A Prom to Remember(43)

With that, Amelia tossed her hair over her shoulder and stalked out of the bathroom.

Paisley looked at her refection in the mirror quizzically. “Did she just come in here to talk to me?”

She shrugged at herself.

“At least the conversation ended in a more expected way than it began,” she said.

Paisley decided to stop talking to herself and go back to physics.

She had never been so surprised and then disappointed over the span of a single conversation.





Chapter 20

Jacinta

Jacinta wondered about the futility of doing homework at this point in her senior year. Would it really make a difference, in the scheme of things, if she just skipped this reader reaction paper for the short story they read in English class? Would Ms. Huang actually fail her?

Unlikely.

On the other hand, it could affect her overall grade and might lower it enough that she wouldn’t be exempt from the final. And she really wanted to be exempt from that final. She didn’t need to waste multiple hours taking an essay exam about all the books they’d read throughout the year. That sounded painful, especially when the alternative was to write the reaction paper that was sitting in front of her.

As she jotted down notes and tried to get her thoughts in order, her phone rang.

Jacinta was confused.

She hadn’t heard her phone ring in a long time, not since she had finally convinced her mom to start texting her last year.

She looked at the phone, and the screen told her that Emma Lim was calling.

Why on earth would Emma be calling on a Thursday night?

Jacinta answered. “Hello?” She sounded like a cartoon bear.

Did her voice always sound so weird when she answered the phone, or had she legitimately forgotten how to do this?

“Hey!” Emma said.

“Hi,” Jacinta said.

“I know we talked the other day, and I hope I’m not interrupting anything, but I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Ooooo-kay,” Jacinta said.

“So, as it turns out, my parents were planning to surprise me with a plane ticket to New Jersey next weekend. When I told them about how Landon’s friend was going to the prom with him they finally told me that they had this plane ticket. And I’m going to be staying with my cousins or whatever. And it’s like all worked out.”

“So, you’re coming next weekend?”

“Yeah, it’s so weird how late your prom is. I’ll already be done with school by then. But I didn’t think I’d really have the money for this trip. Then like I said, my parents wanted to surprise me. Surprise!”

“So, I’m not going to the prom with Landon?” Jacinta asked, trying her best to keep up, but there was a lot of information coming from Emma.

“I mean, of course you should still go. But I’m going to be surprising him. So I was hoping you could help me with that. And we can all go as a big group. Won’t that be so much fun? Landon, me, Kelsey, Kelsey’s boyfriend whose name I can’t remember, and you!”

That honestly sounded like torture to Jacinta. Hooray for being the fifth wheel. This was the opposite of what she wanted.

“I need you to make sure that there’s a ticket for me.”

Jacinta blinked slowly and shook her head.

“What were you going to do about a ticket if your parents had gone through with the surprise?”

“Oh, um, I don’t know,” Emma said offhandedly. “Are they a lot of money or something? I don’t really understand these northern proms.”

“Can you hang on a second?” Jacinta asked.

She didn’t wait for Emma to answer. Instead she grabbed a pillow and screamed into it for ten seconds. She was pretty sure she knew exactly what was going on. Emma had decided that she didn’t want Landon to go to the prom with another girl, so she begged and pleaded with her parents to let her come for the weekend.

That was seriously the only explanation.

Jacinta picked her phone back up. “Sorry about that. So, here’s the thing. This northern prom is at a hotel and it costs a hundred dollars a ticket.” Before Emma could complain about the price, she chattered on. “And it would have been even more since we’re having it at a fancy hotel, but our class is really good at fund-raising.”

“Oh, ours was in our school gym, so it wasn’t—”

Jacinta cut her off. “So I’m going to have to go talk to the head of the prom committee and find out if there are any tickets left. Okay?”

“Sure, that’s so nice of you. I’ll PayPal you the money.”

Jacinta had kind of been hoping that part would deter Emma a little bit, but apparently not.

Jacinta was filled with the kind of rage that was usually reserved for slow walkers and people who texted during movies.

And Jacinta knew that it was actually really sweet of Emma to want to do this, but Jacinta wasn’t sure why she needed to be involved. It all felt kind of passive aggressive.

“Do you want my e-mail address so you can PayPal me?” Jacinta asked after realizing that Emma had been quiet for an awfully long time.

“Yeah, that’d be so great. Thank you so much. I know you can figure this all out for me. I really appreciate it.”

“Yeah, cool, you’re welcome,” Jacinta said. Then she spelled out her e-mail address.