this?” Tiffany asked.
“Prague.”
She laughed. “Come on, seriously.”
I smiled. “You don’t believe me?”
She shook her head, and placed the frame back in my comic book box. “You’re silly. By the way, you really should stop reading comic books. They’re for kids.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t want to grow up to become one of those sad comic book guys that live in their mothers’ basements, do you?” she said, coming over to the bed where I was seated, to tug on my ear.
“I guess not.”
“You guess not?”
“No, I don’t,” I clarified.
She grinned. “Good. I’m so over boys.” And then, she leaned down and pressed her lips against mine.
Our first kiss. My first real kiss, if you didn’t count Mi-Yao’s—and most days, I didn’t.
We grew closer as summer drew nearer. We never called our hangouts ‘dates’, because Tiffany didn’t like to put labels on things. For that reason, we never used the words ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ either. But it was okay, because we made out a lot, and I assumed that our relationship status went without saying. At the end of the school year, I asked her to go to the senior prom with me, and she accepted.
“Good thing you asked me,” she said, as we walked home from our last day of high school.
“Why?”
“I was hearing rumors,” she told me, “that Joey was going to ask me to go with him.”
“Joey who?”
“The only Joey worth talking about,” she said.
“Joey from the basketball team?”
She smiled at me. “What do you think?”
“He’s got a lot of muscles. Too many muscles, I’d say,” I said. “His face is a little too Calvin Klein for my taste too. I mean, who needs a face that good looking, am I right? It’s ridiculous, I think. And that hair. He must spend a fortune on hair gel every year.”
“So, he’s cute,” she said.
“Sure, if you’re into that sort of thing.” I shrugged.
She laughed. “You should work out too, if you’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” I said. “And I’ve been working out like you asked me to. I can do fifty pushups now.”
She poked at my scrawny muscles. “Double that, and I’ll be impressed.”
“Okay.”
“You want to look great in your tux for prom, don’t you?”
Prom was in a week, so I doubted any working out I did now would show by then. But I smiled and nodded anyway. “Yeah.”
“Good.” She grabbed the scruff of my neck and pulled me in for a kiss.
I was very nervous about prom. I had not bothered going to my middle school prom, or my junior prom. This was the first time I would be going to a dance with a girl. This was the first time I would be expected to dance with a girl. Unless you counted that time in New York with Mi-Yao, when we tried to teach other break-dancing at the top of the Statue of Liberty after closing hours. I didn’t—not on most days.
Tiffany got my mom and her parents to split the cost of a limousine. It would come pick me up, before swinging by her house for her, her girlfriends and their boyfriends.
On D-day, Mom was so excited that she hung outside my door the entire time that I got dressed. When I stepped out, I was greeted with multiple flashes from her camera.
“Oh my baby,” she cooed, fighting back tears. “You look so handsome.” She hugged me really tightly.
“Don’t cry into my tux mom,” I sighed. “We can’t afford to stain this thing in any way.”
“If that’s the price for a moment with my son, then I’ll gladly pay it five times over,” she murmured into my chest.
I hugged her back for a little bit, before whispering, “You wouldn’t though, right?”
“Nope,” she said, leaning back and rubbing my tux down. “We’re returning this tux the way we got it, so watch the punch will you?”
I smiled. “I will, Mom.”
She kissed my cheek. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Mom.”
Twenty minutes later, the limo arrived. Mom waved as we drove off.
Tiffany lived a long way from the school, on a piece of private property around the woodlands. We actually drove past the area where Mi-Yao would hide her pod on the way to Tiffany’s house.
The drive felt longer than it should have, because I was alone in the back. Also, the seats were less plush than I imagined they would be, and the music playing from the speakers was Celine Deon ballads. I looked for the CD player, and then tried to get the driver to change the music, but either he couldn’t hear me or he was ignoring my knocks on his divider. I contemplated opening the complimentary bottle of sparkling juice, but then decided to wait till Tiffany was in the car with me.
I was glad when we finally pulled up at her Victorian house. I grabbed the corsage I’d brought for Tiffany, and jumped out of the limo. I leapt up the stairs to her front door.
After ringing the bell a few times, Tiffany’s father came to the door, a short graying man in a bathrobe.
“Good evening, sir,” I said.
He looked me up and down. “Who are you?”
“Peter, sir.”
“Peter?” he grunted.
“I’m Tiffany’s boyfriend?”
He frowned at me. “Tiffany doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“Um, well we don’t really use labels,” I said. “But we’ve met three times.”
He shook his head. “If we had, I would’ve remembered. I never forget a face.”
That was what he had said the last two times I’d met him.
I put up a smile anyway. “I’m here to pick up Tiffany for the prom.”
“Huh?” he said. “Tiffany already left for the prom.”
I stared at him, stumped.
“Well,” he said, after at least sixty seconds of dumbfounded silence. “Are you going to say something?”
“Are…are you sure?” I stammered.
He rolled his eyes. “Look kid, I’ve got a bathtub that’s probably overflowing by now. If you’re supposed to be with my daughter, I’m sure she’ll meet you at the party.”
“Okay,” I said.
He nodded, and closed the door. I got out my cell phone and tried to call Tiffany, but her phone was off.
I walked back to the limo, and knocked on the driver’s window. He let it down by a sliver.
“We’re going to go straight to the school,” I said.
My words were barely out, before he closed up his window again. I sighed, and got back into the limo.
Other kids were just arriving when we got to the school. It did not feel great being one of the few students walking in alone.
The prom theme was ‘Winter Wonderland’, which meant the gymnasium was decked in sparkly white trees, Christmas ornaments, and unconvincing mounds of snow made out of papier-mâché. I looked and asked around for Tiffany, but nobody seemed to have seen her.
I got a cup of punch, and sat at one of the empty tables, feeling wretched.
As I drank, two girls sitting behind me talked. I could just hear them over Kelly Clarkson.
“Oh my god,” Girl One was saying, “Are you serious?”
“I swear. I heard he and his friends picked them all up in a limo. They’ll probably be driving around town, goofing off till they decide it’s time to be fashionably late,” Girl Two said.
Girl One giggled. “I’m so jealous. But who knew he liked Tiffany? I thought she was with some dork.”
“Tiffany? Come on. She was probably just playing mind games with Joey, you know? Bait ‘em before you catch ‘em.”
They cracked up into fits of laughter.
I got up, and started to walk away. Then, my walk turned into a jog. Then, my jog turned into a run. I bumped into a few people; pushed between a few couples. I had to get out of there, away from everyone.
My eyes were stinging when I reached the sc
hool main entrance. And then, I stopped.
Mi-Yao was standing on the front steps, in a purple full-length gown. She had grown her blond hair a little longer, so that it brushed only slightly past her naked shoulders. She looked nervous. She smiled.
I swallowed.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” I said back. And then, I noticed that she didn’t have a translator around her neck.
“How do I look?” she asked. Her natural voice was a little higher, a little more musical, than the voice her translator had provided.
“You—“ I said, taking a step closer. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she said, her lips spreading into a grin. “Where is your date?”
“She’s not here yet,” I said.
“May I keep you company until she arrives?” she said, and she offered me her hand.
I hesitated.
“Come on,” she said. “Take a chance with me.”
“Yeah.” I said, smiling and taking her hand. “I would like that.”
The rest of the night flew by. I danced with Mi-Yao, fast and silly-like at first, and then slower when the DJ switched to softer music. I had forgotten how much I liked the way she smelled: like lemons and rain. Suddenly, there was no dance floor, and there were no dancers. There was just us, the touching of skin against skin, and the swelling melody that kept us walking on air.
At some point, she led me off the dance floor and I followed her.
She took me to the basketball court outside, where her pod was parked, invisible. Then, she led me inside. The interior was not like I remembered it; for one thing, there was a bed.
Mi-Yao commanded the lights to dim, as we helped each other out of our clothes, our lips somehow finding each other in the midst of the storm. I barely knew what I was doing, but I couldn’t say the same for her. She took the reins as her body melded with mine, her skin went from cool, to warm, to burning. Her
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