The Real Prom Queens of Westfield High Read online

  Making my escape behind Kelly and Amy, I can feel the curious secretary trying to catch my eye. I just focus on the coffee-stained carpet the whole way to the door.

  Thankfully, eighth period is over by the time we step back out into the sunshine, and it’s time for us to go straight to our buses. Except for Kelly, who lives in the sprawling trailer park across the street from the school. From my bus window, I see her, head down, lit cigarette already in hand, as she moves across Westfield High’s huge front lawn.

  I’m startled by a tapping on the glass window next to my face and see Marnie giving me her patented raised eyebrow. It’s not especially humid today, but her hair is a ball of frizz like usual. Looking at her flushed cheeks, it feels like the reality show is a big lie that’s stuck in my throat. How can I not tell her?

  I shake my head and pretend to strangle myself to indicate the guidance office sucks, and she laughs. I think about how much she would freak out over my news. The only reality shows she ever watches are the sewing ones, since she sews most of her own clothes. But here’s the thing—Marnie is horrible at sewing. I mean really awful. Like, the clothes she makes are hideous. She knows it too. It’s just her way of expressing her anti-corporate branding resistance. She also pulls the brand-name labels out of the things she buys at the thrift store or uses fabric paint to draw strike-out buster signs through logos. She’s all about rejecting consumerism.

  I look at the hand-sewn dress she’s wearing today and think it’s a good thing she’s cute enough to make loose threads and lumpy seams work.

  She and I agree to talk on the phone after school using our highly evolved top secret best-friend sign language. Which basically means she puts her thumb and pinky out and holds them to her ear like a phone and mouths the words “call me” while I nod in agreement. She pats the window before moving toward her bus, and I have to resist the urge to knock on the glass and spill my news.

  But it’s not as if there’s any best-friend secret way to pantomime the fact that I’ve been invited to star in a reality show based on how much of a loser I am. And now I’ve essentially begun lying to the one person who never thinks of me as the Elf Ucker.

  I must admit, it would be pretty sweet if the show helped me lose that damned nickname for senior year, but I have no idea how I’d keep it from Marnie that long. Besides the fact that she can read my mind, I suck at lying in general. Like, even when I start in with my daydreaming during a conversation, the other person can totally tell, which is probably why I need my own reality show and a whole team of professionals to make me socially acceptable.

  Just as I ease into my comfortable gutter of self-loathing, who should come bouncing up the aisle but my darling little sister, Josie, and one of her upbeat friends. Josie is so bubbly and popular, it makes me wonder how we can possibly be from the same gene pool.

  She ignores me as she bounces by, but I grab her arm and pull her into the seat beside me. She and I might not have much in common, but she’s family, and so she is one of the only two people I’m allowed to tell about the show.

  “Ow, hey,” she says. “I’m sitting with Tiffany.”

  “I have to tell you something,” I hiss.

  Josie slaps my arm. “Oh my God. You’re pregnant! Mom’s going to kill you.”

  I resist the urge to slap her back hard. “I’m a virgin, stupid.” I stop and ask, “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes, of course, but I don’t know what goes on in your world. You could’ve lost your virginity along the way.”

  “Like I would somehow misplace my virginity!” I say loudly enough that heads whip in my direction. Tiffany stops whining, “Josie, when are you coming back here?” and the whole bus goes silent. Josie stifles a giggle, and I fling my head back and pretend to be passed out.

  Once the bus is moving and interest in the Elf Ucker’s sexual status has finally worn off, I open my eyes and whisper to Josie, “You know your obsession with reality shows?”

  Josie nods, and we’re tossed against the seat as the bus lurches left.

  “Well, what do you think of me being on one?”

  My sister sits, blinking at me, and asks, “They’re making a reality show about you losing your virginity?”

  “Shhhh! Can you please drop the subject of my virginity?”

  She shakes her hair. “So uptight.”

  “Shut up and listen.” Scanning for potential eavesdroppers, I launch into a description of the show in hushed tones. As I share the whole story, Josie’s wide eyes grow wider. She begins bouncing more and more excitedly, making the green seat squeak as I lay out Mickey and Victoria’s “amazing, life-changing opportunity.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, “I mean it would obviously be nice to ditch the Elf Ucker thing.” I don’t actually say the words Elf Ucker, just mouth them silently, but Josie knows what I’m talking about. “Well? What do you think?”

  Words burst out of my sister. “This is it! I really thought I’d be on my own show first, but this is the way this sort of thing happens. The premise sounds like an elaborate version of Switch. Have you seen that one?”

  I shake my head no.

  “It’s where they take people who have a dream of becoming someone else and make it come true.”

  “I never asked to be turned into the dang Prom Queen.”

  “I know, I know,” she says. “And it’s not as if they’re going to succeed. I mean, talk about L-O-L. But how can you turn down this chance to be on television? Oh my goodness, you could actually stop being a tremendous loser. Think of what this can mean for me.”

  “Um, okay, so I’m not exactly focused on the impact the show will have on your life…”

  “Oh, Shannon.” Josie hugs me. “We can finally put the stupid Elf Ucker thing behind us!” She says “Elf Ucker” loud enough to turn a few heads and make me blush.

  “Who knows?” Josie draws back. “With the show’s help, you might even become friends with Grace Douglas.”

  “I will never be friends with Grace, trust me.” Josie doesn’t know that Grace is the one who came up with the Elf Ucker in the first place. That information only adds to my humiliation.

  She pouts. “You could at least try becoming friends with Grace Douglas.”

  “There is no way Mom will even go for this.” I pull out the thick stack of papers Mickey gave me. “You really think she’ll sign this mega-contract plus let them install cameras all over our house?”

  Josie absentmindedly fixes her hair and sits back against the pleather bus seat. “Of course, I’ll need to pick a personality type…maybe I’ll be your studious little sister and people watching will wonder how someone so cute can be so smart and serious. Or maybe…”

  I tune my sister out as she excitedly plots her onscreen strategy. Maybe Josie’s right. The show itself sounds pretty cool, something I wouldn’t mind watching.

  But do I really want to see it unfold from the inside?

  ***

  When I get home, I nearly have to sit on my hands to avoid calling Marnie right away. The two of us do everything together. Even something boring like a trip to JippyLube to get the oil changed in the old Coroda my “Aunt” Kate gave me turns fun if Marnie comes along. I picture the two of us bouncing our butts on the stacks of tires until I knocked one over, sending tires rolling in every direction. We laughed so hard as we chased them down that nobody in the shop could even get mad at us.

  Marnie and I will probably be just like my mom and my Aunt Kate. Best friends since the third grade, they may not have grand tales of wild exploits, but they’ve always had each other. Through Mom’s divorce and Aunt Kate’s breast cancer, they’ve stuck together. I try to imagine what it might be like to be popular next year with dozens of friends, and I smile at the image of multiple Marnies.

  My phone lights up with a picture of her with her tongue rolled and her eyes crossed. Automatically, my hand reaches to answer it, and I practically have to slap it away with my other hand. Missing my talk with Marnie aft
er school feels very wrong, but I need to talk to Mom about this whole thing before I figure out what to tell my best friend.

  Marnie and I keep secrets together, not from each other. Her secret crush on James, my secret obsession with the movie Pretty Woman—for years we’ve even shared similar secret hobbies. That is, secret up until Marnie had to go all public with the stupid Future Homemakers of America club. She’s tried to convince me I should be proud of my talent, but how can I be proud when the Elf Ucker finger cot catastrophe all stems from this stupid hobby?

  How could I be proud of a hobby as lame as quilting? That’s right, I’m a quilter. I’d be a big hit with the Amish.

  The mini-condom that started the whole Elf Ucker thing is actually a handy-dandy insider’s trick to help with hand quilting, so the needle doesn’t slip. Which pretty much makes the whole thing even sadder.

  It all started with a sleepover at Marnie’s house the same night her mom was hosting a stitch-n-bitch with about a dozen women. Marnie and I were still pretty young, like, maybe sixth grade or so, and in our defense, nothing on television was more interesting than the bitch-fest happening in the living room.

  I’d learned from my mom and Aunt Kate that with grown-ups, all you have to do is sit very quiet and still and wait for them to gradually forget you’re there. That’s when you get to hear the good stuff. So Marnie and I parked ourselves outside the sewing circle and got busy disappearing into the background. It was working too. Mrs. Engelbert was just launching in about Mr. Engelbert’s inadequate sexual maneuvers when, wouldn’t you know it, Marnie’s mom noticed us sitting there listening. Instead of just chasing us out of the room, like my mom would’ve done, she changed the subject and included us in piecing her quilt together.

  It was like a giant puzzle but with colors and patterns that had to blend together. Somehow mixing and matching the fabrics made sense to me in a way that’s hard to describe. It was almost like hearing a new song that seems familiar, and then when you open your mouth, you discover that you can already sing it. Like it was inside you all along.

  So now, I’ll be flipping through a fashion magazine, looking at all the makeup that I have no clue how to use, and I’ll turn the page to some knee-length, brightly patterned wrap dress on a model with a severe eating disorder. Instead of thinking, Gee, I think I’ll skip lunch to look like that, like any normal, painfully insecure and damaged teenage girl, I go, Wow, the material of that dress would look awesome in a Log Cabin quilt design.

  A lot of the time, when it seems like I’m daydreaming, I’m actually constructing new shapes and patterns in my mind. For instance, the day Grace tripped me in the hallway as a part of her ongoing mission to make my high school experience pure hell, I sat in English class afterward envisioning a quilt called Crushing Grace Douglas’s Face with an English Literature Textbook. It had a Shakespeare-patterned background and a nice swirly design with lines of text and lots of red.

  As stupid as I think quilting is, I’m hopelessly into it. Marns and I spend lots of time sitting in her bedroom as she constructs her unique outfits and I quilt. This is probably one of the many reasons I’m not exactly on my way to accessorizing my head with a tiara come prom night. In fact, I can picture Marnie and me falling into a laughing heap at the idea of me becoming the Prom Queen.

  ***

  “No, no, absolutely not,” Mom says as soon as I’ve gotten five minutes of her attention to tell her about the show. I didn’t even get to the part where I spend my summer at Prom Queen Camp.

  “Those reality shows are destroying lives, honey,” she says as she scans the massive stack of contract pages. “I hate the fact that Josie even watches them. They edit people’s conversations and rearrange everything to appear more dramatic. Not to mention this insane release they expect me to sign.” She points to a paragraph that she apparently finds particularly disgusting. “If anything goes wrong, there’ll be no legal recourse!”

  “Okay, Mom? Take a breath,” I say. “You’re a great lawyer and can probably negotiate some stuff in there.” I slide the contract out of her hand since its presence is not helping. “I want you to think about what a great opportunity this can be. The prize money can help us out with bills, and you can stop working so hard.” I look at her meaningfully as I add, “We’ll be able to spend more time together as a family.”

  I’m aiming for her weak spot, and let me tell you, Mom’s guilt over working as much as she does is so soft and gooey, it’s like a giant toasted marshmallow with a bull’s-eye painted on it.

  “They may even give me a new car!” I say, which is overshooting because, apparently, Mom does not feel at all guilty that I’m stuck driving Aunt Kate’s old Coroda.

  She shakes her head no.

  “She should get this chance, Mom,” Josie speaks up from where she’s been hovering close by. “They will be fixing her socially. Do you have any idea how much help Shannon needs?”

  Mom raises her eyebrows. It isn’t very often that Josie and I double-team her, which is why it can be so effective when we do. Mom shakes her head in disbelief, which is a good sign she realizes we’re determined to wear her down.

  “If becoming popular is something you care about, why don’t you just work on your people skills?” Mom says. “Josie, you can help her—without involving nationwide viewers. Have you even thought about how embarrassing this could end up being?”

  I am, of course, familiar with the concept of manufactured drama among the contestants-slash-participants-slash-stars of reality shows. But really, who wants to watch real reality? I may as well sit at our bay window watching the little old couple across the street argue with each other. We call them the Bickersons, and let me tell you, they can get into it over anything. Whether or not the right front tire of their car is low on air—it’s not. Whether or not it’s going to rain—it did. Whether or not Mrs. Bickerson needs to “shut the hell up already”—she does. Sorry, tangent. I did warn you.

  As I’ve been daydreaming, Josie has been trying to work Mom over, and I tune in just as she blurts out, “Did you know Shannon’s been getting bullied at school for over a year now?”

  Mom swings on me with her nostrils flared. “What?”

  “Thanks a bunch, Jos,” I say, and she mouths sorry and heads to her bedroom. Mom asks me if it’s true.

  “I’ve been getting lightly bullied off and on. Mostly on. But doing the show would put an end to that.”

  Mom grabs the bridge of her nose. “Please tell me you’re not getting called a slut.” She takes a deep breath.

  “Not exactly. It’s just one mean girl that I can totally handle. Don’t worry.” Mom presses me for details, and seeing how upset she is makes the pain fresh and raw all over again. “I’m sorry, Mom.” I can’t stop the tears in my eyes. “I didn’t want you to know.”

  We sit in silence while I get my emotions under control by fantasizing what it would be like to walk down the hallways at school with my head held high.

  “So, voted into the bottom three, huh?” Mom finally says.

  “I’d like my senior year to be different,” I tell her. “This show can help.”

  ***

  Mom finally agrees to meet with Mickey and Victoria, which is how she, Josie, and I end up huddled together on our Swedish sofa getting assaulted by a full-color multimedia presentation right there in our living room.

  No way is Mom being swayed by this One! Million! Dollar! game-show pageantry complete with thumping dance music.

  She puts her hands over her ears, and Josie stands up to start working damage control. “Hey, Mickey,” Josie yells over the music. “This sounds like a fun show that will be really popular and all”—Mickey clicks off the music and Josie glances at Mom before going on—“but I think what we’re most concerned about here is Shannon.”

  “Yes.” Mom sits up. “Teenagers tend to speak and act before thinking. In a situation like this, Shannon’s life could be ruined.”

  Mickey must be pretty slick, be
cause she snaps her laptop shut right then and looks Mom square in the face. “Your concern is perfectly normal,” she says. “It’s important to us that you feel comfortable with this.”

  Josie and I trade a private smile as Victoria looks back and forth from us to the spot on the wall where the blazing video presentation has gone dark.

  Mickey softens her voice and goes on. “Raising two girls on your own must be very difficult, Ms. Depola. I must say, from what I can see, you’re doing a fabulous job.”

  Eep. Josie and I grimace. Condescending to our mother is not going to get Mickey anywhere except ejected from our house: projector, laptop, slick suit, and all.

  Victoria leans back. “Shannon graduates next year,” she says. “Do you think she’s maybe ready to start making some decisions on her own?”

  Mom frowns at this, and I see Mickey toss a warning look in Victoria’s direction. She seems able to read Mom, as if she’s playing a game of hot and cold, zoning in on the best way to manipulate her.

  “I’ve been producing reality shows for seven years now,” Mickey says briskly. “Did you ever see Spring Break Sweethearts?” Thankfully, Mom has not, since she probably isn’t in a huge rush to sign me up as a wet T-shirt contestant.

  “Besides developing Sweethearts,” Mickey goes on, “I’ve been in charge of casting over sixteen reality shows. Normally, when we cast these shows, we audition for particular types.”

  “They look for over-the-top personalities,” Victoria says. “Kids that will clash with each other and create lots of drama.”

  “Those shows encourage the drama normally associated with reality television. But this show is different,” says Mickey. “The girls never asked to be on it. It’s the next wave of reality television. You don’t come to us; we come to you.”

  “This isn’t just a makeover show,” Victoria says, licking her bright-red lips. “It’s a show about helping the girls discover who they really are.”

  Good, I think. Load of crap…but good.