The Real Prom Queens of Westfield High Read online

  “Plus of course there is the One! Million! Dollars! to consider!” Victoria adds and I wince.

  Mickey intercepts Victoria’s fumble. “There will be a team of professionals, or Social Advisement Coaches as we call them, to help the girls make good decisions over the course of this year. Shannon will be challenged to consider her future.”

  “Have you been thinking about college, Shannon?” Victoria asks me pointedly.

  “Um.” I glance at Mom. “No?” And that’s how Victoria stumbled on the exact right thing to say to crack through that rock-hard single-mother exoskeleton. Mom wants me to go to college. And even though I could probably earn scholarships thanks to my grades, I’m pretty okay with taking a year off.

  Part of the problem is the fact that I’m best at math, but I don’t really see myself as a mathematics major. I mean, what does a mathematician even do all day? Sit in a room with a giant calculator and zero windows? No thank you.

  Mom asks me, “Are you sure this is something you want to do?” and smiles circulate around the room because everyone knows that’s the first step to her caving in.

  Chapter Three

  After Mickey and Victoria leave, Mom starts the process of reading through the stack of releases that need her signature and enters lawyer mode, stabbing at the pages of the contract with her red pen. She negotiates with the studio over the course of the next few days, and it takes near divine intervention for her to agree to cameras all over our house, but she finally gives her reluctant consent.

  Meanwhile, I’m having a really hard time keeping my massive secret from Marnie, James, and Rick as school winds down. Thankfully my default setting is “distracted,” so I’m not acting much odder than usual as I make my way through finals week.

  Marnie is heading on a mission trip to the Bahamas with her church’s youth group once school ends, so thankfully I won’t have to suppress my secret much longer. I was a little bummed when she first told me she was dedicating her summer to Habitat for Humanity, but now I get to go to Prom Queen Camp with a clear conscience.

  And I won’t have to worry about Rick and James looking to hang out over the break, since we’re more or less just friends by default. On top of Marnie’s secret love for James, the four of us usually sit together at open study hall where, as long as we use our “indoor voices,” we’re allowed to work on trigonometry as a group. Rick and I can get insanely competitive over cosines, but this one time I saw him grab a phallic-enhanced gnome off my desk and throw it away before it could upset me. The whole thing is pretty much all his fault, but we’re friends enough I suppose. Friends of least resistance.

  Marnie wags her head in amazement as the four of us eat in the cafeteria together on the final day of school. “So, besides the party Saturday night, the next time we’re together, we’ll be seniors?”

  I’d forgotten about the party. A kid who used to be in our advanced classes before he got fast-tracked to graduate a year early invited us to a celebration at his house tomorrow night. I’ve heard buzz that a Neanderthal football player named Pete is having an epic house party tomorrow night as well. But of course, we didn’t get invited to the epic one.

  “One more year of this torture, and we’re outta here,” says James. “I’d like to say I’m going to miss it…”

  “We know, we know,” Marnie says. “The soul-crushing oppression of high school, blah, blah, blah.” Marnie always acts like James annoys her, which is the most obvious cover for being madly in love with him.

  The urge to shout out, I’m going to be on TV! is welling up in my throat, so I blurt, “So, what are everyone’s plans after graduation next year?”

  Rick flashes me an amused grin. “Shan-non!” he accuses. “You haven’t fully tuned-in to a single conversation this month, have you?” Um, no. I have a tendency to go into extreme daydreaming mode when the topic switches to something I’m trying to avoid thinking about. Like, for instance, college.

  I realize that putting off thinking about college is probably the way folks end up with a career at Royal Burger. I picture my super-successful friends visiting me at work, where I’ll be wearing a greasy orange apron and a paper hat on my head.

  “…and of course Rick is staying in PA to study science at Pelham,” James recites their future plans as I start designing a quilt for the four of us in my head. The Friends of Least Resistance Quilt.

  James is easiest; with his button-down shirts and all-business buzz cut, he’d get stiff material sewn into neat right angles, but with a cow photo-bombing one corner, since he lives on a dairy farm. Marnie’s section would have rows of corporate brand logos with buster signs drawn through each of them. I’d be a day-dreamy cloud pattern, cut into wispy swirls that curl around in a decoupage overlay.

  Leaning forward, I consider Rick. He’s a bit of an enigma. I take in his goofy expression, his blue eyes, his brown waves resting on his neck. Looking down, I smile with inspiration. His BlackSpot sneakers. He’s wearing checkered ones for the last day of school, and they perfectly capture his irreverent sense of humor. He wags his shoe, and I look up to see him watching me with an amused look. I grin back and then remember: the finger cot, Elf Ucker Incident, social banishment. I look away as my mind shreds his sweet sneaker quilt square.

  I tune back in to James asking, “Do you think there’ll be a keg tomorrow night?” He’s trying to sound cool but comes off like a little kid, excited about a birthday party that’s rumored to have a piñata.

  “Well, just in case, we should ride together Saturday,” says Rick. “Who wants to be designated driver?”

  “I’ll do it,” I volunteer. If there’s going to be alcohol, I like the idea of having an excuse to avoid drinking. I can act flaky enough sober, and besides, there’s apparently some bad gene in my family that makes certain members turn into asshats when they drink. It’s the reason my dad’s not in the picture. I figure I’ll hold out as long as I can before feeding that asshat gene some booze, just in case I have it.

  ***

  On Saturday, it’s obvious right away when we show up at the party that we didn’t need to bother with the designated driver routine. But it is a very good thing the four of us came, since we make up nearly half the party guests.

  We sit awkwardly in a row, trying to make a dent in the massive bowls of chips and Cheezy Poofs the graduating kid’s mother lined up along the table. The discomfort is so strong I can’t help but focus on it.

  I try escaping into a daydream of being home, getting a little quilting in before the show starts. We were each given a thick packet of Prom Queen dos and don’ts to study. It included a spreadsheet of acceptable hobbies, and quilting is very much not on that list. I won’t have much time for sewing anyway, since I’ll apparently be participating in various afterschool activities such as pep club. Yay.

  I take a sip of apple juice that makes me cough, and everyone turns to look at me. I shake my head and wave them off. “Nothing.” I croak, pointing to my throat. “I’m just choking a little.” The silence creeps back in, but everyone keeps watching me, sort of smiling and nodding. Finally, I drop my head and curse my plastic cup of apple juice.

  Marnie springs up. “I know what we can do!”

  “Leave?” I whisper hopefully.

  “Let’s play the adverb game!”

  Which, I have to tell you, ends up totally saving everything. At least the poor kid won’t have nightmares about his graduation party for the rest of his life because those of us who are there end up having a pretty great time.

  If you’ve never played the adverb game, you should. It’s loads of fun. What you do is divide into two teams and write down a bunch of adverbs on slips of paper. Then each team picks an adverb from the other team, like for instance happily, which no one would actually use because it’s too easy but this is just an example.

  Next, you make up a two-person scene that the other team has to act out in a way that illustrates the adverb. So, like, with happily, whatever the scene is, even
if one guy is robbing the other guy, they both have to act happy so their team can guess the adverb. The ten people at the party make the perfect number of players.

  We all go from bored out of our skulls to laughing as we shout out a jumble of obscure adverbs. Our team comes up with a scenario where one kid is trying to bluff his way into a bar with a phony ID and the kid who is graduating plays a bouncer. The adverb is fanatically, and so the two of them go into this idiot savant mode that has us laughing so hard we’re practically throwing up. Next, Rick plays a driver trying to get out of a speeding ticket with the adverb deprecatingly which is really tough to guess, since he’s pretty much just acting like regular Rick. It’s a good thing Marnie is the cop, because at least there’s a contrast to her normal upbeat personality and I manage to guess the word.

  I’m glad things are in full swing by the time it’s my turn to act, since I’m not really much of an actress. Rick and I are picked to be a couple on a first date who are falling instantly in love. I roll my eyes at that and Rick laughs, but we both groan when we read our little slip of paper. It says “fervently.”

  The two of us dive in and try our best, but nobody is guessing the word. They all just think we’re getting really into the “falling in love” part. The whole party is whooping as we go deeper into our charade. At one point, the two of us are practically rubbing against each other as Rick passes me the imaginary salt shaker and I hear James call out, “Yeah, Rick, go for it.”

  “Are you guys even guessing?” I snap, realizing our teammates have turned into a gang of voyeurs. I push Rick off of me and say, “New tactic.” Fanning myself, I pull at the collar of my T-shirt and act as if the thermostat just jumped about a hundred degrees.

  The guessing starts back up, “Hotly!” “Sweatily!” “Feverishly!” At feverishly, I say “Almost!”

  “Oh,” says Marnie, “fervently!”

  “That wasn’t as much fun,” Rick teases, and I give him a shove. He catches my hand and pulls me close. “Who knew you could act so fervently, Shannon?” The way he looks at me, up close, with his pale blue eyes, sets off a sudden chain of memories in my brain.

  I see Rick leaning playfully against my locker as I try to get my books—I see Rick bending to whisper a wry comment in my ear as we move down the hallway in perfect sync—And I see Rick looking at me in amusement as I get caught daydreaming over and over again.

  I’d thought he was just method acting for fervently, but the two of us are still sitting so close, and I realize: Rick has a crush on me. He must read my thoughts, because he gives me the slightest nod.

  His eyes trace my face, and the intensity sends a thrill through my whole body. I feel a sudden urge to find out what his brown waves of hair feel like and have to clench my fist to stop my fingers from reaching for it.

  We must be sitting like that for a while, because the other team is already organizing themselves into a skit when I finally break our gaze. I look over to Marnie, who’s smirking at the two of us. Leave it to Marnie to know more about my love life than I do.

  As Rick and I awkwardly disengage, I think about how this new development could affect my life. I mean, how cool would it be to get a boyfriend and not have to involve any new people? But then, won’t it reflect poorly on me to have a boyfriend who puts fluffy white socks on his ears when he’s bored? Does dating a dork make one more dorky or in some way less dorky by comparison? Not that my social status could sink any lower, but at least we’d have all summer…

  And I remember.

  Prom Queen Camp! Not only will I not see Rick all summer, I won’t even be able to tell him what I’m up to. I’m hit with fresh doubt about doing the show.

  As we continue through the adverb game and then the rest of the party, there’s no denying the fact that things have shifted between me and Rick.

  His eyes follow me wherever I go and a private smile plays hide and seek with me on his lips. When his hand brushes my arm on its way to the bowl of Cheezy Poofs, it feels like an electric current just zapped me. Everyone is having so much fun since Marnie’s game saved the party that we’re all surprised when the kid’s mom shows up in her bathrobe to announce it’s after eleven o’clock. We have to rush for Marnie to make her midnight curfew.

  After some dramatic good-byes to the graduating kid, the four of us pile into my Coroda and head home. Rick sits directly behind me, his face barely illuminated by the dash lights. As I drive, our eyes keep meeting accidentally-on-purpose in the rearview mirror. I’m having a tough time watching the road, and Marnie grabs the armrest for support more than once.

  I feel as if my whole view of Rick is changing even as we zoom along the winding roads. I mean, sure, his hair always looks a little goofy right after he gets a haircut, but his pale blue eyes are—wow.

  I drive up James’s long driveway to drop him in front of his farmhouse, and we all go through the “see you in September” routine that breaks Marnie’s heart, I’m sure. Then I’m faced with a very important decision. I need to figure out who I’m dropping off next. On the way to the party, I picked up Marnie first, of course, but now she’s the one with the curfew and things are a little more complicated. I glance at Rick watching me in the mirror and smile.

  “Shannon!” Marnie shouts. I swerve to miss a squirrel, who has mistaken the Coroda’s headlights for a spotlight where he thinks he’s auditioning for Squirrels Got Talent.

  “Sorry.”

  Marnie asks, “Can you try to focus a little better?” I don’t tell her I’m pretty focused already. Just not on the road.

  If I drop her off first, Rick will obviously move to the passenger seat, and we’ll have to make conversation. Not even radio-fiddling for a distraction, since it doesn’t exist.

  Aunt Kate was generous enough to give me the car, but her husband insisted they sell the sound system. I like driving in silence, so not having a radio isn’t some huge tragedy the way it might be for normal people my age. But I don’t have time for this radio tangent right now because the turn-off is approaching, and if I drop Marnie off first, Rick and I can either sing car karaoke or we’ll be forced to discuss that look.

  I immediately launch into a very off-key and audibly painful version of “Lousy Romance” and drive directly to Rick’s house.

  When I stop the car in his driveway, he opens the door quickly, gets out, and slams it shut. My arm is resting on the edge of my open window, and when I put my head out to say good-bye, he leans down at the same time and startles me.

  The two of us are nose-to-nose as his blue eyes stare into mine. I think about reaching out to touch his hair but pull back and drop my gaze to his lips. Imagine drawing him close…“Shannon?” He gives me a loopy grin.

  “Sure, yeah…I mean, what?” I stammer, pulling my arm back into the car and refocusing. “Uh…what?”

  “Goodnight.”

  I smile and turn the key in the ignition. Of course, the car is already running, so it makes that angry grinding sound that I hate. “Oops.” I wave as I back out of Rick’s driveway. He laughs and watches until we’re out of sight.

  “I thought for sure you were going to drop me off first,” Marnie says.

  “Oh yeah? Why?” I ask, keeping my focus on the road.

  “Shannon, really!” she says. “That look? Between you two?”

  “What? During the game? We were acting.”

  “Neither one of you can act.”

  “Gee thanks.”

  Marnie stares at me. “You are not going to try to tell me there’s nothing’s going on between you and Rick.”

  “There’s nothing going on.” I laugh. “You know. We’re friends.”

  “Okay, you can believe that if you want to,” she mocks lightly. “But I’d swear I saw you crushing on him tonight.”

  “Crushing? Naaah.” I glance her way. By the dashboard light, I can see she knows I’m full of shit.

  “Well, we’ll see what happens.” Rolling down her window, she says casually, “Slow down?”<
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  We’re passing the BG gas station on Route 8, and BG happens to have caused the most recent disastrous oil spill. Marnie throws her head out the window and screams at the top of her lungs, “Burn in hell, BG!” She calmly rolls her window back up and asks me what I plan to do if Rick calls.

  I tell her I don’t think him calling would mean anything, but it isn’t easy for me, driving and lying at the same time. I’m not great at multitasking. I pull into her driveway, and she jumps out of the car moments before curfew.

  “Love you,” I say, putting the car in reverse. “Have fun saving the world one beach at a time.” I’ve been teasing her about going to such an amazing spot on a “mission trip,” but apparently the island she’s going to was ripped up by a recent hurricane and people are now homeless.

  “Love you too,” she says. “Promise me you won’t totally isolate? Quilting while you watch Pretty Woman on repeat is no way to spend your summer.”

  I wave and start backing slowly down her driveway. She calls after me, “Say you’ll try something you’ve never done before!”

  “I promise to try something new,” I call back. Which is the truest thing I’ve told her all night.

  Chapter Four

  At least at home I don’t have to pretend everything is normal. It clearly isn’t, as evidenced by the fact that Josie and I are getting along. We’re talking late into the night about the show and what it can mean for each of us. I warn her that she might not be on camera all that much. “My school life will be the main focus once the season gets rolling,” I say, but Josie’s clearly psyched to be getting that cool older sister she’s always wanted, and she’s determined to help me prepare.

  “A girl from Make Me a Model said the best advice she got was to take her top off when she was too cranky to deal with the cameras,” she tells me. “You’re still underage, so they can’t film you nude.”

  “Um, thanks?” There’s no way I’m taking my shirt off in front of anybody.