Ainsley grabs my arm as we stand up from our lab table at the end of physics class. “There’s a party at Kaylie’s next Saturday. You should come.”
“Kaylie and I don’t really hang out.” It’s true, since I’ve spoken maybe twelve words to Kaylie in my life, and some have been things like “Excuse me” and “That’s my pencil.”
“Everyone can come. The whole senior class.”
“I’ll wait for my invitation,” I say, and she bonks her purse into me.
“This is your invitation.” She’s smiling, but then it drops from her face. “Can I ask you something?”
Not-about-Oliver-not-about-Oliver.
“Sure.”
“It’s about Oliver.” Natch. “How’s he doing?”
“I honestly have no idea.”
“You just listen to music when you drive to school?”
I nod. “You might want to ask Theo.”
Ainsley’s arched eyebrows jut together in the middle. “Theo?”
“From what I can tell, that’s the only person who Oliver’s hanging out with.”
Ainsley shakes her head. “That’s not good.”
“Tell me about it.”
It’s spring, which means it’s sunny and lovely but not yet too hot. It also means that all kinds of people eat on the bleachers. Lily and Darbs and Shaun and I are at our regular spot, but now there are tons of others dotted all around in little clusters like ours. We’ve just finished an entire conversation about the end of spring break and Yana and the final book report for the year when Lily asks the question I’ve been hoping to avoid. “Are you guys definitely going to prom?”
Shaun and Darbs both nod, which I was not expecting. Shaun, yes. Darbs…I kinda figured she’d flake.
“I’m deejaying,” Shaun says. “I can’t escape it.”
“I don’t want to escape it,” Darbs tells us. “It’s going to be hilarious.”
“Will you go with someone?” I ask her.
“I’m debating.”
“Between what?” Lily asks.
“Taking a risk on asking Yana or saying yes to Ethan.”
“Ethan asked you to prom? He never even texted me.” I gawk at her. “You must be an awesome kisser.”
Darbs waggles her tongue in my direction. “Oh, I’ve got moves.”
“Gross,” I tell her.
“Are you going?” Shaun asks Lily.
“Maybe if my new boyfriend’s into it.” She smiles when she says it, all smug and amused because we react exactly the way she knew we would: by squealing and hammering her with questions. Apparently Lily has been hooking up with a twenty-year-old dude she met in Saline at an underground concert. His name is Gordy, his hair is dyed shiny black, and he wears eyeliner. “He’s so hot,” Lily tells us.
Later, I’m walking back into the main building with Shaun when he nudges me. “Are you still anti-prom?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Just because it’s an antiquated tradition from a patriarchal era that disenfranchises females by placing them in the subordinate position of waiting to be asked by a male?”
“Pretty much.”
“Change your mind,” says Shaun. “Be my date.”
“What about Kirk?”
“I can’t ask him. He’ll say no and I’ll be destroyed. It’s better if I just let him drift away. You be my date instead.”
“That’s crazy,” I tell him. “And no. You’ll be deejaying.”
“You could keep me company.”
“No offense, but no thanks,” I tell him. What I don’t tell him is that the idea of hanging in the deejay booth with my gay best friend during the most sacred of high school traditions makes me feel like a pathetic loser. Like the girl who can’t find a real date. And yes, I know plenty of my fellow seniors are planning to go in big groups with each other and that it’s totally fine to fly solo…but I don’t want to. I don’t want to because—
“Oliver,” says Shaun, and I feel my body twitch in response.
“What about him?” I say in the most casual tone I can scrape up.
“He’s single. You’re single.” Shaun shrugs. “It kinda seems like a duh.”
“I thought you would be on the Oliver hatred train with Darbs and Lily.”
“No, I’ve done stupid things because I was trying to fit in.” Shaun shakes his head. “Granted, not since middle school, but still. Most of the time, Oliver’s a really good guy. He should get credit for that.”
“I guess.” We walk in silence until we’re almost to the building. “But we’re friends, or something like friends. Going to prom—that would make it a different story.”
“Maybe you need a different story.” Shaun gives me side-eye and I shove him.
“Maybe shut your trap-hole.”
“Are you going to Kaylie’s on Saturday?” My question is a desperate attempt to make conversation with Oliver as we approach campus.
“Nope.” And then, for the first time in a week, he actually asks me a question in return. “Are you?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“You should. Kaylie throws a good party.”
“Then why aren’t you going?”
“I’ve been to a lot of Kaylie’s parties.”
I eye him, debating asking a different question. We seem to be making progress—at least in this moment—but I don’t want to piss him off and possibly send him back to the Land of Jerkdom, even though there’s a certain peace in that land, because when he lives there, I have no fear of the attraction coming back.
“Is it because Ainsley will be there?”
Oliver glances at me, and I see him weighing how to answer. “No.”
“Then why?”
“I promised my mom I’d help her with some stuff at home, that’s all.”
We’re silent as Oliver finds a parking spot, but when we’re walking toward school, he suddenly turns to me. “Do you think I should go?”
“Yes.” I say it reflexively, which is why I don’t have an answer when Oliver asks the inevitable next question.
“Why?”
Because I want you there.
It comes into my head as a simple fact over which I have no control. Like gravity. “Because…because it’ll be fun.”
“But don’t you think there will be other fun parties?”
I’m not sure what Oliver is getting at. “Maybe. Or maybe not. We don’t have that much school left.”
Oliver nods. “So it’s one of the last times I’ll get to hang out with all my friends.”
“Yes. It might even be the last big party of the whole year.”
“Except for prom.”
Ugh.
“Right. Except for prom.”
Oliver’s face gets very serious. “So you’re saying that it’s important.”
“Exactly,” I tell him, and then realize my mistake as the first bell rings and Oliver grins really big. “Dammit!”
“Oh, June,” Oliver says, and all my attraction to him comes flooding back, because his smile is so wide and his eyes are so brown, and something about the way he says my name makes my abdomen tighten. “Another song for our playlist. When will you ever learn?”
Apparently the answer is “never,” because here we are again: me falling hopelessly; him unaware and unattainable.
Of course, the only thing I say is “Shut up.”
It makes him laugh out loud.