What's Your Status? (12 page)

mad_mac → KitKat
Um, sure. All the time. FINE. Leaving now.

KitKat → mad_mac
And that doesn’t sound like a positive promitude to me!

mad_mac → KitKat
It’s 7 am, Kittson. This is the best you’re going to get.

KitKat → mad_mac
Just get here. Speed if you must.

Yawning, I turned into the entrance of the Putnam Hyatt. I knew that I would have driven better—and would have been altogether more coherent—if I’d been able to stop at Stubbs for a latte. But I had a feeling that Kittson would not understand this, and the sight of me with a cup might be enough to send her over the edge that she was always so close to these days.

I stared up at the hotel as I drove through the gated entrance. The Putnam Hyatt was huge, easily the
nicest hotel in town, and I’d been there a few times over the years—weddings, fancy school events, and lots of weekends in seventh grade for bar and bat mitzvahs. I pulled into the half-filled parking lot, updated my status, and got out of my car.

mad_mac
At the Putnam Hyatt on official prom business. Would be willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a Stubbs latte right now.

I crossed the parking lot and walked up to the hotel’s main entrance, a series of doors, each one staffed by a sleepy-looking doorman wearing a heavily braided red uniform. As I approached the door nearest me, it was flung open by the closest doorman, who appeared to be stifling a yawn.

“Um, thanks,” I said as I stepped inside and the door swung shut behind me. I headed across the lobby, which was very grand, with mirrors and gilt, a huge fireplace on each end, flower arrangements as tall as I was, and lots of uncomfortable-looking armchairs placed about. It was absolutely quiet, and my flip-flops seemed to make a ton of noise as they slapped against the thick carpet.

I continued to the side wing of the hotel, where the ballrooms were. We were booked in the Rosebud Ballroom, on the ground floor. There was another ballroom directly above it, but that one was nicer and had been outside the prom budget. There was a third ballroom all the way across the hotel—through the lobby and down a hallway. The hallway was so long there were benches scattered along it, most likely in case you needed to stop and have a rest halfway through. It was in
this ballroom, thankfully, that Travis’s friend’s bat mitzvah reception was going to be held.

There was a small sitting area outside our ballroom with more uncomfortable armchairs and bathrooms to each side. Two large wooden doors led to the ballroom. I yanked one open and stepped inside, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. The ballroom had hardwood floors, high ceilings with moldings, a stage along one side, where the queen would be crowned, and an area with speakers and electronic equipment, where Tanner would be DJing.

Kittson was standing in the center of the ballroom, her back to the doors. She was staring at the stage with such intensity that I couldn’t help thinking that she’d stopped doing whatever prom business she’d dragged me there for and was now imagining her own coronation. Sure enough, as I watched, she raised her right arm and turned her cupped palm to the left and then to the right—the perfect gracious prom queen wave.

“Hey,” I called, my voice echoing in the empty ballroom. I wanted to stop her before she started making a speech or something.

Kittson dropped her arm and whirled around. “Madison!” she said, stalking toward me. “Finally.”

“Sorry,” I said, crossing to meet her in the middle of the ballroom, under a huge crystal chandelier. As had been my habit ever since I’d seen
Phantom of the Opera,
I moved a couple of steps to the right so that I wouldn’t be directly underneath it, just in case a singing masked maniac decided to set it loose. “I would have been here at
seven,” I said, giving myself a great deal of credit, “but I didn’t know I was supposed to be.”

Kittson shook her head impatiently. “It’s on my prom blog,” she said. “Aren’t you reading it?”

“Mmm,” I said noncommittally. I glanced at Kittson’s blog from time to time, but couldn’t bring myself to read the thing. Lately, she seemed to be doing an interactive poll where she modeled her prom dress choices and asked people to vote on which dress she should wear.

“Well, you should,” she said. “I have a lot of pertinent information on it. And it’s very popular, you know.” She smoothed her hair. “I had over a hundred comments on my
Updo/Updon’t
post.”

“Seriously?” I asked, stunned that there were that many bored people at our school.

“Yes,” she said, a little smugly. “Apparently, my journey to the crown is being very closely watched.” She looked around the ballroom and sighed. “Which will be worthless unless we can get things organized.”

“Well,” I said, glancing down at my phone to check the time. It took a great deal of restraint, but I stopped myself from also checking my status feed. “We have an hour before school. What do we need to do?”

Kittson handed me a clipboard. “We have to inspect the ballroom,” she said, “and note any problems, so that after the prom, when the Hyatt people inspect it for damage, we won’t be charged if something was broken before.”

“All right,” I said, taking out a pen and getting to work. I had thought that Kittson would be busy with her
own list, but she just watched me check off boxes, her own clipboard hanging by her side. “Can I help you?” I asked after a few minutes.

“Yes, actually,” Kittson said, as though this hadn’t been a rhetorical question. “It’s about Glen.”

I focused on the list again, feeling that I had been put in the middle of far too many friends’ relationships recently.

“He’s being kind of stubborn,” Kittson went on, “about this whole prom royalty thing. I mean, I know he wants me to win queen. He’s told me so. But he also seems to have this vendetta against whoever is going to be king. He keeps saying he’ll beat up whoever dances with me.” Kittson had been frowning, but as I watched, it changed to a slightly dreamy expression. “He’s just so…protective of me.”

“Really,” I said, trying to keep my expression as neutral as possible so that she wouldn’t guess I’d had almost the same conversation with Turtell. The beating-people-up thing was new information, though.

“Yes,” she said, the dreamy expression fading. “And now all these guys are saying that they don’t want to be prom king. I think they’re afraid that Glen’s going to beat them up. You know, because he keeps telling them he’s going to.”

“I think you should talk to Glen,” I said. “Relationships are about communication.” I paused, wondering why that sounded so familiar, before I realized it was what Schuyler had said to me the day before. “Just tell Glen that he has nothing to worry about. And tell him to
stop threatening to beat up our potential prom kings.”

“I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said slyly. “I mean, since it’s probably going to be Justin.”

I put my clipboard down and looked at her. Although we didn’t talk about it much, Kittson and I had a shared history with Justin. She’d dated him after I had, but had broken up with him after only a few weeks and then immediately started dating Turtell. But the me-and-Justin thing felt like ancient history. Justin paled in comparison to Nate. It seemed like we’d dated in another lifetime. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d thought about him. “I don’t want Glen to beat up Justin,” I said. “I don’t want Glen to beat up anyone.”

“Oh,” Kittson said, looking disappointed. She’d probably been hoping that there was still some drama to be mined from the situation. “I just thought you might still be mad at him.”

“Not at all,” I said. “I mean, compared to Nate, Justin’s just…”

“I know,” Kittson said. “Same with Glen, that is.” She took a lip gloss out of her bag and applied it skillfully. Watching her, I suddenly felt bad for Justin. After all, both his ex-girlfriends were in relationships with other people, and both were happy to not be dating him anymore. As far as I knew, Justin hadn’t dated anyone since Kittson had dumped him. Which, it now struck me, was a little strange. Guys like Justin were rarely unattached. After Ruth, pretending to be me, had dumped him on Friendverse, he’d been single less than forty-eight hours before Kittson asked him out.

“Back to business,” Kittson said briskly, capping her lip gloss and frowning at me, as though I was the one who’d gotten us off track. “Where are we with the gift bags?”

“Hello?” a voice called out from the ballroom entrance. I turned and saw a girl standing in the doorway, but I couldn’t see her face, as she was silhouetted by the light outside.

Kittson looked over as well, and I could feel her stiffen beside me. She stood up and crossed toward the girl. Not wanting to miss anything—and happy to take a break from the inspection form—I followed.

The girl was on the short side, even though she was wearing a serious pair of stiletto heels. She looked about our age, but was dressed older, in a pencil skirt and gauzy shirt that, I could tell just by looking at it, had probably been incredibly expensive. She had dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, with blunt bangs, and she was carrying a thick black binder.

“I thought I heard your voice,” the girl said as Kittson approached. She gave Kittson a tight smile, and her eyes flicked to me before returning to Kittson. “Doing some last-minute preparations?”