Promposal

by Rhonda Helms

  “Hey, Ethan,” Camilla said with a small wave.

  “Hey there, princess,” he replied, then gave David, Niecey, and Dwayne a broad smile. My heart pinged in my chest.

  Niecey and Dwayne looked around to make sure there weren’t any teachers present, then went back to kissing, arms tangled around each other.

  “So, where have you been?” Ethan asked me. He grabbed a bag of baked barbecue chips and ripped it open.

  “What?”

  “Normally, you text me a lot in your morning classes. Did you get busted and have your phone taken away?”

  “Oh. Uh, no.” My face burned. I swallowed. I guess my attempts at subtle avoidance weren’t working well. “I got busy taking notes and stuff, that’s all.”

  The heat from his nearby thigh seeped into mine, and it was so hard not to just inch my leg over a fraction, see what happened if our knees brushed each other. Would he pull away? Why didn’t he feel this crackle between us that I did?

  Oh, that’s right. Because he felt it for someone else. For perfect, beautiful Noah.

  I poked my salad and drew my leg closer to me.

  Ethan leaned toward me and whispered in my ear, “Seriously, what’s going on with you today? You don’t seem like yourself.”

  The warm puffs of breath caressed my hair and made goose bumps rise across my skin. “What? Me? I’m totally fine.” Liar. “Just tired. Overschooled. Undersexed. Going through menopause. I’m pregnant. Something dramatic and amazing.”

  Camilla snorted as she chewed on another bite of her pizza.

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “You’re doing that thing.”

  “Thing?” I blinked.

  “Where you turn up the humor. It usually means you’re hiding something. What’s wrong?”

  Shit. I poked my chocolate cake. My heart slammed against my rib cage, and the roar of the students around us melded with the screaming in my head. I was torn between feeling stupidly vulnerable and kind of honored that Ethan knew me so well. “Well,” I drawled in a thick mock-Southern accent. What should I say? “I just—”

  “Oh my God, she’s here,” David said, interrupting me. His attention was locked on the cafeteria doors. He tugged a large bag out from under the cafeteria table.

  “What are you doing?” Camilla asked him.

  “Embracing my destiny.” Okay, David was a bit dramatic, but the guy meant well and had a good heart. He stood from the seat, his lanky six-foot-four frame towering over us, cloth bag-straps gripped in his shaking hands. “Wish me luck.”

  Our whole table—even Niecey and Dwayne—spun around to face the cafeteria doors. There stood Karen, head of the Mathletes, chess captain, girls’ rugby cocaptain, tennis captain, and probably leader of many other school groups I didn’t even know existed. Her red hair flamed in a rippling cascade of waves, and she was flanked by her two best friends, Ashley and Monica.

  “Oh my God,” Camilla whispered to me and Ethan. “I think we’re about to see another promposal.”

  Saved from Ethan’s inquisition by fate. I avoided looking at him and kept my attention focused on the scene.

  The air in the room seemed to shift as David purposefully strolled up to Karen. His long legs ate up the space between them. A foot away from her, he stopped, and she turned from giggling with her friends to peer up into his face.

  “Yes?” she asked him with a polite, if not a little frosty, smile.

  Whispers fled and darted across the caf. Camilla’s hand flew up in front of her mouth as she tensed beside me. Ethan remained strangely still and silent.

  “Karen,” David said in a loud, rumbling voice. He dropped the bag to his side, dug through it, and whipped out a black top hat. He plopped it on his head and then donned two white gloves.

  A couple of girls in the cafeteria giggled, and someone applauded with a loud whistle. Karen’s two friends stepped back a touch and began whispering furiously to each other, mouths cupped and eyes locked on the spectacle to come.

  Then the room grew eerily quiet. I saw several girls and guys grab their phones and hold them up to video the moment. We all waited to see what David was going to do. Karen’s back stiffened, and she frowned. Glanced around and saw the phones stuck in the air.

  “I don’t—” she started to say.

  “Karen,” David repeated, “being around you is magic.” He flung his gloved hands up in the air with a flourish and then pulled the end of one of those long magic scarves out of his sweater sleeve. So cheesy, but kinda sweet. With a thrust, he crammed the end into Karen’s limp hand. “Please pull it.”

  Dwayne made an under-the-breath comment about something farther south being pulled. Niecey snorted.

  “Hmm. No thanks,” Karen replied to David. She dropped the end of the scarf.

  David’s face fell, and my heart stuttered in sympathy for him. Was Karen really going to just let him flounder like this?

  With a halting step, Ashley moved forward, bent down, and took the scarf end. She pulled as brightly toned scarves tied one to another swept out of David’s sleeve. Each scarf had a large black letter written on it.

  Ashley read the letters out loud until the last scarf came out of the sleeve. “P. R. O. M. P. L. E. A. S. E.”

  Karen stared on, mixed emotions flying across her face. Her cheeks grew flushed, and she fiddled with her fingers. An uncomfortable feeling settled in my stomach—this was so not going to end well. And the entire thing was going to be captured on video for everyone to see.

  But poor David still tried to roll with it. Like a champ, he whipped his hat off and pulled out a bundle of plastic flowers from within, then pushed them toward Karen, who reached out a wooden arm and took them. Her eyes were fixed on the floor.

  “Karen, it would be my honor to accompany you to senior prom,” he said with loud bravado, though I heard the tremble in his words. “Will you please be my prom date?”

  The whole cafeteria went dead silent. I knew what was coming, could see the rejection written all over Karen’s eyes and downturned mouth, and I wanted to grab David’s arm and yank him out of here. But I couldn’t move.

  Camilla drew in a soft breath from behind her hand, and Ethan shifted. I dared a glance at him and saw sadness in his eyes. He knew what was coming too.

  Karen glanced at Ashley, then at David. She shook her head and handed him back the fake flowers. “No, thanks.”

  He blinked. “Um, pretty please?”

  I cringed. Oh God. This was going downhill, fast. I shifted to stand, thinking of ways I could throw a tarp over David and drag him away, but Camilla grabbed my arm and shot me a warning glance.

  Karen sighed and flipped a lock of hair over her shoulder. “Sorry, but I don’t want to go to prom with you, David. Not in the least.”

  Wow. Bitch much? A swell of anger settled like a tight ball in my chest. She didn’t need to be so rude about it.

  Ashley shot David a worried glance and stepped back. She looked like she wanted to say something but bit her lower lip.

  “But . . . I don’t . . .” David struggled for words. He twisted the fake flower stems, eyes wide, blinking.

  Fervent whispers built to a crescendo around us. “Oh my God. How is he ever going to show his face again around school?” one girl said in a not-so-subtle tone.

  “So. Humiliating,” another replied.

  David licked his lips. He peered around the room and seemed to realize he had a rapt audience witnessing his downfall. “Maybe we can talk about it somewhere else,” he offered in a quiet voice.

  Karen’s eyes flashed. “There’s nothing to talk about,” she spat out. “I think you’ve embarrassed me enough for the moment, haven’t you? My answer is no. I don’t want to go to prom with you. I don’t like you like that.”

  Camilla sucked in a shaky breath. “Poor David,” she said quietly.

  I reached over and patted her leg. She had to be feeling torn right now, given how her own awkward promposal had been sprung on her last week. It was pa
infully evident Karen was irritated by the surprise, but David was our friend. He had tried so hard to do something sweet to ask her to prom.

  David turned away from Karen and with deliberate, careful motions, tucked his hat and gloves back inside his bag. He moved around the trio of girls and walked out the cafeteria door. Like his whole world hadn’t fallen around his feet right then. In front of so many people who were by now texting everyone else, sending copies of the videos.

  We spun back around to face the table and sat in depressed silence for a few moments. Karen and her girls moved toward their table in the corner. No one said a word to Karen or even looked at her. She kept her chin up and didn’t talk to anyone.

  “Why did you hold me back?” I asked Camilla. “I just wanted to help him.”

  “This was his moment,” she said. “He wouldn’t want to be emasculated by having someone rescue him. And I think Karen made herself look bad enough.” There was a hint of emotion in her voice, and when I turned to her, I saw her eyes welling up. “And that was the exact reason I couldn’t say no to Zach. Because I would have looked like a megabitch like her.”

  “But your no wouldn’t have—”

  “Holy shit.” Niecey shook her head and shot a look at her boyfriend. “That was intense. Poor David. He’s gotta be hurting a lot right now.”

  Ethan, who had been quiet, reached over and touched my forearm. “Hey, you and I still need to talk.”

  I stood and gathered my stuff. I kept my eyes fixed on my tasks so Ethan couldn’t see that the last thing I wanted to do was talk about what was bothering me. “I should go see David. Make sure he isn’t jumping off a bridge or something.” After I managed to don a broad smile, I looked at him. “I’ll catch you later, though, okay?”

  His eyes peered into me, and he gave a brief nod.

  I knew the best way to get him off my back, and it was going to kill me to pull this card. But it was my only chance of escape. “When we get together, we’ll start working on our strategies. For things.”

  The tension around his eyes faded, and he got that dreamy look. “Yeah, that’ll be great. Thanks.”

  It was so hard to gather my pride and keep my chin up. To not smack him on the back of the head and demand he notice me as more than a friend. But this wasn’t the time for that. I’d missed my time, and now it was too late.

  I told the others bye and took off down the hall for David. If anyone knew the pains of a broken heart, if anyone could commiserate with him right now, it was me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Camilla

  Hey, Camilla. Did you hear the latest about Karen?” Michelle, the girl kitty-corner to me in psych, leaned forward to whisper to me. She played with the ends of her thick brown braid.

  “Beyond what’s already buzzing around? Nope.” I shook my head and settled into my seat. My stomach was still in knots over that whole debacle three days ago. Luckily, Joshua had hung out with David for a bit after the cafeteria rejection and had managed to get the poor guy to stop hiding out in the bathroom. But videos of the scene were everywhere, all over Facebook and Twitter. Almost couldn’t escape it.

  While there were a few random douchebags ripping on David for getting shot down, most of the vitriol was aimed at Karen, who seemed to have found herself suddenly infamous over her harsh public rejection. Part of me felt really bad for her, due to the extreme comments being lobbed her way online, but the other part thought she could have handled the whole issue with more care. Like, maybe not be such a bitch, and pull him aside to let him down quietly.

  Something I probably should have thought of trying, instead of my nervous agreement to go with Zach. Sigh. Hindsight really was twenty-twenty.

  “Well,” Michelle said, “my brother said that David’s swim teammates swore not to ask her to prom because of how she treated him. And a couple of the other jock circles joined in as well. Some kind of bro solidarity, I guess.”

  “Wow.” Blackballed. Karen had to be upset about that, for sure. What was she going to do?

  Benjamin strolled across the front of the room, wearing a pair of perfectly faded jeans and a dark gray T-shirt. My stupid heart did that fluttery thing when our eyes locked. With as much carelessness as I could fake, I turned my attention back to my notebook. After leaving that note in his locker with my number on it, I hadn’t heard a peep from him. Not one text.

  I was a class-A idiot, obviously. I’d read too much into our in-class interaction on Monday. God, I wished I could go back in time and just not respond at all. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel so stupid.

  Yet he’d taken the time to draw a sketch of my face. And give it to me. Why do that if he was just going to ignore what I wrote? Maybe I’d slipped the note into the wrong locker, or maybe he never saw it.

  Should I ask?

  Mrs. Brandwright rushed into the classroom and plopped her stuff down on the desk. “Sorry, guys,” she said in a rush. “I had to pop by the library, and then I got distracted talking to teachers. Anyway. I have some lecture material, and then I want you to break into your project groups and start making plans for when you’re doing your experiments. The clock is ticking!”

  For the next twenty minutes, Mrs. Brandwright went over important notes on social mores and how they evolved over the decades as generations grew up and created new generations with new ideas. It was actually interesting to hear how different things were now from when she was a young kid, such as discussions of money, sex, religion, and politics in mixed-gender company being taboo. Time flew by.

  “Okay, that’s enough of that.” She wiped her chalk-covered hands and laughed when puffs of white floated to the ground. The class laughed too. “Man, do I get messy. Now it’s your turn to group together and finalize your plans. As you do, please keep in mind the gender and age of your targets. As I’ve shown in the lecture, those might impact the reaction you get and are worth noting.” After giving us a few more reminders about when the project was due, plus suggestions on where we could go, she waved us into our groups.

  We made our small circle again, and I grabbed a fresh piece of paper. Benjamin’s knee brushed against my lower thigh, and I swallowed. Grabbed my pencil tighter to keep from leaning toward him.

  “Well, Mrs. Brandwright had some good suggestions for where to go to meet a variety of people. Like a park, the mall, or a shopping plaza. Do you guys have a preference?” I looked at Carter, who shrugged. Eh, at least he was awake.

  Benjamin rubbed his jaw without looking at me. “Mall would be fine.” He flipped his notebook open and began writing a few notes.

  Okay. Succinct as ever. I shoved down the flare of disappointment in his deliberate lack of attention toward me. Obviously, he wanted to make sure I didn’t get any further mixed signals. Message received, dude. I made a mental note to stop acting so interested in whatever he was doing.

  “Mall it is, then.” I summed up what our chosen activities would be on the paper. “And what are our expected outcomes?” We were supposed to predict what we thought people would do, record the actual reactions, then compare and discuss it all.

  “I think old people will freak out,” Carter offered with a mumble.

  I gave an enthusiastic nod at him, glad he was actually participating for once. I wrote his answer down. “Yeah, probably so.”

  “Probably get mixed reactions from younger people, but they might laugh more than anything,” Benjamin offered, his attention still focused on his notebook. The page now had the start of some ornate line work in the margins. As he lifted it to flip to a new page, I saw a book tucked underneath.

  I couldn’t help it; I tilted my head and peered at the title. The Canterbury Tales, written in a fancy swirling medieval script, and I saw the top of a woman’s headdress near the upper-right corner. Interesting choice of reading material.

  “Are you two free on Sunday?” Benjamin asked, and I blinked and looked away from his desk, guilty at having been caught staring, despite my promise to myself not five minutes ago
. So much for acting disinterested in him. I was lame.

  I nodded in response to his question.

  Carter did as well. He sighed and leaned his head against his hand. Apparently, nodding was hard work for him.

  “Let’s meet at noon. In the food court.” Benjamin dropped his pen and leaned back in his chair, rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Sounds good.” Curiosity burned in my belly as I peeked once again at the book on his desk. “What are you reading?” I asked, even though I obviously knew the answer. I nodded toward the book hidden under his notebook. The real question I wanted to ask was why, but that seemed too open-ended and risky.

  “It’s for English, but I read it last year during Christmas break. The Canterbury Tales.” Benjamin was in advanced English, whereas I was in honors. Different curriculum material. “Have you read it? It’s written in Middle English, but it comes with a translation.” He took it out and showed me the cover, with a bunch of medieval people riding horses across a hilly landscape.

  Apparently, all I needed to do to get him to talk was discuss books. Interesting. “No, our English teacher is firmly contemporary.” Ms. Wickliffe preferred for our class to read more modern material, from the twentieth century on. No translations needed in hopes that we’d enjoy the reading more. Plus, as a hard-core feminist, she was super vocal about avoiding the works of dead white guys as much as possible.

  His shrug was casual, but I saw a flare of something deeper in his eyes. “It’s actually funny. Lots of bawdy old jokes. ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ is one of my favorites.”

  “That sounds cool. Did you—” I stopped myself right in the nick of time from blurting out to ask if he’d gotten the note with my number. What was with me?

  He blinked. “Did I what?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Never mind.” If he did get it, I didn’t want to know why he didn’t reply. And if he didn’t get it for some reason, maybe it was better that way.

  He stared at me for a moment, and I fought the urge to squirm. I just kept my chin up and stared back, like nothing was bothering me. This guy had to suspect he was getting to me, and for some stubborn reason, I didn’t want him to know.