Ella's Twisted Senior Year(44)
She shrugs. “It’s the dress, not me. It’d make anyone look hot.”
“I disagree.” I hold the phone closer, zooming in on her face. “Did you get this dress?”
She takes a sip of her float and shakes her head. “Nah. Can’t afford it.”
“What does it cost?”
“Too much.”
I follow her to the couch. “I’ll buy it for you.”
She chokes on her ice cream. “Nope. No way.”
“Why not? I don’t mind. In fact, I want to.”
“No. I’m not some charity case, Ethan.”
“Do I look like the Red Cross?”
She peers at me over the rim of her glass, then licks off the ice cream mustache on her upper lip. “No.”
I bump my knee into hers. “If you’re my girl then you’ll need to accept that I’m going to do nice things for you. It doesn’t make you a charity case, it makes you my girl. Besides, you used to make me buy you ice cream every time the truck came to our neighborhood, remember?”
She grins. “SpongeBob sherbet.”
“It didn’t bother you back then so it shouldn’t bother you now.”
“Ethan, a prom dress is a lot more than a SpongeBob ice cream.”
I stab a chunk of ice cream with my spoon and bring it to my lips. “And we’re a lot older now. It’s like inflation. It all evens out.”
She shakes her head. “I’d still rather buy it myself, but thanks for the offer. I’m not even sure I want to go to prom.”
“I don’t really want to go either but after seeing that photo, I think it’d be a crime to prevent the world from seeing you in that dress. Plus, it’s like a high school rite of passage.”
Her lips tremble as she holds back a smile. “Aren’t you worried about being prom king with your ex? How is that going to work?”
I shrug. “The guys on the team say Decker Graham has a better chance of winning than I do. So we’re good.”
She leans forward. “So dating me has dropped you from hero to zero, huh?”
“Dating you didn’t do anything to my popularity. Any popularity I had was beaten to death by Kennedy revealing that I’m not a horny man slut willing to hook up with anyone.”
She gives me this little puppy look. “Aww, but I love that about you.”
I laugh. “I’ve been called a * so many times that the word has lost all meaning.”
“You know, I’m not a fan of using a woman’s vagina as an insult to a weak man.” Her nostrils flare. “I mean, babies come out of there. Vaginas are strong and resilient and they happen to be the one thing that men love more than anything else so why the hell is that an insult?” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “You should be honored to be called a—well, I don’t want to say it.”
“You make a good point,” I say, straightening my spine. “I’ll wear the nickname as a badge of honor from now on.”
She grins and takes another sip of her float. “Good.”
Chapter 24
As kids, Ethan had this chore list his mom created out of a magnetic dry erase board and stickers. Every day after school he had to check the list on the fridge for all the things to do before he was allowed to play or watch TV. One of the permanent chores was to put his dirty dishes in the dishwasher.
Mrs. Poe has this obsessive hatred toward dirty dishes being left on the counter and in the sink. I’d forgotten all about it until Ethan takes our empty root beer float glasses and runs them down to the kitchen. I guess some things never change. You can grow and age, and fill out with muscles and drive a tall truck, but underneath it all, you’re still the same kid who follows your mom’s rules. He’s still the Ethan I cared about all those years ago.
I take out my notebook and turn it around to face him. “So here’s my plan.”
He casts a confused look at the page. “You’re writing her a letter? Or . . . a recipe?”
“No, this is a prototype. I had the idea when April and I were making the poster in the hallway.” I give a sly nod across the room to where my blank poster board and markers wait. “I’m going to draw this as a big poster and sneak it into the school. It’ll be tricky, but I’m pretty sure with your help that we’ll be able to hang it right in front of the cafeteria by that huge wall clock.”
I grin and wait for his reaction. “It’s brilliant, right?”
His lips slide to the side of his mouth. “I dig the concept,” he says, tapping on my paper. “But a poster can be removed and thrown away in two seconds. Kennedy attacked us virtually and it went viral, so to speak.”
I shrug. “Okay, so we’ll post it online?”
Ethan’s eyes glimmer with an excitement I haven’t seen in years. “No. We’ll do one better. We’ll make it into a T-shirt.”
In Ethan’s room, he powers up his computer and shows me the glass thing called a graphics tablet that he uses to draw his images. It’s a cool device that lets you draw on the glass with a stylus and the image appears on the computer. I keep getting little giddy ripples of excitement as we work. Kennedy will be so pissed. This might make me kind of a bad person, but I don’t care. She messed with me, and she messed with Ethan. It’s time she’s spoon fed a bottle of her own damn medicine.