Page 44 of Dropping the Ball

“Trade you for the cabbage and beets.” I can put them in my other burrito and make it more filling. Hopefully the oversalted ground beef (allegedly) will cover the taste of the beets.

“Done.”

We trade and eat, and halfway through my burrito, Kaitlyn pauses and points her chopsticks at it, then clicks them together. “So, why use forks, even?”

We have found our topic for the day. It wanders from there to a conversation about Vikings and how much we both hate Beowulf, which leads us to someone’s dog named Beowulf and on to dogs in general to parks and near the end of lunch, we’re somehow on the subject of what tattoo each Disney princess would get.

Kaitlyn is arguing that Cinderella is the one princess who would never, under any circumstance, get a tattoo while I’m pointing to proof of her rebellious streak as counterevidence when the slight crackle from the PA system signals an announcement coming.

“A reminder that tomorrow is the last day to buy prom tickets. They will be available before and after school and during lunch. If you are bringing a non-Hillview student, they willneed a signed faculty endorsement from their own school to be submitted to a junior class officer before prom.”

My stomach tightens with every word of the announcement. I’m not a school activity guy. Maybe I would be into a few of them if I could afford them. But prom is different. Iconic even if school social stuff isn’t your thing. And Kaitlyn is very much a school activity girl. She’ll be there. With someone who can afford to take her.

I don’t care about the pictures or dinner or any of that stuff, but I think about her out there, dancing to the one slow song they’ll play at the end of the night, and I always see her dancing with me.

Your boy doesn’t have three hundred dollars for a pair of prom tickets. Hillview is a prom-at-the-Four-Seasons school. I don’t even have prom-in-the-school-gym money.

“Do you have tickets yet?” Kaitlyn asks.

I’m trying to read her tone. It’s heavy on irony, likeHaha, Micah Croft at prom, what a joke.But there’s an undercurrent there, like maybe she’s . . . is she fishing? She’s not quite pulling off the casual conversation vibe. Is she trying to figure out if I’m going? If she’s not asking straight-out, is it because she wants to work the conversation around to me asking her?

It might not even be what she’s getting at. Library time and debates about Disney princess tattoos is as social as we’ve ever gotten. Is she hinting she wants to go as friends? Because that’s not what I would want. Are solid couples or friend dates the only options for prom? Is prom a thing where it can be a first date that turns into a more-dates situation?

I wish I had the option of pulling on this thread and finding out. Maybe for the first time ever, it truly sucks that I don’t have the money for this. Even if I scraped together enough for the tickets, there’s dinner, pictures, corsages . . . I’m not even sure what else would crop up.

My nasty beet-and-“beef” burrito settles in my stomach like a rock, and Kaitlyn is waiting for her answer, looking like she wishes she hadn’t asked after my stupidly long pause.

I start gathering my burrito trash as I answer. “Not doing prom.”

“Right. Probably not your thing.”

Couldn’t be my thing if I wanted it to be, which for her, I do. “I have plans that night.”

“Doing something cool?”

Babysitting the two neighbor kids for the single dad next door who works swing shifts at a shipping warehouse. I watch them most Saturday nights. The pay isn’t enough for me, and it’s too much for him, but he’s a good dude, and he helped me build shelves in our garage.

Instead of telling her that, I say, “My only plans are not to be at prom.”

“Right.” She stares down at her bento box.

“Gotta go grab a thing from Ms. Neely,” I say. She’s the college counselor, and seniors have to grab so many things from her throughout the year that it’s an excuse to leave any situation.

She doesn’t look up, only nods and chases a snap pea around with her chopsticks like she’ll get a trophy if she gets it.

I don’t want to leave her feeling like crap, but I don’t know what else to say. So I turn and walk out on Kaitlyn without looking back.

We don’t talk about it when I find her in the library the next week or ever. When prom photos start showing up on Instagram two weeks later, I don’t know if I feel better or worse after scrolling through enough to figure out that she went with friends and not a date.

When a picture pops up with her and one of her friends instead of the whole group, I get a good view of her dress and answer my own question. She picked a strapless sparkly dressabout as light as pink can go before it becomes white, and she looks . . .

She looks beautiful. I feel worse. It confirms what I’ve known since ninth grade. The only girl I’ve ever wanted at Hillview is the one furthest out of my league.

Chapter Sixteen

Kaitlyn

I’m not sure Iget Micah.

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