Limos, Lattes and My Life on the Fringe Page 20

  I was still sure I would look as if I’d been poured into any dress of hers, but I felt happier anyway. Now I just had to ask one of the boys in the Twelve if he would escort me on stage. I would actually ask Izzy if I thought he could stay awake long enough.

  I was headed for the table at lunch, still pretty much playing eeny, meeny, miny, mo, when a hulking figure with shaggy black hair cut into my path.

  “Hey, Tyler,” Matthew said.

  “Well, hey yourself.”

  “I thought maybe you’d want to go to lunch.”

  I looked behind him.

  “It’s just me,” he said.

  “And you want to go to lunch. Why, all of a sudden?”

  I hoped I didn’t sound rude, but this was out of left field. Actually it was from way out of the park. Nobody in the Fringe had spoken to me since the YouTube/Izzy incident.

  “I know it’s kind of random,” Matthew said. “But I need to talk to you. I’ll buy.”

  “I’ll eat lunch with you,” I said. “But I’ll buy my own food, and I am not getting in a car with you. How about the courtyard?”

  “Fine with me. I’m not that hungry anyway.”

  I started toward the outside door. “As I recall, you always mooched off my lunch. Come on.”

  I may have appeared casual as I led the way to the courtyard, but my mind was reviewing the possible topics. He wanted to apologize for leaving me to do the whole Andrew Jackson presentation. He wanted to tell me something about Yuri or Deidre. He wanted to announce that he was becoming a priest. Okay, ridiculous, but it was about as plausible as the other two. Matthew just didn’t “talk” about things.

  We sat at the only concrete table that wasn’t occupied by an RC. Matthew surveyed them from under his bushy eyebrows, but I shook my head at him.

  “They’re all harmless,” I whispered. “Just don’t tell them that, because they don’t know.”

  He gave them one last scowl and turned to me. “I know this is going to sound really weird, but I heard you need an escort for the prom queen — thing — and if you want, I’ll do it.”

  I froze with my sandwich midway to my mouth.

  “Like I said, I know it’s weird, random, whatever — but I want to do it.”

  I put the sandwich down. “Why?”

  “Because …” He looked warily at YouTube and the crowd around him at the other end of the courtyard. “You know they’re going to try to humiliate you again, especially now that a lot of people are looking up to you. I could protect you, maybe.”

  “How are you going to do that, Matthew? All you’ve ever done up until now is hide from them.” “I can come out for one night.”

  I laughed. “And then you’ll climb back into the crypt?”

  “I want to do it, okay? You need somebody and I want it to be me.” He rubbed the concrete with his finger. “Unless you don’t think I can clean up my act or something. I guess I might not be what they have in mind.”

  Everything I’d said about Prom for Everybody flashed through my mind. Right along with RL saying Did you give everything you had?

  “I would love to have you as my escort, Matthew,” I said. “We will be stunning on that stage.”

  He closed his eyes, and for the first time I saw the under-the-skin tremble around his mouth. “I swear I’ll drive safe.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a good thing my house is only four blocks from here.”

  “Dude, that’s harsh.”

  “You’ll come to the party before, right?”

  He shook his bangs over his eyes.

  “You can still back out,” I said.

  “No. I’m there.” He actually smiled at me. “This is me being there.”

  And this was me, still trying to keep my teeth from dropping out of my mouth.

  Seventeen days of full-out preparation, and suddenly, prom night was just — there. The last day was the fullest.

  Do’s at Ryleigh’s mom’s shop, although I just went to watch. Sunny did mine and Candace’s, because African American hair is a whole other thing. I had never seen Candace’s hair look so … sane.

  Manicures à la each other. Hayley did mine, in red to match the dress Sunny gave me. By some miracle it fit as if it were made for me, with a trumpet skirt and a long, fitted waist that made me feel like somebody glamorous.

  “You are somebody glamorous,” my mother told me. Her eyes were actually misty when she loaned me the perfect lipstick and her diamond tennis bracelet. For the first time ever, I wanted to be me when I grew up.

  The last half hour before the party was supposed to start, I had a major attack of the doubts. I paced them out in the foyer. No one was going to come. There were going to be all these Swedish meatballs and cheese puffs and white roses waiting in an empty house until midnight, when I would turn back into a pumpkin. What was I going to do when the prom was over?

  “Well now. Who is this?”

  I looked up at my father, who was standing halfway down the stairs, wearing a suit and a wobbly smile. “It’s just me,” I said.

  He took the rest of the steps down shaking his head. “No, no, this is not ‘just’ anybody. This is my beautiful daughter.”

  Dad held out his hand, and when I took it, he twirled me around so that the trumpet skirt sailed at my calves. He stopped and took both of my hands in his — not something the father I knew would ever do.

  “I still have my misgivings about all this,” he said. “But I have to say this: I think it has turned you into a young woman.”

  “It’s the dress,” I said.

  “Dresses don’t make young women. Integrity makes young women. And character. Now, stubbornness” — he gave me his boy grin — “that just makes me remember you’re still my kid.”

  “That and my big feet. I couldn’t wear Sunny’s shoes.”

  “Some of the most beautiful women in the world have worn size nine or over. Jacqueline Kennedy —”

  “How do you even know that?”

  I didn’t get to hear, because there was a commotion out front. I went to the window in the door and felt a guffaw burst right up out of the neckline of that red dress.

  A large farm wagon was stopping at the curb, lined with seats and festooned with garlands of ivy and daisies and white fluff. The Twelve filled the seats, a profusion of color and laughter and joy. The whole thing was pulled by four horses.

  The prom was now officially for everybody.

  It only got better after that. Candace arrived in the Camaro with the much-anticipated Quinn. He was everything she said he was and more. I couldn’t take my eyes off the gold tooth. Hayley showed up in a limo with a date someone told me was her cousin, along with Joanna and a sophomore boy she must have corralled at the last minute. He looked pretty much ecstatic to be there. She was keeping up a brave front. I secretly hoped she’d be crowned queen.

  Valleri was my personal favorite guest. When she walked in wearing a coral party dress that screamed Paris, everyone stopped in awe.

  “Who is that?” Joanna’s date whispered to me. “I never even saw her before.”

  “Pretend you don’t see her now,” I said. “If you get my drift.”

  He evidently did, because he scurried back to Joanna.

  When I got Valleri alone at the hors d’oeuvres table, I told her how fabulous she looked, and then I asked her something I never thought to even bring up before.

  “Are you going to prom alone?”

  “Oh, no. My date’s meeting me here and we’re going to walk over.”

  “I feel like a totally heinous friend for not already knowing this,” I said. “Who is it?”

  She smiled and nodded toward the door, which Sunny was opening with one hand while she balanced a tray of drinks with the other. I hoped it wasn’t Matthew she was letting in or she was going to be wearing those drinks.

  But it was Patrick who walked into the foyer, looking far hotter than any seventeen-year-old boy should be allowed to look. White dinner jacket. B
lond hair shiny and falling into all the right places. And even from where I was standing, I could see the brown eyes dancing.

  My heart stopped … Valleri was going to the prom with Patrick? I whipped around to face her, but she was already headed for the door. With a quick wave to him, she greeted the next person who stepped in — with a hug and a huge smile. I stared for a full five seconds before I realized it was Izzy.

  “He sure cleans up nice,” Sunny murmured behind me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Who’d have thought?”

  Nobody, except Valleri, who brought out the hidden self in everybody, it seemed. Izzy was combed and shined up and fitted nicely into a gray tux. Best of all, he was wide awake.

  “I knew you’d look this way.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment before I turned to Patrick. He looked — and smelled — even better close up. I should have kept my eyes shut longer.

  “You’re fabulous,” he said.

  “So are you,” I said.

  “We did it, didn’t we?”

  “I think we did.”

  He put up his hand and I touched my palm to it. This time when he squeezed, I squeezed back. His date probably wasn’t going to like it. I should probably let go …

  I looked around. “Did you come with someone?” I said.

  “No, it’s just me.”

  A stab of something went straight through my heart. He’d rather go to the prom alone than ask me?

  “Tyler?”

  That was Sunny, singing out to me from the front door. Matthew was standing next to her, all in black, hair combed back, looking almost handsome in a haunted sort of way. Haunted and out of place.

  “Excuse me,” I said to Patrick.

  Somehow I pulled Matthew into the dining room — I was in need of that guy from Castle Heights Towing — and got him focused on the food. Fortunately, any food was comfort food to Matthew, including cheese puffs. Then I turned around to find Patrick again, but Noelle and Fred cornered me.

  “Do you like the tux?” she said, eyes alive and shiny.

  “I do,” I said. Fred too “cleaned up nice” in tails and a top hat.

  “He won it,” she said. “In the contest.”

  “You mean the Most Creative Invite contest?”

  She nodded proudly and wrung out his arm. “Tell her what you did.”

  Fred shrugged. “I’d already asked her before and it was lame, like, ‘You don’t really want to go, do you?’ So I decided to ask her again, for real —”

  “ — And he sang it! In the middle of the night, under my window. It was so romantic!”

  “The neighbors weren’t that happy about it,” Fred said with another shrug. “But who cares? This only happens once in our whole life.”

  I followed his gaze around the room. People I saw every day in their jeans and their T-shirts and their I’m-so-over-this expressions had been transformed, not only by their heels and bow ties and Lana-made corsages, but by the poise in their shoulders and the softness in their manners and the self-respect in their voices. It was like a peek into the future, at the adults we would all be if we treated each other well: Joanna was exclaiming over Candace’s bracelets, and Hayley was chatting Izzy up about the lobster rolls, and Egan, sweet Egan, was telling Ryleigh she was beauty pageant material. We could all be ladies and gentlemen, no matter how much money we ever made, and this was our rite of passage into that.

  I was going to have to explain that to my father. Because this was why a prom was significant.

  “We have to go,” Ryleigh said to me. “We’re going for a ride around the lake before we go to the school. You’re coming, aren’t you?”

  I shook my head and glanced around for Matthew, who was currently trying to become one with the wainscoting in the foyer.

  “I wish I was,” I said. “But I’ll see you all there.”

  She hugged me and flew off, taking the rest of the Twelve with her.

  “You’re not going with the group?” Patrick said at my elbow. “No,” I said. “I’m going with Matthew.” He looked as if I had just slapped him across the face. There was more than disappointment in his eyes.

  “I thought you were all about the group thing,” he said.

  “I am. But Matthew volunteered to be my escort — and the prom is for everybody.” I finished off with a dry, “Even him.”

  “So if somebody else had asked you sooner, you’d have gone with him.”

  I opened my mouth to answer with who knew what, but he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Look, I just wanted to tell you a couple things.”

  “Okay.”

  His voice was chilly. Or maybe I was imagining that. Or maybe I wasn’t.

  “Egan,” he was saying. “He said at the last minute they got a cheaper photographer, so even that got done. Cool, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And the other thing? YouTube and, like, four other people already got busted with alcohol in their limo.”

  “The prom hasn’t even started yet!”

  “Yeah, well, now it’ll be even better. We never found out for sure who sent those threats, but without them there, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

  “Maybe not.” I was trying to swallow that bubble gum again. “Patrick,” I said, “are you okay?”

  “Fine. I’m going to go tell your parents thanks.”

  I nodded numbly and watched him go toward the kitchen. If he’d turned around and said, “Forget this whole thing. Let’s you and me go to Scarnato’s,” I’d have done it.

  But he didn’t.

  “You ready?” Matthew said.

  He was there beside me, jangling his car keys.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We might as well go.”

  I didn’t feel much like talking when we got in the car, not even to comment on the fact that Matthew had cleaned it out. At least I didn’t have to contend with a liter of Mountain Dew. That day seemed like a lifetime ago now. That was the day I’d first suspected that Patrick was a decent human being.

  Okay — I had to stop thinking about Patrick. He was obviously already pulling away now that the prom was here. I needed to focus on Matthew. It was the least I could do.

  “Thanks for not driving like we’re in a NASCAR race,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  I looked ahead of us. “Of course, you still have about as much sense of direction as — Matthew, this is not the way to the school.”

  “I know.”

  “Where are we going?”

  I watched him squeeze the steering wheel. “I’ll tell you where we’re not going.”

  “What?”

  He took his eyes off the road and turned them on me. “Sorry, Tyler,” he said. “We’re not going to the prom.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I don’t see the humor in that, Matthew,” I said.

  “That’s because there isn’t any.”

  The car lunged forward, and he took a corner on what felt like two tires.

  “Matthew — stop.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Then slow down — unless your plan is to try to kill me. I’m serious. Slow down or I’m calling 911.”

  “That’s going to be kind of difficult,” he said.

  But he eased back on the speed and took the next curve on all four tires. I wasn’t reassured. Matthew was pulling his hair back over his eyebrows, and his black tie was already flopping where he’d loosened it. We really weren’t going to the prom.

  “Look,” I said, “if you don’t want to escort me, I totally get that, but I have to be there. Just take me back to the school and drop me off. No hard feelings.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Would you stop saying that!”

  “How about, ‘I am not able to accommodate you at this time'? Does that work for you?”

  I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Okay. Tell me what’s going on — and don’t say you can’t, or I will call 911.”
>
  “No, you won’t.”

  “Bet me.” I fumbled with the clasp on my purse — and hoped I could call 911 with my fingers shaking like I had some kind of palsy. When I finally got the thing open, my phone wasn’t in there.

  “I took it out when you were talking to Patrick Sykes,” Matthew said.

  I went cold. But I forced myself to roll my eyes at him. I had to pretend until I got my brain around this. I wished I were better at it.

  “The prom wasn’t exciting enough so you thought you’d throw a kidnapping in?” I said.

  “The kidnapping part is right.”

  “And you’re doing it because …”

  “Because you didn’t get the message.”

  “What mess — “ I stopped and stared. The pretend game was already over. “You sent those text messages?” I said.

  “No, Deidre did. It was actually kind of slick the way she —”

  “Picked up somebody’s cell phone wherever she happened to be,” I said.

  She was always having her car worked on. Castle Heights Towing. And she ate at Five Guys at least twice a week. She loved their Fat Burgers.

  Why hadn’t I put that together before?

  Because it didn’t make any sense then. It still didn’t. And that broke me out in an icy sweat. I coaxed myself back to pretending.

  “Are you going to tell me why?” I said. “Or do I have to deduce it for myself?”

  Matthew swore under his breath and jerked the steering wheel, sending us at a squealing angle as we made another corner. Barely.

  “Where are you taking me?” I said. “Just curious — you know, in case I’m dressed wrong.”

  “This isn’t the way I wanted it to go.”

  I glanced out the window and felt an iota of relief. We were coming up on the Jiff-E-Mart, which meant there would be people around. There were always people. Ahead the light was red, and Matthew showed no signs of stopping. I planted my hands on the dashboard and glared at him, hard.

  “If you don’t stop,” I said, “I will jump out of this car.”

  “Yeah? If I do stop, you’ll definitely jump out and run.”

  “I swear I won’t — just don’t get us killed!”

  As he braked and sent the car into another slide, I looked frantically out the window toward the Jiff-E-Mart. As I’d hoped, several guys were hanging out in the parking lot, and they all jerked their faces toward us at the sound of Matthew’s tires screaming on the pavement. One of them was my cousin Kenny.