For her senior project, Dallas Delaney starts Girls Shit Too, a series of vlogs inspiring girls to ditch the constraints of femininity and adopt the perks of masculinity. That's when another girl in her English class, Adree, uses her own online plat...
Amy flipped me off in the halls on Monday, and I smared back at her, thanking Valerie in my head for my now-favorite non-aggressive tool. The incident made me feel like we'd won, but then I realized if we truly had won, we would've gotten through to Amy, and apparently we hadn't. I guessed I was just glad Adree and I were on a team. Maybe even more than a team.
"That girl is always angry," said Eric, who was walking with me and Dylan as Amy passed us.
"Well, all thrash metal and no symphonic metal makes Amy a dull girl," said Dylan, and I laughed.
"Eric!" Trish intervened in our path, and said, "I had a good time the other weekend. We should hang out again sometime."
"I had a good time too. That reminds me: do you want to go to prom with me?"
She had a pretty smile when she said, "Yeah, that'd be fun."
"Rad," Eric smiled back. "I'll text you about doing something this weekend, too."
She nodded back, not entirely containing her excitement through the jerking of her head. "Later!"
"Wow, Eric!" I punched his arm. "You were just so casual and cool! And she's totally hot!"
"Yeah, she seems like one of those girls who might drag me to a Lana Del Ray concert."
"That would be a total bummer for you," said Dylan.
"Total bummer."
Then I said, "Man, is prom already almost here?" Prom thoughts hadn't crossed my mind at all.
"May 20th," said Dylan. "Eleven days away."
"You'd better work on how you're gonna ask Adree," Eric said.
"Why do I have to ask her?" I retorted.
"Um... 'cause you're the dude?"
"Crap!"
"Why crap? It won't be that hard...just ask her."
"No, it's not that. It's just that the application for this scholarship I'm applying for is due on May 15th. If May 20th is only nine days away, then May 15th is like...six days away!"
The truth was, I was nervous about the scholarship application, but I felt equally nervous about the prospect of asking Adree to prom. I didn't know why; I had just made it to first base with her. Prom wasn't even that big of a deal...or was it?
I tried to forget about prom for the rest of the day, but that became impossible in English when Ms. Brooks started handing out small sheets of fill-in-the-blank paper:
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Then she said, "It's the time of year when you gets to nominate prom royalty. Each of you is meant to nominate one boy and one girl from the senior class for prom king and queen. Write your nominations on these pieces of paper, and I will return them to the front office. Those students with the most nominations will go onto the ballot, and will be announced next Monday. The actual voting will take place at prom. I'm asked to remind you that this isn't a popularity contest; you should choose students who you believe have proven themselves caring, successful, and influential over the course of the year." Ms. Brooks couldn't have sounded any less enthusiastic about this if she tried. I didn't think she saw any point in "prom royalty." I think she knew, like the rest of us, that this really was just a popularity contest.
It seemed completely unworthy of my time, so I wrote Adree's name, even though I was sure Valerie would win. Then I wrote Eric's name for king.
After class, Alex and Benny told me they wrote down my name. "What the eff, guys, I don't want to be prom queen!"
"That's why we did it."
"If I win the nomination, I'm going to tear both of your limbs off."
"If you get enough votes, they should create a new category for you," said Benny. "Prom Quing."
I shook my head, even though I liked the sound of "quing."
After class, I said hi to Adree. She said it back, but in a very friend-ish way, leaving me wondering if she had any regrets about what happened, and making me feel even more unsure about prom.
The next two days went similarly, with talk of prom and prom royalty filling the hallways, and Adree being just friendly enough with me. If there was a scale with friendly on one side and flirty on the other, then I'd say she was being even less flirty / more friendly than she'd been a month before. The meowing Adree was gone, and any thoughts of asking her to prom vanished from my mind. If she wouldn't even acknowledge what had happened between us, then how could she ever want to go to prom with me? Maybe she was one of those closet bisexuals who enjoyed the confines of the closet.
Well, I wasn't going to out her with a public prom proposal, and I wasn't going to get enough courage to ask her privately, either.
So I tried to act normal, waiting for Wednesday night to see what her next vlog would be.
