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But Ally wasn’t there. She wasn’t there and I couldn’t smile.
It was amazing, really. Amazing how everything could look so perfect and normal, when everything was so very not.
ally
Someone was going to get strangled with a roll of black tulle. I wasn’t sure whether it was going to be my mom, who’d gone into full-time bride mode; Faith, who had somehow gotten the prom theme changed from Postapocalypse to the equally cheesy, though far less dark, Springtime in Paris; or Qui
Sigh.
So when my mother dropped off forty bags of custom M&M’s in my room and told me it was my job to fill hundreds of tiny boxes with them and tie them with bows and tags for favors, you can imagine what I wanted to tell her to do with them. I mean, she didn’t even say “please,” which was basically the number one lesson she’d drilled into my brain my entire childhood. But instead of pointing out this hypocrisy, I took a deep breath and allowed her to leave my room unharmed. She was, after all, my mother. And I had basically no speech prepared for her wedding, since I’d thrown out my two-thousand-five-hundredth version yesterday. As maids of honor went, I was already turning out to be a huge disappointment.
I leaned back on my throw pillows and sighed, staring at the cardboard crates full of yellow and white ribbons, waxy plastic boxes, and bags of candy. This was going to take me hours. Why couldn’t my mother have just gone high-end and ordered Godiva boxes instead of trying to be cute? Maybe I should ask Qui
I sat up straight. I knew exactly who to call.
Twenty minutes later, Chloe and I were sitting on her bed, facing each other over a pile of plastic boxes, quietly munching on yellow and white M&M’s that read MELANIE & GRAY and TRUE LOVE and attempting to tie the slippery silk ribbons.
“Thanks for doing this,” I said. “I would have lost it if I had to do this by myself.”
“No problem.” Chloe added a box to the “done” pile. “I do tie a kick-ass bow.”
“It’s always been one of your special talents,” I replied with a smirk.
Chloe reached for another box and held it between her thumb and forefinger. She looked better than I had expected. Her baby weight was almost gone and she wore the tiniest bit of mascara and lip gloss. Her room was another story, though. It looked like she hadn’t left it in weeks. Her laptop was open on her desk, surrounded by teetering piles of books and papers, and a line of empty water bottles. The garbage can was full of college brochures, and the chair by the deck was covered in a mound of rumpled designer clothes. Workout DVDs were strewn on the floor in front of her TV, and an exercise ball, mat, weights, kettleball, and ru
So at least she was working out. Depressed people don’t work out. Right?
“So, I have news,” she said suddenly, starting to fill the next box.
“Yeah?” I tied a ribbon, badly, and tossed the box in the done pile. Chloe fished it right out and started to retie it. “What’s up?”
“I got into Brown,” Chloe informed me.
“Omigod! Really?” My eyes widened. “That’s your dream school!”
“I know.” Chloe’s lips twitched into a small smile. “I actually got the letter back in March, but I wasn’t really opening mail then. I got into Duke, too. And Dartmouth.”
“Chloe! That’s unbelievable!” I said. I leaned over all the crap between us to give her a half hug. “You must be so excited.”
Even though she didn’t look it.
“Yeah,” she said, lifting her shoulders and letting them drop. “I guess life really does go on.”
She tossed my now perfectly bowed box in the done pile and sighed. My heart felt heavy against my ribs. This was just not right. When someone worked their ass off as hard as Chloe had her whole life, she should be able to enjoy getting into all these amazing schools. But instead, she looked like she’d been rejected ten times over.
“Chloe,” I said, ripping open a new bag of M&M’s. “You have to come back to school.”
She chuckled and shook some M&M’s into a box. “Why?”
“Because … you have to,” I said lamely. “What are you getting out of locking yourself up in here twenty-four-seven? You should be hanging out with us, pla
I felt fake even as I said it, because it wasn’t like I was exactly enjoying myself. But Faith had been right about joining the prom committee. It might not have entirely snapped me out of my funk, but it had been distracting. I was no longer focused on Jake and lost love and feeling sad for Chloe. That crapioca was still there, yeah, but it wasn’t ru
“I don’t know, all that stuff … the prom and everything … it just feels so, like, shallow now,” Chloe said. She pushed her hands into her hair, then hugged her knees. “I’d feel like a poser or something, pretending I actually cared.” Her gaze flicked up tentatively. “Besides, I can just imagine what everyone is saying about me.”
She had a point there. Making up lies about Chloe Appleby had become the number one pastime at Orchard Hill High. But that was mostly because she wasn’t there to defend herself.
“Who cares what they’re saying?” I replied. “How great would it be to go to the prom with Will? I mean, he’s, like, one of the hottest guys in our class. You could get some sick prom dress that’ll make everyone salivate and show them how totally fine and not fat you are. Don’t even try to tell me that wouldn’t feel good.”
For the first time, Chloe smiled for real.
“It would actually be kind of nice to see Will in a tux,” she said, blushing.
“See? There you go!” I reached for a box and filled it with candy. “So … you’ll come back?”
Chloe bit her lip and narrowed her eyes. “I’ll think about it.”
“Cool,” I said.
As I slipped another ribbon from the pile, something inside my chest seemed to loosen. For the first time in a while, I felt like I’d done something good.
jake
When I drove past Ally’s house for the third time, I saw the curtain on her window shift. Fuck. I floored it and took the turn at the end of the street like a NASCAR driver. Had she seen me? Was that the first time she’d seen me? Did she think I was just driving over to the Twins’ place or did she know I was basically stalking her?
I lifted my fingers from the wheel, trying to give my sweaty palms some air. This was totally effed up. I couldn’t be one of those guys who drove by a girl’s house just to see if she was home. Those guys were pathetic. They were the guys who wrote poetry in the back of their Trig notebooks and got their asses tossed into that gross shower stall at the dark end of the locker room with the cold water turned on and the door jammed closed with a broom handle. Definitely not me.
I headed toward town and tried to think. The problem was, Ally’s birthday was coming up. Her mom’s wedding, too. I didn’t care so much about missing that, but the idea of missing her birthday … I couldn’t deal. Last year that had been the day I’d turned it all around. Shown up at her house with the perfect gift. Gotten her to say she’d go out with me. I didn’t know if it was because of that or what, but lately I’d started feeling like her birthday was kind of a deadline. Like if I didn’t find a way to get her back by then, I never would.