Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom (16 page)

Most friends don’t remember the actual first time they met because usually it’s a gradual thing, like you happened to sit next to each other in class one day and then the next day, too, or you worked at Scoops Ice Cream one summer and by the end of your shifts you were close to the other employees, but you don’t know the moment.

My friendship with Lucas is different that way.

We have a photograph from our first conversation.

If I were in English class I would turn it in as a decent representation of irony since it’s a black-and-white picture from the
Brookfield Tribune
, back before we had to combine school districts because of lack of funding and people moving away because the auto industry tanked.

My desk is a slab of Formica on two filing cabinets.
The Lucas picture is framed, positioned between a family photo of Danny, Dad, Mom, and me in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, dressed as cowboys, which is only mildly embarrassing now, and a photo I took of Josie when my parents found an old Polaroid camera and it turned out to have film inside. She’s only half there in the picture because I wasn’t really trying to have her pose; I was just checking to see if the camera worked. Sure enough, the warped photo spat out and a few seconds later there Josie was, heading out the staff door into the bright, cold January air.

I’m getting ready for work with my nerves sprinting because my parents are downstairs arguing about money and I can hear words like “closing,” “mortgage,” “financial aid,” and “bankruptcy” and I try to drown them out with Josie’s mix. I turn up the volume on the French song and pick up Josie’s picture, thumbing the warped edge. She’s looking over her shoulder at me, caught somewhere between a grin and a seductive glance, and her hair is outlined in white from the snowy background. Her purple cat-eye glasses perch on her head as though she has an extra set of eyes up there. The whole thing has an otherwordly look to it, like something found in an attic from another era. Partially this is because the film was, like, decades old, but it’s also due to the fact that Josie and I are sort of stop-start-stop. Like sprints on the track. You get ready and give it everything and then it’s over. Or maybe that’s wrong because we haven’t given it—us—a
real shot because there’s too much mayhem around. Either way, when the mix slides into the song, pumping out the lyrics “I wanna I wanna I wanna be adored,” it occurs to me that maybe Josie and I are in two different places: she’s ready to be adored and I’m just ready not to be loathed. Adoration sounds good, but impossible with the click of cameras and flashbulbs, and reporters everywhere.

And yet, that’s exactly how Lucas and I found each other. I hold the frame in my hands, staring at the image, letting myself get sucked into the pixels. We are so young, he is all limbs, his hair sticking up at the back. My hair is blunt, to my chin, and I’m taller than he is, with bigger shoes, which was a competitive thing back then. Anyone looking at the picture would think that we are reaching for each other, our arms stretched out, fingers spread. But a closer look reveals that in midair between us is a can of frozen lemonade. It is the same can that Lucas took from the display my parents had set up for the grand opening of their new store—the one that had been such big news for our area that reporters as far away as Indianapolis had come to wolf down cut sandwiches and cold sodas. But Lucas’s mom had forbidden soda, so in an act of young rebellion, he’d poached a display can of semifrozen pink lemonade and—his arm was great even then—thrown it hard … right into my back. Pain and surprise zinged through me and I spun around, searching for the source, and found Lucas, horrified that he’d hurt me, and the can sweating into the grass at my feet. Lucas was so sorry and
I was so surprised that we started to laugh, which turned into red-faced hysterics as we began a game of catch. I remember that my fingers stung from the cold, and that Lucas kept count of how many successful passes we had, and how we talked as the rest of the celebration went on without us as we got absorbed in our own game. The photograph was taken without us knowing. My parents snipped it from the paper and framed one copy for them and one copy for Mrs. Fogelman. The picture migrated over the years, from the kitchen counter to the hallway. Now my room.

“Tessa!” my father shouts over the music. I can’t actually hear my name, just the sound of his voice. “Tessa!”

I put the picture back. It’s time to go.

I’ve never been out of the country, but I’ve seen pictures of crowded India and of the Beatles landing in London, and while my arrival at Giant Brooks isn’t met with adoring fans, it is as big a crowd as I remember seeing. At least around here.

“Is it true that Giant Brooks is minutes away from going under?”

A reporter shoves her face in front of my mother’s as she gets out of the car. My father shoots her a look that says, “Don’t say a word.” Since my parents are silent, the crowd turns on me.

There are supporters carrying signs that read SAVE
GIANT BROOKS. There are others holding aloft poster-board with TEAM TESSA written in thick marker—some rainbow-colored—and a bunch of people who are sure not from Brookfield-Mason. They have expensive shoes and good hair and wave to me as I walk toward the entrance.

But there are double that number of signs that say GO AWAY, TACKLE TEAM TESSA (that’s the entire football team in full force and uniform), SIN SPREADS, GIANT BROOKS = GIANT GAY.

“Can a store even
be
gay?” I ask Josie when I see her inside. She’s doing inventory of the bags of charcoal, which involves lifting and isn’t much fun, so she hardly gives a laugh.

“This town blows,” she says under her breath as she heaves another bag on top of a pile.

I do a quick check of the angry crowd outside, the deserted aisles at the store my parents built from nothing—the one that has paid for my running shoes, my allowance, and lots of the salaries in this town—and start to nod. But something keeps me from totally giving in. “It’s not all bad,” I say.

“You’re too forgiving,” Josie says. Her voice is hard. Flat. She sighs and pushes her glasses up with her pointer finger.

“Come on, Josie.” I try to make a face to lighten the mood even though I feel like I’m trapped under water.

She gives her head a defeated shake. “Seriously, Tessa, the rest of the world isn’t like this.”

Now I feel something aside from down and worried.
I feel annoyed. “But it is like this. You’ve lived all over, right? This is a small town. This is so much of America, Jos. You think it’d be different for me if I lived in Berlin, Arkansas? Or Lucca, Mississippi? My life would be the same there.”

Josie’s mouth turns down. She bites her top lip. “Well, it wouldn’t have me in it if you lived there.”

I see my mother waving me to the back of the store but I can’t leave just yet. I bounce back and forth from one foot to the other, a habit left over from prerace warmups. “And that would be a good thing?” I ask.

She waits a second before responding. “Not good. That’s not what I mean. More like … easier. For you.” She loads another bag of charcoal, scraping it on the linoleum until I help her lift it. Across the weight of it, Josie looks at me, her eyes not sad exactly, but sorry for what she’s about to say. “You would have dealt with this eventually. I know that. But I can’t help but feel like it’s because of me that it turned into a complete circus. Look at them out there. Crazy people. I mean, I don’t even feel safe driving alone. Or walking to the post office.”

I crack a smile, fighting off tears. “What are you mailing?”

Josie gets flustered for a second, half laughing. Then she drops her end of the bag and it lands with a thud. “It’s not that I don’t like you. I did. I do. It’s just …” Her gaze goes to the parking lot, where people have walked right up to the plate-glass window and shoved their signs at us.
I know she told Luke how great she thinks I am. Now I realize this might have been her parting words.

“It feels like too much, you know?” Josie fidgets with her hair.

And I want to say I don’t know, that she’s the one who helped me go forward, that I like her songs and her smile and the way she kisses. But I don’t. “I know what you mean,” I say, and before I actually cry, I walk over and hug her. Right with everyone watching, which of course only makes the shouting and cheering louder. Josie’s right. We’re a spectacle, not a couple.

“This doesn’t mean I won’t help you,” she says. “You know, if they reinstate Prom or whatever.”

I nod and walk the long way through the frozen foods to the back of the store.

“Aren’t we a big bunch of sad sacks?” My mother has her apron on inside out as she methodically places napkins—the good, double-ply, expensive ones—into a cardboard box that once held Lucky Charms.

I nod and start to help her. “No,” she says, and directs me to another empty box. “Make yourself useful and bring the salsa and chips here.”

“How many?” I ask.

“All of it,” she says. “The whole aisle.”

I stare, amazed. “Huh?”

My mother is all business. “When times are tight, you
make adjustments. The yacht club called and—well, they were probably feigning support—but they asked if we’d sell them paper goods at cut-rate.”

“Mom—”

“Don’t Mom me. We’re still making money off it, which may not be the case forever.”

“And the salsa?”

She shrugs. “Breaking even. But it’s got a long shelf life and they’ll probably use it all up this summer, so it’s not going to waste or anything …”

I spend the next hour or so of my shift lugging boxes of salsa to the delivery van. Once the whole lot of Pedro’s and El Guapo and the unlikely Midwestern Salsa Company are out, I start with the chips. I only pop one bag, which is the hazard of carrying too many at a time.

“Need a hand?” Danny steps on the chips I dropped which means cleanup in aisle six but also means he can drive with me to the yacht club.

“Yes. I need many hands,” I say, and together we pile stuff into the van and ignore the protesters who have found us in the back loading area.

Danny looks at me across the van’s bucket seats but doesn’t hassle me until we’re parked at the yacht club’s delivery door. “I hate this place,” Danny says. “It’s so wannabe fancy. Like the trellis. What is a trellis, anyway? Who needs it?”

“People who like flowers. Or who have weddings here,” I say, as I bring in a box of salsa and put it in the dark
corridor near the industrial kitchen. “I always kind of liked this place.” I look at the groomed shrubs, the newly varnished decking, the maintenance crew painting the railings white like they do every spring.

In the middle of unloading, Danny strips his polo shirt off and reveals a bright purple T-shirt. “TEAM TESSA?” I ask.

He grins. “I’m MVP,” he says.

“’Course you are,” I say, and close the van door, catching my thumb in the handle in the process. Danny laughs and it feels good just to have a normal brother-sister moment. You know, with a brother laughing at a sister’s pain.

“Ahem.” The throat clearing comes from Mrs. Elaine Gertrin, who wears her yacht club blazer and pressed red trousers as though she’s about to aye-aye us.