A Prom to Remember(15)

His mom smiled, ignoring his tone for once. Normally there would be a lecture about how it wasn’t so much what he said but how he said it. And that he really needed to watch the way he presented himself.

But tonight of all nights, his mom was ignoring his usual coping strategies and staying doggedly on message.

“How could you possibly know that if you don’t even bother asking?”

Mom logic. Mom logic could always get the better of him and leave him spluttering for words even when he’d had a perfectly good argument lined up until that moment.

“I talked to her the other day,” he said, instantly regretting it. They were never supposed to admit to their moms that they had any contact at school. And it was rare that they did. But Jacinta had sought him out and warned him and now he was stuck at the dinner table trying to dig his way out of a hole of his own making.

“Oh, that’s good news! See, she wants to talk to you—you should ask her.”

He needed an excuse. “She didn’t seem like she was interested in prom.” It wasn’t a complete lie; they just hadn’t discussed her desire to attend.

“But you could try!” his mom said.

He was already exhausted by this topic, and she seemed like she could go another ten rounds at least.

“I’m going to go do my homework,” he said, using his only way out.

“Fine, fine, just bring your plate into the kitchen.”

He did as he was told and then stomped upstairs as she called after him, “And at least consider it! You never know unless you try.”

He closed his bedroom door behind him and threw himself face-first on his bed. All he really wanted in that moment was to go to sleep and maybe not wake up until graduation. Maybe even sleep all the way until he had to leave for college. That wouldn’t be so bad. At least he wouldn’t have to talk about any of this again.

On the other hand, he would fail his finals and maybe Penn State would rescind his acceptance.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

He could do this.

He had to forget everything he had talked about with his mother. He sat down with his homework and tried to concentrate.

Except, three problems into his calc homework and his brain was running in circles.

His mom was right; he wouldn’t know if he didn’t ask.

But he didn’t want to ask Jacinta Ramos to the prom.

He didn’t want to go to the prom, period. There was not one little cell in his entire body that had any interest in going to the prom. He would really have to want to go to the prom to ever work up the courage to ask someone.

He didn’t see that happening anytime in the near future.

Whatever. He had work to do. He moved on to the next problem.

His phone buzzed next to him, and he half expected it to be Jacinta since he had been thinking about her so much. More likely it was Paisley. She’d been texting him before dinner with ridiculous stories from the mall food court.

Instead it was Amelia Vaughn.




They had exchanged phone numbers a while back when they were doing a history project together. But she’d never texted him without a reason before.

He should probably shoot Jacinta a text while he had his phone in his hand, since he had her number and all.



He hit send before he could think about it anymore, and then threw his phone under his pillow before getting back to work.

He had calc homework to do and plenty of other things to worry about.

Cameron

It was only 7:45 a.m. Friday morning, and Cameron was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It had all started when he’d woken up from a dream where he met Laptop Girl in real life and she laughed in his face when she found out who he was. So that wasn’t the best way to start the day.

Then he got in the shower and Landon had used up all the hot water. That was not a rare occurrence. His stepbrother seemed to enjoy his water temperature to be approximately Earth’s-core hot.

But on top of that, there was no more orange juice for breakfast, and when he went out to his car it wouldn’t start.

It seemed like the battery had died.

Of course, Landon had already left for school and his mom had left for work, which meant there was only one option.

He’d have to ask Richard for a ride.

Cameron went back inside, and Richard was sipping the last of his coffee at the kitchen table while scanning his iPad.

“Hey, um,” Cameron said. He never knew what to call him. In his head, he liked to call him Dick, but his mom called him Richard and everyone else in the world seemed to call him Rich. Cameron stuck to “um” most of the time.

“Yes?” Richard asked, straightening his tie.

“My car won’t start. Would you mind dropping me off at school?”

Dick looked over at the clock. He didn’t have to be at the office until nine, Cameron knew, so this would mean having to leave the house and come back after dropping Cam off, or going into work early.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, grabbing his keys.

Cameron followed him out the door and to the car, desperately wanting to sit in the back seat. The thing about Richard was that he probably wasn’t a bad guy; he wasn’t abusive or mean to Cameron or his mom. Cameron just couldn’t stand the way his mom acted around his stepfather. It was like the second she met him she had gotten a personality transplant.