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

Jacob did another jumping front snap kick gleefully as if to prove Angela’s point.

“Sona, the eight-year-old is doing better than you. Let’s see a real kick,” Ash said sternly. She was not going to let that bratty Angela get away with insulting her sister.

Sonali hopped back and forth, hands in a defensive posture, but staring at her feet.

What was Sonali’s problem? Ash was going to make her do the kick before the night was over.

“God, why don’t you just give up? Why are you even in here?” Angela dropped her defensive stance and stood with her hands on her hips. Ash could tell she was going to be a real pain in a few years.

“Sona, for the love of—” Ash started toward her sister.

Bam! Suddenly Angela went flying backward.

Sona stood there looking shocked. Jumping front snap kick success.

Ash didn’t know whether to applaud or scold. Sona had never, ever initiated contact in class before. Now, Angela sat on her butt five feet away, her face crumbling.

“Uh, no contact, Sona,” was all Ash could think of to say.

The head tae-kwon-do instructor blew the whistle. “No contact! Now back to circling.”

Wow. Ash was stunned by her sister’s sudden aggression for the rest of the hour.

After class, the sisters headed back to the locker room to change and wait for Josh to come pick them up. He didn’t like them to walk home from the studio after dark, and he certainly didn’t like for Ash to take Sona as a passenger on the Vespa.

“Did someone do something to you? Is that why you won’t walk home the normal way?” Ash asked as she sat down on a bench and started running a comb through her hair.

“Are you spying on me?” Sona slammed her locker shut, piercing Ash with an accusatory stare.

“Clearly! Because I have nothing else to do,” Ash snapped back. “I saw you come through the backyard. It’s like you were dodging the other kids on your bus. Were you? Is that where all this aggression is coming from?”

Sona gave her a suspicious look and started shoveling her uniform into her gym bag. “No.”

“God, I hope I sound more convincing when I lie.”

“You don’t.”

“Who’s messing with you?”

“I’m handling it, okay? In my own way. You don’t need to interfere in my life.”

“I never interfere!”

Sonali snorted.

“Yeah right. Like you never interfered when you beat the shit out of that Billy kid who was messing with Sebastian.”

“Sona! Language!” Ash was hardly offended, but she knew if Sona used that kind of language around Laila, she would be in deep trouble and be blamed for being a bad influence.

“It’s true, though. Remember how he used to trip Seb in the shower in gym class and call him a dirty—”

“Sona!”

“I wasn’t going to say it.”

Ash doubted it. “Why do you know all this, by the way? You were seven.”

“Seb told me.” Sonali went back to packing away her helmet and gloves. “He told me that somehow you just knew. He never said a word to you about Billy, but you just knew what was going on.”

It had happened at the end of eighth grade. Sebastian had grown quieter and quieter the whole year, starting when Billy Walters had transferred to their school—and to Seb’s gym class. Sebastian had always been shy, but that year he’d started to avoid even his nerd friends and hang out in the computer lab during lunch instead of going to the cafeteria.

Worst of all, he wouldn’t tell Ash why and would snap at her when she pursued it too fervently. Ash started to think it was because they had started getting teased for being boyfriend-girlfriend because they were together so much of the time.

Hurt that he was so offended at being called her boyfriend, Ash had started to pull away from him and had hung out with some of the more popular kids...Billy Walters included.

She’d started to walk to Pacific Place mall after school with her new friends to people-watch and make comments at random strangers, rather than going home to watch TV and do homework, as she always did with Seb.

It had been awesome to finally feel like she belonged. A total thrill to have every day be a total unknown. She knew she was getting set up for a good place in the high-school food chain and it felt great.

On the last day of eighth grade, she was walking down the hall with some of her new friends when she overheard Billy Walters and his cronies start slamming closed all the open lockers while kids were still trying to empty them out. She’d never liked it when Billy harassed people who hadn’t done anything to him, but up until then she’d never cared enough to stop him.

She’d looked down the hall and had seen Sebastian spot Billy and his gang as they started toward his locker. Sebastian hurriedly started emptying everything into his backpack. Ash heard Billy call out to him, by a very derogatory name.

Sebastian turned as white as Ash had ever seen him.

She’d looked from her former best friend to the group of guys who were now backing Billy as they stalked toward Sebastian.

She saw something she’d never seen before in Sebastian’s eyes. Fear. In an instant, she realized what had been causing Sebastian’s weird behavior that year. And she knew that she needed to do something to make sure Seb never felt that fear again.

She’d gone after the guys and stepped between them and Sebastian. She’d stood in front of Billy, half his size, and smiled sweetly. She’d whispered some nonsense under her breath. When he’d leaned down to hear what she was saying, she struck. She kneed him under the chin, punched him in the solar plexus, then flipped his entire body over her shoulder.

Just as she’d done to pass her green belt test for tae kwon do the week before.

After Billy’s body hit the ground in front of his shocked friends, she’d planted her left foot, clad in her first pair of high heels, in his chest and said quietly, “Bully someone again and see what happens.”

Her father had been proud of and impressed by her.

Her mother had been convinced she’d go to jail.

Billy had never again looked her in the eye.

Her so-called new friends never spoke to her again.

Sebastian had grown six inches that summer and had never gotten picked on again...but had never stopped trying to make it up to Ash ever since.

Six

“I am your hero, go ahead and admit it.” Sebastian dropped a giant gizmo that looked like an old-school soda machine on the drafting table.

“I don’t want a soda. They’re bad for you, anyway. This is what you had to show me?”

When Ash had received a text from Sebastian asking her to skip lunch and meet in the drafting classroom, she’d been expecting... Well, she didn’t know. But it certainly wasn’t a soda machine.

“Do you even know what this is? Hint—not a soda machine.”

“Slushees?”

“No.”

“Frozen yogurt?”

“Stop thinking about food!”

“I’m supposed to be eating curly fries right now—just tell me.”

“It’s a 3-D printer!”

A 3-D printer. Ash’s curiosity was piqued. “There’s such a thing? What does it print?”

“Stuff in 3-D.”

“Thank you, Wikipedia Brown. Like what stuff?”

“Like...” Sebastian paused for effect. “This sketch for example!”

He slapped down a gorgeous sketch of the lehenga modified and shown in a 3-D perspective using their CAD software. He’d spent the past three evenings working on it at Ash’s place after school with Sonali.

It was even better than Ash had imagined it would be. And so much better than the schoolfront they were supposed to be working on. She’d taken over the school project so Sebastian could focus on the dress, and she had to admit she’d been having a lot of fun with designing a new entrance. Too much fun, probably, since none of the ideas she’d had were very practical.