Limos, Lattes and My Life on the Fringe

by Nancy N. Rue

  “So why would the prom be any different?” Ryleigh said.

  “It isn’t,” Kenny said. “’Cept that it’s worse.”

  “Like how?” I said.

  “Like I wanna ask this one girl, only I can’t afford no hotel room after — “ “Hotel room?”

  “Some kids’ parents rent a room for them to party in after prom,” Noelle said. “That way they won’t drink and drive.”

  “It’s not just that,” Ryleigh put in. “My sister said that last year the Labels totally took over the dance floor.”

  “Labels?” I said.

  “The kids wearin’ Abercrombie and all that,” Kenny said. “Got it,” I said. It was kind of clever, actually. “So go ahead, Ryleigh.”

  “Anyway, she said she and her friends — she went, like, in a group — couldn’t even dance because they had it all, like, staked out, and then they’d just stand there locked together practically having —”

  “Got that too,” I said.

  “I don’t even want to go.”

  We all looked at Fred in time to see Noelle sit straight up and untangle herself from him. I expected the arm punch, or at the very least the “shut up,” but she just stared at him, eyes filling with tears.

  “You never told me that,” she said.

  “I know — but I’m hearing all this stuff, and it just doesn’t even seem worth it.”

  Ryleigh frosted me with a look. “Thank you,” she said.

  All of this was stuff I basically already knew from Candace and my research. Time to push it down a different path. “What if it was worth it?” I said. “What if it was your prom — really yours, the way you wanted it?”

  “Not gonna happen,” Fred said.

  Noelle did give him the “shut up” then. “I’d want to be able to get a really nice dress,” she said to me, “and wear it without people going, ‘Oh, did you get that at J. C. Penney?’ — like there’s something wrong with that.”

  “Somebody actually said that to my sister,” Ryleigh said. “See, I’d want to get my and my date’s picture taken by the professional photographer —”

  “A party after, where you didn’t have to get wasted to be cool.” That was Kenny’s input. I wrote it down, wondering what else I didn’t know about my cousin who, last time I looked, was an absurd little creep.

  “I just don’t want all this pressure.” We looked at Fred again. This time he didn’t get punched. “Isn’t it supposed to be, like, fun? Like this big turning point in your life or something?”

  “Is that what you want it to be?” I said.

  He looked at Noelle, whose eyes were still damp. “I just want it to be nice for her.”

  “That is so sweet,” Ryleigh said. “Why are all the good ones taken?”

  “I ain’t taken,” Kenny said.

  “I said the good ones.” Ryleigh grabbed his arm and shook it, and he messed up the front of her hair. She laughed as it slid neatly back into place. I felt a strange pang.

  Noelle nodded at my notebook. “So what are you going to do with all this stuff you’re writing down?”

  “Come up with a plan.”

  “For what?”

  “For making the prom something anybody can experience however they want to without feeling —”

  “Like a loser?” Ryleigh said. “No offense, Taylor —”

  “Tyler,” Noelle said. “Right?”

  “Well, no offense, but like Fred said, I don’t see anything changing.”

  “If it did,” I said, “would it matter to you?”

  They took a minute to answer, and somehow I was impressed by that. And also nervous. If they said no, I was going to look like more than a moron when that article came out.

  “Yeah,” Fred said finally. “It would matter. I’m sick of being treated like trailer trash when I’m not — and that’s not just about the prom.”

  The group gave a unanimous nod. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

  Patrick was waiting for me outside the door when the bell rang, and I looked around to see if Alyssa was in the vicinity. She wasn’t, but I didn’t doubt she’d show up at the exact moment when Patrick said anything that could be misinterpreted as me going after her man. As if. “Well?” Patrick said.

  “Actually,” I said, “it’s great.” I handed him the article. “I marked one little place where you had a subject-verb agreement issue, but other than that … seriously, I like it.”

  “Then why do you look like somebody just took away your birthday?”

  “It shows, huh?” I said — before I could stop myself. Why did I always end up saying things I had no intention of saying to this boy?

  “You just look worried.” He nodded me down the hall with him. “I’ll walk you to your French class.”

  “Do you know how disconcerting it is that you know my class schedule?” I said as I fell into step beside him.

  “No,” he said, “because I don’t even know what disconcerting means.”

  “It weirds me out,” I said.

  “Oh.” He grinned again. Still. “Good,” he said. “So, what’s with the long face?”

  I gave up trying to evade the question. He would just ask another one.

  “Okay — so I’m announcing my campaign, publicly.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I just interviewed a group of kids who now have a glimmer of hope that something’s going to change. Only I still don’t know how I’m going to do it.”

  “Which is why you need a plan.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “You have anybody to help you? Any of your friends?”

  I did manage to bite back, What friends? I was about to sit across the aisle from Deidre for an hour and a half and I didn’t even know if she was speaking to me. She hadn’t lied about “staying away.”

  “I haven’t gotten that far,” I said.

  We stopped outside Madame Upchurch’s room. She was about as French as I was, but she insisted on us calling her Madame. We, of course, were Mademoiselle and Monsieur. Monsieur YouTube was my personal favorite.

  “You don’t have your phone with you, right?” Patrick said. “Okay, write down my number, and if you want —”

  “Patrick, you are not serious!”

  My eyes rolled completely up into my head, I was sure. Was there nowhere I could go without this girl stalking me?

  Alyssa stomped up to us and without so much as a glare at me wrapped her talons around Patrick’s arm and yanked him to the other side of the hall. He looked at me, but I shook my head. I so did not want to get in the middle of that situation.

  Still I had to wonder, as I went on into the French room, what a maybe-nice and clearly intelligent guy saw in somebody like her. If that was what it took to hook a boyfriend, I wasn’t likely to have one. Ever. Not that I was interested right now — but “ever” was a long time. I felt that pang again.

  I didn’t feel it, however, when I got to my desk and Deidre was no longer sitting next to me. One glance revealed her in the back, where she’d wanted to sit anyway when we first chose seats at the beginning of the year. I always wanted to be closer to the front. So, evidently, did Valleri, who picked up her backpack and moved from the second-to-last seat and slid into Deidre’s old one. “Is this okay?” she said.

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “And remind me to work with you on partner assignments. You probably speak French better than ‘Madame.’ Not that that’s the only reason I want you sitting next to me,” I added. Had I always been this socially inept?

  “So what’s up?” she said.

  “Am I walking around with a sign on my back that says, ‘Ask me what’s wrong’?” I shook my head. “Sorry. It’s this prom thing.”

  While Madame Upchurch took roll, during which we each had to answer, “Bonjour, Madame,” I filled Valleri in on everything that had happened regarding the prom situation since she did my makeover in the girls’ restroom. She never took her blue eyes off m
e — until Madame told us we could only continue our conversation if we did it entirely in French.

  Like that was going to happen.

  But the minute class was over and we were headed for the cafeteria, Valleri made me pick up where I’d left off. By the time we turned the corner, I was wrapping up with, “It’s bigger than I thought. I’m not sure I can pull it off by myself.”

  She put her hand on my arm and nodded toward the cafeteria door. The entrance was clogged with bodies, some of them holding others piggyback so they could see in. My stomach took a nosedive. The last time there had been this much interest in something, my entire life had turned upside down.

  “Let’s go in the back way,” I said.

  That would mean running into the Fringe — but they were the ones staying away from me, not vice versa. And there was no way I was trying to get through the mob, even though it was eerily quiet. Silent, even.

  “What’s going on?” Valleri said as we hurried toward the entrance.

  “I don’t think we want to know. Let’s just get our food and go out to the courtyard.”

  There wasn’t a sound in the lunchroom as we pushed through the door. It was as if the entire place had slipped into a coma.

  They hadn’t. Every single person was merely focused on a scene going down in the middle of the long stretch of freshman and sophomore tables. I couldn’t see what it was at first for the wall of people surrounding it. Their silence was explained by YouTube, who was standing on the table, video camera in hand, shooting straight down at whatever was transpiring below. And whatever it was, it was so outrageous that every face in the place was the color of Bob the Tomato.

  YouTube motioned to someone beneath him and then watched whoever it was, his own face contorted with the delight of it all. Those in the crowd who had a clear view convulsed anew, and the people behind them elbowed in and then did the same. I, personally, looked around to see where the teacher/monitor of the day was. There wasn’t an adult in sight, and with the feeling that charged the air right now, there needed to be.

  Matthew, Yuri, and Deidre were sitting at our old table, sharing a plate of generic nachos as if there weren’t a silent riot raging around them.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  Somebody told me to shh.

  The Fringe shrugged at me and went back to their processed cheese.

  “Move that over,” I said.

  Deidre shot me a dark look, but Matthew picked up the nachos and held them out of the way while I climbed up onto the table. Valleri tugged at my hand and I pulled her up with me. And then I froze.

  Dead center in the sophomore section, Izzy was slumped over on the tabletop, face slack with sleep, the inevitable drool pooling under his mouth. One of YouTube’s cronies was spraying purple dye into Izzy’s tumble of hair. Hayley and Joanna were busily painting his nails a hideous shade of magenta. Still another male member of the Ruling Class was holding something up for all to appreciate, which must have accounted for that last spasm of held-back hilarity. I could make out the gold hoop earring in one hand, but what was that thing in the other one? “They’re going to pierce his ear!”

  Half the crowd whirled around to look at Valleri, who shouted it again. The other half groaned as Izzy jerked awake and looked up, bewildered. Now that they had permission to laugh it up all they wanted, the whole cafeteria shrieked. The half of Izzy’s face that hadn’t been turned to the table was a mass of orange blush, scarlet lipstick, and enough garish-blue eye shadow for a whole chorus line.

  YouTube brought the camera just inches from Izzy’s face and yelled, “You ready for your close-up?”

  Izzy shoved the camera away and pushed himself back from the table. He tried to run, but it was hard to do in a pair of gold stilettos.

  “That is so horrible!” Valleri cried.

  Izzy shot past us, sans the shoes, and Valleri jumped down from the table and went for the door. I climbed down just as Mr. Baumgarten parted the crowd from the other end. All I needed was for him to see me standing on a table. I’d probably get the blame for this too.

  “She should leave him alone,” Yuri said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Homeschool. She should just leave Izzy alone.” “Like all of you did?” I said.

  Deidre sighed. “What do you want us to do — go after him and give him therapy?”

  “I’m talking about when it was happening. Why didn’t somebody go stop it?”

  “What are you, the bully police now too?”

  “Just leave it alone!” Yuri snatched up his camera and his backpack and shoved three people out of his path to the door.

  “Look out, Matthew,” Deidre said in a dead voice. “You’ll be the next one she ticks off.”

  “What is going on?” I said. “How did I tick Yuri off?”

  Deidre folded her arms and glowered. I turned to Matthew.

  He let out a low groan, as if I’d just asked him to open a vein. “What?” I said.

  “You weren’t here in middle school,” he said. “They used to do that kind of stuff to Yuri all the time. He tried to stand up for himself, but like he was going to get anywhere with that. He finally learned how to make himself invisible with his photography and all that, and now they leave him alone.”

  “And that’s the goal — to just be left alone?” I said.

  “Works for me,” Deidre said to her fingernails. “Worked for you too, until you turned into the ACLU. Matthew — what happened to our nachos?”

  “You’re against everything,” I said. “Even if it’s good.”

  Deidre finally looked at me. “Where did that come from?”

  I didn’t know. Maybe it was from what I saw when I was standing on the table. Or from what I wasn’t seeing down here in my friends’ eyes.

  “You’re against everything,” I said again. “But are you for anything? Do you believe in anything?”

  Matthew shook his bangs over his eyes. Deidre leaned into the table. “I believe in getting through this year and getting out of this place. And I’m going to do it by keeping my head down and my mouth shut. I thought we were having a pretty good time doing that together.”

  “I guess the party’s over,” I said.

  I walked out and left the Fringe table behind.

  Valleri met me at the door.

  “Did you find him?” I said.

  She shook the curls, and tears sparkled in her eyes. “I want to help,” she said.

  “I know. Izzy might not want help, but —”

  “No. I want to help you — with the prom campaign.”

  I looked closer. “You’re serious.”

  “God doesn’t want me to sit around and let one group of people make everybody else’s life miserable,” she said.

  I didn’t ask her how she knew that. But I didn’t doubt that she did.

  Chapter Ten

  That night at the dinner table I escaped going under the maternal microscope, because all lenses were again focused on Sunny.

  “I messed up my very first day,” she wailed as soon as the amens were said.

  My ears perked up. This could be good news.

  Mom grunted. “Everybody messes up their first day. My first hour nursing, I dumped a bedpan on a vascular surgeon. A full bedpan.”

  “No, I really messed up. I didn’t know it was Mr. Linkhart’s turn to do lunch duty. While I was sitting there in the teacher’s lounge eating my salad, evidently all Hades broke loose in the cafeteria.” She looked across the table at me. “Did you see what happened?”

  That explained the absence of adults on the scene. “I caught the end of it,” I said.

  “Could I have stopped it?”

  I had to say yes. I could have stopped it if I’d gotten there soon enough.

  “Then I feel terrible,” she said.

  “Did you get called on the carpet?” Dad said.

  Sunny shook her head. “Mr. Baumgarten said not to worry about it. He said nobody was hurt �
��”

  I let my fork drop to my plate, splattering hollandaise sauce. “Nobody was hurt? That poor kid was humiliated, and now it’s going to be all over the Internet. He’ll probably be scarred for the rest of his life.”

  Sunny put her face in her hands. My mother lowered her chin to look at me.

  “I didn’t say it was her fault,” I said. “Those jackals have been at this since middle school, and nobody’s stopped them. Not yet, anyway.”

  Sunny shook her head at me. “It’s not going to happen again on my watch,” she said.

  Well. Interesting.

  I didn’t really have time to analyze it, though, because that night and whenever we could grab a minute on Thursday, Valleri and I were trying to come up with a Prom for Everybody Plan.

  I went to the Internet and looked up what other schools were doing — everything from canceling the whole thing to replacing it with an elaborate scavenger hunt with a sit-down dinner at the end — but none of it sounded like what Ryleigh and her friends were asking for.

  Meanwhile, Valleri was writing questions in different colored markers on a big piece of butcher paper she kept rolled up in her locker — Where can girls get great dresses at reasonable prices? How can we make the photography awesome AND affordable? What kind of after party would be safe, inexpensive, AND a blast? What do we have to do to keep booze out and fun in? Is there a way-cool way to get to the prom without hiring a limo? Where can you get your hair and nails done without your parents having to take out a second mortgage?

  We thought we’d have time in fourth block — History — to work on some actual answers while people were putting the lastminute touches on their presentations. The Andrew Jackson one was ready; I would be virtually giving it by myself, since Yuri and Matthew weren’t returning my calls.

  But Sunny — Ms. Bonning as the rest of the class called her — had other plans.

  “Anybody whose report is ready,” she said to us, “I want you to get a head start on the next unit. These presentations will take care of presidents from Jackson to Coolidge, but I want our study of the Great Depression, World War Two, and the second half of the twentieth century to be a little more in-depth.” Depth? Now there was a novel idea.