Page 6 of 10 Things I Hate About Prom
My smile is as stiff and awkward as the thought of Rutgers makes me feel. The day I got my acceptance email was the happiest I’d seen Mami in months. She may have dropped out her junior year after she discovered she was pregnant with me, but that hasn’t stopped her from singing Rutgers’ praises. And there are plenty of pros, more than any of the other schools I got into.
But I can’t shake the nagging feeling that the only reason I can see myself there is because it’d make her proud.
Mami wasn’t over the moon about Sarah Lawrence, at least not the way I was. The campus, the theater program, the city. The chance to live somewhere new and reinvent myself was so intoxicating I’d filled out an application the second we got home from our visit. All Mami saw was the distance between here andNew York, making it seem like I’d be flying across the country instead of just hopping to the next state over. But no other place has given me that all-consuming, have-to-be-there feeling like Sarah Lawrence did.
There’s nothing wrong with Rutgers, really. They even have a solid theater program. The biggest problem is that more than half our class will be there next year. College is supposed to be about discovering yourself, finding new friends, yadda yadda. How am I supposed to do that when I’m only twenty minutes from home and surrounded by the same people I’ve known my entirelife?
“Right,” I reply, brushing off the post-grad-plan cloud that’s been hanging over me for seventeen days, twelve hours, and forty-five minutes, and focus on the more important task at hand: trying slushies from restaurant number two. Limeade and watermelon from Talk Frosty to Me.
While Joaquin combines our—unfortunately mediocre—slushies, I pause, struck by how…differenthe looks. Besides the bold fashion choices, everything else about him is a stock-photo-worthy image of your classic high school spring breaker. An unfairly even tan, freckles dotting the bridge of his nose, and the smell of salt water and suntan lotion rolling off him in waves.
Something tugs at my heart, a weird, empty type of sadness as I dwell on the fact that I should’ve been on the beach with him, sampling slushies by the ocean instead of at my dining room table.
“Five. Nothing special,” Joaquin says after a lukewarm finalsip. I jot down his ranking. “So, how was your mom’s Vegas extravaganza?”
As if on cue, the front door bursts open and Nurse Oatmeal springs into action, barking at top volume as she races to greet whoever just walked in.
Mami comes barreling into the kitchen with an armful of shopping bags, wearing the most god-awful cheetah-print jumpsuit I’ve ever seen.
“Hello, party people!” She greets both of us with a kiss on the cheek before setting her bags on the ground.
“Did you hit big?” I ask, eyeing the Chanel shopping bag on her arm.
She scoffs, rolling her eyes as she grabs a seltzer water from the fridge. “Lost three hundred bucks. Don’t gamble when you’re older, kids,” she warns before taking a long sip. “It’s a scam.”
While Mami quenches her thirst and Nurse Oatmeal inspects the bags on the floor, I scan the entryway for any sign of her travel companion. “Where’s Doug?”
The whole reason Mami was even in Vegas was to celebrate her latest fling’s divorce anniversary. Who the hell celebrates getting divorced?
“Daveis at his place,” Mami replies, emphasizing his name. In my defense, he looked like a Doug. “We, uh…didn’t workout.”
Joaquin gives her a sympathetic frown, while I hold back an eye roll. I saw that coming from a mile away. When Mami asked me earlier this year if I’d be okay with her slowly dipping her toes into romance again, I’d insisted on helping her take a new set of photos for her dating profile. It’s been over a decadesince she and Papi split, and almost as long since either of us have seen him. No one deserves to be swept off their feet more than she does.
But when I was helping her apply winged eyeliner for the first time, I didn’t think the next six months would pass in a blur of dozens of different nondescript men hanging out in our living room every other week. We already rarely see each other thanks to her new job as an overnight ER nurse. Most days we’re on opposite timelines—her fast asleep when I get up for school in the morning and vice versa. With her days off now reserved for dates, I’m lucky if Mami and I can get a single night alone together every week, if I even see her at all. For years it was just the two of us, holding on to each other like lifelines, and now I’m off at sea alone.
I’d been talking about my own spring break plans for months when Doug—sorry,Dave—sprang the weeklong trip to Vegas on Mami. A weeklong trip that happened to be at the exact same time asmyspring break. With my abuela down in Virginia and Doña Carmen off at a church retreat for a few days, Mami begged me to stay home and watch Nurse Oatmeal. Or at the very least bring the dog with me. Because, of course, their hotel and travel weren’t refundable.
But mine were.
Every potential dog sitter already had spring break plans of their own, the local pet hotel banned Nurse Oatmeal last year after she bit someone, and the Airbnb Joaquin and I booked had a strict no pets or late cancellation policy, so the decision was made for me.
Spring Broke was supposed to be perfect. Every year, Cordero High seniors flock to Wildwood—a resort town in South Jersey far away enough from Elmwood that parental supervision is minimal, but close enough that Herbert’s engine wouldn’t crap out on us halfway there.
Spring break in Wildwood is as essential to the senior year experience as existential dread about your future. After nearly four years, it was our turn to feel like the protagonists in a Disney Channel movie. Beach volleyball and bike rides on the boardwalk and finally using the fake IDs we spent all of our birthday money on last year.
But just because my mom decided to wreck my plans didn’t mean Joaquin should suffer. He’d insisted that he was fine with canceling his trip too—since we are co–dog parents—but he couldn’t hide his disappointment. Spending a week at a beach house alone isn’t ideal, but it’s not like he’d have to search hard for company. Most of our class was staying in the same budget-friendly block of rentals as us, and, unlike me, Joaquin never had trouble making friends. Within ten minutes of me officially backing out, he was making plans to go boogie boarding with his friends from the baseball team.
Mami sits down beside me, not clocking the pissed look on my face as she helps herself to a sip of my third slushie. “Did youhave fun while I was gone?” she aims the question at me, even though we both know my disrupted plans were the exact opposite of fun.
“Just worked,” I mumble, the annoyance from her wrecking my spring break making the limeade slushie taste bitter.
Mami stiffens, clearly sensing my irritation, but doesn’t call me out on it. Instead, she grabs her bags and heads for the stairs. “I’m going upstairs to unpack and shower. Let me know if you two need anything, all right?”
I give her a noncommittal nod, waiting until she’s gone before slumping in my seat. “Looks like it went as well as I thought it would,” I say, answering Joaquin’s earlier question from before she arrived. “So, was Spring Broke everything we dreamed it would be?” I ask him, eager to switch to a less frustrating topic.
“Not exactly,” he replies with a coy smile. “Kinda hard to live up to the dream when half of it isn’t there.” Beneath the table, he nudges his foot against mine.
“Please tell me you and the guys didn’t spend your entire break playing video games.” Joaquin and his teammates have a one-track mind when it comes to video games. They see a TV, they sit, they play. For hours, unless someone comes along and offers them food. Then they learn to multitask.
