Page 1 of 10 Things I Hate About Prom
Chapter One
There’s nothing worse thanworking a double shift on the last day of spring break.
Except turning around to find a guy you barely know holding up a sign that saysPROM?
My jaw locked the second the bell over the door chimed. Most weekends I don’t get a moment to breathe. The rush at Casa Y Cocina is constant from brunch all the way through dinner, the hours passing by in a mad flurry of fritura samplers, piña colada mimosas, and crumpled dollar bills. But today was unusually slow. Like, keep-an-eye-out-for-tumbleweeds slow. Tío Tony even gave me the green light to head home at two if no one else came in after I finished wiping down my tables. The last time he let me dip early was when I chipped my tooth nosediving to save a plate before it hit the ground.Nepotismisn’t a word in the Santos family dictionary.
I can feel Tío Tony’s glare on the back of my head as mygentleman caller, Chris Pavlenko, sets the box under his arm on a table so he can get down on one knee.
Chris’s brow quirks, his hot-pink duct tape sign halfway into the air when he pauses. “You’re Ivelisse, right?”
Wow. A promposal from a guy who isn’t even sure who I am. Shakespeare could never.
The temptation to say no is strong. Chris is usually stoned on days that end iny,and last month he almost drank a beaker of liquid iron because he thought it was green-apple Gatorade. But even if he doesn’t immediately smell the lie, roll call in chem tomorrow will be a pretty big giveaway.
I take my time replying. Opening my mouth too soon could lead to (a) projectile vomiting, (b) saying something I’ll regret, or (c) saying something I regret while projectile vomiting. So I take a deep breath, decide to use the rational part of my brain, and nod instead.
Chris grins, his eyes half open and tinged pink. “Sweet.”
The smell of weed and stale tortilla chips comes with him as he shifts closer to me, overpowering the usual smell of sautéed onions and cilantro wafting from the kitchen.
“So, you down?” Chris asks as he holds the sign up over his head.
“To go to prom?”
“Yeah,” he says in the same tone one might say, “Duh” or “No shit, I’m holding a sign that saysPROM?”
My cheeks flush as I choke out a laugh, scratching the back of my neck just to give my hands something to do. It’s not like he walked in here to ask Tío Tony or one of the fry cooks to prombut asking me makes just as little sense. In the four years we’ve known each other, Chris has said maybe ten words to me. Five of which wereDid you do the homework?You can’t blame me for being shocked thatprom?is the eleventh.
“Ivelisse,” Tío Tony barks, wiping down his knife as he slowly approaches us. “You good?”
“Yep, fine,” I reply to keep the peace. Tío Tony’s heart may be made of marshmallow fluff, but he definitely gets a kick out of leaning into his “bulging muscles and intimidating tattoos” exterior. I wouldn’t put it past him to lift Chris up by the scruff of his neck and toss him onto the street like a rag doll.
“Oh!” Chris exclaims with a grin, as if there isn’t a six-foot-five man with a meat cleaver glaring at him. “I brought these.”
He gets up off his knees to grab the box he set aside. My nose wrinkles as he pulls up the lid with a lazy wave of his hand, the hairs along my arms rocketing to attention as a familiar scent wafts over me.
The peanut butter cookies make me recoil like a vampire would at garlic. Any hope I had of getting through this interaction without throwing up is long gone. I’m not afraid to admit that a box of cookies can strike the fear of God into me—not when one wrong move could land me in the emergency room with anaphylactic shock.
I jump back as Chris takes a tentative step toward me, nearly tripping over a broom. He frowns, glancing from me to the box. “I guess you don’t like peanut butter?”
At this point, expecting him to remember my nut allergy would’ve been too much to ask.
“I’m allergic.” I take another step back for good measure. “Really allergic.”
“My bad,” he replies as he closes the box. “Anna likes these, so I figured you might like them too.”
All the nerves that calmed within me when Chris put the cookies away come again. “Anna?”
He nods, picking his PROM sign back up and wiping some dirt off theR.“I asked her yesterday.” He wrinkles his nose, picking at a dust clump that’s now stuck to the tape. “But she saidno.”
Finally, this bizarro situation starts to make some sense. Chris spends more time sighing over Anna Adebayo’s perfume than he does taking notes. If he spent that time actually listening to her or paying attention to the pins on her backpack instead of trolling “How to Get Girls” subreddits, he’d know she’s a lesbian.
“So…you decided to ask me instead?”
Anna and I don’t have many other friends at Cordero High besides each other, whichishow we prefer it, but that doesn’t make us interchangeable. I guess proximity makes me his runner-up.
He shrugs, giving up on the dust clump and flipping the sign around to face me once more. In the new light, I spot the patches where tape has been pulled off. Sticky residue spells outAnna.
