“Yes, ma’am, I’ll take a rain check,” he says as he closes the garage door behind him.
The moment my mother is fully seated in the car, I reverse out the driveway. “Well, now hang on a minute,” she says. “Let me put my seat belt on. And we didn’t even see to it that Tucker got on his way okay.”
“Mom, I guarantee you on a Sunday afternoon, there’s a wait at the nail salon, and if anything is wrong with that boy’s truck, you and I are the last people on earth who could offer him any help.”
In the rearview mirror, I watch as Tucker steps out into the street, his hands in his pockets, as we drive away.
Eighteen
I barely sleep on Sunday night thinking about the prospect of seeing Tucker on Monday morning in first period. But when Monday morning finally comes, Tucker is nowhere to be found.
I think about texting him, since we have a prom court meeting after school, but what am I supposed to say?I think you might be gay and please don’t bail on this dumb meeting we’re supposed to attend?
As I walk to choir, Alex bounces at my side. “Wasn’t Saturday night absolutely epic? And next Saturday is Kyle’s big party. You’re coming, right? Would karaoke be fun? Do our peers appreciate karaoke?”
I pat his shoulder gently. “I think you might want to rethink the karaoke.”
Alex’s shoulders slump and he nods.
Across the hallway, I see Simone, who was also there this weekend. I wave and she smiles cheerfully. I feel a twinge of regret for not getting to know many people during my four years here. I turn back to Alex. “But I guess it’salways good to have activities planned as a backup? Karaoke could be fun, I guess.”
“Yes!” His puppy-dog energy surges. “Now, that’s a party planning tactic I hadn’t thought of. Backup activities.”
In the choir room, Clem and Kyle are already sitting on the risers.
“Ask him,” Clem says to Kyle.
I settle in next to her with a slight feeling of dread. “Ask me what?”
“You should know,” says Kyle with absolute earnestness, “that I’ve never even unintentionally broken the law, so I’m not entirely comfortable with this potential situation, but—”
“They need booze,” says Clem. “For the party.”
Kyle sucks air in through his teeth and winces. “And now I’m making you all accomplices. I’m sorry, but I remember you being... friendly with Lucas Campbell.”
“Ohhhh,” I say, immediately aware of where this is headed. Kyle doesn’t know the full extent of my fling with Lucas, but he did happen to walk into the gas station once while I was walking out of the back room. “I don’t... Lucas and I...” Lucas is not only the recent high school graduate gas station attendant. He’s also one of the only people in town who will sell beer to minors, but he won’t sell to just anyone. And sure, I know for a fact that Lucas would sell me whatever I wanted, but it would require actually seeing Lucas, which is a thing I had hoped to avoid forever, basically.
“Come on,” Clem chimes in. “We’ve never been to areal high school party, Waylon. This is our chance to make one last memory of our time here.”
The three of them—Clem, Alex, and Kyle—look at me with hope in their eyes. And it’s true. None of us were ever invited to the wild high school parties where people get wasted and dance on tables or make out with six people in one night. We could invite Millie and Amanda and Ellen and Willowdean and all the other kids who were never cool enough to be on someone’s list and for one night, we could run the show.
“Fine,” I finally say. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Alex kisses me on the cheek and Kyle lunges at me in a hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” they both sing in unison.
Surprisingly, their close proximity isn’t awful.
After school, in the home ec room, everyone partners up in their assigned pairs automatically, so it’s just me left sitting at the back of the room at a tall tabletop desk, like the kinds we have in science classes, getting ditched all over again. Déjà vu.
“Good afternoon, prom court,” Mrs. Leonard says in a teacher voice.
“Good afternoon,” a few people mumble back.
In front of me, Melissa and Bryce have a whispered argument that results in Melissa scooting her chair a full two feet from him.
“Is everything all right, Miss Gutierrez?” asks Mrs. Leonard.
“Um, no, actually,” Melissa says.
