Indecent promposal, p.1
Indecent Promposal, page 1
Indecent Promposal
By
Natasha West
Copyright © 2023 by Natasha West
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
One
Cody Foster was sitting in the hall of Harewood Academy, attending an assembly conducted by the assistant head, Mr Parsons. He was blathering about things Cody didn’t care about, so she was in the place she spent most of her time, her own head.
She was plotting her escape route in case of an emergency. As she was in her final year, she was in the back row, which was nearest the door, advantageous to a speedy exit. She reckoned she could be out in two seconds, conservatively.
But the emergency she envisaged was not a fire or a sudden outbreak of disease. The crisis she pictured had more to do with her patience finally breaking, making this the day she ran out of Harewood screaming. But what could cause such a reaction? The continued existence of her classmates, that was what. Year after year of watching their idiosyncrasies and shortcomings and general dumbassery had taken a toll on Cody. She felt like a rubber band, stretched to the limit, ready to snap.
Today’s maddening sights included Ben Cutler trying to woo Shannon McGrath across ten feet via the medium of scrunched-up paper balls lobbed at her head. And Noah Wojcik sticking his hand into the back of his pants, farting discreetly, and then bringing the hand back out for an olfactory inspection. Or Tara Phelps endlessly caressing her bone straight balayage’d locks like her head was her safety blanket.
There were plenty of candidates for most annoying person at Harewood Academy. Oh wait, here was a new contender!
As Mr Parsons was winding up (something about not using the bins to sledge down the hill at the back of the school because the streak of rubbish they left was attracting rats in a sort of vermin parade), Ava Gale stuck up her hand and said, ‘Mr Parsons?’
‘Yes, Ava?’
‘Could I just have a quick word before you let everyone go?’
Mr Parsons permitted it, and Ava stood up, smoothing her perky little polka dot dress. Her bum-length caramel shampoo-advert hair hung loosely waved to perfection, and her cat-like green eyes were darkly lined with the precision of a professional. It tired Cody out just to imagine the time and effort that went into it all.
Everyone sat up a bit straighter to hear what she had to say, already fascinated. Cody? Not so much. She just wanted to go. Ava was delaying her release, and in Cody’s eyes, there was no greater crime.
‘Hi, everyone. Just wanted to let you all know that there are still some prom details to nail down. I’d love to get a broad spectrum of voices in from sixth formers, so please come to the drama studio at five tonight if you’d like to contribute your ideas. It’s your prom, after all.’
Cody translated her little speech. ‘Can someone other than me give their opinion about my vanity project so I can pretend I give a shit what anyone else thinks? Then I can keep making out that I’m doing this for the school. Not just so I can officially be crowned queen of this dump and finally disappear completely up my own arse.’
But Cody was alone in her assessment because people were nodding away, and the response was positive. People loved Ava—sheep. They bought her nice-girl act.
‘OK, thanks. Hope to see you there,’ she finished.
Mr Parsons released them at long last, and Cody was first out of her seat. A close second was Ava’s boyfriend, Leo Wicks, displaying surprising speed, beating Cody to the door. He stopped and turned, blocking the exit with his huge, muscly frame.
‘Come on, babe!’ he called, and Ava dutifully sped to him through the throng.
Cody tried to get around them, but they were blocking her, the oblivious arseholes.
‘Babe, you look so hot when you give speeches,’ Leo said, grabbing her by the waist.
Ava laughed and shoved him playfully. ‘Not really a speech. Just a public service announcement.’
Cody rolled her eyes. She tried to get around, determined to be first out of the room, and beat everyone out of the building. She hated to get caught in hallway traffic. That was more minutes of sweet freedom taken.
But in the doorway, she got jammed—with Ava.
‘Excuse me,’ Ava said politely.
Cody tutted and stepped back to let her out. Ava walked out without a thanks, followed by her boy toy.
‘It’s your world, Prom Queen,’ Cody muttered. ‘I just live in it.’
Ava cast a quick, nervous look over her shoulder at the comment. Cody was vaguely shocked she’d been heard. She was used to being invisible to Ava and her ilk.
As Cody managed to overtake Ava in the corridor, Cody heard her laughing, carefree and happy. Cody didn’t buy it. She could smell a fake a mile away.
And all this prom business she was so obsessed with? Harewood Academy hadn’t even had one last year, just the normal Leavers’ Ball. But they were rebranding it because Ava had campaigned for it.
She had written the school board and provided signatures squeezed out of a few hundred idiots, explaining that the school needed to go more, ‘Iconic.’ What did that even mean?
What it meant, of course, was that Ava Gale was a cutthroat snake who would step over her grandmother’s corpse for the chance to be crowned prom queen. But the joke was on her, ultimately. For Christ’s sake, prom queen? Imagine wanting something as pathetic as that?
But Ava wasn’t the worst thing about being at this school. Just a symptom. Pretty much everyone at Harewood sucked in one way or another.
All Cody wanted was to escape. And she was mere months away. When that time came, she would leave this school and every last person in it behind her and never look back.
Two
Ava Gale frowned as she watched that Cody girl stomping down the hall. What the hell was her problem? Ava had said thank you. She’d said it quietly, but what more was she supposed to do? Get down and curtsy?
Ava shook off the awkward moment. Nobody cared what Cody thought anyway. That was her own fault. She had always thought she was too cool for the planet, so she could blame herself for her total lack of friends.
People had tried. Ava had personally watched Joe Jempson, Garret Lloyd, Amit Sharma and Rian Ip all have a go at sitting next to her at lunch. Every time, she’d turned from whatever book she was ready, pushed her thick-framed glasses up her nose and told them to fuck directly off. Ava didn’t blame her because they were all just trying to get her clothes off. Because it had to be said, Cody was a looker.
Irritatingly, she didn’t even try. She never wore a stitch of makeup, but she had the kind of clear olive skin that Ava would have, if not given her right arm for, possibly sacrificed a toe. Hoodies and jeans in dark colours were her uniform no matter the time of the year or the temperature. But they hung on her lean frame like nobody’s business. Her black hair was cut low-maintenance short, which only made her absurd cheekbones pop further. Her dark eyes screamed, ‘I don’t give a shit.’ Ava found her a contrived rebel, but boys loved it.
However, Cody didn’t care even slightly about the attention, even with Rian, who, it had to be said, was probably the most beautiful male in the school. If Cody had to play the mysterious loner, she should have at least spent the sexual currency she was accruing. But she was determined to be outside of life.
It was kind of sad. Ava felt almost sorry for her. People said she was messed up because of something that happened at some sleepover years ago. Ava never got the full details of it, nor would she press for them. It wasn’t good to be gossipy. She wanted to be better than that.
She knew she had a lot of power, socially speaking, even if she didn’t always understand it. She wasn’t anything terribly special. It wasn’t like she was the smartest or the prettiest.
But her mother was able to explain it indirectly because her mother loved movies. Particularly the movies of her youth. Teen movies of the nineties and the early noughties played on repeat in Ava’s house, and they told Ava that some girls just had to lead. The other thing they told her was that you had to have a prom. Something called a Leavers’ Ball didn’t cut it. You had to call it prom and have the crowning at the end, or why bother?
But it was crucial to Ava that it be fair. That everyone had their vote. She wanted to rule over a democracy. She was not a dictator. Hence, the call for ideas. It could not seem like a fix. She was not Regina George. She was a good person, and she wanted everyone to know that.
But yeah, she wanted the crown. She wanted it pretty badly. Her mother’s movies showed that prom was supposed to be a special night, and if you were coronated, all the better. Ava wanted her movie moment. If someone could just say to her, ‘Yeah, it’s you. You’re special,’ then she would know she had mattered, at least once. No matter what the future brought.
Luckily, Leo was a good fit for her king. He was square-jawed, athletic, and charming. People liked him. He was exactly the right person to have by her side. He would help her get to the only place she
Three
It was Monday morning. Cody had been in her bedroom at her mum’s place, cocooned the entire weekend, reading, streaming, content, and unbothered by adult interference. Her mother was a lawyer, so she worked constantly and didn’t show up all that much, which suited Cody fine. Everything was supplied, the house well stocked with food and high-end consumer goods, but other than that? She was satisfied to be an emotional orphan at the weekend.
During the week, she was with her dad, who was the opposite. He had less money than Ava’s mother because he was a middle manager in an insurance office, but what he offered in a little too much abundance was emotional involvement. She supposed they balanced each other out. But it never felt that way.
But the solitude her mother’s place offered had to come to an end sometime, so it was back to the factory to grind her way to her final grades. Cody wasn’t exactly academically focused, but she had a thing she wanted to do.
She was going to be a writer. She was going to go to Medford to learn how to do it well. If they could just hurry up and send her acceptance letter. It was making her nervous how long it was taking.
Cody showered, her one concession to being out in public. ‘Mum, you here? I don’t have any knickers,’ she yelled, coming out of the shower.
No one answered, of course. But her mum had a laundry service that kept her in fresh duds. It was just a question of finding the bag.
Cody wrapped herself in a towel and went down to the utility room, which held a bells-and-whistles washer dryer that had probably never been used. There were a couple of laundry bags dumped near it, her mother’s suits hanging nearby. Cody dug around until she found her pants. She slipped them on and glanced into the bag on the off chance of a fresh bra (her current one was on day three), but it didn’t deliver. Oh well. Her black standard would go another day.
As she turned to leave, she noticed something on top of the washing machine. A large pile of mail cascaded over the side. Cody checked the pile, all circulars. Her mother must have grabbed the mail on the way in here for clean clothes and chucked the insignificant stuff on top of the washing machine to be sorted at some other time.
Only there was one letter that had fallen to the floor that did seem significant. It had Cody’s name on it. The logo in the corner said Medford. How long had it been sat here?
Cody’s heart thumped loudly as she ripped open the letter.
Thank you for sending your application for admission. The University has given it careful consideration. I am sorry to inform you we are unable to offer you a place at this time.
The University receives thousands of applications, all from very able prospective graduate students, and the competition for the limited number of places is intense. This means that we are not able to offer admission to many good candidates.
I am sorry to bring you this disappointing news.
Cody let the letter fall where she’d found it in the first place. She went upstairs and put her knickers and the rest of her clothes on. She sat on the bed, allowed herself a one-minute cry, and then grabbed her schoolbag before heading off.
Four
Ava was listening to Leo, sitting on the wall that bordered the school courtyard. Or rather, she was pointing her face at him and making the appropriate expression for the act. She heard words pop through occasionally, like ‘squat’ and ‘superset’ and ‘deltoid,’ but she didn’t think she was required to be anything more than a place for him to talk at while she thought about all the stuff she’d promised to arrange for the prom.
The big job was figuring out what they were going to need for the theme, which the couple of dozen people that had shown up for her meeting agreed would be ‘Fire and Ice.’ She also had to get quotes for the DJ and design the menu. It was a lot. She wasn’t at all sure she hadn’t overloaded herself.
‘So, shall we pick out your suit this week?’ Ava asked Leo, breaking into his monologue.
He didn’t mind the interruption. ‘No worries. I already got it. It’s so hot, I’m gonna look hench as fuck in it.’
‘When did you get it?’ Ava asked, surprised.
‘Sunday. Rian helped me pick it.’
‘He did?’ Ava said, pleased. One less job for her to do. ‘Did you take any pics?’
Leo got his phone out and sent her a shot. She checked her messages to find him in a very beautiful forest-green suit. She made a note to thank Rian. He did have good taste.
But the white shirt Leo was wearing with his lovely suit looked two sizes too small. He was practically bursting out of it. ‘Do you think you ought to go a size up on that shirt?’ she asked carefully.
Leo shook his head like he’d been prepared to defend this issue. ‘No way. I’d lose definition. The point is to have the guns pushing up against it.’
‘The buttons are going to pop off,’ Ava told him.
Leo shrugged. ‘Then I’ll just go shirtless with the suit.’
‘What?’ Ava cried, aghast.
‘Rian’s doing that, and he looks good,’ Leo said quickly.
Ava sighed. It was nice to have an athletic boyfriend, but he was obsessed with showing off his hard work, which Ava could understand were it not for the fact that it usually equalled him having his tits out, no matter the formality of the occasion.
‘I’m not going with Rian, though, am I?’ Ava argued. ‘I mean, how would you like it if I went topless?’
Leo thought it over. ‘Your body, your choice, babe,’ he eventually shrugged.
Ava took a deep breath. ‘Look. We might end up looking at these pictures for the rest of our lives…’
Leo let out a faint sigh that Ava chose to ignore.
‘…And if we do, do you really want to explain to your grandkids why grandad has got his nips out?’ Ava finished.
Leo frowned. ‘We’re not having this talk again, are we? I can’t do this whole what-if game. I gotta live now. You only YOLO once, yeah?’ Leo argued.
Truth be told, Ava didn’t know if she was going the distance with Leo, so these theoretical grandchildren felt very unlikely. But Ava liked to plan for any eventuality.
‘OK, fine. Here’s a compromise. Wear the shirt. But could you please get the buttons reinforced?’
Leo chewed it over and nodded. ‘I can do that.’ He didn’t look happy about it, though.
Ava could live with that. Leo was a sweetie, but he didn’t know classy. And whether Ava knew Leo in twenty years or not, she would have these pictures of herself at eighteen at her prom, probably wearing a small plastic tiara. It would prove she’d been a success, and so would the boy wearing the crown on her arm. He might not care about that future version of himself, but Ava cared very much about Future-Ava. She had to have the pictures.
‘Right, now that’s sorted, can we eat? I need meat,’ Leo said, getting up.
‘Sure,’ Ava said, standing. They began to walk toward the cafeteria. ‘Oh, by the way, did I hear Rian’s having a thing on Friday?’
