expect you to be home.”
“Hey, Mom,” Cora said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing, just got back from the store. Are you hungry? Are you staying home tonight?”
“Yes and yes,” Cora said.
“What are you doing?”
“I might be trying to meditate,” Cora said, her cheeks warming at the confession even as she told herself it was nothing to be ashamed of.
Her mom raised her eyebrows and stifled a smile as she leaned on the doorjamb, obviously not wanting to laugh at Cora or make her feel bad for trying. “Are you okay?”
“I’m a little overwhelmed and kind of confused.”
“Confused about what?”
“Well, you know. Everything. Nothing. The usual?” Cora offered, hoping that was enough of an excuse.
“Sex. Drugs. Rock and roll?”
Cora laughed then and so did her mom. “Something like that.”
“Is it Jamie?’
“Jamie and Teagan and Josie and prom committee and college and yearbook and finals, and, well, everything.”
“Now I gotcha,” her mom said. “It’s a tough time. A lot is going on and a lot is changing.”
“Exactly,” Cora said. “And sometimes I want to be alone for a little while, you know? To meditate, I guess.”
“Well, I’ll leave you be,” her mom said.
“No!” Cora called after her, leaping off her bed.
Her mom paused.
“I mean, you don’t have to go. That’s just why I’m home tonight, because I never make time for myself. But, like, being home is part of myself, so you’re part of myself?”
“That’s actually fairly astute,” her mom said. “You know you can talk to me or Dad anytime you feel overwhelmed, right? Like, that’s not something you need to feel bad about.”