“Waylon Brewer.”

That was not the wild card I was expecting.

Eleven

I am immediately called into the office, where Hannah is already sitting, slouched in a chair with her beanie pulled over her eyes.

“Um, what the hell is going on?” I ask her.

She pulls the beanie up over one eye and gets a look at me. “Oh, you haven’t heard? We’re next in line to the throne.”

“Stop messing around.”

She sits up with a sigh. “Just a bunch of idiots,” she says. “Patrick Thomas probably got enough people to vote for us or someone rigged the vote. Either way, someone is making a joke of us. Nothing new.”

“Maybe for you,” I say. “But I’ve never been made fun of . . . on this scale.” Unlike Hannah, I didn’t join the town beauty pageant in tenth grade, which was basically an invitation to put a target on her back in some circles.

“How nice for you.”

“You’re not at all freaked out?”

She shrugs. “I’ve got a few weeks left here and currently my biggest concern is going back to class so I can tuck my phone under my desk and watch videos of hamsters sitting on miniature furniture inside customized doll houses.”

“Now that’s an internet deep dive I could get on board with.”

Mom stomps into the office and says to Mrs. Bradley, “Where is he? I need to speak with Principal Armstrong. Immediately.” She sees me sitting there with Hannah. “Oh my goodness. My darlings. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Waylon, where’s your sister?”

I turn to Hannah.

“She’s still in class,” she says. “But she’s all fired up,” she adds in a dreamy way.

Principal Armstrong sticks his head out of his office. “I believe we’re still waiting on Hannah’s grandmother.”

Hannah stands. “She’s at physical therapy, so she’s going to be late. Besides, I’m eighteen.”

I look to Mom and she doesn’t object. “I’m definitely here for Hannah’s benefit as well, and I’d be happy to relay any information to her grandmother.”

The three of us sit shoulder to shoulder inside Principal Armstrong’s office.

Mom sits between us with her purse in her lap. “Please explain to me exactly what happened here, Russ.”

He eyes Mom at the use of his first name in front of students, but Mom doesn’t flinch.

“I’ve spoken with the student government and the faculty volunteers who tallied the nominations. It appears that both Hannah and Waylon did indeed garner enough votes for their respective nominations. Their names were a surprise while the votes were being counted, but the consensus was that their nomination should be included in case they had legitimately tried to garner votes.”

“So basically,” I say, “a bunch of teachers thought I actually wanted to run for prom queen and that Hannah wanted to be king, so they let the student body president and vice president name us as nominees during the live announcements?”

Principal Armstrong loosens his tie. “Yes.” He shakes his head. “We . . . they didn’t want to discount the possibility, and perhaps there was a better way to handle this.” He looks to Hannah, twirling a piece of gum around her finger, and then to me. “I guess I am to understand that these nominations were not the intended outcome?”

“Uh, ya think?” I ask, one step away from actually tapping his head to see if there’s anything left in there.

He throws his hands up. “Every time I think I understand teens— You wanna know what, I’m going to take care of it.”

“I expect apologies from the responsible parties,” Mom says.

Principal Armstrong sputters. “We have no way of knowing who exactly is to blame here, but I will be vigilant about making sure that both Hannah and Waylon are not the victim of any further abuse, and their names will be removed from all prom-court-related things.”

Hannah stands and pulls her backpack over her shoulder. “No need. They want a king? They’ll get a king. Count me in. I’m running for prom king, Mr. Principal Man.”

She’s out the door before any of us can even react.

I look to Mom and then Principal Armstrong, who are both as shocked as I am.

“Uh . . . uh . . . give me a sec.”

I run after her and find her in the hallway. “What the hell, Hannah? You can’t be serious. What’s your grandma going to say?”

She turns around with an innocent grin. “If I’ve learned anything in the last few years, it’s that you’ve got to be the one who writes your own story. You don’t think I see people making fun of me? I’m the Afro-Dominican girl with buck teeth. That’s all anyone knows me as. I’ve been dating your sister since last summer and I bet that’s pretty much all you even know about me.”

I clear my throat, trying to suppress a little bit of guilt and what that guilt might mean. I haven’t really taken the time to get to know Hannah, because I always felt like Hannah wasn’t interested. “We are so close to graduation,” I finally say. “So close to getting out of this stupid school, and you want to make a thing of this instead of just letting it die?”

She shrugs. “This can go one of two ways. We’re nominated and step out of the race and people always remember that one time the two homos were nominated for prom court. Wasn’t that funny? Or I could actually do this thing and then maybe someday everyone will remember how the gay girl with the crazy teeth took life by the balls and ran for prom king. Wasn’t that wild? Wasn’t she fearless?”

I stand there for a minute, waiting for her to say she’s kidding and that she’s going to let all this blow over. But she doesn’t. Instead, her posture only becomes more defiant. She’s got nothing to lose. And for the first time, I think I’m actually seeing Hannah. It’s as though this whole time the Hannah I knew was never Hannah at all. Only a shadow of her.

“Patrick Thomas and all the assholes who followed his lead might get to choose how this story begins, but I get to choose how it ends.” She takes a step closer to me, and something shifts behind her light-brown eyes that makes me think that she’s a little nervous to do this without me. “And for what it’s worth, I think you’d make an incredible queen.”

I watch her walk off down the hallway and her words vibrate through me like a tuning fork.

Back in the office, I find Mom and Hannah’s grandmother talking to Principal Armstrong.

Hannah’s grandmother looks just like Hannah if Hannah were sixty-four years old and wore chino pants and Clarks and got regular perms. She eyes me up and down as I stand in the doorframe. “The nose,” she finally says to Mom. “Both babies have the nose.”

Mom smiles and faintly touches her own nose with the tip of her finger, momentarily distracted by the thought of the three of us sharing a nose. Everyone has always said how much Clem and I look like Dad, and when I was a kid, I always felt bad, like it might hurt her feelings.

Hannah’s grandma winks at Mom. I’ve been invited to Hannah’s house many times, but if I’m going to be the third wheel, I might as well do it in the safety of my own home. I’ve only seen Hannah’s grandmother a few times from a distance. Up close, I can see the soft lines around her lips and the silver hairs running through her curls.