You Should See Me in a Crown(6)

Robbie’s signed Declaration of Intent form is in my backpack, no doubt dripping wet by now, but I swear it feels like it’s burning a hole straight through to my hoodie. I haven’t left home without it since he handed it to me two days ago, but I can’t seem to bring myself to do anything with it. It’s like I’m wagering a potential future at my dream school against a very real, very present danger of making a fool of myself in front of not only our student body but the entire town.

“Jeez, Liz. I could have picked you up, you know,” Britt says after I lock my bike to the rack under the awning in front of Melody Music—the music store where I work—and step inside. “You’re such a masochist—and that’s coming from me.”

She gestures at her face full of piercings, and I laugh a tight, strained laugh.

Britt thinks I ride my bike everywhere because I like the exercise, and I’ve never gone out of my way to correct her. She’s partially right, but mostly I ride my bike because I don’t want anyone coming out to my house to get me. I don’t want anyone but Gabi seeing where I live. It’s just easier that way.

“Lizzie! You’re finally here!” Gabi turns away from the counter where she’d been taking Stone’s measurements before I came in, and Kurt, my boss, mouths a very distinct SAVE ME in my direction. G may be his niece, but he’s never quite figured out how to manage her, um, exuberance. “Please tell him how critical it is that I make Stone a prom dress where the shade compliments her tawny undertones.”

Kurt rounds the counter, rubbing his temples. He doesn’t have the heart to tell us that we can’t use his store as our number one hangout spot, since Gabi is his blood relative and because I’ve worked here on most afternoons and every weekend since I was a freshman.

“You’re right. How could I ever have misunderstood the importance of … What were we talking about again?” He smirks and winks in my and Britt’s direction.

He leans in and lowers his voice as I take over for him behind the register. “I’m going to miss you when you graduate, kid, but you have got to take my niece far, far from here.” Kurt hums the melody to some Ariana Grande song about leaving as he disappears into the back room.

I cross and uncross my arms. I’m nervous even though I probably shouldn’t be. I love my friends. I trust my friends. I need my friends’ help if I want to make it to Pennington.

“Yeah, so look. I, um …” I look at their faces and am reminded why they’re my people. All three of them look ready to leap into action, and they don’t even know what I’m asking of them yet. “I didn’t get that scholarship from Pennington.”

Their reactions are immediate.

Britt cracks her knuckles. “That’s such garbage! Nobody deserves that scholarship more—”

Gabi shakes her head. “I’m going to take care of this. I’ll have my parents’ lawyer call—”

Stone grabs the crystal pendant hanging from her necklace. “I have palo santo in my purse. We can cleanse your clarinet and—”

I wave my hands in front of me with a quiet laugh. These weirdos are the best sometimes. “Guys, it’s cool. It’s fine. Well, not fine. It’s pretty awful actually. But it’ll be okay. I have a plan.”

Like a lightbulb, Gabi’s face instantly shifts from rage to recognition.

“We’re going to make you prom queen,” she says simply, reading my mind.

“We’re gonna what?” Britt narrows her eyes.

“My sentiment exactly,” I mumble. I add so that Gabi can hear me, “Robbie said the same thing, and I’m starting to believe that I’m in some alternate universe in which I am a viable option for prom court.”

In a concert band, you’re arranged into sections so that the instruments and sounds in your ear are the most similar to your own—so that what surrounds you is you, to a degree. It’s easier to know your clarinet part when you’re not fighting against a cello on one side and a tuba on the other.

High school friend groups are something like an ensemble in that way. My friends are certified oddballs, the inkblots on an otherwise pure white page, and it’s why we work together so well. Because as long as they’re my people, as long as they’re the ones on my left and my right, sometimes I can forget that I don’t fit in anywhere else in this town.

Stone adds, “My horoscope predicted something untoward might present itself today, but I wasn’t anticipating anything of this nature.”

“It’s not untoward. Ugh, you’re all so dramatic. Lizzie, I was born to be a fairy godmother; it’s my destiny.” Gabi plops her highlighter-yellow Chloé bag next to the register and pulls her phone out of it. Her fingers fly across the screen so quickly, I almost don’t notice she’s speaking. “A couple slight changes, and you’ll be as good as new. Certifiably prom queen ready.”

Her tongue darts out to the corner of her mouth quickly like it always does when she thinks. I brace myself for what that face means for my life, even though she hasn’t said quite what she has in mind yet. Gabi is sort of magical in that way—she doesn’t really have to say what she wants from you in order for you to just know.

“With Stone running the data from mentions on Campbell Confidential and the point-collection system, and my powers of strategy or—shall we say—shrewd deduction, we’ll know where you stand in the polls at all times,” she says. “Nothing a quick algorithm can’t do, right Stony?”