Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom (15 page)

I don’t, however, grow up enough to go in the store with her. Ten minutes later, Mom comes out with her own shirt.

“That girl likes you,” Mom says as we’re driving home.

“Yeah,” I say. “Well. I don’t know. Yeah, she flirts with me and stuff, but she’s in college. Plus, you know—”

“Grow a pair and ask her out, will you?”

I sigh. “Mom. This is probably going to sound really weird and you’re probably going to make fun of me, but as much as, wow, I would love to go out with an adorable
college girl, I just feel like this—I’m going to be spending a lot of time trying to redeem myself over the next month, and I … I owe Tessa a lot, and I don’t want to be distracted from that project, and I’m afraid any girl would just be, like, jealous, you know—why are you spending all this time on Tessa?—and I just think I shouldn’t go out with anybody until this thing is kind of settled or whatever. You know?”

Mom doesn’t answer, but I see her starting to well up. “Quit making me so damn proud of you when I have to drive,” she says.

Just then my phone buzzes, and despite the fact that we haven’t exchanged numbers, I have this irrational hope that it’s a text from Kate. Only it isn’t from Kate.

“This is Josie,” it says. “You should change your Facebook privacy settings.” I don’t know what that means. “Anyone can get your #. Just wanted to say that this is the kind of thing I meant and I hate you less now.”

I look at my phone, perplexed, and send this back: “What thing?”

I get this ten seconds later: “Giant Brooks.”

“Hey Mom,” I say, “can we swing by Giant Brooks on the way home?”

Mom says okay, and when we drive by, we see this: the parking lot is full of cars. Okay, not full. Probably two-thirds full. But yesterday it was three-quarters empty, so it’s a big improvement. Who knows if it’s enough to save anybody’s job. But it’s something.

Monday morning comes, and, heart pounding, I ready myself for another attempt to make things right. At seven thirty, I walk into school wearing my new T-shirt. It says TEAM TESSA.

I should have taken up fencing instead of running. The mask, the white protective gear, it would come in handy right about now. But of course our school doesn’t have fencing—we barely have track and all that requires is a surface on which to run—because the district can’t afford the gear and the parents can’t scrape together extra funds like they do for a new football mascot. Actually, the football mascot outfit—a misshapen beaver—would be great now, too, although it wouldn’t do much for the ridicule factor.

But I have nothing to protect me. Nothing to hide behind as I drive into the parking lot and realize that what I first thought was spring hail is actually a shower of candy. Not in a Willy Wonka way of “Wouldn’t it be so
awesome if it rained gumdrops,” more like someone raided the MegaMart of all its stale Easter candy and is now chucking it from the second-floor roof. I turn my windshield wipers on to deflect the jujubes and rejected black jelly beans and carefully roll down my window so I can look up: mistake number one because as I stick my head out, the group of kids on the roof hurls fistfuls of suckers at me. A mint wrapped in green cellophane hits my forehead and slides into the collar of my shirt and I duck back inside the relative safety of my car.

For the first five months of senior year Lucas and I carpooled. Well, not carpooled, exactly, because he never drove. For all his hand-eye coordination on the field he’s not the best driver, not to mention most of the time he can’t afford to fix his car, so I would pick him up. The first couple of mornings he was waiting for me early, leaning on the window ledge outside the boarded-up drugstore below his apartment. He was so happy to see me, so happy that it was still warm and we had an extra twenty minutes before the first bell to just hang out together. I shove my books into my bag and inhale sharply to fortify myself. I wince—not just at the long walk from the parking lot to the school’s double doors, but because I remember that first morning when I picked up Lucas. He’d brought homemade Arnold Palmers—half lemonade, half iced tea. I’d brought leftover pecan rolls from the pastry platter my parents had lugged home. Then every morning after that, we shared breakfast.

Now I am alone. My stomach rumbles because I didn’t bring breakfast with me, and Lucas didn’t slip into the passenger seat with a cold travel mug thoughtfully wrapped with a paper napkin. I undo my seat belt, sling my bag over my shoulder, and exit the car like it’s any other day. If I can pretend it’s normal, maybe it will be normal.

“Screw you, Masterson!” Marcus Denner and a group of his thuggy football players make a threatening huddle near Marcus’s F-150. When Marcus first got his license Danny and Lucas and a few of my fellow runners piled in the back of the pickup and rode around for hours, just beeping the horn and laughing, sharing bags of BBQ chips from my parents’ store.

“Way to ruin everything.” Marcus’s girlfriend, Tina, steps out in front of me and for a second I think she’s going to shove me—and maybe she thinks about it, but then realizes she’s built like a sapling and I could deck her easily.

I keep walking, and a shower of sweets stings my skin as gumdrops land on my shoulders, caramel squares peck my head. Who knew candy could leave marks?

I walk faster, but I don’t run because I fear if I do, I will start bawling or turn back. Plus Marcus and his buddies and Tina’s crew of girls—who will never leave this town, staying to work at the MegaMart or Supercuts and talking of high school as the best time ever—keep following me in a swarm.

Inside, it’s no better.

My locker is slimed with shaving cream and what appears to be honey mixed with red food coloring, giving it the look of oozing blood.

“I can’t believe this,” I say aloud. Determined not to give up, I march to the principal’s office and go right up to the desk. “My locker has been vandalized again.”

“And?” So much for massive concern from the secretary.

“And my essay for American Lit is in there,” I say.

“Well, reprint it.”

“But it’s due today. Now.” I feel the anger, the frustration threatening to form tears.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

I look at her, and look over my shoulder at the kids in the hall, all of them stone-faced.

“Forget it,” I say. “I’ll just figure it out myself.”

Before the bell rings, Jenny Himmelrath approaches my locker, where I am trying in vain to scoop up the glop with cheap paper towels from the janitor’s closet. He wouldn’t even help me when I asked; he just shook his head and muttered under his breath that I’m the girl who ruined the whole Prom for everyone. “Just so you know,” Jenny says, “I’m not totally horrified about you … your … um, sexuality.”

Wow. So not what I expected from her. I begin to crack a smile but she keeps talking. “But it’s like, keep it to yourself, you know? You’re rubbing it in everyone’s face with this whole bring-a-girl-to-Prom thing and now look what you’ve done.” Her volume increases. “I special-ordered
a dress I can’t wear and all my plans—everyone’s plans—are screwed up because of you.” I stare at her. I could say that me bringing Josie to the Prom is no more rubbing anything in anyone’s faces than her bringing a guy. I could say she can wear the dress another time.

But instead, what ends up coming out is, “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know it would be like this.” She stares at me and everyone around us is quiet. A few sneakers squeak on the linoleum, someone closes a locker.

“But it
is
like this. And it’s all your fault.”

Jenny glares and walks away. I stand there as people head off to Trig and Chemistry and American Lit with papers that aren’t trapped in their disgusting lockers, and I sink down to the floor, still clutching the honey-sticky paper towels. Then I bolt to the bathroom.

I stay there through first and second periods, debating whether to go home or not, then imagining the humiliation I’d feel. But it’s stupid being in the bathroom anyway. I’m about to emerge from the stall when I hear voices and, like a field mouse, I dart back in and lock the stall door.

“Anyway,” the voice says, “Jenny says her mom has a plan.”

“Serves her right,” another voice says.

I peer through the crack and try to see who the voices belong to, but all I see is a hot-pink tank top and faketanned legs, which could be any number of girls.

“They say her lawyer is gay. It’s like a club.”

“Well, if Jenny says there’s a plan, you know there is. Hey, give me your gloss, okay?”

And with that, they leave, the door whispering shut behind them.

What plan does Mrs. Himmelrath have? An anti-me parade through town, complete with homophobic floats? I stare at my blotchy face in the mirror. I will clean my locker and then go home. That’s my own plan. I grab a fistful of paper towels, dampen them, and head out to the crowded corridor.

Stares. Glares. Someone spits on my shoe and I’m wearing flip-flops so it’s super-gross, but I don’t flinch. The ACLU lawyer told me to expect this, but thinking about it and experiencing it are very different things. He plans on filing a suit against the school board, but it isn’t easy. And each step he takes toward “helping my cause” makes me feel less and less a part of this town. This school. Less a part of anywhere. “Look,” Mr. Wekstein had said on speakerphone with my parents and me last night, “they’re going to blame you for everything—ruining the Prom, the town, anything they can think of.” And they do.

“Who did it?” Danny asks when he finds me heading to my locker.

“Who cares?” I say, and hand him paper towels. “Just help me get it off before I drive home.”

He grabs my shoulder and looks at me too close. “No. You can’t leave. You can’t let the other team—”

“No sports pep talks, okay?” I keep walking to my locker, trying to figure out the best way to de-scum it, but
when I get there, it is honey-free, no shaving cream, no slurs. Just clean and dry.

Danny looks surprised. “Guess maintenance finally caved,” he says.

I look down the corridor and see no one. Everyone’s gone to class. Then I turn and look the other way, past the principal’s office toward the front entrance and there’s the answer.

It’s Lucas, one hand clutching a spray bottle of some kind, the other holding a balled-up Brookfield-Mason baseball shirt—the blue-trimmed one only MVPs get. We lock eyes right before he chucks the shirt in the trash, pausing for a second, maybe waiting for me to shout something to him. Then he rounds the corner toward the gym.

Danny gives my hand a squeeze before bolting to class; he’s late already and they’ll probably give him detention just because he’s related to me. I should go to class, too, but I don’t. I open my locker, find my essay, walk it to my American Lit room, and hand it to Mr. Nichols while everyone watches me, waiting for me to take my seat.

But I don’t sit in class. I pivot and leave. Walking past my now-clean locker, I reach into my pocket and pull out one of the mints that had hit me in the face and pop it in my mouth. I’m halfway out the door when I stop. The trash can is giant and smells like old fries and sweat, but I reach in and retrieve Lucas’s shirt. It would be a shame to throw away something that meant so much.

Wearing my TEAM TESSA shirt to school turns out to be way less interesting to my fellow students than I had hoped. Everybody who might have been offended by it already hated me for not hating Tessa as thoroughly as they thought their religion demanded. I did have one girl I didn’t know—a short, chubby ninth grader with that weird orangey colored hair that I guess comes from bleaching hair that’s too dark to go blond or something—ask me where I got the shirt. “Wild Thingz!” I say. “But, I mean, they made it for me.”

“Cool,” she says, and flees down the hallway.

Of course Tessa’s locker has been vandalized, since she’s now the Evil Lesbian Who Canceled Prom. The fact that the school board actually canceled Prom is true and
logical, but truth and logic don’t seem to be very popular around here these days.

So I clean it. It’s not that big a deal, but I figure it’s the least I can do. And yeah, I could go into the bathroom and get lots of paper towels and clean it up, but, with our last baseball game behind us, I kind of feel like using my Brookfield-Mason jersey. I’ll be wearing a Boilermakers jersey soon enough, and I can’t imagine I’ll want to put on a jersey that represents this school ever again in my life.

Also, I threw a shutout when I wore it early in the season, and after that I figured it would probably be bad luck to wash it. Which probably qualifies it as toxic waste at this point. So I wipe all the goo off Tessa’s locker with my reeking jersey and some cleaning spray I took from the custodian’s cart, which was abandoned in the hallway with no custodian in sight.

Then I throw my jersey into the trash. And it feels kind of good.

Walking down the hall toward my first class, I get stopped by Mr. Stroudt, the assistant principal. “Luke, can you step into my office, please?” he says.

“Okay,” I say.

“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing at the chair in front of the desk. So it’s one of those conversations. I plant myself in a hard plastic chair in front of his desk, and he walks around to the back and sits down in his comfortable chair. “Now, Luke, are you familiar with the student handbook?”

I really want to tell him that of course I’ve memorized the student handbook—doesn’t everyone?—but I decide to just play it cool. “I know the rules,” I say.

“Well, son, I’m afraid maybe you don’t. Here,” he says, reaching onto a bookshelf behind his desk and tossing me a copy of the student handbook. “Will you open this to page thirty-seven please?”

“Uh. Okay,” I say.

“Will you read the section entitled ‘Dress Code’?”

“Sure,” I say. I start reading it to myself, though I know where this is going.

“Read it aloud, please,” Mr. Stroudt says.

Maybe it’s senioritis. Maybe it’s that I just spent ten minutes cleaning gross goo off a locker and knowing that the dildo or dildos who did it are not getting punished. But I’m not reading the dress code aloud.

“I can read it,” I say.

“I know you can. Now read it aloud, please.”

There’s a pause. I hear my mom’s voice in my head, telling me never to mouth off to cops or bosses or anybody that can make your life hell. “Swallow your pride and don’t go to jail,” she said.

I try for middle ground. Why haven’t I figured out yet that there’s no middle ground here anymore?

“Sir, I can read the passage. I would prefer not to read it aloud.”

And Stroudt’s face is suddenly pink. He’s out of his chair and yelling. “Did I ask you what you preferred?” he
bellows. “Do you recall me asking whether you preferred to read aloud?”

I don’t say anything.

“Answer my question! Did I ask you what you preferred?”

“Sir, I don’t believe that’s a serious question. If you have a real question for me, I’ll be happy to answer it.”

He looks like his head might explode with rage. “Okay, mister! You want a real question? Here’s a real question for you! Why do you think you’re getting suspended from school today?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. Though since you had me read the dress code section, I have to assume it’s because I’m wearing a halter top, belly shirt, or short shorts.”

I am, in fact, wearing my TEAM TESSA shirt, jeans, and a ratty pair of sneakers I’ve had for a year.

“Very funny. If you had bothered to read to the end of that sentence, you would have seen that the school dress code, which you signed at the beginning of the year, forbids not just the articles of clothing you mentioned, but any clothing likely to disrupt the educational process.”

“So my T-shirt is disruptive?”

“You’re damn right it is. It’s a middle finger to the authority of this school and the school board, and to the values of this town.”

This makes me smile. “Well, golly, sir, I had only intended it to be a show of support for my friend. But if it’s all of those things as well, that’s just super.”

Stroudt gets very quiet. “Get out of my office and out of this school. You may return when you are appropriately dressed. And you can bet Purdue is going to hear about this.”

Now, I’ve only been on the Purdue campus two times, but I certainly got the impression from walking around there that a TEAM TESSA shirt wouldn’t cause much of a stir.

“You have a lovely afternoon, sir,” I say as I exit the office.

Intrepid reporter Cindy Alpert is standing in the hallway as I exit Mr. Stroudt’s office. “So what happened?” she asks.

“I got suspended because my T-shirt is disruptive to the educational process,” I say. “How did you even know I was in there?”

“I didn’t. I was walking by and heard yelling, and I figured there might be a story. So do you have any comment?”

“I think this school has pretty weird ideas about what’s disruptive,” I say, and walk out.

I’m just clearing the parking lot when I hear footsteps running behind me. I turn around, prepared to fight, and I see Tessa.

“Did you just get suspended?” she asks, her eyes wide.

I look at my TEAM TESSA shirt. “Yep.”

She throws my nasty jersey with the red goo on it at me. And now I have red goo on my TEAM TESSA shirt.
“Damn it, Luke! Do not go getting in trouble for me! It’s not gonna prove anything to me if you lose your scholarship! It’s bad enough
my
life is ruined!” She’s crying. I have an instinct to hug her, but it doesn’t feel quite right. So I put a hand on her shoulder.

“T, I kind of hate to admit this, but I’m not doing this for you. I mean, I am. But I’m also doing it for me. It turns out that I sleep a lot better when I know I’m doing the right thing. Not that I’ve had a lot of opportunity to test that recently. But I’m hoping.”

“Well, go take a nap, then. You look like hell.”

“Thanks! ’Preciate it!” I say, smiling. I start walking away, and Tessa calls after me.

“Lucas!”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“I … You really shouldn’t thank me. I’m … I was supposed to be your friend. I’m really late to this party.”

“Well,” Tessa says, “I’m glad you finally showed up.” She turns and walks away.

There’s not much to do at home, so I decide to stop by the library. Cindy Alpert already has the story posted on the
Bee
: Star Athlete Suspended for T-Shirt. It features a photo of me in my shirt. I’m not sure I qualify as a star athlete. It’s not like I play basketball or football.

“This school has funny ideas about what’s disruptive,” student in TEAM TESSA shirt says.

I smile.

I check Facebook and find I’ve been tagged in a photo. It’s the photo of me from the
Bee.

And I’ve already got ten messages asking where people can get their own TEAM TESSA shirts. And an invitation to like a page called “Save Giant Brooks!”

I click on the page and see that two thousand people like it. Well, that’s cool. I hope they all decide to buy their groceries there.

I check back on the
Bee
because, for the first time in a really long time, I’m kind of proud of myself, and I just want to read the article again. I get this: “Error 404: the page you are looking for is not at this address.” So they’ve taken down the
Bee
. I hope Cindy didn’t get suspended too.

I walk home, wash off my TEAM TESSA shirt in the sink, and hang it up to dry next to the window. When it’s time to go to work two hours later, my shirt is dry. I pull it on and head out my front door. Which, since I got home, has acquired the word FAG in pink spray paint. Fortunately, I still have the jersey that Tessa threw at me, adorned with the number I got when I made varsity in ninth grade: 12. I fold the jersey in half and tack it on the front door, so now our front door says F1G.

When I get to work, I get this text from Tessa: “Your front door says fig. Very dadaist.”

I have no idea what the hell she’s talking about. But at least she’s talking to me. Or, anyway, texting me. Assuming nobody torches our apartment, I might actually get a good night’s sleep tonight.