America's Geekheart (Bro Code #2)(59)

I gape at him. “What—but—how?”

“Ah, one of us was old enough to drive. Not really well with that trailer hooked to it—we used every cent any of us made mowing grass that summer, swear we did, because we had to buy the trailer too—but we did it. We got this giant—what’s the dinosaur with the long neck? The giraffe of the dinosaurs?”

“You’re making this all up.” I’m smiling as I’m calling him on his bullshit, because there’s no freaking way.

“I’m not,” he says. “What’s that dinosaur called? I can never remember it.”

“Brontosaurus?” I suggest. “Or a brachiosaurus?”

“Sure. Let’s go with one of those. Anyway, we did it. We got it all set up on the principal’s front lawn, positioned just right, and that sucker was heavy, took like eight of us to move it, and then we went back home and hid the trailer in the garage of this empty house a couple blocks away. Got to school that morning and everyone’s talking about the greatest prank ever pulled.”

“Oh my god, that was you!” Mackenzie gasps. “I remember that!”

Charlie shushes her quietly, but Beck points to her and winks. “Beautiful, wasn’t it?”

“It’s still there.”

“What? No way.” He squeezes my knee. “We’re taking a field trip. I’ll show you.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t believe me.” His eyes are twinkling, and I’m still smiling back so big I’m practically laughing.

“No, I mean, of all the pranks you could pull, why that one? It’s kinda…lame.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re jealous you didn’t think of it first.”

“If I’d done that, the tabloids would’ve said Sunny Darling’s daughter warped the space-time continuum and brought back real dinosaurs. Or that I concocted them out of DNA samples I stole out of a museum.”

“Exactly. We did it, and until, well, right now, when I have a feeling a few mothers are getting ready to kick our asses, nobody knew it was us. If you’d even had the thought, you probably would’ve been followed by the paparazzi for weeks with them just waiting for you to screw up. That had to suck.”

“It did,” I concede with a sigh. “You got away with putting a freaking dinosaur in your principal’s front yard, and the time I spritzed my hair with gel before combing all the knots out and then squirted myself in the eyeball with detangler spray when my mom’s stylist was trying to help fix it, they had to pay off the paparazzi to not run the pictures of me walking into school.”

“Damn, Sarah. That sucks.”

Control the story. Control the story. I shrug and take a page out of his book. “Seriously, what seventeen-year-old hasn’t had a bad hair day?”

His eyes bug out, and I let myself grin. “Kidding. I was six. But my parents still paid off the paps. And that’s the only time in my life I’ve had really short hair. It works on my dad, but on me, I look like a confused poodle.”

His eyes are going soft. “You were probably adorable.”

“You could pull it off, but I scared small children and exotic pets.” Okay. Yeah. I can do this, because he’s right.

Letting go and being willing to poke a little fun at yourself makes it all easier.

Like it’s not so real.

Maybe I could do a video series on my blog.

“You want to talk about prom?” he asks, and there I go, tensing up again.

But I’m safe here.

If I say no go to putting this video on the internet, then he won’t put it up there.

But maybe I do need to tell my side of the story. Even knowing people will twist it and call me stupid and ugly and a whore—though I don’t know how you get whore out of an owl story, but it’s the internet, so clearly it’ll come up—maybe it’s time to really face it.

“I was in the geek crowd in high school, and there were probably six or eight of us who’d sit in the halls and trade Harry Potter cards before school and during lunch, so we thought it would be fun to go to prom like the whole cast. Who doesn’t like Harry Potter, right?”

“He’s no Buffy, but yeah,” Beck says. “He’s cool. Even if everyone knows wizards aren’t real.”

“Not like vampires?”

“Exactly. You went as Hermione?”

I shrug. “I had the hair for it. And my dad was able to get us a few props from one of the movie sets, which we thought was really cool, especially since most of my friends didn’t have parents in the industry. And my mom had connections with a guy who raised owls for movies, so when I asked her if we could get a couple owls, she made the call for me and said it was all set, that we’d have two or three owls—and their trainer—to go with us on prom night.”

“Your parents are pretty awesome,” he says.

“They are.” I smile and leave it at that, because I’m not dragging them into this too any more than they’ve already dragged themselves. “So we all had our costumes fitted, one of my friends found a stuffed dragon that was fairly epic—at least, until I just heard your dinosaur story—and another’s parents owned a restaurant that converted itself into a whole Harry Potter theme for the night, so we had a delicious dinner there, and then we headed to prom, where we were supposed to meet the owl trainer.”