You Should See Me in a Crown(8)

Thanks to my briefing session with G and an all-night cramming session with Ro, I know exactly who I need to be paying the most attention to in the race.

My sights are set directly on Rachel. Her mom is one of only two people in the history of Campbell County to win queen both her junior and senior year. This prom stuff is in her blood.

The thought makes me feel like I’m in an airplane getting ready to take off, all anxious and more than a little lightheaded.

But there are plenty of wild cards too. A couple of guys who I know are running as either a joke or a dare (if the way they haven’t stopped laughing or talking since we arrived is any indication of their interest in making court), and girls like me who don’t exactly scream prom court at first look for one reason or another.

The lights shut off in the room, and I swear to you, the Olympics theme music starts playing.

I practically jump out of my skin when the first horns start blaring, but the spotlight hits Madame Simoné where she stands onstage, her long black kimono dragging on the floor as she gestures at the screen behind her.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you have entered into a time-honored Campbell tradition that will soon change the course of your life forever!” The room erupts in applause. She speaks with an incredibly convincing French accent, like she wasn’t born and raised in Campbell County and like we haven’t all seen her photo in the Gallery with her very own placard underneath: Roberta Simon, 1987.

Madame Simoné is talking about all the powerful men and women who have left this race and gone on to great things, when the doors in the back bang open, and she shuts her mouth with a snap.

“Sorry I’m late!” a blur of a girl whisper-shouts as she bursts through the doors. She has a skateboard tucked underneath her arm, and a messenger bag that keeps slipping down her shoulder as she makes her way up the center aisle. “This school is surprisingly labyrinth-like. They don’t mention that on the website.”

Everyone stares at the intrusion, but the girl doesn’t seem to notice. She just keeps going. She reaches my row, the last row where people are seated, and climbs over the two people closest to the aisle to work her way inside. She’s speaking to everyone and no one in the room, her eyes never fixing on any one person for long.

“I didn’t realize that the auditorium and the performing-arts space were two different things, you know? Most schools only have one. But this place is massive. I was just telling my dad that—”

Madame Simoné coughs dramatically and the girl finally stops talking. Rachel and her crew don’t even bother to conceal their giggles as they turn back to face the front.

“Now that everyone has finally decided to arrive, may I continue?” She shoots a pointed look at the girl, who is slumped down in the seat next to me, before continuing her speech.

“I have her for second-period French,” the late girl whispers in my ear, and I can feel her breath on my neck. “I like her energy. She seems pretty no-nonsense.”

I don’t want to look away from the stage, to miss even a moment of what Madame Simoné is saying, but I can’t help myself. This girl is bold enough to come in late and talk during her lecture? I gotta know who I’m dealing with here. I’m sure Gabi would be proud of me for being vigilant about the competition.

I turn to face her, and seriously, her eyes are the kind of green that I thought only existed in books and on models post-Photoshop. Just a little bit south of olive, with brown flecks in them and everything, like someone painted them by hand. It trips me up for just a second.

“Wait, what?”

“She’s cool, right? I’m getting a cool energy from her.” She bites her thumbnail. “I’m not super good at French, but I feel like she takes no prisoners.”

I just nod, because I’m not sure what to say. I mean, I’ve taken honors and then AP French with Madame Simoné for the past three years, but I don’t know that it’s even all that relevant to this girl. She seems to just like to talk for the sake of talking. And I’m not into that, noise for the sake of noise.

“You all know how this works, les élèves. But if you want to have your chance at making prom court, you’ll listen very closely to the nuance.”

Some of the rules Madame Simoné goes into next make sense, are obvious even, but some are completely antiquated. She covers all the bases for the campaign as well as prom night itself: no drinking, no vaping, the usual. But the hardest ones to hear are the ones she says with the most authority: Girls will run for queen, and boys will run for king—there’s definitely no accounting for people who might not identify as either. And the hardest for me to ignore, same-sex couples aren’t allowed to attend together. They can dance with each other once they get there, maybe, if no chaperones care enough to stop them, but they can’t officially go as dates. And just in case they hadn’t made their prejudice clear enough, if your gender identity doesn’t explicitly align with the one you were assigned at birth, you can’t come dressed the way you might want. Girls wear dresses, and boys wear tuxes. And that’s the end of it.

The whole thing royally sucks in my opinion.

“Prom court is decided by a point system, determined by your attendance at a combination of both mandatory and volunteer community service events and public appearances, and your class rank.” A chorus of groans erupts again, and I feel a little giddy inside. Finally, some payoff for being the nerdiest nerd this school has ever seen! “This is about more than where you sit in the cafeteria, les élèves; this is about your overall ability to represent the best of what Campbell County High School has to offer! Each event is worth twenty points, and the eight of you with the highest scores—four boys and four girls—will be selected as this year’s prestigious prom court. And in the event of a tie, the administration will weigh in to make the final call on who gets to represent the best and brightest of what Campbell County High School has to offer!”