“That’s it?” I said. I was annoyed with him that night,with everything about him. He’d gotten to take Belly to her prom and he acted like it was some big chore. If it had been me, I would have done it right.
Conrad ignored me. “She looked really pretty. She wore a purple dress.”
My mom nodded, smiling. “I know exactly the one. How’d the corsage look?”
He shifted in his seat. “It looked nice.”
“Did you end up getting the kind you pin on or the kind you wear on your wrist?”
“The kind you pin on,” he said.
“And did you dance?”
“Yeah, a lot,” he said. “We danced, like, every song.”
“What was the theme?”
“I don’t remember,” Conrad said, and when my mother looked disappointed he added, “I think it was A Night on the Continent. It was, like, a tour of Europe. They had a big Eiffel Tower with Christmas tree lights on it, and a London Bridge you could walk across. And a Leaning Tower of Pisa.”
I looked over at him. A Night on the Continent was our school’s prom theme last year; I know because I was there.
But I guess my mother didn’t remember, because she said, “Oh, that sounds so nice. I wish I could’ve been at Laurel’s house to help Belly get ready. I’m gonna call Laure tonight and bug her to send me those pictures.When do you think you’ll get the professional pictures back? I want to get them framed.”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“Ask Belly, will you?” She set her plate down on the coffee table and leaned back against the couch cushions. She looked exhausted all of a sudden.
“I will,” he said.
“I think I’m going to bed now,” she said. “Jere, will you get all this cleaned up?”
“Sure, Mom,” I said, helping her to her feet.
She kissed us both on the cheek and went to her bedroom. We’d moved the study upstairs and put her bedroom downstairs so she didn’t have to go up and down the stairs.
When she was gone, I said, sarcastically, “So you guys danced all night, huh?”
“Just leave it,” Conrad said, leaning his head back against the couch.
“Did you even go to the prom? Or did you lie to Mom about that, too?”
He glared at me. “Yeah, I went.”
“Well, somehow I doubt you guys danced all night,” I said. I felt like a jerk but I just couldn’t let it go.
“Why do you have to be such a dick? What do you care about the prom?”
I shrugged. “I just hope you didn’t ruin it for her. What are you even doing here, anyway?”
I expected him to get pissed, in fact I think I hoped he would. But all he said was, “We can’t all be Mr. Prom King.” He started closing the takeout boxes. “Are you done eating?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m done,” I said.
chapterfourteen
When we drove up to campus, there were people milling around outside on the lawn. Girls were laying out in shorts and bikini tops, and a group of boys were playing Ultimate Frisbee. We found parking right in front of Conrad’s dorm and then we slipped inside the building when a girl stepped out with a laundry basket full of clothes. I felt so incredibly young, and also lost—I’d never been there before. It was different than I’d pictured it. Louder. Busier.
Jeremiah knew the way and I had to hurry to keep up. He took the stairs two at a time and at the third floor, we stopped. I followed him down a brightly lit hallway. On the wall by the elevator there was a bulletin board with a poster that read, Let’s talk about sex, baby. There were STD pamphlets and a breast exam how-to, and neoncondoms were stapled around artfully. “Take one,” someone had written in highlighter. “Or three.”
