Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom (5 page)

Apparently it does. “Well, I think that was really sweet,” she says, walking out of the break room. “Enjoy your cardboard.”

“You enjoy yours,” I say.

Unfortunately, I can’t spend all my time at work, and I have to go back to school. The graffiti bandit has stopped
posting new parodies of my sign, but people still want to talk to me and make jokes and stuff, and it’s tiresome.

A couple of people tell me Tessa was at the tux store in Mason with Danny—who, like all my teammates, is getting the silent treatment from me—and that she rented a tux. I feel like this is one of those typical Brookfield stories where something essential is missing and everyone loses their shit until they find out the story was totally wrong. So I pretty much ignore it. I mean, she wouldn’t be dumb enough to do something like that. Would she?

Our kitchen looks like we’re either massive food hoarders or are preparing a hideout, a fallout shelter from some war outside. Giant Brookfield dumps all the extras with us—cans with misprinted labels, flats of Cola Light about to expire even though there’s nothing in the ingredient list that could possibly expire, and heaps of potato chips, pretzels, and cheese puffs. Different brands send bulk packages to inspire Mom and Dad to order cases for the stores. Most of the time they stick with what they know and order your standard salted and BBQ chips. Every once in a while they throw caution to the wind and order something super-exotic like artificial, not-in-any-way-European French Onion.

“Now tell me these are worth the extra nineteen cents
per packet,” my dad says to my mom, rustling a blue-and-gold bag of Bestler’s Biggest Cheddar ’n’ Onion Super-Size Cheezers.

My mom looks skeptical. “I’ll try one if you will, Tess.” She slips her slim hand in and takes two oversize chips out, handing one to me, seemingly oblivious to my nerves and my racing heart. “Well?”

I force myself to crunch and chew halfway through the mildly disgusting snack despite my dry mouth, my sweaty palms. My mother’s mouth is dusted with cheese. Before she notices any awkwardness, I make my move.

“Probably you’re wondering where my magical Prom dress is,” I say, trying to anticipate a problem the way she and my dad taught me. Dad sits at the round kitchen table doing his best to consume the rest of the contents of the Super-Size Cheezers bag; he and my mom are often so busy at the markets that they forget to eat and then come home and make weird dinners from whatever snacks and wheels of cheese have been dropped off on the front porch.

My mom dusts off her lips with one of the paper napkins that come in packs of five hundred and that we keep on the counter.

“Well, where is it?” Dad asks when Mom doesn’t.

I pause, wondering how on earth to explain. These are people who blanch at new snack products. How will they handle this news about their daughter? My cheeks flush and I feel woozy.

“Now listen,” Mom says as she stands up. She puts a
hand on my forehead as though checking for a fever. “I might be a million years old but I still remember the pre-Prom jitters.” Air gets caught in my throat as I try to breathe. My mom looks at me and then over her shoulder at my dad and his bright orange fingers, his mustache partly dyed by fake cheese. “Listen … your Dad and I … Well …”

This is it, I think. They know. They know. And they’re not freaking out. I always worry about things exploding and they rarely do. The tiniest of smiles appears on my lips.

“So.” I sigh. “You understand?”

My dad studies a new juice bottle, some combination of iced tea and lemonade with a cartoon lime on the label. “I was the first to say maybe things with Luke would progress to the next level.”

My forehead wrinkles. “What?”

My mom steps in. “What he means is, you two spend an awful lot of time together as it is and maybe you have your doubts or feel certain pressures from Lucas because he’s a teenage boy.” She says “boy” like it means “sex,” and I cringe. “So I completely understand where you’re coming from in terms of wanting to forget going to the Prom with him.” She pats my back like it’s all settled. “But …” She and my dad do another parental check-in, with only their eyes communicating.

“We think you’d regret not going at all. That’s how come we told your brother to make sure you got something today.” My dad stands up. “Don’t get that look, Tessa.” He motions to my face. “We’ll even reimburse you for what you spent.” I can see dollar signs behind my dad’s
eyes. He’s not big on buying stuff for us, always wants us to make our own money so we appreciate the value of the hard-earned American dollar, so it’s an even bigger deal that he and Mom want to fund my Prom gear.

“But Dad—”

“Dad’s right, honey. You said no to Lucas but that doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy yourself!” My mother is perpetually bright. Glass half full, sunny side of the street. The early-evening light touches the counter, the breeze riffles the sunflower-yellow curtains my mom sewed by hand when I was little. Being in this room has always felt like being in the center of a flower, that sunny and happy.

I dash out of the kitchen to the mudroom where I dropped my book bag and hung up the plastic suit bag from Mr. Tux. Another life lesson I’ve learned from customer service is accountability, so I don’t want to blame anything on Lucas. After all, he’s always been there for me. Well, not the past day or so, but probably that’ll pass. I hold the suit bag with two fingers, fully aware that its contents are not what my parents expect.

“Now,” I say, when I get back into the kitchen, “let me just start by saying this might be a big sur—”

Dad shakes his head and slams his palms on the tabletop. “What did I tell you, Louise? She’s gone and bought something obscene.” He looks at me with his bushy eyebrows raised. “Let me guess—it’s up to here?” He marks a point at the top of his thigh.

“Strapless?” my mother offers, reaching for the bag, determined to find out for herself.

Weirdly, I wish Lucas were here. Well, not present-day pissed-off Lucas, not public Prom-asking Lucas, but friend Lucas. Old Lucas. The one who’d help me. Who would hold my hand in a friendly, supportive way.

“Well?” my protective father booms.

“It’s not short,” is how I start. And I open my mouth, intending to pour the whole story out, to explain that it’s not Lucas. It’s not them. It’s not anything sudden, it’s more like a creeping knowledge that I’ve pushed away for as long as I can remember. Until Lucas asked me to Prom I thought I could just keep shoving that part of me away until—when? College? After college? When is the right time? Never. Now. And there’s Josie and the artful playlists she burns on CDs and decorates with permanent markers. And how fun it would be to dance with her to some of those songs. The Pogues or the Pixies or Miss Kaboom belting out “Shake it, shake it.” I’ve gone so far as to imagine the corsages we’d get each other. But I also know that it’s not just Josie. If it weren’t her, it’d be someone else. Some other girl some other time. I chomp on my upper lip until it hurts. “In fact, the dress is, well, it’s not even—”

Right when I’m about to let the tux out of the bag, our obnoxious old-school rotary phone rings, shocking the kitchen quiet. Even the happy curtains seem shocked. My mother answers with a quick “yup,” the way she always does, continuing to mull over the suit bag, which is, thankfully, out of her reach. My dad rummages around for the main course—from the looks of it, a tray of deli meat
made into fancy rolls and garnished with now-wilting parsley someone ordered, paid for with at least a 50 percent deposit, and then probably forgot to pick up. As he wolfs down a turkey-and-provolone roll-up, my mother says, “I see,” into the phone, but twists her lips in confusion. She hangs up before I can reconsider and slink out toward the living room to try Lucas’s cell phone yet again.

The receiver clatters into the yellow base on the wall. “That was Melinda Driscoll. She’s down at the former Thai Palace—she’s the real estate agent there,” my mother says, her voice hard and flat. “She seems to be under the impression that, for some reason, you bought—not rented, but purchased—a tuxedo today.”

I swallow. Thai Palace, now closed, is next to the Discount LiquorMart, which is a couple of stores down from Mr. Tux. Word wouldn’t have to travel far from there to be spewed from Mrs. Driscoll’s big mouth. I keep poised, fully in my customer-service stance. “Well, the thing is, it was on sale, so—”

“And Danny managed to convince you to pay for it? I said I’d cover your dress, not his outfit. He’s in for a grounding.” My father’s voice reverberates against the lemony walls.

Danny has a tendency to make rash decisions, especially involving money or fun things that my parents perceive of as flights of fancy and unnecessary. Exhibit A: the pinball machine in the basement. Exhibit B: his water bed. “No,” I say, defending Danny. “This isn’t Danny’s fault.”

My mother takes this opportunity to snatch the bag from my arms where it has left a trail of perspiration. Swiftly she unzips it and looks inside. “What a foolish boy,” she says. “It says FINAL SALE
and
it’s ridiculously small.”

“Maybe he’s planning on hacking an inch or two off his legs?” my dad jokes.

“But that’s the thing. It’s not for Danny.” The words hang there and I watch my parents sort through the possibilities: it’s for Lucas, but no, because he’s not going with Tessa, or it’s for … “It’s for me.”

My dad stops snarfing salty processed meats. My mother adjusts her practical khakis and fitted blouse as though just now realizing what she’s wearing.

After what feels like hours my mother finally asks, “Is this a joke?”

The expression on her face is the same one she had when the original Giant Brookfield, the one closest to her heart, was robbed. They broke the front plate-glass window and looted the cash registers and damaged the expensive display cases, unplugging them and ruining the food inside.

“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for all of this,” my dad says, ever the practical person. “Right?” His gaze locks on mine.

I shift in my sneakers. “Um, well, yeah. The explanation is very simple. I saw the tux at the store and it looked … great. Like it would really
fit
me. Me, you know? Like finally I wouldn’t shove myself into a dress just so everyone else was happy.”

“Is this to do with Lucas?” My mother struggles to understand, which, instead of making me feel angry at her, only makes me feel worse.

“Look,” I say to her, and take the tux back. I slide it out from its sheath and hold it up to me. “See? It’s not Lucas. It’s not Danny. It’s not school pressure or any of those things you’re probably thinking.” I go back to the customer-service tactics. “I understand you must be shocked.”

“Don’t try those customer-service techniques with us!” my dad shouts. “Two seconds ago I had a daughter who I thought was going to dress like a hooker for her Prom. That seems like a manageable problem now.”

“Dad—you still have a daughter.” I try to smile. “And I’d never dress like a hooker.”

My mom reasons, planning in her head. “I saw the cover of
Us Weekly
. This is popular in Hollywood? For girls to wear boys’ clothing?” Her voice goes up, her hopes go higher.

I shrug. “You know I’m not the biggest gossip-rag reader. The cashiers know more than I do.” I keep the tux pressed to my body, already imagining my hair up in a twist.

My dad looks relieved. “So we can tell Mrs. Driscoll this is a fad? A trend?”

I shake my head. “No. I’m pretty sure I’ll be the only female at the Prom in a tux.” Their faces aren’t crumpling so I move forward. “And there’s something else—”

The screen door slams and Danny bursts into the house, shouting information while dropping his baseball bat
and gear onto the floor in his usual messy heap. “Word’s out, Tess! Just so you know, the whole team somehow found out about it. Didn’t take long—like an hour, right? And now you and your big old Prom date are the talk of the town.”

“Date?” My mother braces herself on the table’s edge.

“Mom and Dad are here!” I shout even though it’s too late, and Danny keeps blathering on about every detail. I mean, I haven’t even asked Josie yet. Yet. Of course I want to. I spent last night flipping my pillow around to the cool side every half hour trying to figure out if she’d say yes or if it was dumb to ask her to this traditional event. Now it looks like I won’t even get a chance.

“Lucas is taking it rough, man. I mean, like rough and ragged.” Danny walks into the kitchen, grabs one of the lemonade teas and swigs most of it in one gulp while my parents watch in amazement at everything.

“Define rough,” I say, my lungs cramping, my feet tingling.

“Like the kind of pissed off that might make him do something stupid,” Danny says, sweat dripping from his sideburns to his jaw.

I feel instant betrayal even though I don’t know what—if anything—Lucas is doing. “Well, maybe like you said he just needs to cool down.”

“Wait—can we backtrack a second here?” My father’s big frame takes up nearly the whole window, blocking the last of the sunlight and darkening the room.

Danny elbows me. “Didn’t you tell them?”

I cut to the chase. “Fine. First I thought I didn’t want to go to the Prom. Like it was kind of gratuitous spending like you said when we wanted that arcade game at the front of the store.”

“I still love Ms. Pac-Man,” Danny says. “She’s hot … in a cartoony way.”

I poke his arm. “Not helping … But then I realized it was all this pressure, this immense weight on my shoulders about finding some shiny dress and renting a long black car and a hotel room—”

“Hotel room?” my father yells.

“Suite, Dad, a suite,” Danny interjects with his usual intentional sarcasm.

“No friggin’ way!” Dad’s bellow is loud enough to reach two counties over.

I roll my eyes. “Well, you can be glad that that’s not happening, Dad. It felt wrong. I felt like I was lying. Not just to Lucas. To everyone. To myself.”