Page 54 of 10 Things I Hate About Prom
Huh? Unless Tessa thinks Joaquin hasn’t healed from the wound of Chelsea dumping him sophomore year, she’s most definitelynotin rebound territory.
“He’s been single for, like, the past two years,” I say with earnest conviction, as if that’ll sway her into dumping her date forhim.
“Aren’t you two…” She makes a gesture with her fingers that I realize with slowly dawning horror is supposed to imply that he and I are together.
“Oh, we’re not—” I wave my arms in front of my face. “No, definitely not anything. Just friends.”
Tessa nods slowly, seemingly unconvinced. She’s not the first person to make that assumption. It took months for me to convince the baseball team’s wives and girlfriends that I wasn’t still one of their ranks after Danny and I broke up. Even after four years, I still have to explain to the newer WAGs,No, I’m not going to the games to ogle my partner’s butt.
“Seriously. Just. Friends,” I reiterate, punctuating each statement by tapping my finger against my desk. Just friends. That’s all we’ve ever been and all we’ll ever be.
“Sure,” she replies, though it’s quite obvious that she doesn’t believe me.
I can’t help wondering if there’s a reason she thought we were together—aside from us always physically being together.If maybe Joaquin said something that might make her think we are more. But I quickly shut down that line of thought.
Before I can continue to plead my case for why Joaquin and I are totally 100percent platonic, and she should give him a chance if her mystery date doesn’t work out, Mr.Cline’s alarm goes off, signaling the end of my last detention.
“Sorry, sorry!” Mr.Cline shouts as he comes stumbling into the room, a bloody wad of tissue held up to his nose. “You’re free to go!” He turns off the alarm and rushes out of the room again without ever glancing over at us.
So much for a meaningful goodbye.
Tessa returns to her original desk at the front of the room and gathers her things. With the spell of our brief interaction lifted, I shove my stuff into my bag and head for the exit. By tomorrow, I’ll either find out this was some exhaustion-induced fever dream, or we’ll return to the status quo of never speaking to one another.
We head out, Tessa a few steps ahead of me. She halts in the doorway, one hand on the knob. She whips around so quickly her hair smacks me across the face like a eucalyptus shampoo–scented fan.
“Joaquin really likes you,” she says while I rub my cheek. “I wasn’t kidding when I said he talked about you a lot. Likea lota lot.”
The thought of it makes me warm all over, but reality crushes that flicker of hope. Even if he did spend his spring break hyping me up to Tessa Hernandez, any fondness he had in his heart for me must be long gone by now.
“I don’t think he likes me very much right now.” Saying it outloud burns like the sting of a freshly pulled Band-Aid, but a part of it is soothing. To finally say it instead of bottling it up.
Tessa nods, her face still wildly beautiful even when she’s somber. “I fucked things up with my best friend once,” she whispers, a real secret this time. “And it took years for me to un-fuck things between us. Years of wishing I’d just been honest with myself from the start instead of pushing away someone I really trusted.” My heart races at the thought of Anna, of how she just said those words to me less than a week ago.
Tessa pauses for a beat.
“I don’t know what happened between you two,” she says, her piercing brown eyes locking with mine. “But take it from me, un-fuck things now. Worst-case scenario you spend a whole lot of time feeling bitter and angry that you lost your best friend. Best-case scenario, you figure things out.”
With that, she turns on her heel and leaves me behind in a haze of confusion, wonder, and the scent of her eucalyptus shampoo.
Chapter Seventeen
It takes the entiretyof my thirty-minute bike ride back home for me to process what the hell just happened. I had a conversation with Tessa Hernandez. A civil conversation that started with her telling me the truth about the Danny situation and ended with her telling me to make things right with Joaquin.
What the fucking fuck?
Hardly ever interacting has left little space for a good impression of Tessa to expand. I know she’s been a jerk and that she did something to make Anna despise her; that was enough for me to form my own conclusions.
But…what if Joaquin was right? What if she reallyisdifferent and I was too caught up in my own misplaced anger and jealousy to see that? Could she really be that bad if she’s the apple of literally everyone’s eye? Sure, a fat bank account and a face that plastic surgeons dream of catapulted her to the top of the social hierarchy, but people wouldn’t be throwing themselvesover one another to try to ask out someone who’s a massive asshole, right?
As soon as I open the door, I’m greeted by Nurse Oatmeal. She follows me into my room, barking her little lungs off. She gives up once I’ve flopped onto my bed, turning her attention to one of my chewed up chanclas while I stare at the cracks in my ceiling and let my head spin.
Joaquin talked to Tessa about me. A lot, apparently. Enough to make her think that we were a thing—which, to be fair, isn’t unusual. The WAGs are convinced that we’ve been secretly hooking up for years, but that doesn’t mean anything.Shouldn’tmean anything. But I can’t help holding on to the hope that it does, or did, once upon a time.
I open my text thread with Joaquin. We haven’t said anything to each other since Dino World, even though I considered reaching out. Apologies over text don’t hold the same value, and he’s mastered the art of avoiding me at school. With the championship game this weekend, he’s hardly ever home, either. Closing our text thread, I scroll through my camera roll instead. It’s like a time capsule, documenting our finest moments from across the years. Joaquin beaming at me from the baseball field after he hit his first home run of the season. The two of us Lady and the Tramp-ing a ramen noodle after we were too cheap to buy our own $32 bowls at the new trendy place downtown. Walks through the park with Nurse Oatmeal, her always with a stick or some type of debris in her mouth. Us on my most recent birthday, him attempting to smash cake into my face while I held up Otis the Otter to protect me.
Speaking of which…where is Otis? I scan the collection ofstuffed animals on my bed, but there’s no sign of him there or on the floor. My mind whirrs—I swear I saw him recently. I check behind my desk and even my hamper but don’t spot any stuffed otters. Then it clicks. Glaring at Nurse Oatmeal, I head out to the living room and find her collection of destroyed treasures. Sure enough, Otis is at the bottom of the pile, his head mostly chewed off and his chest leaking cotton. Poor guy.
I hold him to my chest, nuzzling him even though he smells like dog slobber, as if that’ll bring me a little bit closer to Joaquin. Now I regret ever letting Nurse Oatmeal get anywhere near Otis. I should start keeping my stuff in a safe.
