Page 67 of 10 Things I Hate About Prom
Anna doesn’t buy my excuse, narrowing her eyes at me as she crosses her arms. “You wear jeans to sleep?”
I look down at my ensemble of my Sarah Lawrence shirt and paint-splattered jeans. “Sure, why not.”
Anna sighs. “Try to keep up.” She shoves her phone into my hand, opened to a bright red infographic—a schedule of every Senior Spirit Week event, starting with today. Pajama Day. Maybe I’ll dig around in the attic for something tomorrow, which, according to the schedule, is Silly Hat Day.
The fluffy rainbow-colored tail poking out of Anna’s onesie drags on the ground as we head over to the row of tables piled high with thick, maroon leather yearbooks. The crowdparts for her now that she’s half of the It couple officially known as Tessanna—a piece of gossip so unexpected it broke records. Within a whopping three and a half minutes, the entire student body knew about Anna’s promposal.
Once we’ve forked over our paid receipts, Anna grabs two yearbooks off the closest stack and hands one to me. Mami grumbled so much about the $80 cost that I considered passing on getting one, but she insisted. In addition to my standard portrait, there’ll be at least one posed shot of me with the tech crew on the drama club page that she wants to show my abuela.
“Your boy got a full-page spread,” Anna says as she flips through her copy. I peek over her shoulder to find exactly what she promised, an entire page dedicated to Joaquin Romero, this year’s Senior MVP.
His official baseball team photo sits front and center, with various pro shots of him midgame, and a few candids of him with the rest of the team, surrounding it like a frame. Beneath the collage, a quote is written in script so elegant it’s almost illegible.
“Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.” —Babe Ruth
“Oh my God.”
It’s horrendously cheesy, and I’m sure he absolutely cannot stand it, but I love it.
Joaquin and I are still trapped in limbo. But if we were talking, I’d text him about it right now, taking as many pictures of it as I can to make sure he doesn’t vandalize it. I’d present him with a massive sheet cake with a copy of the spread on it for his nineteenth birthday, forcing him to eat his own face.
But that’s another life.
“They make it sound like he died,” Anna says, still scrutinizing the spread.
She has a point. All you need are some angel wings, and this would have big “May God rest his soul” vibes.
“That’s what I said,” a voice behind us says.
We both whip around to find Joaquin grimacing at the same page in his own yearbook.
“What’s that?” Anna shouts suddenly, waving at something in the distance. “Yeah, I’ll be right there!” She turns to us with a sly grin. “Sorry, gotta run. Meet me in the auditorium?”
She doesn’t bother waiting for me to answer before taking off. A smart move, because if she’d stuck around any longer, I would’ve jabbed her with her unicorn horn. I was tempted to step on her tail and force her to stay here as a buffer, because we both know damn well no one was calling her. But when Anna has an agenda, she sticks to it.
I turn back to Joaquin, not sure what to do now that it’s just us for the first time since the game on Saturday. Behind him, a clique of girls whisper among themselves while not-so-subtly ogling him. They’re holding their yearbooks and gel pens at the ready, most likely waiting for me to leave so they can pounce for his signature.
“I think you’ve got some fans waiting for your autograph.” It’s meant as a playful tease, but the tension in my voice makes it sound like a barb. I wince, hoping he can see through my nerves.
“They can wait.” He gives them a wave, then comes back to me with an achingly familiar smile. “I wanted to see if you’d be the first person to sign my yearbook?”
He offers his yearbook to me, Sharpie at the ready, and if my heart wasn’t locked inside my chest by veins and arteries, I’d be throwing it up onto the floor.
It shouldn’t mean anything. Itdoesn’tmean anything. He probably wants me to write “It’s been real” along with my signature and leave it at that, but it ignites a fire in me I thought I’d permanently put out. He wants me to sign his yearbook, and mundane as that might be, it’s the most exciting thing he’s asked me this year.
The lines on Joaquin’s forehead crease deeper and deeper the longer I go without answering. “Or not, if you don’t want to.”
I snap back to reality, and when our eyes meet, I can’t help the laugh that bubbles up inside of me. “Only if you’re the first to sign mine.”
He softens, the tension melting from his shoulders, his own easy smile returning. “Deal.”
We exchange yearbooks and pens, me passing him one of the dozens of gold Sharpies I keep in my backpack—a good tech crew leaderalwayshas Sharpies on hand. Cracking the book open to the signature page, it dawns on me that I have no idea what to say. “Hey man sorry I messed up your shot at your dream girl” isn’t the kind of thing I want immortalized in our senior yearbook, but it’s not like I have much else worth saying to him right now. Except that I miss him, and our car rides, and slushies, and the way he always listens to the cheesiest songs possible.
And that I love him. And I’m sorry I didn’t realize that sooner.
Probably a lot for a yearbook message.
The sound of Joaquin snapping my yearbook shut jolts meback to the task at hand. How the hell did he finish so fast?! I swallow hard, realizing this means he probably wrote something super short. Most likely just his name. Maybe a “good luck next year” if he was feeling generous.
