IMAGINES: Celebrity Encounters Starring You (64 page)

You pick up the gift bag Angelica left you with and walk out of the stage wings. You wave toward the stage crew that you pass, and they congratulate you on the show. Your shoes feel more broken-in than ever as you walk past the rehearsal room, the makeup room, and finally stand at the elevator at the top of Jimmy’s studio. From the middle of it, Jimmy waves to you, a big wave, like his arms are a windmill. You can hear him shouting, “Thank you!” You pull your blue plastic kazoo out of your pocket and raise it in the air like a toast. You know that it’s a special night for New York, and for you, that you will hold it in your heart forever: tonight was the night that you met Jimmy Fallon, and more important, the night he met you.

Y
ou’re sitting in the driver’s seat, dolled up to the best of your abilities in a dress you didn’t want to buy and shoes that almost stabbed you in the process of putting them on. The garage door is open, but the car is off. Your car is compact, so it’s a little crammed, but the way you’ve gotten your knees propped against the steering wheel is comfortable enough for scrolling through Twitter not-so-mindlessly. No matter how many times you refresh your feed, nothing seems to be going on that’s any more exciting than someone you follow’s thoughts on an episode of some obscure HBO show. Still, you keep at it, half hoping you’ll lose track of the time.

Losing track of the time is key—if you let the hours slip by, then you’ll be
far
too late to even think about leaving.

You could list around a
million
things you’d rather be doing tonight than going. You considered getting a job at a fast-food joint earlier this week solely so you could claim the weekend night shift. You prayed for a last-minute project from your teachers that would keep you cooped up in your room all night long. Heck, you even asked your neighbors if their imbecilic children needed a babysitter, which is a task you usually avoid like the plague.

You’ll do anything—
anything
to avoid going to prom.

It’s not like you’re against the whole establishment. Prom is
supposed
to be one of the more enjoyable aspects of the high school experience, and you’d like it to be so. But none of it is going how you imagined it would. For starters, your dress isn’t even the color you wanted it to be. Your hair refused to cooperate with you while you were getting ready. And like the cherry on top of a vanilla sundae you ordered as chocolate, you’re the
only
one of your friends who wasn’t able to get a date.

Your high school prom seems like a ridiculous thing to get upset over, but you can’t help it. It was a growing agitation, a domino effect. One of your friends got a box of chocolates and a sign with a stereotypical prom pun on it, and suddenly, it was an
avalanche.
Your friends were getting serenaded at lunch, decorations were being put on their cars, the whole nine yards. And there you were, always there to jump around with excitement. Deep down, the fear grew stronger and louder inside—when would it be
your turn
? You tried hard to be patient, but the closer you drew to prom, the more evident it became: You were about to be the third wheel to, like,
twelve people.

Thirteenth wheel? That doesn’t sound too lucky.

It’s been a daily struggle to hide your slight bitterness. For weeks you’ve pent up your responses, grinning and bearing far too often through dress shopping, boutonniere picking (your friends insisted you get one for yourself instead of a corsage—how
unique
!), and all the usual prom-preparation festivities. You know your friends only mean the best by including you, but it doesn’t make any of it sting less. If anything, it makes you feel like some sort of charity case, what with the way they pay special attention to your choices, no matter how outrageous they are. You even tested the theory once and stepped out of the dressing room in chunky heels colored a gaudy orange chevron pattern.
They absolutely adored them!

It’s not that you don’t have a date that’s put you in a tizzy—it’s that you’re the only one alone. If things had gone like they previously had at formals, you and your friends would’ve gone stag together, no problem. But now they have people to focus on, and color schemes to match, and other things that you, being dateless, just wouldn’t understand. When you aren’t being cocooned with sudden, suffocating reassurance, you feel a little like white noise.

Worst of all, what would happen when you actually got to prom and all your friends have someone to dance with? What would you do, dance
around
them?

You somehow managed, against all odds, to get out of every nail and hair appointment that your friends tried to get you to join in on. For the entire day you’ve been blasting angry rock music, messing with different eye-shadow palettes, and mentally prepping yourself for the awkward, lonesome night to come. But all the preparation in the world isn’t nearly enough. You’ve resorted to stalling in the garage when you should be well on your way to the Italian restaurant your friends booked.

Your phone buzzes, the message appearing at the top of your screen. It’s a text from one of your friends, chock-full of one too many smiling faces and hearts:
Hey, are you on your way yet?
We’re
all here!

Just reading it makes you want to hop out of the car and declare a night-in with Netflix. Your friends getting to the restaurant before you was
never
part of the plan. You intended to slip in quietly, take your seat in the farthest corner of the booth, and participate in as little conversation as possible so as to guarantee minimal humiliation. But coming to dinner
late
is the closest equivalent to bounding in and exclaiming,
“I’m going stag!”
Cue the flagrantly fake sympathetic faces and the halfhearted comments about how
great you look!

Just the thought of it makes you want to gag. You ignore the
message, swiping it away from your screen so that only Twitter remains. Feeling disgustingly desperate, you compose what might be your hundredth complaining tweet today. What better place to get your innermost frustrations out than a very public online journal like Twitter?

Pressing send on the tweet, you refresh your page a few more times. Nothing exciting. Nothing worthwhile. You sigh, observing your position. If you leave your house right now, you might make it to the restaurant before all the meals are served. Having a decadent, cheese-laden meal to occupy yourself with so you can ignore all the lovey-doveyness that’s about to go down is imperative. You decide to give your Twitter one last refresh.

A new tweet comes in from Michael Clifford, the lead guitarist of your favorite band, 5 Seconds of Summer.

@Michael5SOS: No one asked you?

You laugh. No username is mentioned in his message, just the words. You imagine to yourself every meme that’s ever had
No One Asked You
printed over them in bold letters. Michael’s the type of guy to appreciate a good meme—he had been joking about Grumpy Cat at the show earlier this week. It was in the town a couple minutes away from yours, but,
of course
, you couldn’t go. You just followed it avidly via Twitter hashtag.

Just then, another tweet comes in.

@Michael5SOS: How’s this?

Attached is a selfie of Michael, hair bright and neon red, holding a piece of paper over the lower half of his face. Scribbled in Sharpie is one word:
PROM?

You feel a brief rush of adrenaline, and your eyes dart toward
the username that’s tagged in the photo. You’re bracing yourself to see Luke, Calum, or Ashton, the other members of 5SOS, or maybe even somebody from another band—an inside joke the fans will be left to wonder about.

The last thing you expect to see is
your username.

The notifications come in like a hailstorm. Your feed fills with a million
OMG
s and
AHHH!
s that reflect everything you’re experiencing both internally and externally. You bump your head against the roof of the car jumping in your seat.

Michael Clifford just asked you to prom.

Another text comes up from your friends, but you swipe it away immediately. You can barely form a coherent thought, much less any sort of reply about how late you are. Hands shaking, you type
YES
again and again and again before sending it off. Chances of his seeing it, if he’s not looking at your profile, are astronomically slim.

A moment passes. You scroll through your notifications, taking in all the retweets and favorites Michael’s post is getting. They’re flooding in so fast, you barely notice one sticking out from the others.

@Michael5SOS just followed you

You barely have the time to scream about it before your phone makes a pinging noise. A new direct message.

@Michael5SOS: You said you missed the show this week. You live around there?

Your phone seems to be permanently in caps lock. You reply
YEAH
and send it, hopefully before he can look away from his phone. Timing is everything—if you don’t move quickly enough,
your message could get lost in the shuffle of fans with follows who are always spamming him to get noticed.

Luckily, he catches it.

@Michael5SOS: I’m still in the area.

@Michael5SOS: Where do I pick you up?

@Michael5SOS: I mean, if you really want to.

Michael Clifford,
you think to yourself,
of course I want to.

You send him the details, your heart bursting. A part of you feels like none of this can be real, that what you’re actually interacting with is probably a really popular troll account that somehow managed to get verified. But the proof is astonishing. It was
Michael Clifford
, the real, actual Michael Clifford, holding the paper in that tweet—a tweet that now has over twenty thousand retweets. It’s barely been three minutes since he sent it out.

@Michael5SOS: Cool. I’ll be there in an hour.