The Prom Read online

  But it won’t slip away.

  Not here. Not with my mom watching.

  I want to make it clear: I’m not ashamed to be a lesbian. I love love, and I love my girlfriend. I love quiet murmurs and secret kisses. I love snuggling next to her on her grandmother’s strangely velveteen couch, watching movies when the rain presses in from the west. I love that our hands are exactly the same size, but she has tiny feet with super long toes. When she sings, I love her even more. So much that it actually hurts, like there’s a hand reaching in to squeeze my heart until it’s a diamond.

  She flickers like a firefly, because her hair is gold but almost brown; her eyes are blue but almost green. When she takes off her glasses, I like to press my nose to hers and just gaze in. It makes her laugh and blush, her cheeks suddenly pink as her lips. It’s hard to whisper our love instead of shouting it to the skies.

  But the thing is, my mother, she’s not ready for it. She’s fragile right now. She’s been fragile since my father left. It was so easy for him. He just packed a gym bag and waltzed out into the night. Started a new family—well, based on when my half sibling was born, he started the new family before he walked out.

  And since then, Mom has lived in this delicate crystal bubble. She thinks if she goes to church more, if she prays harder, if she cleans the house better, if she loses twenty pounds, if she raises me right, if she finally nails that pot roast recipe her mother-in-law gave her, Dad will come home. You can see the belief sparking in her eyes; she’s a transformer hit by lightning. Everything pours out, hot and fast and endlessly.

  That fire means I have to be the best daughter. My grades have to be all As, with weighted classes so my GPA breaks that 4.0 ceiling. My safety schools have to be other people’s first picks. I have to teach Sunday school, and my kids have to have the best crafts, the ones that make their parents tear up at the preciousness.

  But I’m president of the student council because I wanted that. Because I thought I could change things that needed to be changed and strengthen things that needed to be stronger. Still, I have to go to the prom in a lilac, spaghetti-strapped, knee-length dress that Mom worked sixty-hour weeks for a month to afford. It has Swarovski crystals on the bodice. Swarovski. Crystals.

  And why? Well, she’s the president of the PTA (remember: perfect in all things), and they’re the chaperone hosts of the prom. This year will be perfect, and it will be perfect with me in that dress, on the arm of a boy in a tux.

  Some boy. Any boy. Mom doesn’t know who—but she sure has suggestions. Like Paolo, for instance, the exchange student who goes to our church. He’s a real-life college sophomore and looks like TV sophomores look: cut and sculpted, walking with knowing hips. Don’t get me wrong: he’s hot. But he’s also secretly sleeping with our choir director, so shhh, that’s between us.

  The point is, my mom’s bubble is going to burst. She thinks she’s working domestic magic, but she’s really just lying to herself. Lying to the world. Any minute, everything is going to come crashing down on her. The spell will end, and I need to be able to put her back together again.

  That’s why I don’t want to be the clock that strikes her midnight. And that’s why I’m not-arguing-but-discussing-seriously the prom with my girlfriend. She wants one magical night, and I want that, too. But we live in Edgewater, Indiana, and signing that list with our names—Emma Nolan, Alyssa Greene—side by side, that’s more than buying two tickets to the school gym.

  Emma knows, better than anybody, how this story goes. Her mom and dad still go to my church. Every week. Same pew. Same stony faces gazing up at the stained-glass Lord behind the pulpit. He gathers lambs at his feet; his hair is almost golden when the light streams through.

  My dad’s already gone. My mom’s in la-la land, probably complete with magical dancing and show tunes. For me, saying yes to the prom is more than putting on a dress and buying a corsage. It’s choosing to be the flawless, ideal daughter or to pick up a bat and shatter my mother into a million pieces.

  And still, I want to fly free and say yes and kiss Emma under the glimmering light of a borrowed disco ball. So, we’re discussing. Not arguing. I don’t want to fight. It’s spring and Indiana is beautiful again. Between us, and the blue skies, and the budding pear trees, and the tulips sending up little green tendrils toward the sun, I’m leaning toward yes. I want to say yes.

  We’ll see.

  3. Subterfuge

  EMMA

  I have one hundred dollars in my pocket, but I’m not approaching the ticket table just yet.

  I can’t; Nick Leavel is putting on a production of PROMPOSAL! right here in the Hall of Champions. Standing room only, but mostly because it’s the front hallway of a high school and nobody who values their life is going to sit on (a) the stairs or (b) the FCK prom-ticket table.

  Excitement runs through the unwitting crowd. Nick has a brigade of junior varsity guys behind him. Carrying poster boards close to their chests, they have (what I’m guessing are) gas station carnations clutched in their teeth. Strobed out in sunglasses, his letter jacket, and the shiniest shoes I’ve ever laid eyes on, Nick puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles sharply.

  Everyone in the Hall of Champions stops and turns. I kid you not, Nick pauses to take a quick gander at the gaggles who came to witness his wonder and glory. It’s not enough for him to prompose to Kaylee Brooks, he has to make sure he’s going all out. When you’re the star center of the Golden Weevils, you have to shine.

  “Kaylee,” Nick says, taking her hands. He spins her around, and hilariously, he has to untangle their arms a little—he pretends it was all smooth. His slick dress shoes scrape against the floor as he turns to kneel in front of her. He looks up, but he doesn’t say anything.

  Instead, he nods and the junior varsity swoop in. Like, you can tell they’ve practiced this. Standing in a semicircle behind Nick, they drop the carnations at Kaylee’s feet. And then, one by one, they flip the poster boards.

  On the one hand, this is practiced and thoughtful and the tiny sliver of sentimentality lodged deep in my heart makes me smile. But let’s be real, it’s a bunch of tenth-graders fumbling with poster boards like it’s a third-grade play about making flowers grow. Plus, it’s happening in a high school hallway. In front of the yellowed JUST SAY NO posters. It’s legitimately hilarious, but I keep my laughter to myself.

  “Kaylee,” the first JVer says, holding up his sign. It has a lot of writing on it, but helpfully for the audience, Nick reads it aloud. He literally glances over his shoulder to make sure he’s in the right place.

  Clutching Kaylee’s hands, he says, “Girl,” like he’s a late-night DJ, “ever since freshman first string, everybody has been all up on this. You know I’m the OG around here, but it’s lonely at the top.”

  My eyes roll so hard, I feel a little twinge before they roll back. Because, let me clarify for you: this OG is the whitest kid in our mostly white school. Light brown hair, pale blue eyes, he’s the tallest, foamiest glass of milk in southern Indiana. Kaylee’s lapping it up like a rescue kitten, too.

  The next poster board falls, and I hover near the stairs because yes, I’m watching this, but no, I don’t want to be caught watching this. As I cling to the straps of my backpack, I shiver suddenly. Not from cold, or excess cynicism—it’s her.

  When Alyssa gets close, I tingle everywhere. Everywhere. She doesn’t stand too close, because nobody knows. But she’s near enough that I catch a hint of the coconut oil she uses in her hair, the rich vanilla from her hand lotion, and if I’m making her sound delicious, well, obviously.

  When Nick gets to the third poster board in his set (Then something happened, girl, you turned my life around), Alyssa murmurs to me, “Are you sorry we’re not doing this?”

  I muster a smile. “What, sonnets in the key of duh? Not sorry at all.”

  Her fingers brush the back of my arm, and she says, �
��You know what I mean.”

  Her skin is like silk on mine. I want to wrap myself in her, bury my face in the warm curve of her neck. I’d love to get on one knee for her, or write her a song and sing it from the balcony here at school. I really would. But it’s easier to be sarcastic about something I’m never going to get than to admit that I want it. I’d go beyond big if Alyssa would let me. But she won’t, so why think about it?

  With a quick look back, I say, “I just want to go to prom with you.”

  “About that,” she replies, and she already sounds like she’s negotiating with Principal Hawkins for off-campus lunch for seniors. Not a promising start to a conversation I thought we were almost done having. She says, “I had a thought.”

  Welp. Time to pull down the metal shutters and chain off the old heart. Deliberately, I stare at Nick and his All-Star Carnation Revue, my brain full of Wonder Bread romance that they don’t even appreciate.

  Sure, yeah, Kaylee jumps up and down and makes Wookiee sounds before she says yes, and maybe Nick is into that. Behind her, her best friend Shelby pretends to be happy, but it’s obvious by the way she stares longingly at her boyfriend, she’s peeved this moment isn’t hers.

  But this is a show we’ve all seen before on YouTube, except with way worse production values. It’s so easy for them that they don’t even try. They don’t have to try; people will remember this like a classic movie scene because it happens all the time in movies . . . for them.

  I don’t want my disappointment to come out when I answer Alyssa, but it might. My throat’s so tight, I can’t tell. “Let’s hear this thought.”

  “We’ll go together,” Alyssa says diplomatically, “but let’s sign up separately today. I need to be able to ease my mom into this. I think she’s starting to come around.”

  I almost make a Wookiee sound of my own, and not a cute one. Baffled, I turn to look at her. “What’s the difference between telling her today and telling her three weeks from today?”

  “She’s not ready yet, and you know she has this place on lockdown,” Alyssa says. “If we buy tickets together, she’ll know before I get home. I want to tell her. Present it exactly the right way, and that takes time.”

  The argument is there, and fair. The longer we wait to buy tickets, the less likely there will be tickets to buy. Since neither of us will be arriving on the underwhelming arm of a James Madison Golden Weevil, time is of the essence.

  But, I point out, “I’m going to have to put down somebody’s name. And you realize this means we’re paying for two extra tickets we’re not going to use. That’s basically a gay tax.”

  “I’ll pay you back,” Alyssa says. She touches the back of my arm again, a secret touch no one should see because we’re lingering under the stairs like bridge trolls. She swears, “I’ll make this up to you.”

  Cash money is not on offer. Instead, it’s everything. It’s one night that’s just ours, without hiding and sneaking and pretending we’re something we’re not. And I know it’s hard—only out gay kid in my entire school, remember? And also the gay kid who didn’t get to tell her parents on her own terms. And, finalement, the gay kid who lives with Grandma now. Truly, honestly, really, I get it. Lying about who you’re with isn’t quite as hard as lying about who you are, and yet . . .

  “I just want to dance with you,” I tell her, as I reach back and catch her hand, our fingers touching. For just a moment, she holds my hand, and we’re together in the bright light of day. I see no one but her; I swear, I feel her heartbeat instead of mine. My lips sting for a kiss, but I let go before she can. Not here. Not now.

  “Is that a yes?” she asks.

  “Watch this,” I say, some weird strain of bravado flowing through me. I walk straight for the FCK table, because my thought is, I’m going to buy those tickets right now and show my girlfriend I’ll do whatever it takes to have the most romantic night of our lives together.

  Buuuut, I fail at the down low, because our star center just promposed, so of course all eyes are on the sign-up table as he pays for tickets while his girl watches, clutching a bouquet of sophomore-slobbered flowers. Now everybody’s huddled around the table, buzzing about the spectacle, and now THE ONLY (OUT) GAY GIRL IN EDGEWATER just hopped in line.

  The FCK doesn’t care who buys prom tickets. They want their money (25 percent of ticket sales goes to their club to—I don’t know—buy luxury pesticides or something), and my fee disappears into the lockbox before I can say hello. Breanna Lo slaps down two tickets, ready to inscribe my name and my date’s name on them, while Milo Potts shoves the clipboard under my nose.

  “Your name here,” he says, tapping the first column. “Date’s name here.”

  I say something really intelligent, like “Uh,” then sign my name very slowly. I even say it out loud, as if Breanna might not know who I am. Emma Nolan, that’s me, that’s for sure, definitely write down Emma Nolan on that first ticket!

  “Who are you going with?” Kaylee asks facetiously. This is quite possibly the first time Kaylee has spoken to me since ninth-grade English, when she asked me to trade seats because the fluorescent lights were, and I quote, making her eyelashes twitch.

  Shelby perches at her elbow, Kaylee’s perpetual garbage minion. “Yeah, who are you going with, Emma? I didn’t know we had more than one lesbo in town.”

  This is when I want to look back. When I want to turn and see Alyssa standing there. The strength of her dark eyes would hold me up. We’d be connected; I wouldn’t be alone. But that would be endlessly obvious. I can’t do that to her. So I stiffen my neck like it’s a vampire convention and stare at the blank line. Date’s name. Date’s name.

  “You have to have a date,” Breanna says curtly. The daggers in her eyes imply that I’d better not have just made her ruin a ticket for nothing.

  “Your left hand doesn’t count,” Kaylee says. Nick snorts a laugh that makes me take back any benefit of the doubt I might have given him for his cheese-factory promposal. I’m also a big enough person that I don’t stab him with the pen when he says, “Righty doesn’t either.”

  Oh, the devastating wit.

  Clenching my teeth, I scribble the first name I can think of, and it’s not my fault I thought of it, it just happened. Here’s hoping that the gathered brain trust isn’t bright enough to make the connection. The only thing I can say in my defense is that she’s a cute brunette and I have a type.

  Kaylee reads over the top of the clipboard. “Anna Kendrick . . . son?”

  “You don’t know her,” I mutter.

  “Is she an exchange student or something?” Shelby asks.

  “Sure.”

  Nick detaches his lips from Kaylee’s ear long enough to ask, “Then why don’t you exchange her for a guy?”

  With every bit of patience I have, I ignore them. I thrust my hand under Breanna’s nose and say, “Tickets, please.”

  Kaylee all but falls back against Nick. “I can’t wait to meet your really real gay prom date, Emma! Anna Kendrick . . . son sounds so cute. Doesn’t she sound cute, Nick?”

  He twines his arms around her, like she’s bricks and he’s ivy. The combined IQ is about right, anyway. With his chin resting on her shoulder, Nick nuzzles Kaylee’s ear in a way that I find genuinely cannibalistic, then he spills a tanker’s worth of smarm when he replies, “Not as cute as you, babe.”

  Without another word, I tuck the tickets into my backpack and turn. The smile I was about to shoot Alyssa dies. She’s not even turned this way.

  Her mother has appeared from nowhere, as she is wont to do. There are days when I see Mrs. Greene around here more than I see Principal Hawkins, which is saying something. She might be the slightest bit overinvested in all things Alyssa.

  Mrs. Greene holds both of Alyssa’s hands. I can tell they’re talking about the prom, because Mrs. Greene keeps gesturing toward the table. The look on
Alyssa’s face is somewhere south of nauseated, but she nods. She nods and smiles and then takes one mechanical step in my direction.

  There’s a whole dance to being in and being out, and I know the steps. I’m supposed to disappear now. So I do, ducking my head and drifting past Nick’s JV chorus line. They cough, “Gay, gay, gay,” as I pass, and as Alyssa passes me, she says nothing.

  Escaping, I chant back to myself, She’s worth it, she’s worth it, she’s worth it.

  4. Strategic

  ALYSSA

  I think—no, I know—I am the worst person in the world.

  Mom shows up at school far too often these days, and this was the positively worst time. I didn’t hear what Kaylee and her crew said to Emma, but I saw the look on her face. Her heart-shaped, freckled face, her face that I love more than any other face in the world.

  When I have to pretend we’re not together, it’s like giant hands reaching down to break me in two. I feel the break, right in the middle of my chest. It exposes my marrow and my nerves, and I’m nothing but a walking wound.

  “What’s all that about?” my mother asks sharply. As we walk around Emma, we both hear the JVers barking, “Gay, gay, gay.”

  They do it to Emma sometimes, like it’s supposed to be an insult. I guess they think it is an insult, instead of a statement of fact. Most of the time, I say something. But most of the time, I don’t have my mother frog-marching me up to the prom-ticket table.

  I swallow my anger, my frustration, my embarrassment. I push down the hurt I feel because I can’t say anything, and the shame that I don’t. I put on my perfect-daughter smile and shake my head like it’s light and worry-free. “No idea. Wow, a hundred dollars. I don’t know if I have—”