Caridad Ferrer - Prom Ever After - Haute Date / Save the Last Dance / Prom and Circumstance

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“Hey.” Ash tried to sound casual as she slipped into a seat behind Armstrong Jones in their Brit-lit class. Every time she got near him, she lost her nerve to say the fun, carefree line she’d come up with the night before. Every. Time.

“Cute dress. I like it with the Vans.”

She’d worried that checkered Vans with a printed dress was too much, but apparently not. Before Ash could thank him, he was off on a tirade. “Don’t you hate the reading list? God, it’s so mainstream. Do we really all need to read Emma or Wuthering Heights? Why can’t we find something a little more obscure... Something actually original? Like The Doctor’s Wife. Or East Lynne. Or at least some Kipling everyone hasn’t read a hundred times over. God.”

“I know!” Ash nodded along. She had no idea what he was talking about. She loved all the Jane Austen readings they’d done, but didn’t want to look overly mainstream.

Armstrong was unflappably awesome. She just loved the way he knew everything about literature. And even though she had no idea what he was talking about half the time, it had played to her advantage.

Ash had watched Armstrong from afar for years—commenting on the pieces he wrote for the school blog, sitting in the first row when he had the role of Jean Valjean in the previous year’s Les Misérables, admiring the fact that he made being a scholarship kid look cool. He relished being a thrift-store junkie and the fact that his parents were frequently unemployed.

Ash had found out Armstrong was taking Brit lit that semester and had immediately registered for the class. She had made sure to grab the seat behind him on the first day, knowing the teacher considered those seats permanent.

She had also gladly accepted Armstrong’s help when he’d offered to proofread her second paper on Jane Austen when the first one she’d written hadn’t gone over so well. Laila had had a fit when she’d seen Ash come home with a B. “An English paper? A ‘B’? You’re half British for heaven’s sake, you should be teaching the class!”

Ash had gotten an A on her second paper and despite this, had asked Armstrong to help proofread her third, as well. He didn’t have too many changes to suggest, but she’d effervescently attributed the A-plus, the highest grade in the class, to his help. He’d asked her to the prom shortly after.

“Want to go thrifting this weekend?” Armstrong asked without looking up from his phone, where his fingers worked furiously to live-tweet whatever was on his mind.

Ash burst into a smile. “Absolutely!” She cursed herself for sounding so pathetically pleased.

“I could use a suit for the prom. Maybe. I don’t know.”

Ash’s smile slowly faded. Here she was totally freaking out about what to wear and he hadn’t even thought about it?

“So...the prom after-party. What are you thinking?” Ash asked casually, hoping he would ask her what she wanted to do. The senior class was planning an all-night “lock-in” at the school with dance contests, food, music and movies. Her parents had already agreed to let her go given that it was chaperoned and didn’t cost anything extra. Ash was almost more excited about that than the prom.

“After-parties are so...I don’t know, cliché. Don’t you think? I mean the prom is such a cliché alone, right?” Armstrong turned back to face her. “I love that about you—you hate clichés.”

“Hate them,” Ash agreed, though she didn’t understand what was so cliché about the after-party. This was the first year the school was having it.

“I’m sure every other girl is probably fixating on her dress right now. Trying to find something ‘different’ while getting the exact same thing as her six best friends. I love that you’re not even stressed,” Armstrong continued.

Ash was relieved she hadn’t sent him the dress freak-out text she had almost hit Send on the night before.

“Why don’t we go to Belltown after the prom and get into an open mic? You got a fake?”

Ash blinked, not realizing what he meant for a second. A fake ID? No, she didn’t have one. Where was she going to get one?

Great, one more thing to worry about. She had no dress. She had no fake ID.

“Sure, I have one. I mean, who doesn’t, right?” Ash smiled weakly. She’d just only gotten her real ID a few months ago.

“You’d be surprised. I gotta finish this blog. Text me later?” With that, and without waiting for a response, Armstrong turned around.

I guess we’re done. She still hadn’t gotten to deliver her fun, carefree line of the day. She’d gotten so light-headed being around him, she’d forgotten it anyhow.

Four

“What’s that?”

Sebastian and Ash were spending the afternoon at Ash’s house, each in their usual position around the kitchen table. Today, they were doing the work they hadn’t finished in class. Both of them were rocking out to the music coming from the garage.

Josh Montague’s band was playing a new song Josh had written the night before, he on drums, his former coworker on lead guitar, vocals and bass by their next-door neighbor. The only thing missing was Ash’s role, keyboardist. She’d promised to join practice once she was done with her homework.

“What?” Ash looked up from the diagram of the moat she was surreptitiously adding to the front of the school. She knew as soon as Sebastian saw it, he wouldn’t let her have any more suggestions in the project. “Be influenced by medieval times—don’t be literal!” he’d already chided.

“That outfit.” Sebastian was looking at Laila’s lehenga, which was still hanging on the coatrack. “Is that yours?”

“Oh. That. You haven’t heard?” Ash filled him in on Laila’s master plan of Ash wearing the lehenga to the prom. Sebastian always knew the latest happenings in the Montague household through his mother, sometimes before Ash had a chance to tell him.

Laila and Sebastian’s mother, Constance, had been close friends since the Montagues had moved in across the street in the multicultural First Hill neighborhood. Constance had a babysitting business that she ran out of her home, and had watched both Ash and Sonali till they were old enough to stay home alone. Sebastian and Ash had grown up in each other’s homes. Seb had no siblings and loved the constant chaos in the Montague household.

Sebastian shrugged. “I think it’s nice of your mother to offer. You don’t have too many other options.”

“Can you not be my mom’s fanboy for five seconds, please?” Ash was getting annoyed with Sebastian’s taking Laila’s side. He was supposed to be her best friend and support her despite his obvious and loyal admiration for Laila.

“I’m just saying.”

“Just agree with me. That’s your job as a best friend. And besides...” Ash was distracted by what she was seeing out of the kitchen window.

Sonali was cutting through the neighbor’s yard, climbing over bushes and under hedges. Was she practicing to join the marines or something? Why wasn’t she walking from the bus stop to home via the normal route of the sidewalk like all the other kids?

Ash rose from the table and went over to the window to see if there was someone on the side of the house she was avoiding.

No one.

Ash would bet anything this had something to do with whatever had caused the bird’s nest in Sona’s hair.

“I just don’t think fighting with your mom over something as silly as a dress is worth it,” Sebastian was saying. “Especially not since you’re just trying to impress Armstrong. Do you really want to end up as the star of one of his podcasts that badly?”

Ash resented that remark.

“I’m not just trying to impress Armstrong.”

“Then why were you not obsessed with going until he asked you?” Sebastian didn’t look up from his sketch. “And you weren’t stalking some expensive dress, either.”