Promposal (6 page)

“Well, Carter might not be that into you,” I replied to cover my crazy train of thought.

His grin grew. “He'd probably sleep through the whole thing anyway. It would be like kissing Sleeping Beauty. But with itchy facial hair.”

I chuckled. Wow, he was funnier than I anticipated. It made
me want to keep talking to see what he'd say or do. This whole class period was keeping me on my toes wondering what was next.

“Class is about to end,” Mrs. Brandwright declared. For once, I actually regretted the end of the school day. “Take one more minute. Narrow your list down to your top three disruptive activities. Write them down on a fresh piece of paper, add your names to the paper, and hand it in to me before you go.”

Carter gave a soft snore, and Benjamin and I exchanged a raised-eyebrow look.

“I guess it falls on our shoulders,” I said, then glanced down at my sheet. “Um, which ones do you like the most? I like your suggestion of trying to hold people's hands.” And, of course, I desperately liked the kissing idea, but there was no way in hell I was going to admit that to him.

“I like the idea of standing or sitting too close to people. And the public argument as well.”

“Let's go with those, then.” I wrote them down and added all three of our names. Then glanced back up at him through my eyelashes. Benjamin wasn't looking at me, his attention back on his notebook.

The last bell rang. The usual end-of-the-day fuss commenced as people grabbed their stuff and ran out of the room. I dropped our paper off on Mrs. Brandwright's desk and then left as well, making sure to nestle myself in the middle of the pack. Not that I anticipated another promposal, but I had a paranoid fear of Zach trying something else wacky to get me to say yes to a date with him.

Speaking of . . . I dug my phone out of my purse.
Five
more messages waiting for me. Seriously? I should have thought more
about giving him my number, because all this was doing was making me irritated at him and making me
not
want to be his friend. I'd had no idea he'd blow up my phone like this. I scanned the texts.

Okay, looking forward to it! Hope class is good.

Maybe we can see a movie on Friday?

What shade of red did you mean—like, blood or brick or something closer to pink?

Do you like limos? I'm just curious. Or I could borrow my brother's car.

Sorry, am I bugging you? I'm bugging you, aren't I?

I groaned. I wasn't ready to answer these yet. I headed to my locker and flicked open the lock to get my backpack out. My brain was spinning with everything that had happened in psych. Benjamin had actually talked to me—and not just out of obligation. He'd passed me a note. Had drawn me a picture.

I dug it out and, with the note hidden in my locker, peered at it again. Then I got the perfect idea for what to write in the thought bubble. Joshua would be so proud of me. I quickly scribbled inside it, gathered my stuff, and slammed the door. My pulse throbbed in my throat as I turned the corner and headed toward Benjamin's locker.

Yes, I knew which one was his. I was
that
girl.

The hall was almost empty. I leaned against the row of lockers and pretended to dig through my bag, waiting until people filtered out. When all was clear, I stuck the note through the slot on the top of his locker. The soft plunk let me know it landed.

Then I opened my phone and replied,
Not bugging, but I *am* super busy this week. Sorry. Will msg you later with my answers.

I donned my gloves and scarf, zipped my coat, and walked out
the school door. The sun was surprisingly warm, and I turned my face toward it, basking in the much-needed rays. Spring was finally starting to feel like spring. Things weren't perfect, but they were looking up. Thinking about what I wrote in the comment bubble, I smiled.

I'd given Benjamin my phone number, along with the message
For planning epic social disruption.

I
sighed as I poked the crust of the limp, greasy pepperoni pizza. This was what I got for forgetting to pack my lunch today. “Nasty,” I whispered to Camilla. “Pretty sure that isn't real cheese.”

She shrugged and grabbed a plate, plopping it onto her tray. “Better than the ham salad sandwich I brought. Mom won't buy more lunch meat until we finish it all.”

Camilla's mom
loved
ham salad. She even had her own grinder. Needless to say, Camilla had confessed to me that she'd burned out on it when she was little and now tried to avoid it as often as possible. To the point of packing multiple ham sandwiches she threw away once she got to school, just to fake like she was eating it so she wouldn't hurt her mom's feelings.

At least my dad didn't make me eat crap I didn't want.

I grabbed a spinach salad that didn't look too heinous and put a dollop of ranch dressing on top, then snagged a Coke and a slice of cake. After paying, Camilla and I made our way to our lunch table, where most of the gang was already gathered. David, one of our
friends, gnawed on a sandwich, while Niecey and Dwayne sucked on each other's faces, as usual.

No Ethan yet.

The tightness in my shoulders that I hadn't even known was there managed to loosen a touch. Camilla and I sat down and started eating.

She bit into her pizza and frowned. I could see the puddle of grease pooled in one of the curled pieces of pepperoni. “Okay,” she mumbled around her bite. “This wasn't my best idea ever.”

David laughed. “You're a brave woman,” he declared. “I swore off school pizza back in middle school, when I got a slice that was still half frozen.” He shuddered in mock horror, his brown eyes twinkling.

I picked at the slivers of mushrooms in my salad. I wasn't really hungry, hadn't eaten much since Saturday night's fiasco with Ethan. I'd managed to avoid him at lunch yesterday, had tried to keep my texts light and relaxed. But my heart was still sick and hurting over the whole situation.

“You okay?” David asked, a frown marring his usually bright face. “You seem a little . . . off.”

Even Niecey and Dwayne pulled away from each other to eye me, their mouths swollen and red from so much nonstop kissing.

I waved the fork in the air and forced a wide, fake smile. “Who, me? Why, I'm just perfect.”

“Whew,” Ethan said as he dropped his brown-paper-bag lunch on the table and took the seat close beside me. “I thought I'd never get out of there. Mrs. Quinton kept me after German class and wouldn't stop talking.”

“Hey, Ethan,” Camilla said with a small wave.

“Hey there, princess,” he replied, then gave David, Niecey, and Dwayne a broad smile. My heart pinged in my chest.

Niecey and Dwayne looked around to make sure there weren't any teachers present, then went back to kissing, arms tangled around each other.

“So, where have you been?” Ethan asked me. He grabbed a bag of baked barbecue chips and ripped it open.

“What?”

“Normally, you text me a lot in your morning classes. Did you get busted and have your phone taken away?”

“Oh. Uh, no.” My face burned. I swallowed. I guess my attempts at subtle avoidance weren't working well. “I got busy taking notes and stuff, that's all.”

The heat from his nearby thigh seeped into mine, and it was so hard not to just inch my leg over a fraction, see what happened if our knees brushed each other. Would he pull away? Why didn't he feel this crackle between us that I did?

Oh, that's right. Because he felt it for someone else. For perfect, beautiful Noah.

I poked my salad and drew my leg closer to me.

Ethan leaned toward me and whispered in my ear, “Seriously, what's going on with you today? You don't seem like yourself.”

The warm puffs of breath caressed my hair and made goose bumps rise across my skin. “What? Me? I'm totally fine.”
Liar.
“Just tired. Overschooled. Undersexed. Going through menopause. I'm pregnant. Something dramatic and amazing.”

Camilla snorted as she chewed on another bite of her pizza.

Ethan's eyes narrowed. “You're doing that thing.”

“Thing?” I blinked.

“Where you turn up the humor. It usually means you're hiding something. What's wrong?”

Shit.
I poked my chocolate cake. My heart slammed against my rib cage, and the roar of the students around us melded with the screaming in my head. I was torn between feeling stupidly vulnerable and kind of honored that Ethan knew me so well. “Well,” I drawled in a thick mock-Southern accent. What should I say? “I just—”

“Oh my God, she's here,” David said, interrupting me. His attention was locked on the cafeteria doors. He tugged a large bag out from under the cafeteria table.

“What are you doing?” Camilla asked him.

“Embracing my destiny.” Okay, David was a bit dramatic, but the guy meant well and had a good heart. He stood from the seat, his lanky six-foot-four frame towering over us, cloth bag-straps gripped in his shaking hands. “Wish me luck.”

Our whole table—even Niecey and Dwayne—spun around to face the cafeteria doors. There stood Karen, head of the Mathletes, chess captain, girls' rugby cocaptain, tennis captain, and probably leader of many other school groups I didn't even know existed. Her red hair flamed in a rippling cascade of waves, and she was flanked by her two best friends, Ashley and Monica.

“Oh my God,” Camilla whispered to me and Ethan. “I think we're about to see another promposal.”

Saved from Ethan's inquisition by fate. I avoided looking at him and kept my attention focused on the scene.

The air in the room seemed to shift as David purposefully strolled up to Karen. His long legs ate up the space between them. A foot away from her, he stopped, and she turned from giggling with her friends to peer up into his face.

“Yes?” she asked him with a polite, if not a little frosty, smile.

Whispers fled and darted across the caf. Camilla's hand flew up in front of her mouth as she tensed beside me. Ethan remained strangely still and silent.

“Karen,” David said in a loud, rumbling voice. He dropped the bag to his side, dug through it, and whipped out a black top hat. He plopped it on his head and then donned two white gloves.

A couple of girls in the cafeteria giggled, and someone applauded with a loud whistle. Karen's two friends stepped back a touch and began whispering furiously to each other, mouths cupped and eyes locked on the spectacle to come.

Then the room grew eerily quiet. I saw several girls and guys grab their phones and hold them up to video the moment. We all waited to see what David was going to do. Karen's back stiffened, and she frowned. Glanced around and saw the phones stuck in the air.

“I don't—” she started to say.

“Karen,” David repeated, “being around you is magic.” He flung his gloved hands up in the air with a flourish and then pulled the end of one of those long magic scarves out of his sweater sleeve. So cheesy, but kinda sweet. With a thrust, he crammed the end into Karen's limp hand. “Please pull it.”

Dwayne made an under-the-breath comment about something farther south being pulled. Niecey snorted.

“Hmm. No thanks,” Karen replied to David. She dropped the end of the scarf.

David's face fell, and my heart stuttered in sympathy for him. Was Karen really going to just let him flounder like this?

With a halting step, Ashley moved forward, bent down, and
took the scarf end. She pulled as brightly toned scarves tied one to another swept out of David's sleeve. Each scarf had a large black letter written on it.

Ashley read the letters out loud until the last scarf came out of the sleeve. “P. R. O. M. P. L. E. A. S. E.”

Karen stared on, mixed emotions flying across her face. Her cheeks grew flushed, and she fiddled with her fingers. An uncomfortable feeling settled in my stomach—this was so not going to end well. And the entire thing was going to be captured on video for everyone to see.

But poor David still tried to roll with it. Like a champ, he whipped his hat off and pulled out a bundle of plastic flowers from within, then pushed them toward Karen, who reached out a wooden arm and took them. Her eyes were fixed on the floor.

“Karen, it would be my honor to accompany you to senior prom,” he said with loud bravado, though I heard the tremble in his words. “Will you please be my prom date?”

The whole cafeteria went dead silent. I knew what was coming, could see the rejection written all over Karen's eyes and downturned mouth, and I wanted to grab David's arm and yank him out of here. But I couldn't move.

Camilla drew in a soft breath from behind her hand, and Ethan shifted. I dared a glance at him and saw sadness in his eyes. He knew what was coming too.

Karen glanced at Ashley, then at David. She shook her head and handed him back the fake flowers. “No, thanks.”

He blinked. “Um, pretty please?”

I cringed. Oh God. This was going downhill, fast. I shifted to stand, thinking of ways I could throw a tarp over David and drag
him away, but Camilla grabbed my arm and shot me a warning glance.

Karen sighed and flipped a lock of hair over her shoulder. “Sorry, but I don't want to go to prom with you, David. Not in the least.”

Wow. Bitch much? A swell of anger settled like a tight ball in my chest. She didn't need to be so rude about it.

Ashley shot David a worried glance and stepped back. She looked like she wanted to say something but bit her lower lip.

“But . . . I don't . . .” David struggled for words. He twisted the fake flower stems, eyes wide, blinking.

Fervent whispers built to a crescendo around us. “Oh my God. How is he ever going to show his face again around school?” one girl said in a not-so-subtle tone.