Pumpkin Page 18

I throw my hands up. “She’s going through with it.”

I expect Hannah’s grandmother to be as outraged as I am, but instead she faces forward with her hands gathered on her purse in her lap. “It’s decided then.”

Well, there goes any possibility of grandmother interference. I sit down right outside the open office door as all three adults talk about the best way to proceed and how teens can be cruel and how social media has ruined us all—though Hannah’s grandmother seems to have some interesting takes on Facebook. But the rest of the time, I listen to the three of them pretty much say all the things you hear adults talking about this generation say when they think we’re not listening. Status update: we’re listening.

But I can’t get Hannah’s words out of my head. I’ve spent the last few years of my life just getting by. Trying not to stand out. Most of my friends are adults who are at least double my age, and the one person I bare my soul to is connected to me by blood and therefore required to keep all the ridiculous and painful truth about me to herself. (She’s not done a great job of that lately though, to be honest.)

I can’t help but wonder . . . what if I just did this? What if I went all in? What’s the worst that could happen? The end of my senior year is miserable? Someone tries to beat me up for wearing a dress? If someone is going to try to torment me for this, they’ve already made up their mind.

And then I envision something epic. Me as queen. Not just any queen. Prom queen. What if I not only did this whole prom thing, but what if I won? I don’t even know if I actually want to do drag, but what a great way to leave high school in the dust and step into the future. The thing that really gets my blood pulsing, though, is the idea that things could be different. Maybe prom queen doesn’t always have to be the same thin, pretty, and popular girl. Maybe the queen doesn’t have to be a girl at all.

Prom is one giant charade anyway—a night where we play make-believe and pretend to be the adults we hope we might one day become. Elegant, refined, and a little bit sexy. That’s not reality, though. Our real adult lives will be about bills and tough decisions and parents getting old and deciding to have families. Not evening gowns and tuxes and crowns. So if prom is one giant fantasy, why can’t I be a part of the illusion?

Twelve


I sit down beside Hannah in the home ec room on Monday after school. “When you manipulated me into actually doing this thing, you didn’t say there would be meetings,” I whisper to her.

“Surprise,” she says. “There are meetings, I guess? I don’t know. I’m not, like, some prom court expert.”

“Well, you were in that pageant.”

“As an act of protest,” she reminds me.

“So what is this?”

She shrugs. “Something to keep me entertained until graduation.”

After my conversation in the hallway with Hannah on Friday morning, I walked back into Principal Armstrong’s office and told Mom to call off her dogs and that if Hannah was in, I was in.

Mom stared at me, and I could almost hear all the things running through her head that I knew she wanted to say, but instead, she turned to Principal Armstrong and said, “Well, you heard him. Let’s make this official.”

So here I am at prom court orientation, which I was not aware is even a thing. I figured I would throw my hat in, make some posters, and leave the rest to be decided by the high school ecosystem fates, but it turns out that in Clover City, prom court is a thing, because of course it is.

“So if the pageant was a protest, did you get what you wanted?”

She side-eyes me. “I think that’s a battle I’ll be fighting for a long time, but I made a dent.”

“Fair. Rome wasn’t built in a day and blah blah.” We’re quiet for a moment, and it is becoming quickly apparent how much we’re both missing our buffer, Clem. “What’d your grandma say about all of this?”

“¿Entonces ne te vas a poner un vestido?”

“Um, would it surprise you to know I got a D in Spanish?”

Hannah laughs and rubs her eyes. “Ds make degrees. She asked if this meant I wouldn’t be wearing a dress. I told her she’s lucky I’m even going to prom to begin with.”

“I’m pretty sure that if you ever wore a dress, it would only be because you accidentally put both your legs through one pant leg.”

She shrugs. “Fair.”

“So . . . your grandmother . . . I’ve never actually met her. Is she cool?”

“Like, as in hip, or with the gay?” she asks with a laugh. “She has high hopes that I’ll marry a girly girl so she at least has one granddaughter to dress up like a doll. Like Ellen and Portia, she says. So, yeah, she’s cool with it, but it’s been . . . a ride.”

Tucker Watson comes in with his hands balled into fists in his pockets. As he walks past me, he gives me a nod. “Hey.”

Was . . . did he just talk to . . . me? My stomach churns as I prepare myself for whatever awful thing he might say or do.

“Is this seat taken?” he asks, pointing to the chair next to me where my bag sits.

“Uh, um . . . yeah. Yes,” I finally manage to say. He can barely look at me and now he wants to sit next to me. He’s probably one of the jerks who voted for me to be nominated in the first place.

“You can sit here,” Melissa Gutierrez says from behind me.

He looks at me for a long moment, like he’s daring me to say something. “Cool,” he says and then goes to sit with Melissa.

“Wow,” Hannah says. “That was some real gay energy.”

I shake my head. “Yeah, no. Guys like him are the reason I was even nominated to begin with. Besides, all my energy is gay energy.”

Mrs. Leonard, a petite Black woman with her hair perfectly curled to frame her face, stands at the front of the room and throws her best spirit fingers to get our attention. “One, two, three, eyes on me.”

“What are we in, preschool?” I mutter.

Hannah smiles. “I had her last year. She’s a hard-ass, but she’s perky about it. Hated her class. She was cool though. She wrote me a letter of recommendation for my college applications.”

“Okay, folks, listen up. Congratulations on your nominations. We’ve got a great group this year and I’m excited to see how this turns out. Now, we are a town built on tradition, and prom court is no different. However, when I took over as faculty adviser, I decided that prom court should be more than a popularity contest, so that’s why not only do the students vote, but the faculty do as well. I know what you’re thinking—there are way more students than faculty—but faculty votes count as two votes while students count as one.”

Behind me Melissa Gutierrez huffs. “That’s not very democratic or whatever.”

Mrs. Leonard smiles sweetly. “Did I say this was a democracy?”

“No, ma’am,” Melissa mumbles.

Honestly, I may not have all the staff eating out of the palm of my hand, but I’m a big enough teacher’s pet that this faculty vote thing might give me a fighting chance.

“Now, just because you were nominated does not mean you are eligible. Prom court students are held to the highest standard, so you must be passing all of your classes and on track to graduate. You are also expected to complete various tasks including community service hours, a staff appreciation project, and a school legacy project.” She hands a stack of packets to Callie Reyes, who stands up and passes them out.

Prev page Next page