A Prom to Remember(16)

Cameron’s dad died when he was seven, so it had just been him and his mom for almost ten years. Until last year when she met Richard on a dating site and the next thing Cameron knew they were getting married. Mere days after announcing their engagement, Cameron’s mom was selling the house that Cameron had grown up in and they were moving in with Richard and Landon, in a much, much nicer part of town.

But there weren’t much, much nicer people to go along with their nicer part of town. Cameron found them cold and weird.

Richard silently drove him to school. Cameron thanked him as he got out of his car, and Richard merely shrugged before driving away.

Cameron gave the car the middle finger before turning to walk into school.

He passed Henry and Paisley on the way in, and, rather than saying anything to them, he looked away, staring at the lockers next to him like they were the most interesting thing in the world.

Cameron didn’t know how to handle anything in his life, but especially not the situation with Henry. It would have been easier to have had a fight with Henry, something that he could have apologized for. But now wasn’t exactly the time to stress out about his ex–best friend.

He didn’t know how to talk about his family stuff with anyone. Everything seemed to be happening all at once, and more than anything he wanted to focus on leaving Richard’s house after graduation and never looking back.

So at the beginning of the school year, he quit the soccer and baseball teams, took two jobs, and totally stopped talking and hanging out with his friends.

Henry Lai was the hardest to stop talking to. Cam hadn’t wanted to ghost him. They’d been friends since they were kids, always playing baseball together, but Henry didn’t seem to understand that Cameron had other things to worry about now.

Not that Cameron tried very hard to explain it all to Henry. Henry should have just understood. He wasn’t much of a talker, either.

More and more it felt like Cameron had made a mistake becoming a hermit his senior year. But it was the only thing he could think to do in the face of all the crap going on at home. He needed something to look forward to, and it was so much easier to cut ties with everyone early before they would all be inevitably cutting ties with one another in June anyway.

Cameron went about his day as he always did, staying quiet in class, eating lunch alone in the library while he scrambled through his homework, and then more classes where he barely spoke.

Except for English.

Except for Laptop Girl.

When he got to class the cart was waiting there. He snagged number 19 as he walked to his seat and couldn’t wait to see what Laptop Girl might have left for him.

The very last thing Cameron expected when he opened the document was an invitation to the prom from Laptop Girl. There may have been things he expected less, but he couldn’t come up with any, no matter how hard he thought about it.

He had to keep himself busy thinking about other things that would have surprised him, because he was completely unprepared to face the reality of being asked to the prom. Not once during this entire school year had it seemed like the prom would be in the realm of possibility for him, even if he wanted to go.

But now, this girl that he honestly really liked, even though he’d never seen her or met her, wanted to go to the prom with him. And he wasn’t sure how to say no to that offer. He wasn’t sure how to pass something like that up. It was enough to make him forget the dream he’d had the night before.

Ms. Huang was explaining what they would be working on that day, so rather than spending a lot of time typing up a new message, Cameron just changed the background on the computer to say YES in huge lime green letters.

His terrible, horrible, no good day was actually looking up.

When Ms. Huang set them to work independently, Cameron typed out a quick message to Laptop Girl.

This is awesome. I never even thought to ask you to prom. We’ll have to figure out how to recognize each other. Like both have something lime green on our person, so we can easily tell each other apart from the crowd. I don’t have a lot of time right now, but I just wanted to say thanks. And yes. I am into girls.

Cameron hit save and got started on his assignment, unable to wipe the grin off his face for the rest of the period.





Chapter 8

Cora

Cora was desperate for a new coping mechanism.

Over the past week, her feelings about Jamie had shifted.

A lot.

For example, his latest text made her cringe.



She rolled her eyes so hard at the “not-babe” thing. How hard is it to just not mention it? She was allowed to have preferences for what people called her. On top of that, the thought of driving with Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick to the game that was almost an hour away sounded exhausting. Jamie’s parents were really very nice, but his dad got a little … overheated about baseball and his mom just wanted to feed her hot chocolate the whole time, even if it wasn’t cold out.

No one wants to drink hot chocolate when it’s above sixty degrees, and it very well might be that warm by then, seeing as how it would be the beginning of May.

Basically, their relationship had gone from steady and non-contentious to Cora pretty much hating everything Jamie did. But how do you break up with a guy after being with him for three years? How do you break up with him when he likes you so much that he decided to go to the same college as you?