Prom Queen of Disaster (26 page)

We walked back out into the back yard. One after the other. A few of the girls were already in the pool. Kaleb began undressing, lifting his t-shirt over his head to show the line of his underwear. He noticed me looking and grinned, rubbing a hand down his torso.

I couldn’t control myself, my skin buzzed. I wanted to throw my entire body at him, but I stopped myself. We weren’t a couple, but as I watched, some of the other girls were looking at him as well. I wanted to be alone with him were nobody could see us.

My parents and Maddie had left for the supermarket to get supper and ingredients for more cake.

Kaleb was
supposed
to be cleaning up. I grabbed him by the collar and kissed him, pushing my face up to his. My teeth wanted to bite, hungry to be close to him. I’d never wanted anything like that before.

“Don’t stop,” I said as he kissed my neck.

He paused and starred into my eyes. “I don’t want to do anything you don’t want,” he said. “I really think I’m—”

I pushed my fingers to his lips to stop him from speaking. I kissed him once again, my hands lifting his t-shirt to feel his body, lingering over the scar above his belly button. He tensed his muscles as I move my fingers over his stomach.

We moved to my room. I’d prepared everything for my first time with Dylan, it had been in place since August of last year when I believed I was ready. It was always different in theory than it was in practice; I didn’t get to light the candle I’d chosen.

Everything was different now. Smells were sweeter, the air was nicer, a touch was amplified by one-thousand fold, and the butterflies in my stomach were tiny jets exploding into fireworks. I smiled at everything and everyone.

Looking at my art project, everything was different, I’d been holding back, and now it was finally flooding out like a leaky faucet, I knew what it needed. The final details were added, and although I felt different now, looking back at the collection, I remembered what I’d felt. That’s what made a collection great.

“Mr. Brooks wants your work in the gallery,” Mrs. Galloway said as I stared at the final pieces. I held the essay tight in my grasp, ready to submit it. “Fingers crossed the gallery approve.”

“This is it,” I said, handing her the essay. “Also, can you look over my college essay? I had Mrs. Jennings look over it, but I’m not looking to be an English major.”

“So you’re going to do art?” she asked.

I nodded. “I’ve always wanted to,” I said. “Even when I was a cheerleader, I’m always here.”

“And from what I hear, you’re running for prom queen.”

I planned on doing it. Everyone had kept me involved with all their drama, their personal lives and scandals. The truth about Char’s baby not being Dylan’s was a shocker, and her credibility went downhill from there, yet she was hardly a pariah.

Kaleb kissed me for the first time in public. I was at my locker, for a moment I believed I was back in my old life, being pulled from behind and kissed on the neck, the little scratch of unshaven facial hair.

“So,” he said. “I don’t have enough credits to graduate. But I can go for my GED, and still graduate—
I think
.”

He pulled me into a hug as people watched.

“I have to ask you something,” I said. “Prom is a few weeks away, and I don’t know if you were going to ask but—”

“I was,” he smiled. “But if you wanna ask.”

“Oh no,” I laughed. “Go ahead.”

“Will you go to prom with me? And even if you luck out, you’ll be my prom queen.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t know whether I was dreaming, or if this was my new reality. “Yes,” I said. “But you’ve gotta promise me one thing.”

“Anything.”

“You’ll let me tell my mom,” I said, biting my bottom lip.

He laughed. “I asked them, before I asked you, before I even let myself have feelings. I told them it was real, at least for me.”

“Shut up.” People stopped in the hall, staring at me. “You didn’t.” Tears rolled down my cheeks.

He pulled me into his arms. “Why else do you think I bought your prom dress. I wouldn’t want anyone else taking you in it, but me.”

The butterflies and turbo jets in my stomach tingled as I surrendered in his arms. My body was tangled in him. I didn’t think I would’ve been happy after what Dylan had done. I’d spent so much time self-loathing and going through ice cream—my calcium intake was higher than ever.

“Does this make it official?” I cried laughing as I asked.

“Are you asking me out?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”

Roaring cheers erupted in the hallway. It traveled through the school. Our names on the lips of others.
He said yes
, and
they’re dating
. Our names were spread faster than any viral picture.

Kaleb wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t need that, I didn’t
want
that. Dylan had been perfect, he couldn’t improve anymore, apparently, he was smooth sailing, and that was nice, there was no variety, and I found that was what I needed more than anything else in my life. I needed someone to help me bust the windows of someone’s car, or carry a spare change of clothes if we accidentally spilt lighter fluid all over what we were wearing. I needed that.

Ava stopped me as I walked into third period. Her arms folded, rolling her eyes. “I hope you’re happy,” she said.

“This was
after
you,” I said. “And I am, thank you.”

“Well you better watch your back, Zoey,” she said, moving to let me in.

We usually sat beside each other, although she moved to sit at an empty seat on the front row. Char was usually here as well, but she was missing most classes now, peeing constantly. She was occupied in study hall, receiving one-to-one tutoring.

I never paid any attention to what Ava said, until a girl in my fifth period science class tapped me on the shoulder. Her face was sincere with heartfelt eyes. “Do you have herpes?” she asked.

“What?!”

“I have some cream, but don’t tell anyone.”

“No! I don’t,” I said, raising my arms to protest. “Who told you that?”

I’d only recently lost my virginity, there was no way I’d contracted an STD in that amount of time, especially since I’d used protection and it had only been with one person. I waited for her response. She chewed on her bottom lip, glancing down at the science book.

“So?” I nudged.

“Ava tweeted it,” she said. “Over fifty retweets.”

“So the truth is in retweets now?” I turned my back on her.

I tagged her in a tweet, reading aloud. “Ava goes to the sexual health clinic so often she might as well apply for a job.” It wasn’t tasteful, I didn’t even know if it was true, except for once, when she thought she was pregnant, but she had really bad gas.

Within minutes of posting it, people were already asking if it was true, and how many times she’d been. I told myself I should’ve left it, but I knew them, they’d take anything else as defeat, and I was not going to let them win.

Zoey Jensen is so desperate to cling to popularity she sleeps with a cheerleader’s sloppy seconds.
Char had posted, without the decency of tagging me. I left it for a moment before frustration set in. School was out and I sat in my car, thinking of something to reply with. It had to be well-thought out, playing on Dylan and her baby.

Kaleb jumped into the passenger seat. “What the hell?” he said. “I saw those posts. Is this because of us?”

“Tell me what you think about this,” I said, quickly tapping into the post box on Twitter. “Charlotte Brooke is so desperate for a guy, she stole mine, the sad thing is, the baby isn’t even his. Hashtag oops!”

He cracked a smile, and before he could object, I’d posted it. “The engagement is still going ahead,” he said. “On Facebook it says she’s engaged.”

“He doesn’t have the balls to break it off,” I said. “Maybe if he did, I wouldn’t have heard he cheated on me from her, maybe he would’ve been upfront.”

Kaleb kissed me. “He lost something special.”

My face flushed. “Me?” I smiled. “So, what happened with your GED?”

“I have practice papers,” he said. “They gave me stuff to work through, apparently I have
adequate
high school education, but not the credits. I test well, just not essays.”

Where he was lacking, I was good. I aced essays, but tests were time-controlled and I developed sweat patches in awkward places during tests.

“I’ll help you study,” I said, kissing him again.

My parents welcomed the news. They were happy. When we were younger, because we were the same age, our parents had decided Kaleb and I would be together. Our families had been the best of friends, but it was a little preemptive of them to say we would get married. For the moment, having him there was all I wanted.

My mom pulled me aside. “I know I don’t monitor you girls, but—” she sighed deeply, pulling out her phone. “I saw these, and it was incredibly hurtful for you to say.” A sensitive soul, my mom once cried over a fabric softener commercial about an owl wrapped in a blanket, she believed it couldn’t fly.

“Did you see what they wrote about me?” I asked, justifying myself.

“Honey, you know, fighting fire with fire,” she began. “In the end, it’s not worth it. None of this matters.”

“You were prom queen, right?”

She nodded.

“And that mattered?”

She nodded.

“It matters to me,” I said. “I want that.”

The one thing that really truly stuck with me from when I was a child, was that if you want something, and you really wanted it, you would do anything to get it. Morals and feelings were an afterthought.

“You make me smile,” I told Kaleb as he laid on his stomach beside me, reading from a GED textbook. “If I don’t win prom queen, which, is doubtful because it’s fixed, it’ll be nice to go with you.”

“But instead of fixing it,” he said. “You’d win anyway.”

“If Char wins, I’d—”

“You think she would?”

I nodded.

“You’d definitely get more votes though,” he laughed. “I overheard some of the cheer squad earlier, they were talking about removing her as captain.”

“I guess
that
baby is taking her life away, and now her cheer captaincy, maybe she wants to be crowned,” I said. “But what she’s done to me, she’s not getting anywhere close to that crown.”

Monday morning was the start of their smear campaigns. It wasn’t unheard of, each senior year had their part to play, and in the end nobody was friends.

Mila tugged my arm to follow her. Kaleb followed me, naturally. We walked into one of the copy rooms. Mila brought a few already made templates to stick around the halls. Granted, smear campaigns were meant to be light hearted.

“Don’t vote Char, she kills rabbits in her spare time,” Mila said, below it there was a picture of a dildo—the ones with the bunny ears—a
rabbit
.

Kaleb burst into a fit of laughter.

“That’s one way of putting it,” I said.

“So?” Heather asked, her finger ready on the copier. “I say 100.”

“Make it three.” I held my fingers up. “Hundred.”

“Let me take a picture,” Kaleb said. “Do you wanna pose with it?”

I shook my head, so did Mila and Heather.

“
Just a reminder, Marin County, at the end of the week, we’ll be holding a ballot to see who you want running for prom king and queen,
” the voice over the PA called out. “
And respect your fellow students, this is prom not a warzone
.”

The voice was wrong. This was
war
, and every student at Marin County High School knew it. They prepared, they’d been preparing since the start of senior year, saving up all the dirt they had and selling it to the highest bidder—those who were campaigning, the guys usually backed away from the drama.

A freshman girl tapped me on the shoulder at my locker. “Is it true?”

“What?”

“That you’re a virgin,” she said loudly.

People around stopped to wait for my response.

I threw my head in laughter. “Would it matter?”

Her hesitant face looked back at me. She fidgeted to grab something from her pocket. I snatched it from her. “I’ve got to give you this,” she said. rushing off with her head down.

It was a folded piece of paper, a picture of myself asleep. I knew exactly where it was because I was beside one of the oversized teddy bears Char had in her room. The caption above read
You want a Prom Queen with Experience
, and the caption below read
Perhaps One who’s NOT a Virgin
. I looked up from the sheet to see the stop-motion of everyone waiting on my response, waiting for me to react.

“It’s a love letter,” I said, sticking it up on my locker. “Cute.”

My phone buzzed with a flood of texts. Hannah and Libby told me they didn’t know anything about it. Followed by Mila’s advice at getting back. She had an idea.

She was outside the AV room. Inside there was a small booth were the PA system sat. Only members of the AV club could go inside, but Mila, as student body president had access to everything and the studio was empty.

“You can go one better,” Mila said.

Kaleb ran to us, panting. “You sure?” He breathed heavily, a hand on my shoulder. “There’s no going back. What if you get in trouble?”

“You won’t,” Mila said. “Ok, you might go to the principal’s office, and you’re grade average is great, he’ll chalk it up to getting into the spirit of prom.
Trust me
.”

I did. I gave Kaleb a kiss on the cheek. “She won’t see it coming.”

Inside, Mila locked the door. She knew how to operate the machine and make sure every room in the school was listening. I sat in the booth. There was a microphone in front of a podium for notes. I didn’t have anything prepared, it was all off the top of my head.

“Prom is around the corner, and you have to ask yourself, do you want Charlotte Brooke, the former cheer captain who disgraced her team, and has so far lied and cheated her way through school—do you want someone like that to be your prom queen?” I said. There was silence in the booth. Of course, I couldn’t hear anything anyone was saying through the sound proofing. I turned to Mila, she held her thumbs up. “Who knows, she could’ve slept with your boyfriend too—he could be her baby daddy—even Jerry Springer couldn’t sort out
her
mess.”