But maybe I am. Maybe expecting to be asked to the prom, rather than just assuming I’m going, is too much.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore, I guess. J.P. must have realized from my silence that he’d said the wrong thing. Because finally, he said, “Wait…Are you saying that I do have to ask?”
I said, “Um.” Because I didn’t know what to say! A part of me was like, Yeah! Yeah, you should have asked! But another part of me was like, You know what, Mia? Don’t rock the boat. You’re graduating in ten days. TEN DAYS. Just let it go.
On the other hand, Dr. K told me to start telling the truth. I’d already not lied to Tina today. I figured I might as well stop lying to my boyfriend, too. So…
“It’d have been nice if you’d asked,” I heard myself say, to my own horror.
J.P. did the strangest thing then:
He laughed!
Really. Like he thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“Is that how it is?” he asked.
What was that supposed to mean?
I had no idea what he was talking about. He sounded a little bit crazy, which wasn’t at all like J.P. I mean, true, he does make me sit through a lot of Sean Penn films, because Sean Penn is his new favorite actor/director.
I have nothing against Sean Penn. I don’t even mind that he ended up divorcing Madonna. I mean, I still like Shia LaBeouf even though he chose to star in Transformers, which turned out to be a movie about robots from space.
That talk.
Which is just as bad as choosing to divorce Madonna, if you ask me.
Still. That doesn’t mean J.P. is crazy. Even though he was laughing like that.
“I know you bought tickets,” I said, going on as if I didn’t actually suspect him of a cognitive imbalance. “So I’ll pay you back for mine. Unless you want to take someone else.”
“Mia!” J.P. stopped laughing all of a sudden. “I don’t want to take anyone but you! Who else would I want to take?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just saying. It’s your senior prom, too. You should ask who you want.”
“I’m asking you,” J.P. said, sounding grumbly, which he used to do sometimes when he felt like going out, and I felt like staying in and writing. Only I couldn’t tell him that’s what I was doing, because of course he didn’t know I was writing a real book, and not just a paper for my senior project.
“Are you?” I asked, a little surprised. “You’re asking me right now?”
“Well, not right this minute,” J.P. said quickly. “I realize I may have fallen down in the romantic prom invitation department. I plan to do it right. So expect an invitation soon. A real invitation that you won’t be able to resist.”
I have to admit, my heart kind of sped up when I heard this. And not in a happy, oh-he’s-so-sweet kind of way, either. More in like a oh-no-what’s-he-going-to-do sort of way. Because I honestly couldn’t think of any way J.P. could ask me to the prom that could make dry chicken and bad music at the Waldorf at all appealing.
“Um,” I said. “You’re not going to do something that’s going to embarrass me in front of the whole school, are you?”
“No,” J.P. said, sounding taken aback. “What are you talking about?”
“Well,” I said. I knew I probably sounded insane, but I had to say it. So I said it fast, to get it out. “I saw this Lifetime movie once where to make a grand romantic gesture this guy wearing a full suit of armor rode up to this woman’s office building to propose to her on a white horse. You know, because he wanted to be her knight in shining armor? You aren’t going to ride up to Albert Einstein High wearing a suit of armor on a white horse and ask me to the prom, are you? Because that would truly be about nineteen levels of wrong. Oh, and the guy couldn’t find a white horse so he painted a brown one white, which is cruelty to animals and also, the white paint rubbed off on the inside of his jeans, so when he got off the horse to kneel down to propose, he looked really dumb.”
“Mia,” J.P. said, sounding annoyed. Which, really, I guess I couldn’t blame him. “I’m not going to ride up to Albert Einstein High in a suit of armor on a horse painted white to ask you to the prom. I think I can manage to think of something a little more romantic than that.”
For some reason this assertion didn’t make me feel any better, though.
“You know, J.P.,” I said. “Prom is pretty lame. I mean, it’s just dancing at the Waldorf. We can do that anytime.”
“Not with all our friends,” J.P. pointed out. “Right before we all graduate and go off to different colleges and possibly never see one another ever again.”
“But we’re going to do that,” I reminded him, “at my birthday blowout on the Royal Genovian yacht Monday night.”
“True,” J.P. said. “But that won’t be the same. All your relatives are going to be there. And it’s not like we’ll really get a chance to be alone afterward.”
What was he talking about?
Oh…right. The paparazzi.
Wow. J.P. really wants to go to the prom. And do all the after-prom stuff, it sounds like.
I guess I can’t really blame him. It is the last event we’ll ever attend as AEHS students, besides graduation, which the administration has cleverly scheduled for the next day, in order to avoid what happened last year, when a few seniors got so drunk at a downtown club they had to be admitted to St. Vincent’s for alcohol poisoning, after spray painting “The WMDs were hidden in my vagina” all over Washington Square Park. Principal Gupta seems to feel that if people know they have graduation the next day, they won’t let themselves get quite that intoxicated this year.