Finding Emily

{Chapter 15}

     Becca eagerly agreed to go to the prom with Jamie, and they ended up having a fun evening with Jamie, Quinn and her date Matthew the college freshman that she'd been dating the past few months. Becca liked him right away. He was even taller than Quinn with messy brown hair, and he wore a plaid tuxedo that he said he found at a thrift shop in New Jersey a few years before, but it hadn't fit until now.

  "He didn't tell me he was going to wear it until a week before," Quinn later swore, but Becca could tell her friend secretly loved it especially since she wore a plaid black and yellow ribbon around her gray dress to match.

  Becca found a dress that didn't scream little girl prom dreams like the one she wore last year that was a pink, pouf monstrosity she always dreamed of as a kid. Emily said it looked like a wedding gown, and she was right now that Becca looked at the pictures, but that was what Becca wanted at the time. 

  She went for an understated look this year. She had found a simple emerald green gown that looked like something from the 1920's, and her Mom said brought out the green in her eyes and her dark hair. Quinn said she was a knock out, and Jamie told her she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever laid eyes on. They took pictures in front of the incredibly ugly pink limo that Matthew rented and let them share. Jamie got a kick out of the limo, and Matthew's suit.

  "Your friends are awesome," Jamie told her.

  She found she didn't mind Jamie's friends either. Thomas was now serious again with Gloria, but it didn't matter. He was still a good friend, and she would miss talking to him in World Geography even though she felt embarrassed that she thought he liked her all year long and had been sadly mistaken. 

   Or at least she thought until the day before the prom weekend he stopped to talk to her by her locker and confessed he had been thinking of asking her out all year long, but then Jamie told him about his long-time crush on her.

  "I didn't want you to think I was a jerk, and I didn't notice how amazing you are," Thomas said with a bit of a blush and a shrug of his shoulder. "I think it was more than obvious that I had a thing for you. I wasn't that subtle."

  She laughed it off, but she didn't let on that she'd liked him back. She felt too proud after the movie date fiasco even though she was no longer angry at him. It didn't matter anymore anyway. 

  She and Jamie danced at the prom until their feet were sore, and then they went bowling with most of their class. Most of her class were kids that Becca had known since elementary, and a lot of them that she hadn't really had much to do with since except for passing them in the halls and the occasional borrowing of a pencil or pen. She ended up enjoying herself though, and she felt a twinge of sadness that she and Quinn stayed so isolated their four years and even before. It wasn't that she didn't love her friends, but she was realizing that they weren't the only people alive – and maybe it would have been good to branch out, and perhaps the whole Kyle mess wouldn't have happened.

  "He dated three of the five girls in our group," Becca said as she discussed it with Quinn later as they stood on the fountain by the hotel where Matthew got them a room since their home town was four hours away, and they were more than a little drunk.

  "Seriously – it was incestuous," Quinn said as she dropped penny after penny into the large fountain; the water was a shimmering blue in the moonlight. She was walking around the edge with bare feet and holding the hem of her dress with one hand and dropping pennies with the other. 

  "Plus Star and Lenny – who knew?" Becca added.

  Lenny showed up to prom with Star, and Becca and Quinn weren't happy. He swore he wasn't taking sides, and there he was as Star's date. He gave them both a helpless shrug, and sent them both texts that he wasn't mad at them, but Star asked him to be her date, and he didn't have anyone to go with. They ignored the couple the rest of the night.