Page 36 of 10 Things I Hate About Prom
“That would be cheating.”
Given his insistence on the blindfold, I have zero clues as to where we’re headed except that it definitely isn’t around the block. At first, I tried to keep track of the time by counting how many songs played on the radio. But he’s settled on a stationthat’s more devoted to commercials than songs. I’ve heard Joaquin humming Whitney Houston and Celine Dion morethan actual music. Not for the first time, I desperately wish Herbert had an AUX cord. I can’t even switch on one of our mix CDs thanks to me being stuck in the back seat.
I slump as low as I can go, the edge of my seat belt digging into my neck. “Since when does this game have rules?”
“Since I decided it does.”
“Pendejo,” I mutter under my breath.
He lowers the volume on the ten thousandth commercial for Spill-E, an all-in-one cleaning device, to say, “I heard that, and I’m knocking ten points off your score.”
“Wait, there are points now?”
Even if I can’t see him, I can sense the joy in his voice and the laughter he’s keeping in. Glad he’s at least having fun torturingme.
He cranks the volume back up and I resign myself to my fate.
“The Egyptian pyramids?”
“Nope. You lose another five points.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
This time he doesn’t fight the laughter, getting it out of his system before replying, “Don’t worry, we’re almost there.”
By “almost there” he apparently means ten more minutes of the bumpiest drive I’ve ever experienced. My head almost collides with the roof as we drive over what’s either the world’s deepest pothole or a gap in the space-time continuum. “Sorry,” he mumbles around a hiss. “Rough patch of road.”
“Rough patch of road?!” I snap, my stomach bubbling like a chemistry experiment gone wrong. “I almost got decapitated by my seat belt!”
“I promise the surprise is worth having no head!” He reaches back to pat my knee.
Wherever the hell he’s taking me, it’d better be made of solidgold.
Thankfully, the last stretch of the journey isn’t as nausea-inducing. After one last commercial break, we finally settle to a stop, and the car switches off.
“Ready to lose your mind?” Joaquin asks. I can hear his seat belt unbuckling.
A mixture of nerves and excitement gurgle in my uneasy stomach. “As I’ll ever be.”
Joaquin carefully guides me out of the back seat, one hand in mine and the other steadying me by the waist. His grip shifts to my shoulders, pushing me forward a few steps before letting go. Pleased with my positioning, he whips off the blindfold with a flourish. “Behold!”
Gazing directly into the afternoon sun after almost an hour of being surrounded by darkness feels like cutting into an onion. I wince, shielding my eyes until the world slowly starts to come into view again. My other senses kick into action while my sight recovers. The sound of bloodcurdling screams whipping through the air. The smell of deep-fried, sugar-coated dough.
“We’re going to Dino World?!” I spin to study Joaquin, his lips pressed into a tight line as he tries to suppress another laugh.
“No,” he replies. “We’reatDino World.”
Instead of smacking him for being a smartass, I greedily take in the neon coasters soaring above the pine trees.
“What’re we doing here?” I ask without tearing my eyes away from the mother of all coasters—the Tyrannosaurus Death.
Joaquin shrugs. “Promised I’d make it up to you for helping me, didn’t I?”
My heart stutters, caught somewhere between my butt andmy throat, unable to process anything that isn’t the jumble of feelings this boy brings out of me. When he turns to face me, his dark brown curls glimmer in the light of golden hour.
He offers his hand. “You coming?”
It’s hard to look at him, at his smile, and not wish that things between us could be different. That I wasn’t falling for someone I love too much to let go. That we might be hours rather than minutes apart next year. That he wasn’t falling for Tessa. But I push aside the doubts and insecurities—about me not being enough, about us and who we’re destined to be to each other along with the guilt over hiding more than just my feelings from him—and I take his hand.
