“Right. Better keep those grades up, so they don’t take away that acceptance letter.”What a dumb thing to say.
He nodded again. “It was good to see you.”
“You too,” I whispered. But he was already halfway down the hall. I wondered what would happen if I caught up to him and just forced him to be with me. As his friend or his girlfriend. Or however he would have me. But I hurt him. When I was hurting the most, I turned around and cut off the person who’d been there for me more than anyone.
One night at the end of our shift, Ruth and I pile into the booth nearest the kitchen to refill all the salt and pepper shakers, hot sauce, and ketchup.
“Hey,” says Ruthie. “Do you need all your graduation tickets?”
I shrug. “Probably not. How many do we get?”
“Something like ten.”
“Uh, yeah.” I laugh. “I just need two. Maybe three.”
She glances up at me. “You need three,” she tells me. “Have you even seen your mom since Hattie’s shower?”
I shake my head. “She’s called a few times and texted us both, but I don’t know. I mean, I’m not even mad at her, really. She’ll always be this way. I think I’ve come to terms with that. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be selective about how often and when I see her.”
Ruthie sticks a funnel into a hot sauce bottle andcarefully begins to pour. “I wish I could choose when I have to see my family.” She sighs heavily. “My mom won’t shut up about prom. Saul didn’t go to his, and it’s like I’m somehow depriving her if I don’t give her this. She keeps saying it’s a young woman’s rite of passage. I don’t even think she cares if I actually go. She just wants the picture to put on her mantelpiece.”
“Oh God. I haven’t even thought about prom. I’ve never been to a dance.”
“I haven’t been to one since freshman year,” she says.
And something about this makes me wonder if we’ll someday regret not going. “So you don’t want to go to prom?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I think I’d want to if she wasn’t breathing down my neck. Like, I guess it is a sort of big deal, ya know?”
Saul slides into the booth beside me and lays a big, fat, wet kiss on my cheek. “What’s a big deal?”
“Prom,” says Ruthie. “Mom won’t back off about it and you’re not around to distract her.”
He lays his server apron down on the table and begins to count out his tips. “Think of this as the final gauntlet.” Looking up for a moment, he adds, “And maybe you should go, Ruthie. You might even have fun.”
She scoffs.
I can’t help but think that maybeweshould go. There have been so many things over the last few years that Ruthie and I never did. Things that felt totally hetero and outside of what two gay girls in a small town should get todo, and school dances are definitely number one on that list. We always joke about Vermont, but maybe we don’t have to wait until we’re old ladies with fifty cats, making maple syrup.
I lean across the table. “Ruthie, go with me. Be my date to prom.”
She shakes her head even as I’m still talking. “No way.”
I grab her hand, forcing her to look at me. “What? We’re already rejects, right? Why not give these people a real thrill?”
Saul holds a fluttering hand to his chest. “Nothing would excite me more.”
Ruthie turns to her brother, and he reaches for her other hand, so that she’s stretched across the table holding both of our hands. “Ruthie, you’ll have fun and give Mom what she wants on pure technicality, which is basically the exact opposite of what she wants. It’s perfect.”
I feel myself smiling, because with Saul’s insistence, she can only say yes. Using my pointer fingers, I draw a heart in the air around my face. “Ruth, will you be my super-platonic gay date to prom?”
She shakes her head again, but her lips say, “Fine. Yes, I’ll go with you, but only because two small-town lesbos at prom completely undermines the hetero bullshit that is our high school’s prom.”
I grin. “Or just a yes would have been good.”
FORTY-ONE
Hattie informs me that because I did the asking, it’s my responsibility to buy our tickets to prom. So by the time I’ve made that dent in my cash supply, I can’t bring myself to buy anything more than a thrift-store dress. I’m not the only girl in Eulogy to have this idea, though, so by the time I make my selection a few days before prom, my options are a mauve mother-of-the-bride dress and a short bright-yellow dress with huge velvet sleeves and black velvet polka dots to match.
