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

“So...Sebastian Diaz.”

“Ah.” This was normal. A lot of girls liked Sebastian and most were afraid to talk to him. At least one or two girls asked Ash about him every week: whether he was single, liked them, et cetera. As if Ash were his keeper or something.

“Has he said anything about the prom?”

“Yep, he’s said a lot about it.” Ash was enjoying this now. Jess had never been particularly nice to her before. Ash was still annoyed at the “vintage” comment she’d made in the dressing room when Ash had been trying on the orange gown.

Jessica’s eyes widened. “OhMyGod, are you guys going together? Did you dump Armstrong?”

“No!” Ash looked around, hoping no one had heard. This was how rumors got started. “I’m going with Armstrong.”

“So...Sebastian doesn’t have a date yet?”

Ash sighed heavily, as if divulging a huge secret, and lowered her voice. “He’s still available.”

Jess smiled as though she’d just heard that her grandmother’s pecan pie was now available in the vending machines. She was from the South and was constantly lamenting the lack of good Southern food in Seattle.

“Do you think he’d go with me?”

“Um...” Ash pretended to think about it. Honestly, she had no idea if Sebastian even knew who Jessica was. That was probably for the best. Jessica wasn’t the sharpest stick in the forest, and Sebastian tended to only hang out with the AP crowd. He’d only had one girlfriend during high school, the one girl in Computer Club who’d moved away their junior year.

“You’ll have to ask him and see,” Ash finally said.

Jessica’s face fell. “Can you find out if he likes me?”

“I’ll let you know.” Ash picked up her book again when she saw Armstrong enter the room, exactly a second before the bell rang. “Go sit down before you get detention. Sebastian hates girls who get detention. His mother would disapprove.”

Jessica hurried to her seat and was replaced by Armstrong a few seconds later.

“So...your Facebook page hinted at something very interesting about your prom attire. Along the lines of something no one at this school had ever seen before? ‘Drafting class plus fashion unite’? Care to share a sound bite for my blog?”

Ash felt a rolling thrill down her back that Armstrong not only checked out her Facebook page, but also was curious about her cryptic status update from the previous night.

“You’ll see on prom night,” Ash said, she hoped, enigmatically.

“You tease.” Armstrong shrugged. “I like it. I don’t know what I’m wearing. It’ll be good, though.”

Lucky guy with that confidence. Despite her hopefulness about the idea she and Sebastian came up with last night, she didn’t actually have a plan for what would happen next.

Neither of them was exactly Van Gogh. Nor was either of them Coco Chanel. They needed to make a drawing, make it into 3-D, then get it into a real garment. Were the modifications even going to be possible? Who was going to do them?

* * *

Ash barged into Sonali’s room without knocking. Her sister barely glanced up from the huge book of oil paintings she was poring over.

“You’re supposed to be offended that I’m invading your privacy, kid.” Ash stood over her sister, who continued to sprawl across the carpet.

“Get out. You’re invading my privacy,” her sister said without looking up.

“Get ready. We need to go.”

“We have fifteen minutes,” Sonali mumbled. Ash and Sonali went to their weekly tae-kwon-do lesson on Wednesdays. Ash enthusiastically, since she loved punching and kicking out her aggressions for an hour. Sonali hated it, but Josh insisted both of his girls learn basic self-defense.

Ash reached over and tousled Sonali’s still-knotted hair.

“Want to tell me who did this?”

Silence.

“Okay. Want to do me a favor?”

“Nope.”

“Sure you do. Listen, so Sebastian and I came up with an idea to turn that lehenga of mom’s into an actual dress that I can wear to the prom.”

Sona said nothing.

“I need your awesome drawing skills to make a sketch for us that we can turn into 3-D.”

Sona raised an eyebrow. “You want me to do fashion design? You told me I dress like Dora the Explorer.”

“I don’t need you to come up with something from scratch, genius. Just make a sketch of the lehenga we started to modify downstairs.”

Sona shrugged. “I want a cut of the royalties if it becomes famous and Dolce & Gabbana wants to make it in bulk.”

Ash had to laugh. “Do you even know what royalties are? Do you even know who Dolce & Gabbana are?”

“Dad was watching Project Runway reruns all afternoon.”

Ash rolled her eyes. “Dad needs to get a job.”

“Royalties?”

“How about, five laps around the gym if you’re not ready in five minutes?”

“Let’s not go today.” Sona rolled over onto her back. “Let’s just stay here. Let’s make microwave s’mores instead.”

Ash sighed, putting her hands on her hips. “Do you want to ever get your green belt?”

“I don’t want to break a board in half.”

“It’s not that hard.” Ash didn’t understand how Sonali could be satisfied with her white belt after two years of training. Ash had sailed through the belts and now taught the more junior students with her brown belt.

“Why does no one understand that I’m a pacifist?” With a huge sigh, Sonali rolled to her feet. She started grabbing her gloves, helmet and uniform out of the closet.

“It’s about to become ten laps. And why do you know that word?”

* * *

Ash was assigned to lead three junior students in their sparring in class that evening. As a brown belt, she was allowed to use body contact in her sparring, though the white belts never were. Her job was mainly to make sure they used full force to throw their kicks and jabs, but always stopped short of actually killing each other.

Ash circled around Sonali, a timid, moppy eight-year-old named Jacob and a fiery little twelve-year-old girl with hair as bright as carrots, who was eyeing Sonali in a way Ash didn’t like.

“Okay everyone, the next move all of you should do is the jumping front snap kick.”

All three of them stood there and stared at her.

“That move sucks,” complained the little red-haired one.

“Let’s keep our opinions to ourselves and do the move,” Ash suggested.

They still just stood there.

“I mean today. Now. Do it now.”

All three halfheartedly hopped in the air, then threw out their right feet in the air in front of them.

“At someone. You’re hardly ever going to have to fight thin air in the real world. Here, Jacob, you throw a kick at me. Sona, throw a kick at...” Ash gestured toward the red-haired girl.

“Angela, duh.”

Ash resisted an eye roll. “At Angela Duh.”

“It’s just regular Angela. Duh.”

“Sona, throw a kick at Regular Angela.”

“That’s not my name!”

Everyone got into their positions.

“Okay, let’s circle.”

The four of them circled one another in pairs, Jacob and Sona throwing out timid jabs toward their opponents. “Now, jump snap kick. Go!”

Jacob’s little foot brushed the air near Ash’s hip. “Good job, Jacob!”

Ash looked to see if Sona had done the move yet. She hadn’t. She was still circling Angela.

“Come on!” Angela whined. “You’re so lame!”

Sona tilted on her side and did a tentative kick.

“Wrong kick, Sona. Jump and kick. Come on, just one,” Ash called out. Where was her sister’s head today?

“God, you suck.” Angela folded her arms. “Everyone is going to get their green belt before you, loser.”