Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom (6 page)

My mother’s voice comes out small, nearly a whisper. “May I ask you something?” I nod. “This tux you’re planning on wearing … Is it … Are you going with a group of people?”

Silence stretches like taffy in the heat, longer than I ever thought was possible.

“She can go with me and Anabel like we planned,” Danny says, trying to smooth things over and make up for his colossally badly timed announcements earlier.

“Right,” I say. “Maybe we won’t get the limo. Maybe we will. But I can wear this …” I look at my parents and do my absolute best to calm the situation.

“We?” my mother asks, as though she’s never heard of that pronoun.

“We,” I confirm. “Me. And I’ll be asking Josie to go with me.”

More silence. Then my mother must realize what I mean. “Deli Josie?” she asks, before my father can ask who the heck Josie is because he’s terrible at remembering staff names and prone to avoiding names altogether, preferring “Hey there!” as his standard greeting.

“Yes, Josie who happens to work in the deli,” I say as my dad looks at the tray in front of him, putting the pieces together.

“I see.” Mom sits down and reaches for Dad’s hand.

To their credit, they don’t scream. They don’t cry. But they don’t tell me how great I’ll look in the outfit either.

Danny steps up to the plate, ever the designated hitter. “Well, I for one can’t wait to see you kick ass in that tux.”

“Language, Daniel,” my mother says automatically.

Danny reaches for a turkey roll-up and shrugs. “At the very least you can lend Anabel your jacket if it gets cold and I’ve managed to forget mine in the limo.”

I give Danny a quick and thankful grin before joining my parents at the table. You can’t expect conflict to go away on its own, so I don’t want to duck away to my room even though it sounds like a refuge. My mother tips
her chair back to reach the fridge and takes out a tray of premade lasagna. It lands on the table with a loud
clump
and she offers everyone the environmentally friendly silverware they’re debating ordering for Giant Brookfield. We sit there, eating the noodles cold, right from the pan, as though not too much has changed. Like they haven’t just been told their daughter is a lesbian.

I do wish my best friend were here eating rubbery lasagna with us. He always has a way of making things better. When we were eight and went trick-or-treating, Lucas had glitter in a water gun. He’d blast it on the sidewalks or in the air, showering everything around him in what looked to me, at the time, like magic. I breathe in hard, air catching in my throat. Where is that glitter now? But then I remember how it lasted forever, always turning up on my fingers or in my hair, glittery bits on my spelling tests or sandwiches, as though Lucas were trying to let me know he’d always be there. And maybe he will be. After all, I think as I swallow another mouthful of tomato sauce, Lucas is just angry. And he’s just being a wounded guy. And how much damage can one guy do?

Here is the problem with finding out that the person you thought was your best friend is in fact a liar who you never really knew at all: when you stop talking to her, you don’t know which of her lies, if any, you’re supposed to cover for.

When Tessa told me she was going to stop lying about who she was, I figured that meant she was going to stop lying to everybody. Because clearly I don’t have any kind of special position in her life.

So when Sean Powter comes running up to me and says, “Dude, I just saw Tessa buying two Prom tickets. So who’s the guy?” I don’t pretend I don’t know what the deal is.

“It’s not a guy,” I say. “It’s a girl from Mason. Her name’s Josie.”

Sean stands there, mouth open, for about ten seconds, and then says, “Dude. That is not cool. I mean, I know she shot you down, but you shouldn’t start rumors about her like that.”

“It’s not a rumor! It’s the truth, okay! That’s why she wouldn’t go to Prom with me! She legitimately doesn’t like boys like that. So she’s going to Prom with a girl, okay?”

I half expect Sean to crack up, pointing and laughing at me, but he surprises me. He extends a hand and puts it on my shoulder—guys do not touch each other in our school unless it’s to punch each other in the arm or bodycheck each other into the lockers, so this is a kind of special moment. “Dude. Wow. I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry I made—well, I’m just sorry.” What Sean means is, “Your situation is now officially so humiliating that mocking you would be cruel, like kicking a puppy.” He looks at his hand as if shocked to find it touching another guy, and quickly pulls it away. “See you at practice,” he says, and disappears.

Maybe some stuff happens in the rest of the day, but I honestly don’t remember it. I can’t bring myself to pay any attention in any of my classes. I feel like everybody’s looking at me, so I just kind of keep my head down and doodle in my notebook while my teachers and classmates drone on.

Normally when I’m having a bad day in the spring, I can think about baseball and look forward to practice. But even that’s tied up with Tessa. We used to play on the same team, and when the trucks weren’t unloading in
the back of her parents’ store, we’d practice there. I’d hit fly balls and grounders for her. And she taught me how to throw a curveball—the same curve that’s had college and pro scouts at a bunch of my games this year.

My job is thanks to Tessa, of course, as is my sport. Without those things I’ve only got school. Mom will kill me if I bring any Cs home, so I do what I need to get by with a B– in every class but gym, which is an automatic A for varsity athletes.

All day I really want to tell Tessa how sad I am because she’s the only person I ever tell about stuff like that. If I ever make the mistake of mentioning that to Mom, she goes on and on about how I have to toughen up, and if I think I have it so hard, I should try coming back to Brookfield in disgrace as a pregnant nineteen-year-old, blah blah blah.

But Tessa. Well, this is the part that hurts. For the kickoff of the season this year, we had a big father-son baseball game, which wasn’t the first time I’d ever had to fake an injury to get out of something like that, but it was the first time it really bothered me. I went over to Tessa’s to watch TV, and something happened on the TV—probably somebody said the word “Dad,” and I just completely lost it. Crying like a baby about how I didn’t have a dad, how mad I was at him for not wanting me, how mad I was at Mom for never even telling me his name, how there was this big hole in my life where most kids have a dad. And Tessa just rubbed my back and said, “I’m so sorry, Lucas. So sorry.”

That is the only time I remember crying in front of
anybody since I got hit by a pitch right in the ’nads when I was ten years old. I showed that girl something I never showed anybody. She knew my true self, and it turns out I didn’t really know anything about her. Nothing at all.

By the end of the school day, the lesbian rumor and the tuxedo rumor have converged, and the locker room falls silent when I walk in.

“So, yeah, I guess you’re all talking about how the girl I asked to Prom is going to Prom in a tuxedo with a girl for a date. So go ahead and just get it all out of your systems now and tell me what a loser I am.”

“So it’s true?” Spence Harrington says.

“Yes, it’s true,” I say.

“Told you!” Sean says to Spence, punching him in the arm in a very manly and not-at-all homosexual way.

“Dude, that sucks.”

“Yeah it does suck,” I say. “And there will be kids from other schools there too. You don’t think we’re gonna hear about it at every game? God, she’s such a selfish bitch!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Danny heading out of the locker room and onto the field. I feel a little guilty for a second, but only for a second. Tessa
is
a selfish bitch. I don’t care if Danny hears me say it or if he tells Tessa. Because it’s true.

Apparently Danny does tell her because the next morning when I emerge from the doorway next to what used
to be Hailer’s Drugstore and step onto the sidewalk of Main Street, Tessa is standing there.

“What the hell are you doing?” she yells at me.

“Uh. It’s called going to school,” I say, and keep walking. Tessa puts a hand on my shoulder and spins me around. “Don’t do that. I don’t have to talk to you,” I say.

“You have to listen to me. You owe me that after twelve years, Lucas,” she says.

After all these years, I know that I’m going to lose one way or the other—once Tessa sets her mind to something, it’s going to happen. So she’s going to say what she wants. I may as well get it over with.

“What are you doing running around school telling everyone about Josie? Are you trying to hurt me?”

“Am
I
trying to hurt
you
?” I yell. People are driving by—not very many, since MegaMart killed the hardware store, the sporting goods/gun store, Al’s Appliance, and the pet-supply store in addition to Hailer’s Drugstore, but still—and staring. “How do you think I felt when I humiliated myself? Did it occur to you that that might have hurt me?”

And now she’s crying. “I told you first, Lucas. Before I told anybody.”

“Only because I put up a sign! And anyway, I’m pretty sure Josie knew before me. Unless you lied about that too.”

Tessa clenches her fists. “You are really being a jerk, you know? Do you think this is easy for me? Any of it?”

“Is it easy for you? News flash, T—there are other people in the world who matter besides you.” I’m not going to get a better exit line than that so I turn and start walking to school.

School is buzzing—this is the biggest thing to happen in Brookfield since … Well, probably ever. Nothing ever happens here.

When I walk into school, I see a bunch of parents standing outside the office. I guess a lot of kids got suspended yesterday. Normally it would be weird that I didn’t hear about something like that, but I’m not talking to anybody right now, so it doesn’t really surprise me. Probably smoking weed out by the Dumpster. That’s the usual cause of group suspensions. I go to my locker and find our second baseman Todd Alpert’s little sister, Cindy, standing there. “Luke, can I get your opinion on the Prom controversy for an article I’m writing for the school newspaper?” she says.

I just look at her. “We have a school newspaper?” I’m not trying to be a jerk. It’s just that I can’t remember ever seeing one.

Cindy rolls her eyes. “It’s been online-only for two years. Your picture is usually on the sports page,” she says, her smile cracking a little.

“Huh. Well, yeah, I don’t have Internet at my house.” Cindy looks at me like she’s waiting for the punch line. “No. Really. So what do you want to know?”

Cindy’s smile is back, big-time. “I just want to know what you think about Tessa Masterson coming to Prom in a tuxedo with a female date.”

“I don’t care that she’s a lesbian. I really don’t. I just think it’s so selfish. It means our whole Prom is going to be about her instead of being a normal dance. It’s supposed to be a—it’s like, be whoever you want to be, you know, I don’t care, but you don’t have to rub everybody’s nose in it and make people uncomfortable. I mean, maybe some people won’t even get to go to Prom now because of their religion, and I just think she ought to think about somebody besides herself and not do this.”

Cindy is practically drooling over the juicy scoop she just got. “Great. Thanks a lot! Can I get a photo?”

“I guess.” She whips out a little digital camera, snaps my picture and then goes running down the hall, and I forgot about it for the rest of the day.

So, apparently this is how it all gets started.

I really don’t have Internet at home—our budget is pretty tight, and Mom has been very clear that she’s “damn sure not paying forty bucks a month to bring pornography and videos of monkeys picking their butts into this house.” We don’t have cable either.

And I don’t have a Facebook account or even e-mail, because we’re not allowed to check Facebook on the school computers, and so if I wanted to keep up with that stuff, I’d have to go to the public library to use the computer, which is pretty much the same as hanging up a sign that says “Hey! I’m poor!”

Tessa tried to get me on Facebook once. “It’s great!” she said. “It lets you connect with people all over the world, you know? People with different thoughts and ideas and perspectives!”

“Let’s see,” I said, and she scrolled down her page. I saw messages from all the people we go to school with:

New Jeans FTW!

Mom is on the rag

Tyler tripped in the hallway today! LMFAO!

“Um,” I said, “this looks like the same people with the same stupid thoughts and ideas and perspectives I see all day. Why the hell would I want to do this when I get home? Oh, hey, somebody’s trying to chat with you.”

She shoved me out of the chair, said, “That’s private,” typed something, and logged out. It was a couple of weeks till my birthday at that point, so I thought she was planning something and didn’t ask any questions. Idiot. What else didn’t I see?

So I go through life not really knowing what happens on the Internet. I guess I know in some kind of dim way that that article and the accompanying photo of me, being on the Internet, will theoretically be visible to the whole world, but why the hell would anybody outside of
Brookfield or Mason ever read the
Brookfield-Mason Regional Bee
?