Saving prom, p.5
Saving Prom, page 5
Felicity got even more angry. She pulled her arm out of my hands and slammed a fist down on the table. It landed with a thump that caused the cashbox he’d been using to rattle. The smartphone connected to a card reader also nearly rattled off the edge and Dirk let out a funny little yelp as he dove for the thing.
“Felicity,” I said, some pleading coming to my voice.
She had no idea what she was doing to me here. I mean she never knew what she was doing to me, but she really didn’t know what she was doing to me now. She was threatening to out me to the world, and that wasn’t what I wanted.
I could see the worst case spreading out in front of me. She made a big deal out of this and suddenly Dirk started spreading around to everyone that we were trying to go to prom as a couple even though we were just going as friends.
That was the kind of asshole move he’d pull. He seemed like the kind who would love a little gossip even though his imaginary friend told him that was a bad thing to do.
Pretty soon people would think we actually were lesbians, and the truth would be out. Sure it would just be a rumor, but I didn’t even want a rumor spreading about me being out.
Sure things were a lot better for gay kids today than they’d been even a little while ago, but that didn’t mean it was any less terrifying to contemplate dealing with something like that.
“Felicity, please,” I said.
I decided begging was better than nothing. Maybe she’d recognize something in my tone. She turned and seemed to realize, at last, that I was really worried about this. Her expression softened and she reached out to touch my arm.
That couldn’t be any worse. Dirk seemed to take that as confirmation that we were exactly what he thought we were.
Talk about your all time confusing moments. I didn’t want him to think me and Felicity were exactly what I’d always hoped me and Felicity would always be even though we weren’t.
Talk about confusing, but then again there was never anything about the whole Felicity situation that was anything less than confusing. This was just a whole new layer of confusion added on top of everything else.
“Fine,” she said. “We can go, but this isn’t over yet.”
That last bit was aimed at Dirk. She glared at him and I think that’s the first time in our long friendship that I’d ever seen her actually get mad at someone.
I couldn’t believe she was getting mad over something so silly, either. I mean it’s not like it was that big a deal. At least it’s not like it should’ve been that big a deal to her, at least. She wasn’t going on the secret ultimate date she’d been fantasizing about her entire life, after all.
Sure she’d always had an overdeveloped sense of justice, but I was surprised she was willing to risk rumors about being gay to satisfy that sense of justice.
Whatever. As long as she was letting me lead her away I wasn’t going to complain too much. We walked past a line of people that was starting to disperse. A couple of them shot dirty looks our way, but the line was a lot shorter now than it’d been when we got up to the front.
Maybe they’d heard about the ridiculous prices too. Maybe they got tired of waiting while Felicity and I stood at the front shouting at the asshole.
“I don’t see why you had to make such a big deal out of that,” I said. “We’ll talk to a teacher and explain the situation. Say we were going as friends. You don’t have to act like…”
I stopped. There was a hitch in my throat. After all, it was difficult to actually say the words. Not when I’d been dreaming about being with her ever since I first realized I was into girls.
I guess I’d just always imagined it would be the sort of situation where we were sneaking around in private for the rest of high school and waiting to head off to college where people would be a lot cooler about that sort of thing than they were here at a school in Small Town, USA.
“No way,” she said. “We’re not letting him get away with something like that. We have to stand up for… Well we have to stand up for stuff like this. It’s important.”
I fixed her with a weird look. She looked right back at me and smiled.
“Come on. It’s not like it’s that bad. It’s like you said. We talk to a teacher and get Dirk to sell us our tickets, but he is going to be the on who sells us those tickets.”
I smiled too. I guess she had a way of making me feel better about these things. It was one of the things I loved about her.
One of the many things I loved about her.
“I guess you’re right,” I said.
The bell rang. Although they didn’t even have traditional bells like you saw in old TV shows or movies in this place. It was a tone that beeped a couple of times to let people know it was time to move on to the next class.
“Look, I’ll talk to you about this later,” I said.
“Of course you will,” she replied. “We’re not going to let him get away with this.”
There was a surprising amount of determination in her voice. It surprised me. I never thought she’d be the kind of person to want to fight this hard for a couple of prom tickets, but I also had to admit it was kind of nice to have her acting this concerned over going to prom with me.
Even if I knew it was all because she didn’t like Dirk telling her she couldn’t do something. It didn’t mean anything else, but a girl could dream.
“See you later,” I said.
She smiled and I melted again. Just like I always did. Maybe it’s something that’s hard to understand if you’re not in the middle of an unrequited crush, but I was in a place where I’d take just about any interaction with Felicity. A smile. A touch.
Her going on a crusade to have a date with me that she didn’t even realize was a date.
Though as I walked to my next class and I didn’t have Felicity there to make me feel better I couldn’t help but fall back into some old bad habits. I couldn’t help but worry that maybe this was all a bad idea.
Maybe that was some of the fear I always felt of being outed coming through. I wasn’t sure why I should be so worried about being outed, but it was a fear that was there. I think it’s a fear that just about every gay kid goes through.
Whatever. I had a class to get to. I could worry about all this other crap later. With a little luck Felicity would cool off in her next couple of classes and forget about the whole thing. Decide it wasn’t worth the trouble.
Which would be both a relief and a monumental disappointment.
10
Confession
“I still can’t believe Dirk would do something like that!”
Any hope I might’ve had that Felicity would cool off as the day wore on proved to be totally wrong. On the one hand I was a little happy about that. She still wanted to fight to go on that date with me.
On the other hand it was terrifying because that meant she was probably about to start a fight that was going to end with the two of us becoming the poster girls for the gay rights movement in our school, and she wasn’t even gay!
I mean how crazy was that? I could appreciate her wanting to be a good ally, but she thought I was just an ally too and meanwhile she was inadvertently dragging me out of my nice comfortable closet.
Felicity paced back and forth in her room. Here we were with yet another thing that only the closeted kid can identify with. Being able to visit your crush in her room whenever you want, with the door closed, even, and not being able to do anything about it.
Felicity had really worked herself up. It was a wonder she hadn’t worn out the carpet in that spot.
“I mean who the hell does he think he is?” she asked.
“The head of the prom committee?” I asked.
She stopped. Eyed me for a long moment. Then started to giggle. It was infectious and I started to giggle right along with her.
What can I say? I needed a break in all the tension right about then.
“I guess you’re right, smartass,” she said. “But seriously. I don’t know where he gets off telling people who can and can’t go to prom. He doesn’t have that kind of power. He’s supposed to be in charge of decorations and collecting money and that’s it.”
“You know why he’s doing it,” I said.
“I do?” she asked.
She came over and sat next to me on the bed. I tried to ignore the goose bumps that rose over my arms and the rest of my body as she was suddenly so close.
I could feel the heat radiating off of her. I told myself it was because she was mad. I knew I felt some heat, and it was all because she was so damn close to me.
Torture. Pure torture. It was difficult for me to think when she was next to me like this. It was difficult for me to do much of anything. I wanted to lean in and kiss her but of course I wasn’t going to do something that monumentally stupid because that would be…
Well it would be stupid. Fun, but stupid. And it would probably end in disaster with her screaming at me for making a move.
“Why is he doing this?” she asked.
“You seriously don’t know?” I asked.
“Pretend I don’t,” she said. “And then maybe explain it to me so I can be educated.”
“Come on,” I said. “You know what church he goes to, right?”
“Well yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?” she asked.
Maybe this was the sort of thing I had to pay more attention to being firmly in the closet, but I had a good grasp of what churches in town weren’t exactly happy with the gay thing and which ones didn’t care. At least I had a pretty good idea when viewed through the lens of people I went to school with and their attitudes on the whole thing.
It was something you sort of learned to pick up on. Call it a survival mechanism.
“It has everything to do with everything,” I said. “He goes to one of those churches that’s a little crazy about the whole gay thing. They’re still out there and it’s not pretty the kind of stuff they put into people’s heads.”
“Huh,” she said. “I guess I never thought of it like that. My pastor is pretty cool about that sort of thing so I just assumed…”
“You thought that because your church is okay with something everyone is?” I asked.
There were times when I was really surprised at how Pollyanna she could be about things. Maybe part of the reason why she went through life with that huge smile plastered on her face was because she hadn’t quite realized how the world worked.
It broke my heart in these moments when I had to explain to her how that world worked. Like the time in elementary school when we’d gone past the same farm every day going to school and she’d pointed out a pig that was her “favorite” from the bus.
I’d been the one to explain to her the reason why her “favorite” pig hadn’t been back in the field the next year, and it didn’t have anything to do with him being sent off to another farm where he could live out a long happy life.
I guess her parents hadn’t been as forthright with her as mine when it came to things like where her food came from. She hadn’t eaten ham or bacon for a year after that.
“Well I still don’t see why he has to be such a jerk to us,” she said.
I shrugged. “Maybe it’s because he goes to that church. Maybe it’s that he’s always been sort of an asshole and he saw his shot and he took it. Whatever the reason, he’s going to be trouble and I don’t know if it’s worth it to fight him on it.”
Felicity hit me with a look. I knew that look. It was the look that said I was about to go along with something whether I wanted to or not.
I know, I know, but it’s not like I was the first stupid teenager who did stupid things because of a stupid crush.
“You can’t be serious,” Felicity said. “We can’t let him get away with this. Think about what it means! What if there are other gay kids who want to go to prom or something?”
I’m not sure why it happened like it did. I just know that there was a lot of anger, confusion, and frustration that’d been building up inside me ever since this whole prom thing started, and it all came boiling over.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” I asked. “You’re ready to go off and have this fight and you’re not even gay, and meanwhile you’re terrifying me because someone’s going to see this crusade you’re going on and they’re going to start rumors. What if I don’t want people to find that out about me?”
There was a long pause. Felicity stared at me and I could see the wheels turning. I could see that she was working out everything I’d just said. Her eyes went wide, and I put my own hands over my mouth as I realized exactly what I’d just said.
“Lily, are you saying…”
She stopped. Seemed to have trouble actually saying her right words. Which I could understand. I’d pretty much just admitted to her that I was totally gay, and I found myself playing defense.
“So what if I am?” I asked.
I forced myself to meet her gaze. I didn’t mean for it to be a negative look, but from the way she flinched she clearly took it like that. I hated that the way I was looking at her scared her, but at the same time I was sort of satisfied.
This was serious business, after all. At least I thought it was serious business. The last thing I needed was for her to act like everything was going to be fine when that wasn’t necessarily the case.
“How long have you known?” she asked.
“We don’t need to talk about that,” I said. “All you need to know is this little crusade you’re going on for prom isn’t about us going as friends. It’s about me being dragged out of the closet and I can’t say I care for it.”
“But…”
Once I’d said that much the hits just kept on coming. It was like everything I’d been holding in for so many years was spilling out of me because I’d been bottling it up for so long that I was going to explode if I didn’t finally let it out.
“But nothing,” I said. “This is already tough enough for me and you don’t seem to understand that or care. I’ve been head over heels for you for years now and dealing with all this prom stuff on top of everything else has…”
I stopped. Stared at her with wide eyes. I totally realized what I’d just revealed, and the panic must’ve been obvious.
Felicity looked confused, but it was clear she was working through it pretty fast.
“You’ve been head over heels for me for years?” she asked. “I mean, I had no idea. I…”
Yeah, the panic in my eyes must’ve been more than enough to confirm everything. She seemed more surprised than anything. At least she wasn’t freaking out which had always been my top worry, but any reaction at all to news like that was more reaction than I cared for because she wasn’t ever supposed to react to the fact that I totally had the hots for her.
It wasn’t something I was ever supposed to let out, damn it. I just really got going and it was like I had verbal diarrhea or something. It came spilling out and by the time I was done it was too late.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I said.
“But you did say it,” she said. “You said it and I think you meant it.”
“I should not have said that,” I continued. “That was a bad idea. Just forget I ever said anything.”
Now she was hitting me with a really weird look. Not that I could blame her. I mean how would I feel if a friend I’d known my entire life suddenly admitted our entire friendship had been a lie and she totally had the hots for me?
Actually that’s probably a terrible comparison. I could think of one friend I’d known my whole life who would be inclined to do that. One friend other than Connie, that is. And to say I’d be super stoked if that friend ever admitted she had feelings for me would be the understatement of the century.
“I need to go,” I said.
This conversation was dipping into some primordial parts of my brain, and that meant the fight or flight response was really kicking into overdrive. Mainly the flight part.
I needed to get out of here. I needed to get the hell away from this conversation.
“Oh no you don’t,” Felicity said, trying to grab my arm. “You’re not getting away without talking to me about this!”
Only she was wrong. I was totally getting away without talking about this, because I ripped my arm out of her grip and made a beeline for the door.
Was it the coward’s way out? Probably, but despite everything not falling apart the moment she realized I was into her I couldn’t help but think that it wouldn’t be long before everything did fall apart, and I wanted to be far away from her when the meltdown eventually came.
I was certain it would eventually come. I couldn’t have been more wrong, but can you blame me? I was panicking after facing a scenario I’d worried about for years, and that panic was so intense that I never realized things were going far better than I ever could’ve imagined.
11
Radio Silence
“So do you want to tell me why I couldn’t get ahold of you all weekend and what it had to do with Felicity and this whole prom thing?” Connie asked as I sat down next to her in math class.
I sighed. I figured something like this was coming. At least it was Connie asking me why she hadn’t been able to get ahold of me all weekend and not Felicity.
I’d even ducked Felicity this morning at my locker where we usually hung out for a little while before classes. It used to be my favorite part of the day, but I’d been dreading it this morning.
I was terrified she was going to start a scene right there in the middle of the hallway. Start asking me questions like why I left her house so suddenly after I’d confessed to her that not only was I totally a lesbian, but I was also totally in love with her.
Not the kind of conversation I wanted to have with her in the middle of a busy hall before school where anyone could listen in and the rumor would spread like wildfire by the end of first period.
So the moment I saw her coming for my locker this morning I ran. Even though the concern was plain in her eyes because of course she’d be concerned about me and not angry. That’s just the kind of person she was. Not that it mattered.
