The Best Laid Plans(67)

“Yeah.”

I climb out of the truck and walk up the dark driveway and into the house. Then I watch through the window as his truck backs up and pulls away.

It looks like we’re both getting the perfect prom, getting everything we want at just the right time, like the end of some teen movie. But if everything is so perfect, then why does it feel so wrong?

Hannah and I have plans to go prom dress shopping the next morning, so she picks me up in the Jeep and takes us on the long drive to the mall. She’s promised to buy me a Cinnabon if I have a good attitude, so I’m trying to be cooperative, but I don’t think I’ve worn a dress since I was the flower girl in my aunt’s wedding in third grade. Secretly, I’m actually a little excited about everything, even though I have no idea what I’m doing. Luckily Hannah has dutifully taken on the role of my fairy godmother, picking out different styles and colors and holding them up in front of me, pleading with big eyes for me to try something on.

I still haven’t told her about what happened with Andrew on Friday. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to talk about it. I can give him that one thing, now that he’s going to tell Danielle he loves her. I don’t want to ruin that for him.

But I need to ask Hannah about them, need to turn the pebble over in my hands, examining it from all sides. We’re together in one of the dressing rooms at Macy’s, surrounded by so many puffy dresses it’s giving me an aneurysm, when I finally break down and ask her.

“Did you know Andrew and Danielle hooked up?”

Hannah has a pink and white zebra-print monstrosity halfway over her head that I think she must have grabbed as a joke.

“I’m so sorry,” she says through the fabric, and then she shimmies the dress down, reaching her arms through the sleeves. “Junior year at Ava’s New Year’s party.” She turns away from me to look through the rack of dresses hanging beside her on the wall, like she’s inspecting them. Like she’s avoiding me.

“You knew?” I’m wearing a green dress that makes me look way too much like Tinkerbell because of my whole tiny blond thing. “How did you know before me? Does everyone else know?”

“You went to bed early that night,” Hannah says, turning her back on the mirror to look at me fully. “Everyone saw them making out at midnight—typical Party Andrew. It was no big deal.”

But it was a big deal. If it had been no big deal, we would have laughed about it together the next morning when he woke up at the foot of my bed, his hair sticking up at all angles, the imprint of the rug patterned into his right cheek.

Missed you last night, Collins, was all he said. And then he pulled the blankets off me so that I shrieked in the chilly morning air.

I shouldn’t have been kept in the dark about it for a whole year.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask Hannah.

“I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

“You didn’t have to protect me,” I say. “I wouldn’t have cared.”

“You would have,” she insists. “I know you don’t like Danielle. You put up with her. You’ve always put up with her because she was my friend. But you don’t like her. And I’ve always wanted you guys to get along. I’ve tried so hard to push you together, because I love you both, and I knew this would ruin that. This would be the thing that made it official, that turned you and Danielle antagonistic.”

“It wouldn’t have been like that,” I say, protesting although I’m not sure I believe it.

“And you’re protective of Andrew,” she says. “Because he’s yours.”

“Hannah, he’s not mine, that’s—”

“And I knew it would hurt you that he went for her.”

“He hooks up with girls all the time, Hannah.”

“Yeah, but they don’t matter to you like Danielle does. Even if it wasn’t a big deal for him, I knew you would—”

“It was a big deal for him,” I say, letting out a humorless laugh.

“It wasn’t,” Hannah insists. “That’s why I didn’t need to tell you. It would only have made things worse, like it is now—”

“He’s in love with her,” I say, letting the words finally tumble out of me.

“What?” Her face is pale.

“He told me last night.”

“But that’s not . . .” She brings a hand up to her hair and pulls it out of her face, back into a bun, like she means business. “That’s not true.”

“They’re going to prom together,” I say, as if that settles it.

“I thought . . .” She trails off again and I can see the wheels turning. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“He’s going to tell her he loves her at prom.”

“But,” Hannah says. She reaches behind her and unzips the zebra dress. “But they don’t even know each other.”

“Of course they know each other. We’ve been going to school together for like ten years.”

Danielle moved to Prescott in fourth grade, a month after school had already started. Even at ten years old she had the same thick dark hair, high cheekbones, and commanding personality that promised more to come. Even then, everyone wanted to be along for the ride.