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Analise dropped the eyeshadow brush on Missy’s pink quilt. She scrubbed the brown powder from it.
“Ana, what’s Dave like?” another girl said.
“Oh, please,” came another, “ask half the female population—no offense, Ana. There’s a reason they call him ‘fuck and duck.’”
How many questions did Analise just get asked? What is Dave like in bed? She cringed.
“There’s no way Taylor Barnes is still a virgin,” Missy said. “Didn’t he and Deanna hook up sophomore year?”
“Do you honestly believe anything Deanna says?” Fiona snarked.
Analise went back to applying eye shadow but couldn’t steady her hand. The words Taylor and Virgin and Fuck and Duck kept ping-ponging in her ears. “Can—could anyone do my eye makeup?”
Missy grinned. “I got ya covered when Fi is done.”
Analise reached for an unopened can of Sprite and fumbled her nails underneath the tab. She looked at Missy’s pink and white clock on the wall.
Thirty minutes had passed since Ulla dropped Analise off. Thirty minutes since Analise asked, “Aren’t you coming to pictures?”
“I told you,” Ulla spoke to the steering wheel, “I have to cover for Brenda at the shop. We’re redoing the filing.”
Bullshit.
“Have Dave’s mom send me copies. My camera sucks anyway.”
Analise cried, “This is so embarrassing! First, you ditch me at coronation, then the parade. Now, all the other parents will ask, ‘Where’s your mom, Ana?’ It’s bad enough I have to tell them I have no dad!”
Ulla drummed her greased-caked fingers, and a faraway, pained veil drew over her eyes and words. “I’m so sorry, Isa. Really, I am.”
Analise had flung open the car door, gathered her dress, overnight bag and shoes, and slammed it shut. She was angry with Ulla, yes. But mostly she was already weary from the energy she’d have to muster tonight, all the false gaiety she’d need to exude under the heaviness of Taylor’s presence. Her mind fast-forwarded to the pictures Taylor’s mom would take of the two of them together at the lakeshore, his cool arm around her waist. Dave would land a jocular slug on Taylor’s shoulder and say, Gimme your crown so I can take a pic with my girlfriend, too.
Girlfriend. The word would come from Dave’s lips for the first time and taste sour against hers.
Analise closed her eyes and imagined going back to the day Taylor Barnes knocked her on the head with his soccer ball. When he told the EMT he was her boyfriend.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Analise
Half the student population clustered by the DJ in the balloon-laced gymnasium. The other half trickled in, already sloshed, and Taylor was, too. She’d watched him in the limousine take shot after shot while Dave kissed her neck, while she grew more sickened. He’d gotten out of the limo, loose and flirtatious with Fiona, who’d drunk as much as him.
Dave guided her to dance, keeping their bodies wedged together, his rhythm more than concealing her lack thereof. More students glommed to the center and no one, thankfully, could see how really terrible she was.
One pop song blended into the next. She swiped away strands of sweaty hair plastering her neck. The pins fastening the crown to her head began to sting.
An hour ticked by before the first slow jam crooned through the speakers. It cleared two-thirds of the bodies. Dave crossed her arms around his neck, and she rested her cheek on his shoulder. A passive, defeated comfort settled over her. She would accept her fate as Dave’s girlfriend, lose her virginity, and in the future, remember it wasn’t cliché to be careful for what you wished for. Analise’s eyes wandered to Taylor and Fiona.
They were kissing.
She buried her face in Dave’s chest. Mariah Carey punished her with the lyrics, “We Belong Together.” Her breath sprinted away, tearing apart her chest.
She was a complete fool.
How had she fallen in love with Taylor Barnes and not even known it?
She slipped herself from Dave’s arms and cupped her mouth. Analise hopped and tripped her way out of her stupid high heels. With them clutched in one hand, she gathered the skirt’s layers in the other and ran.
She ran in search of the deepest corner of the school. One where she could discard her heart. But every hallway was cordoned off with metal caging. The bathroom wasn’t an option because other girls would hear her ugly cries. Outside. Yet every single door was locked. She slammed the bar over and over.
