A Prom to Remember(12)

But it didn’t.

And she couldn’t put her finger on why.

They weren’t exactly a booty call couple, and definitely not on a Tuesday night. Normally she would have just said no, she wasn’t allowed out, but that was how bored she was with her AP Spanish homework. He probably needed help with his trig and was trying to be coy about it. That had to be why she wasn’t excited. He was so predictable.

For a long minute at a stoplight, Cora considered blowing Jamie off and texting Teagan and Josie to meet her at Starbucks. It was a feeling she was experiencing more and more lately. Unfortunately, she rarely had time to examine feelings like that.

Cora pulled up in front of Jamie’s house and sent out a quick “I’m here” text. She was surprised when she got an immediate response telling her to go around to the backyard, only making her more curious. Homework alfresco? That didn’t sound like Jamie.

When she walked around back, Jamie was standing on the edge of the deck. The sun was starting to set, and he had lit what looked like at least twenty or thirty votive candles and lined the ledge of the deck with them.

“Hey,” he said with a grin.

“Hey,” she replied. “What’s going on?”

“Come on up,” he said, gesturing with the grace of a game show host.

Cora slowly walked up the stairs, taking in the whole scene. The word PROM was spelled out in roses on the picnic table, and Cora couldn’t help shaking her head.

“You’re sort of ridiculous, you know that, right?” she said.

“Oh, totally. I have no qualms about my ridiculousness,” he agreed. “But I also knew you would yell at me if I dared to pull something like this at school.”

“Well, yes. And all these candles would definitely be frowned upon.”

He nodded, running a hand over his short dirty-blond hair. “So what do you say, Cora?”

“Oh,” she breathed out.

In that moment Cora saw the boy who she’d loved for almost as long as she could remember. Cute and perfect Jamie, who did everything so cutely and perfectly.

She and Jamie had been dating for over three years. It would have been longer than that if they started counting from when they first held hands at the planetarium on their seventh-grade field trip.

The two thirteen-year-olds would have definitely declared their undying love to each other then and there, like a contemporary Romeo and Juliet minus the suicide, but Cora’s parents were strict with their rule about not letting her date until she was fifteen. So, instead, they counted from Cora’s fifteenth birthday.

“Will you go with me?” he asked, his expression uncertain due to the length of her silence and probably the look on her face.

“Of course I’ll go with you, you big goof,” she said. He pulled her close and kissed her. She cut the kiss off quickly, telling herself his mom was probably watching from the sliding door in the family room.

“You really didn’t have to do all of this,” Cora said. She looked down at their intertwined hands, his light fingers woven through her darker ones.

“I didn’t?” he asked. “Oh snap. Then I take it back. I was going to ask Teagan to the prom, so I guess I’ll do that.”

“You’re completely ridiculous, you know that, right?” Cora asked.

“I am, but you like that about me, right?” he asked. She threaded her arms around his waist, and he pulled her in close. He was a few inches taller than she was these days. It was pretty funny to think that back in seventh grade when she first kissed his cheek while standing in the gift shop at that same planetarium, mere minutes after they’d first held hands, she’d had a solid two inches on him. But he caught up, as boys tend to do.

“I do like that about you,” she said.

“Good,” he said, squeezing her close.

Cora closed her eyes and pretended she felt safe and happy instead of a little bit claustrophobic. If she ignored the feeling maybe it would go away, particularly since they’d made their college plans together. In the fall, they’d both be going to Boston University. Jamie had decided to go there since it was Cora’s dream school.

The future was set for them. She had to hope she’d get past whatever this feeling was in her gut.

“And did you notice I haven’t called you babe once?” he asked.

She was thankful that her face was still pressed up against him so he couldn’t see her expression.





Chapter 6

Lizzie

Lizzie let out one short sigh of disappointment on Wednesday afternoon when the laptop cart was nowhere to be found in the English classroom.

But there was no time to wallow. As soon as the bell rang, Ms. Huang told the class to break into pairs and work on the discussion questions that she was passing out.

Jacinta and Lizzie looked at each other knowingly and pushed their desks together as fast as they could. They had a silent agreement that anytime there was group work they would pair up, in part because they knew they could trust each other to hold up their side of the bargain. The rest of the class, not so much.

Having a similar work ethic, both girls opened to clean pages in their notebooks and got right to work while the rest of the class meandered around, trying to find partners and pens that weren’t completely out of ink.

Lizzie and Jacinta were already moving on to question two when Ms. Huang got called into the hallway for a moment. The class had been unsettled before that, but as soon as the door closed, they were even less settled.