Nine Fool City

The note on the door of the choir room Tuesday morning says: Hanging flyers—see you there!

I’m actually kind of relieved. I don’t know what I was thinking, wandering toward the Great Wait meeting this morning, just because Stella and I got to school a little early. I start to walk away, but a few hallways over, I find a handful of kids in those True Love Waits T-shirts from the Merch! shop, hanging up mini-posters on every door. Cason Price and Lucy Davis are there, laughing and jabbing at each other. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think they were the couple.

I hook a fast U-turn around the corner, where more mini-posters have been taped to the walls and classroom doors. I stop to get a closer look.

“Here,” Beckett says from behind me.

I jolt at the unexpected sound of her voice in my ear as she hands me a flyer.

She goes, “You can keep it. We printed, like, four thousand of them.”

I glance at the text.

Join us at PURE PROM

A WHOLESOME night of music, dance, food, and games!

You have all the FUN!

God gets all the GLORY!

Let them praise His name with dancing. Psalm 149:3

“Grace Redeemer is hosting it this year,” Beckett says just as I look back up at her. “You should come.”

“I... it’s...”

I look at the flyer again because I don’t know how to finish the thought.

She goes, “It’s not boring, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“It’s the same night as prom,” I blurt.

Beckett’s smile dissolves. “Oh. I didn’t realize you were going.”

Going...

“To prom?” I say. “Oh. No. I’m not going to prom, I just... it was an observation. That’s all.”

She nods excessively for a few seconds before saying, “It’s the same night on purpose. So you can’t go to both.” She pulls a piece of tape off the dispenser and rolls it into a ball. “They say they’re big on giving people the freedom to choose,” she adds. “But...” She shrugs.

We stand there, pretending to look at the flyer taped to the wall. At least that’s what I’m doing. Beckett’s hand flutters toward me, comes to rest on my arm. I float as I look down at it, spiral as I come back up, into the gravitational pull of her intensely blue eyes.

“Seriously, though,” Beckett says. “It would be so great if you could come.”

This is not an invitation. I have to tell myself that. Inviting me to go to prom isn’t the same as inviting me to go to prom with her. They even frown on that at the non-church version, not that it would ever matter anyway, since Beckett’s currently with—

A pop of laughter bursts at the other end of the hallway.

“Hey!” Cason Price calls out through a smile aimed straight at his girlfriend. “I wondered where you went.”

He eases up next to her and slides his arm around her waist.

I don’t know why I turn away when he leans in to kiss her, and I don’t know why I turn back a nanosecond later. Maybe I’m a masochist; I don’t know. But it seems like if I’m never going to have the chance to kiss Beckett Wild, I might at least want to see what kissing her would look like.

For the record, Cason kisses her in black and white.

I’d kiss Beckett Wild in living color.

“I’ll see you in class,” I tell her as I back awkwardly down the hall and around the corner.

where ru? I text Stella at the beginning of lunch.

Locker – about to leave campus.

I type wait upas I scramble out of fourth to meet her.

She’s quiet as we walk down the Strip toward midtown. She was quiet this morning, too, as her mom drove us to school. More than quiet—sulky. As soon as Ms. Avila dropped us off in front of the main office, Stella evaporated into the morning bus crowd. Sometimes when she’s in a bad mood, it’s better just to let it burn off her instead of trying to pressure-wash it away.

We cut a path for Fool City, and when we get there, she flips her board vertical with the toe of her shoe and carries it inside. We’re barely through the door when some girl walking by a display of mangoes flashes Stella a neon smile.

The girl says, “Hey, you!” like she has Sour Patch Kids in her mouth—all pucker and saliva.

“Heya, cutie,” Stella calls back.

Once that mystery girl is out of range, I turn and go, “Heya, cutie? Really—that’s your line?”

But Stella just says, “I couldn’t remember her name.”

“So, how do you know her?” I ask.

“I met her at a party a few weeks ago.”

“Met her?”

“You know. We danced.” Her neck goes red.

We turn down aisle nine, and she slows her pace, runs her fingers along the cans.

“Y’know... there’s such a thing as too much order in the world.”

I’m not sure why she says this exactly, but the next thing I know, Stella’s moving things around, sowing the seeds of chaos in the canned vegetables section.

“Alphabetical order is for chumps,” she says, switching stewed tomatoes with peas.

“Seriously, though. How do you not remember someone’s name?” I ask.

“She never actually told me her name.” She hands me a can of okra, takes the candied yams I grab off the shelf and hold out to her. She spends a few seconds deciding where to put them.

“Hold up,” I say, intercepting the next can Stella takes down. “They’re seriously calling this Mexicorn?”

This is what finally cracks her. Mexicorn. Stella launches her atomic belly laugh as I hold the label up and pulse it at her, the bright yellow kernels swimming in a pool of buttery water dotted here and there with bits of red and green mystery vegetables.

“Thank the goddess we showed up when we did,” she says. “Someone has to keep the masses from getting too comfortable.”

“No one better get comfortable with this,” I say, holding the can up again. “Mexicorn, my ass.”

Her laughter rolls down the aisle. Stella has a very distinctive laugh. It’s unmistakable, even from the other side of Fool City, which is where maybe-Naomi must have been hanging out, because within seconds, she comes spinning around the corner toward us. And yes, I know that’s not her name. And I know I just gave Stella crap for not remembering the name of the girl she said hi to when we got here. But this is different. For one, I didn’t sleep with her at a party a couple of weeks ago.

“I knew that was you!” she squeals, hooking Stella into a hug.

When they pull apart, maybe-Naomi flicks me a chin greeting.

“Hey, Daya,” she says.

“Hey.” I nod, sort of. Smile, sort of. But all I really want is to get out from under the uncomfortable scorch of her gaze.

She goes, “I like how you’re doing your hair now.”

My hand shoots up, tries to smooth my bangs over my face. “It’s the same as always.”

She smiles. “So, who you going to prom with?”

I look at Stella, but she’s no help.

“Uh... no one,” I tell her.

Her smile stretches even wider. “Cool.”

No. Not cool. The day just keeps sinking farther into an abyss of weirdness. I need to find a way out of this hellscape. But it seems maybe-Naomi has a different agenda.

“I hope that means you’re going to Vanessa’s party, then?” she asks, trying hard to hook me. So far, maybe-Naomi doesn’t seem like the catch-and-release type.

“I don’t... I’m not...”

Stella finally intervenes. “Go buy your food, Daya. I’ll meet you outside.”

I wasn’t planning on buying anything until she lobbed me that save.

Maybe-Naomi throws me a peace-out as she follows Stella up front to pay for the bag of Fuego-Extra tortilla chips and a bottle of pineapple Jarritos I know she’s going to get. I go to the back where they make sandwiches and Mexican food so I can breathe some air back into my lungs.

Stella’s waiting out front when I come out, and maybe-Naomi is nowhere to be seen, goddess bless.

As we head back to school, Stella takes a swig of Jarritos, burps, and goes: “My mom’s seeing someone new.”

She squints against the reflection of sunlight blazing off the sidewalk and chomps those tortilla chips like a fucking T. rex.

“Is this a new new guy?” I ask, peeling the foil wrap off the burrito I bought. “Or the same new guy she had from a couple weeks ago.”

“Oh, a new new guy. And you wanna know the best part?”

Her sarcasm meter is off the scale as she shakes her chip bag in my direction. I slide out one tortilla chip and eat it, licking the red Fuego-Extra dust off my fingers before it can stain. But I’m also watching close as her face twists like she’s fighting something, and I don’t know if she’s about to break into a million pieces of sadness or rage-vent at the next person she sees.

“It’s Mr. Zapata,” she says. “Can you believe that shit?”

I stop walking for a second. Stella leans over and holds my hand steady as she takes a bite of my burrito. Meanwhile, my brain scrambles to catch up.

I say, “Wait, you mean—”

“Yes, Daya,” she says around a chunk of deep-fried burrito. “I do mean. Mr. Zapata of second-period math. He touches my mom with the same fingers he does proofs with in class, and I now have to sit there and look at him every fucking day and think about him and her instead of derivatives and integrals.”

Well, that explains some things about how Stella’s been acting. I can’t even laugh about it, because this obviously isn’t a joke to her.

“Can’t you switch out?” I ask.

She looks at me like I’m deranged. “It’s May. The year’s almost over, and besides, what am I supposed to tell them? I want to switch out because my teacher’s boning my puta mom?”

She goes from eating chips to chewing on what’s left of her thumbnail.

“I wouldn’t exactly call your mom a—”

“I can’t wait for this fucking year to be over,” she cuts in. “I just want to go to prom, take my finals, and get the fuck out of this drama pit, at least for the summer.”

I look over at her as we walk. “You never said anything about going to prom.”

“Because who goes to prom? But then Valentina hinted that she wants to, and the more I thought about it, the more I got into it. I’ve already picked out my tux and everything. I just...”

She spits out a little chunk of fingernail. I’m surprised there’s enough left for her to bite off.

“It’s not like I have cash to burn, Daya,” she adds. “You can’t pay for something like prom with charm and good looks, or I woulda been going for free every year.”

My head tips heavy in her direction. “It’s not just about the money, Stells. You have to tell them who you’re going with. And they won’t sell you tickets if they know who your date is.”

She goes, “You understand that not everyone goes to prom in couples, right? You can buy a single ticket. So, I buy a single ticket, and she buys a single ticket, and voilà! Now we’re at prom together and no one has to get wrecked about it.”

“They will once you start doing the tongue-tango out on the dance floor.”

She goes back to chewing her nonexistent thumbnail.

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t really matter at this point, does it? Either way, I can’t hit prom without some cash flow.”

Stella goes real quiet as we make it back to campus. Meanwhile, I’m visually drifting between couples and cliques and food fights and Frisbee on the lawn, and posters with a million end-of-year reminders for students, like about finals and yearbook distribution and graduation and prom.

And Pure Prom.

“Hey, Stells?” I fish the flyer Beckett gave me this morning out of my bag.

She goes, “Mm?”

“Have you heard about this?”

“Maybe. What is it?”

I hand the flyer to her, watch her eyes scroll down the paper.

“Is this for real?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

She busts out laughing. “This has to be a joke,” she says. “Pure Prom?”

“Okay, so it’s a bad name—”

“Daya, I wouldn’t stick one toe in something called Pure Prom even if they paid me to take a girl as my date.”

“Why not?”

“God gets all the GLORY?” she quotes off the flyer.

“I know, but it’s free. And you can pretend you’re not a couple there just as easy as you can at the other prom. Lots of people—”

“Oh, come on.” She hands the flyer back to me. “It’s probably just conversion therapy disguised as giddy frolic.”

She’s right. Of course she’s right.

I take a breath. That was the reality check I needed. There is no “safe prom alternative” for people like us.

Not at Escondido High.

Not in the town of Escondido.

And especially not somewhere like Grace Redeemer.

I crumple the flyer into a tight ball and toss it in the next trash can I pass. I need to pull myself together. Even if I did go to Pure Prom, Beckett would still be there with Cason. I won’t be able to dance with her. I won’t be able to talk to her the way I did at Justin Tadeo’s party. Or in my room yesterday. I’ll be sitting there like someone’s kid sister, watching her have all the hetero fun in the universe and feeling miserable about it. Whatever fantasy I have that going to Beckett’s prom is the same as going to prom with Beckett is just that.

A fantasy.