The Real Prom Queens of Westfield High (4 page)

“If becoming popular is something you care about, why don't you just work on your people skills?” Mom says. “Josie, you can help her—
without
involving nationwide viewers. Have you even thought about how embarrassing this could end up being?”

I am, of course, familiar with the concept of manufactured drama among the contestants-slash-participants-slash-stars of reality shows. But really, who wants to watch real reality? I may as well sit at our bay window watching the little old couple across the street argue with each other. We call them the Bickersons, and let me tell you, they can get into it over anything. Whether or not the right front tire of their car is low on air—
it's not
. Whether or not it's going to rain—
it
did
. Whether or not Mrs. Bickerson needs to “shut the hell up already”—
she
does
. Sorry,
tangent
. I did warn you.

As I've been daydreaming, Josie has been trying to work Mom over, and I tune in just as she blurts out, “Did you know Shannon's been getting bullied at school for over a year now?”

Mom swings on me with her nostrils flared. “What?”

“Thanks a bunch, Jos,” I say, and she mouths
sorry
and heads to her bedroom. Mom asks me if it's true.

“I've been getting
lightly
bullied off and on. Mostly on. But doing the show would put an end to that.”

Mom grabs the bridge of her nose. “Please tell me you're not getting called a slut.” She takes a deep breath.

“Not exactly. It's just one mean girl that I can totally handle. Don't worry.” Mom presses me for details, and seeing how upset she is makes the pain fresh and raw all over again. “I'm sorry, Mom.” I can't stop the tears in my eyes. “I didn't want you to know.”

We sit in silence while I get my emotions under control by fantasizing what it would be like to walk down the hallways at school with my head held high.

“So, voted into the bottom three, huh?” Mom finally says.

“I'd like my senior year to be different,” I tell her. “This show can help.”

***

Mom finally agrees to meet with Mickey and Victoria, which is how she, Josie, and I end up huddled together on our Swedish sofa getting assaulted by a full-color multimedia presentation right there in our living room.

No way is Mom being swayed by this
One! Million! Dollar!
game-show pageantry complete with thumping dance music.

She puts her hands over her ears, and Josie stands up to start working damage control. “Hey, Mickey,” Josie yells over the music. “This sounds like a fun show that will be really popular and all”—Mickey clicks off the music and Josie glances at Mom before going on—“but I think what we're most concerned about
here
is Shannon.”

“Yes.” Mom sits up. “Teenagers tend to speak and act before thinking. In a situation like this, Shannon's
life
could be ruined.”

Mickey must be pretty slick, because she snaps her laptop shut right then and looks Mom square in the face. “Your concern is perfectly normal,” she says. “It's important to us that you feel comfortable with this.”

Josie and I trade a private smile as Victoria looks back and forth from us to the spot on the wall where the blazing video presentation has gone dark.

Mickey softens her voice and goes on. “Raising two girls on your own must be very difficult, Ms. Depola. I must say, from what I can see, you're doing a fabulous job.”

Eep
. Josie and I grimace. Condescending to our mother is not going to get Mickey anywhere except ejected from our house: projector, laptop, slick suit, and all.

Victoria leans back. “Shannon graduates next year,” she says. “Do you think she's maybe ready to start making some decisions on her own?”

Mom frowns at this, and I see Mickey toss a warning look in Victoria's direction. She seems able to read Mom, as if she's playing a game of hot and cold, zoning in on the best way to manipulate her.

“I've been producing reality shows for seven years now,” Mickey says briskly. “Did you ever see
Spring
Break
Sweethearts
?” Thankfully, Mom has not, since she probably isn't in a huge rush to sign me up as a wet T-shirt contestant.

“Besides developing
Sweethearts
,” Mickey goes on, “I've been in charge of casting over sixteen reality shows. Normally, when we cast these shows, we audition for particular types.”

“They look for over-the-top personalities,” Victoria says. “Kids that will clash with each other and create lots of drama.”

“Those shows encourage the drama normally associated with reality television. But this show is different,” says Mickey. “The girls never asked to be on it. It's the next wave of reality television. You don't come to us; we come to you.”

“This isn't just a makeover show,” Victoria says, licking her bright-red lips. “It's a show about helping the girls discover who they really are.”

Good
, I think.
Load
of
crap…but good
.

“Plus of course there
is
the
One! Million! Dollars!
to consider!” Victoria adds and I wince.

Mickey intercepts Victoria's fumble. “There will be a team of professionals, or Social Advisement Coaches as we call them, to help the girls make good decisions over the course of this year. Shannon will be challenged to consider her future.”

“Have you been thinking about college, Shannon?” Victoria asks me pointedly.

“Um.” I glance at Mom. “No?” And that's how Victoria stumbled on the exact right thing to say to crack through that rock-hard single-mother exoskeleton. Mom wants me to go to college. And even though I could probably earn scholarships thanks to my grades, I'm pretty okay with taking a year off.

Part of the problem is the fact that I'm best at math, but I don't really see myself as a mathematics major. I mean, what does a mathematician even do all day? Sit in a room with a giant calculator and zero windows? No thank you.

Mom asks me, “Are you
sure
this is something you want to do?” and smiles circulate around the room because everyone knows that's the first step to her caving in.

After Mickey and Victoria leave, Mom starts the process of reading through the stack of releases that need her signature and enters lawyer mode, stabbing at the pages of the contract with her red pen. She negotiates with the studio over the course of the next few days, and it takes near divine intervention for her to agree to cameras all over our house, but she finally gives her reluctant consent.

Meanwhile, I'm having a really hard time keeping my massive secret from Marnie, James, and Rick as school winds down. Thankfully my default setting is “distracted,” so I'm not acting
much
odder than usual as I make my way through finals week.

Marnie is heading on a mission trip to the Bahamas with her church's youth group once school ends, so thankfully I won't have to suppress my secret much longer. I was a little bummed when she first told me she was dedicating her summer to Habitat for Humanity, but now I get to go to Prom Queen Camp with a clear conscience.

And I won't have to worry about Rick and James looking to hang out over the break, since we're more or less just friends by default. On top of Marnie's secret love for James, the four of us usually sit together at open study hall where, as long as we use our “indoor voices,” we're allowed to work on trigonometry as a group. Rick and I can get insanely competitive over cosines, but this one time I saw him grab a phallic-enhanced gnome off my desk and throw it away before it could upset me. The whole thing is pretty much all his fault, but we're friends enough I suppose. Friends of least resistance.

Marnie wags her head in amazement as the four of us eat in the cafeteria together on the final day of school. “So, besides the party Saturday night, the next time we're together, we'll be seniors?”

I'd forgotten about the party. A kid who used to be in our advanced classes before he got fast-tracked to graduate a year early invited us to a celebration at his house tomorrow night. I've heard buzz that a Neanderthal football player named Pete is having an epic house party tomorrow night as well. But of course, we didn't get invited to the epic one.

“One more year of this torture, and we're outta here,” says James. “I'd like to say I'm going to miss it…”

“We know, we know,” Marnie says. “The soul-crushing oppression of high school, blah, blah, blah.” Marnie always acts like James annoys her, which is the most obvious cover for being madly in love with him.

The urge to shout out,
I'm going to be on TV!
is welling up in my throat, so I blurt, “So, what are everyone's plans after graduation next year?”

Rick flashes me an amused grin. “Shan-non!” he accuses. “You haven't fully tuned-in to a single conversation this month, have you?”
Um, no
. I have a tendency to go into extreme daydreaming mode when the topic switches to something I'm trying to avoid thinking about. Like, for instance, college.

I realize that putting off thinking about college is probably the way folks end up with a career at Royal Burger. I picture my super-successful friends visiting me at work, where I'll be wearing a greasy orange apron and a paper hat on my head.

“…and of course Rick is staying in PA to study science at Pelham,” James recites their future plans as I start designing a quilt for the four of us in my head.
The
Friends
of
Least
Resistance
Quilt
.

James is easiest; with his button-down shirts and all-business buzz cut, he'd get stiff material sewn into neat right angles, but with a cow photo-bombing one corner, since he lives on a dairy farm. Marnie's section would have rows of corporate brand logos with buster signs drawn through each of them. I'd be a day-dreamy cloud pattern, cut into wispy swirls that curl around in a decoupage overlay.

Leaning forward, I consider Rick. He's a bit of an enigma. I take in his goofy expression, his blue eyes, his brown waves resting on his neck. Looking down, I smile with inspiration. His BlackSpot sneakers. He's wearing checkered ones for the last day of school, and they perfectly capture his irreverent sense of humor. He wags his shoe, and I look up to see him watching me with an amused look. I grin back and then remember:
the
finger
cot
, Elf Ucker Incident, social banishment. I look away as my mind shreds his sweet sneaker quilt square.

I tune back in to James asking, “Do you think there'll be a keg tomorrow night?” He's trying to sound cool but comes off like a little kid, excited about a birthday party that's rumored to have a piñata.

“Well, just in case, we should ride together Saturday,” says Rick. “Who wants to be designated driver?”

“I'll do it,” I volunteer. If there's going to be alcohol, I like the idea of having an excuse to avoid drinking. I can act flaky enough sober, and besides, there's apparently some bad gene in my family that makes certain members turn into asshats when they drink. It's the reason my dad's not in the picture. I figure I'll hold out as long as I can before feeding that asshat gene some booze, just in case I have it.

***

On Saturday, it's obvious right away when we show up at the party that we didn't need to bother with the designated driver routine. But it is a very good thing the four of us came, since we make up nearly half the party guests.

We sit awkwardly in a row, trying to make a dent in the massive bowls of chips and Cheezy Poofs the graduating kid's mother lined up along the table. The discomfort is so strong I can't help but focus on it.

I try escaping into a daydream of being home, getting a little quilting in before the show starts. We were each given a thick packet of Prom Queen
dos
and
don'ts
to study. It included a spreadsheet of acceptable hobbies, and quilting is very much
not
on that list. I won't have much time for sewing anyway, since I'll apparently be participating in various afterschool activities such as pep club.
Yay
.

I take a sip of apple juice that makes me cough, and everyone turns to look at me. I shake my head and wave them off. “Nothing.” I croak, pointing to my throat. “I'm just choking a little.” The silence creeps back in, but everyone keeps watching me, sort of smiling and nodding. Finally, I drop my head and curse my plastic cup of apple juice.

Marnie springs up. “I know what we can do!”

“
Leave
?” I whisper hopefully.

“Let's play the adverb game!”

Which, I have to tell you, ends up totally saving everything. At least the poor kid won't have nightmares about his graduation party for the rest of his life because those of us who are there end up having a pretty great time.

If you've never played the adverb game, you should. It's loads of fun. What you do is divide into two teams and write down a bunch of adverbs on slips of paper. Then each team picks an adverb from the other team, like for instance
happily
, which no one would actually use because it's too easy but this is just an example.

Next, you make up a two-person scene that the other team has to act out in a way that illustrates the adverb. So, like, with
happily
, whatever the scene is, even if one guy is robbing the other guy, they both have to act happy so their team can guess the adverb. The ten people at the party make the perfect number of players.

We all go from bored out of our skulls to laughing as we shout out a jumble of obscure adverbs. Our team comes up with a scenario where one kid is trying to bluff his way into a bar with a phony ID and the kid who is graduating plays a bouncer. The adverb is
fanatically,
and so the two of them go into this idiot savant mode that has us laughing so hard we're practically throwing up. Next, Rick plays a driver trying to get out of a speeding ticket with the adverb
deprecatingly
which is really tough to guess, since he's pretty much just acting like regular Rick. It's a good thing Marnie is the cop, because at least there's a contrast to her normal upbeat personality and I manage to guess the word.

I'm glad things are in full swing by the time it's my turn to act, since I'm not really much of an actress. Rick and I are picked to be a couple on a first date who are falling instantly in love. I roll my eyes at that and Rick laughs, but we both groan when we read our little slip of paper. It says “fervently.”

The two of us dive in and try our best, but nobody is guessing the word. They all just think we're getting really into the “falling in love” part. The whole party is whooping as we go deeper into our charade. At one point, the two of us are practically rubbing against each other as Rick passes me the imaginary salt shaker and I hear James call out, “Yeah, Rick, go for it.”

“Are you guys even guessing?” I snap, realizing our teammates have turned into a gang of voyeurs. I push Rick off of me and say, “New tactic.” Fanning myself, I pull at the collar of my T-shirt and act as if the thermostat just jumped about a hundred degrees.

The guessing starts back up, “Hotly!” “Sweatily!” “Feverishly!” At feverishly, I say “Almost!”

“Oh,” says Marnie, “fervently!”

“That wasn't as much fun,” Rick teases, and I give him a shove. He catches my hand and pulls me close. “Who knew you could act so fervently, Shannon?” The way he looks at me, up close, with his pale blue eyes, sets off a sudden chain of memories in my brain.

I see Rick leaning playfully against my locker as I try to get my books—I see Rick bending to whisper a wry comment in my ear as we move down the hallway in perfect sync—And I see Rick looking at me in amusement as I get caught daydreaming over and over again.

I'd thought he was just method acting for
fervently
, but the two of us are still sitting so close, and I realize:
Rick
has
a
crush
on
me.
He must read my thoughts, because he gives me the slightest nod.

His eyes trace my face, and the intensity sends a thrill through my whole body. I feel a sudden urge to find out what his brown waves of hair feel like and have to clench my fist to stop my fingers from reaching for it.

We must be sitting like that for a while, because the other team is already organizing themselves into a skit when I finally break our gaze. I look over to Marnie, who's smirking at the two of us.
Leave
it
to
Marnie
to
know
more
about
my
love
life
than
I
do.

As Rick and I awkwardly disengage, I think about how this new development could affect my life. I mean, how cool would it be to get a boyfriend
and
not have to involve any new people? But then, won't it reflect poorly on me to have a boyfriend who puts fluffy white socks on his ears when he's bored? Does dating a dork make one more dorky or in some way less dorky by comparison? Not that my social status could sink any lower, but at least we'd have all summer…

And I remember.

Prom Queen Camp! Not only will I not see Rick all summer, I won't even be able to tell him what I'm up to. I'm hit with fresh doubt about doing the show.

As we continue through the adverb game and then the rest of the party, there's no denying the fact that things have shifted between me and Rick.

His eyes follow me wherever I go and a private smile plays hide and seek with me on his lips. When his hand brushes my arm on its way to the bowl of Cheezy Poofs, it feels like an electric current just zapped me. Everyone is having so much fun since Marnie's game saved the party that we're all surprised when the kid's mom shows up in her bathrobe to announce it's after eleven o'clock. We have to rush for Marnie to make her midnight curfew.

After some dramatic good-byes to the graduating kid, the four of us pile into my Coroda and head home. Rick sits directly behind me, his face barely illuminated by the dash lights. As I drive, our eyes keep meeting accidentally-on-purpose in the rearview mirror. I'm having a tough time watching the road, and Marnie grabs the armrest for support more than once.

I feel as if my whole view of Rick is changing even as we zoom along the winding roads. I mean, sure, his hair always looks a little goofy right after he gets a haircut, but his pale blue eyes are—
wow
.

I drive up James's long driveway to drop him in front of his farmhouse, and we all go through the “see you in September” routine that breaks Marnie's heart, I'm sure. Then I'm faced with a very important decision. I need to figure out who I'm dropping off next. On the way to the party, I picked up Marnie first, of course, but now she's the one with the curfew and things are a little more complicated. I glance at Rick watching me in the mirror and smile.

“Shannon!” Marnie shouts. I swerve to miss a squirrel, who has mistaken the Coroda's headlights for a spotlight where he thinks he's auditioning for
Squirrels
Got
Talent
.

“Sorry.”

Marnie asks, “Can you try to focus a little better?” I don't tell her I'm pretty focused already. Just not on the road.

If I drop her off first, Rick will obviously move to the passenger seat, and we'll have to make conversation. Not even radio-fiddling for a distraction, since it doesn't exist.

Aunt Kate was generous enough to give me the car, but her husband insisted they sell the sound system. I like driving in silence, so not having a radio isn't some huge tragedy the way it might be for normal people my age. But I don't have time for this radio tangent right now because the turn-off is approaching, and if I drop Marnie off first, Rick and I can either sing car karaoke or we'll be forced to discuss
that
look
.