Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom (12 page)

The customer-service me knows that I should give in on a couple points. Find a compromise and make it clear we’re all on the same page.

The customer-service me has left the building.

“So, basically, you’re telling me I can come to the Prom—”

“No, we’re saying the oppos—”

“Wait,” I say, “I’m not finished. You’re saying I can come to my own school’s Prom if I decide to go with a date of your choosing …”

“We’re not exactly telling you whom to choose …”

“That’s not really the case. You’re saying girl dates are off-limits, but any boy I want to bring is fine. Correct?” They actually nod. “So you guys get to choose who my Prom date is … and you get to choose what I wear! Wow. There’s personal shopping and then there’s this.” I draw a breath as Mrs. Abernathy reddens and begins to raise a hand to slap on her knee.

“Ms. Masterson …”

“Tessa. I’m Tessa.”

“Well, Tessa, this isn’t up for negotiation. There’s been a vote.”

A chill washes over me in the stifling office but I stand
tall in my flip-flops. Is this the kind of thing people sue over? I’m in way over my head. I picture how calm my dad was cleaning up the glass the other night. How strong my mom was about the brick. I can’t back down. “And just what happens if I show up at your beloved Prom anyway?”

I clench my hands, hoping one last time they’ll come to their senses and support me. The student, not the issue. I think about Lucas bursting through the picket line with me and wonder what he would have said if he’d had the courage to talk.

“Oh, you can show up.” Mrs. Himmelrath smiles like she’s offering arsenic in a champagne glass.

“But if you do, you will be expelled.” Principal Hartford looks at me long enough for me to know this is the end of the meeting. At least for me.

I walk slowly to the door, my shoes slapping the tight gray carpet that has felt a thousand shoes on it over the years, tons of kids who know they’ve messed up and are being punished for it.

Only I haven’t done anything wrong.

So I stop and pivot. “Thanks so much for taking the time to discuss all of this!” I say brightly, in my best customer-service pitch. And then, “I hope Prom is exactly what you hope it will be.” They all seem relieved until I add, “I’ll see you there!”

I’m at the library again. TESSA MASTERSON
WILL
GO TO PROM is splashed across the
Bee’s
Web site. In an exclusive interview with Tessa, reporter Cindy Alpert reveals that Tessa has been threatened with expulsion if she shows up at the Prom with (a) a female date or (b) a tuxedo on. Since Tessa’s determined to do both, I guess they’re going to have to double expel her or something.

I click over to Facebook. “100,000 Strong for Tessa Masterson” now has 8,024 members. I click the “like” button and make it 8,025. I’m not the greatest student in the world, but I have paid enough attention in English class to recognize irony. If there’s anybody on earth who hasn’t been strong for Tessa Masterson, it’s me. But maybe I can change that.

Maybe I have to. I go to work, where Josie looks at me like I’m the worst person on the planet, which pretty much reinforces what I’m feeling. And the Mastersons, on those rare occasions when I actually see them, look right through me. Again, I feel like I deserve that and it’s preferable to them firing me, which is probably what I would do in their shoes. But, as we’ve seen, I’m just not that good a person. I feel okay while I’m working, but then when I take my mandatory fifteen-minute break, my life starts to feel really heavy, and I sit in a plastic chair that’s probably as old as I am, with my head on the folding table. At some point, Kate Sweeney walks in, and eventually I notice her.

“Hey,” I say.

Kate looks at me. “Are you okay?”

“Nope,” I say. “I screwed up worse than I ever have in my life.”

Kate smiles at me. “Well. Knowing that puts you ahead of most people.”

“Thanks. I feel like the stuff shit scrapes off its shoes.”

This earns me a smile. “I don’t think you’re quite that bad. You’re a lot cuter than shit.”

I laugh. “And you look better than barf. Hey, are you working tomorrow? I kind of—I think, like, everybody here hates me and everybody at school hates me, and it’s just nice to see a semifriendly face.”

Kate laughs out loud. “Semifriendly. That’s what they call me down at the truck stop. But, I mean, I’m not
working tomorrow. Or, I guess, for the rest of the summer. I just got laid off.”

“What?” I’m a little shocked.

“Yeah. It turns out when people can go to MegaMart and pay less money and not have to face down a parking lot full of psychos—”

“Have you ever been in the MegaMart parking lot?”

Kate laughs. “Yeah, okay. Point taken. But the psychos in that parking lot are not organized and holding signs. Anyway, I was pretty much of a charity hire, so with business in the toilet, they can’t really afford to give me three shifts a week anymore.”

I feel like all the air has gone out of my lungs, and my head somehow winds up on the table again. Everybody for two counties knows how loyal the Mastersons are to the people who work for them. It’s not just my mom—tons of people have stories of paycheck advances that got them through a tough divorce, or pallets of food that mysteriously appeared outside their trailers in the middle of the night when times were really tight. It’s one of the reasons people shop at Brookfield Giant even though they can save money shopping at MegaMart.

And now the Mastersons are laying people off. Or at least one person, though probably there will be more, if there haven’t been already. This, too, is my fault. I can’t believe what I did by shooting my mouth off. I just want to curl up somewhere and quietly die.

“You okay?” Kate asks me again.

“I … Are you gonna have enough money for college?”

She puts a hand on my back and bends down next to me, smiling. She smells good. “Yeah, Luke. You didn’t ruin my life.”

“I just … I can’t believe how bad I screwed up.”

“Yeah. Well. How are you gonna make it right?”

“I don’t know if I can. It’s too big. It’s too much.”

“It’s big, but it’s not too big. And you’re not alone. There are a lot of us in this town who aren’t—like that. I think a lot of people are just waiting for someone else to say something sensible.”

“Well, I think I’ve proven that saying something sensible isn’t exactly my strong suit. But I guess I’m gonna go for it. The school board is meeting tomorrow night,” I say. “You know, because they couldn’t convince Tessa to change her mind.”

“Oh, I know. It’s gonna be broadcast on local eight cable access! I never miss one!” I stare at her blankly. “I’m totally kidding. But I am gonna watch this one. Or maybe even come.”

I have never had much trouble sleeping, except when Mom wakes me up blasting Miss Kaboom. No matter what kind of big game I’ve had, or big test, or big paper due, or anything, I’ve always been able to pretty much lie down, roll over, and fall asleep. But tonight, after sixteen rolls in various directions, I’m still awake. I turn onto my back and stare into the darkness—well, the pale yellowness, really, from the streetlights along Main Street that
light up the street where hardly anybody drives anymore and the sidewalk where no one ever walks. I’m nervous about the meeting. What if I get up there and can’t say the right thing? What if I do say the right thing and I’ve still lost Tessa’s friendship? Would I forgive her if she’d done something like this to me? And what happens to me and Mom once I plant my flag in the sand and announce once and for all what side I’m on?

Well, no booty call from Jenny Himmelrath, that’s for sure. It’s not like I care about that, though. I mean, yeah, I am a guy, but the idea of kissing one of the people who thinks Tessa’s evil actually makes me kind of sick.

I guess my problem is that I just can’t imagine what comes next. This isn’t a feeling I’m used to, or one that I’ve really ever had before. I mean, you live in a town like this, you pretty much know what’s happening next. It’s not like you ever start a new school where you don’t know anybody. You can always imagine what the next day, the next week, and the next month will be like, because they’re going to be pretty close to what the last day, the last week, and the last month were like. But not now. Now Tessa’s in completely unmapped territory, and if I’m going to be able to look at myself without completely hating myself, I’ve gotta go stand there with her.

It’s scary.

So I don’t sleep.

At around four, I get up, go to the kitchen table, flip open a notebook, and start writing out what I’m going
to say to the school board. At four thirty, Mom staggers toward the coffeemaker. “Hey,” I say.

“Yaaah!” Mom yells. “You scared the crap out of me! Well. I’m awake now. The question is, why are you?”

“Writing my statement for the school board.”

“Lemme see.”

Mom grabs the notebook and reads it while she busies herself with the coffeemaker, and when it starts to gurgle, she turns back to me. “Coming off the bench, huh? Getting in the game at last?”

“I guess so. You think it’s okay?”

Mom walks over and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s the single best thing you’ve ever done. And it makes me so proud of you I could just explode right here.”

“Don’t do that. The cleanup would be a bitch.”

Mom laughs as she pours coffee into a twenty-ounce travel mug. She takes a big gulp of coffee and says, “All right. I’m outta here. You know every yahoo for a hundred miles is going to turn out for this thing, so you’d better get there early if you want to be able to speak.”

“I will.”

“Good deal. I’ll see you there.”

The school board meeting starts at seven. I get there at four thirty, threading my way through the news trucks and reporters with perfect hair and too much makeup,
and some female reporters too, and I’m not the first in line. I’m not even the twenty-first in line. I don’t know what number I am. I can’t really see all the way up to where the line starts. I’m hoping Tessa is up there somewhere. Even if she’s not, I know she’ll hear about me being here, but I really want her to be in the room. I really want her to see me put myself on the line for her so she knows it’s for real. I really want her to forgive me, though I guess I won’t blame her if she doesn’t.

People look at me while I’m standing there. I’m wearing my Brookfield-Mason varsity baseball jacket over my T-shirt. I kind of imagine they’re wondering what I’m going to say, which side I’m going to be on. Well, most of them are wondering that. At five forty-five, Mom arrives and takes her place, way behind me in line. She looks at me and gives me the thumbs-up. I reach into the pocket of my jacket and feel the folded-up pieces of paper that hold my statement.

At six o’clock, a bald guy with glasses wearing a white short-sleeved button-down shirt comes out and tells us that, due to time constraints, the school board is not going to be able to hear from everyone. “The meeting is scheduled for two hours. That means that after initial announcements and other business, there will be time for exactly forty-five people to speak. Each person will have no more than two minutes. After two minutes, the microphone will be turned off, and those who refuse to leave will be escorted from the building by deputies from the
Clay County sheriff’s department. I will now hand out numbers to everyone who will get to speak. Those who do not get to address the board are welcome to submit their comments in writing after the meeting.”

The guy walks down the line handing out numbers, and I get nervous because I’m not sure how far back I am. When he gets to me, the guy hands me a card with the number 39 on it.

And then I get even more nervous. Because now I have a number and I have to do this. I start getting sweaty even though it’s not very hot. I feel like the other people in line should be staring at me because my heart is pounding so loud. My stomach feels sour, and I burp a nasty echo of the hot dog I had for lunch.

At six forty-five, the door to the meeting room opens, and we all start filing in from the hallway. Those of us with numbers get to sit in the first two rows.

Tessa is right up in the front, talking with some old guy I don’t recognize. I want to get up, go over to her, and say, “Tessa, I’m sorry for being such an idiot.” But sorry doesn’t cut it with something like this. You’ve got to do something bigger than that to try to make it right.

At seven o’clock, the school board chair bangs the gavel and calls the meeting to order. It’s time to make it right.