He leans in and lowers his voice as I take over for him behind the register. “I’m going to miss you when you graduate, kid, but you have got to take my niece far, far from here.” Kurt hums the melody to some Ariana Grande song about leaving as he disappears into the back room.
I cross and uncross my arms. I’m nervous even though I probably shouldn’t be. I love my friends. I trust my friends. I need my friends’ help if I want to make it to Pennington.
“Yeah, so look. I, um …” I look at their faces and am reminded why they’re my people. All three of them look ready to leap into action, and they don’t even know what I’m asking of them yet. “I didn’t get that scholarship from Pennington.”
Their reactions are immediate.
Britt cracks her knuckles. “That’s such garbage! Nobody deserves that scholarship more—”
Gabi shakes her head. “I’m going to take care of this. I’ll have my parents’ lawyer call—”
Stone grabs the crystal pendant hanging from her necklace. “I have palo santo in my purse. We can cleanse your clarinet and—”
I wave my hands in front of me with a quiet laugh. These weirdos are the best sometimes. “Guys, it’s cool. It’s fine. Well, not fine. It’s pretty awful actually. But it’ll be okay. I have a plan.”
Like a lightbulb, Gabi’s face instantly shifts from rage to recognition.
“We’re going to make you prom queen,” she says simply, reading my mind.
“We’re gonna what?” Britt narrows her eyes.
“My sentiment exactly,” I mumble. I add so that Gabi can hear me, “Robbie said the same thing, and I’m starting to believe that I’m in some alternate universe in which I am a viable option for prom court.”
In a concert band, you’re arranged into sections so that the instruments and sounds in your ear are the most similar to your own—so that what surrounds you is you, to a degree. It’s easier to know your clarinet part when you’re not fighting against a cello on one side and a tuba on the other.
High school friend groups are something like an ensemble in that way. My friends are certified oddballs, the inkblots on an otherwise pure white page, and it’s why we work together so well. Because as long as they’re my people, as long as they’re the ones on my left and my right, sometimes I can forget that I don’t fit in anywhere else in this town.
Stone adds, “My horoscope predicted something untoward might present itself today, but I wasn’t anticipating anything of this nature.”
“It’s not untoward. Ugh, you’re all so dramatic. Lizzie, I was born to be a fairy godmother; it’s my destiny.” Gabi plops her highlighter-yellow Chloé bag next to the register and pulls her phone out of it. Her fingers fly across the screen so quickly, I almost don’t notice she’s speaking. “A couple slight changes, and you’ll be as good as new. Certifiably prom queen ready.”
Her tongue darts out to the corner of her mouth quickly like it always does when she thinks. I brace myself for what that face means for my life, even though she hasn’t said quite what she has in mind yet. Gabi is sort of magical in that way—she doesn’t really have to say what she wants from you in order for you to just know.
“With Stone running the data from mentions on Campbell Confidential and the point-collection system, and my powers of strategy or—shall we say—shrewd deduction, we’ll know where you stand in the polls at all times,” she says. “Nothing a quick algorithm can’t do, right Stony?”
Stone looks to the ceiling, and I think for a moment she might be asleep with her eyes open. Until she speaks.
“I’ve consulted my star chart, and yes, Liz, I can do this for you.”
I shake my head. I don’t know how this runaway train started chugging along so quickly, but I have to stop it before I get knocked completely off track.
“Thank you, Stone, seriously but—”
“Perfect! It’s settled, then. Stone, come with me. I’ll explain—we have some work to do.” She doesn’t look up from her phone, but she doesn’t have to. Stone is already grabbing for her own phone to get to work. “And Liz”—she looks me up and down—“we’ll need to revamp your look soon. The grunge aesthetic does not a prom queen make.”
I glance down at my outfit, and frown. Melody doesn’t have a dress code—pretty much all we do is sell sheet music to middle-aged men looking to learn how to play Beatles songs on their acoustic guitars, and that doesn’t require a ball gown—so I’m wearing a variation of what I always wear: a white V-neck T-shirt, black skinny jeans with holes in the kneecaps, and high-top black Chucks. Sometimes I switch the game up and opt for a cool thrifted logo tee from the ’80s or ’90s, but for the most part, this is it. Simple and to the point.
But Gabi has been like this since we discovered her mom’s massive stack of old issues of Vogue in the basement when we were eight—and she’s had one foot out of Indiana since then. Fashion is her everything. It’s why she’s already such a talented designer that she got accepted early into the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York for the fall. When G knows what she wants, nothing keeps her from getting it.
I look over at Britt and raise my eyebrows in question. She holds up both her hands in surrender. “Don’t look at me, dude. I missed the memo where we decided to go all debutante ball on steroids.”
Britt’s right. We’ve had a plan, practically since the day we met, that we’d all go to prom as a unit. Just the four of us, together, wearing Gabi Marino original dresses. It was simple, ideal. This was never part of that plan. Prom court is anything but simple.
“Britt, why must you be so negative? This is going to be amazing!” Gabi offers me her warmest smile. “What you need to focus on now is the fact that you are officially in the running for Campbell County High School prom queen, and these are the logistics that are going to help you win. We’re going to need some major work if we want even the slightest chance of moving you from here”—she holds her hand down near the floor and then moves it up near her face—“to here.”
Britt winces. “Are you going to get any more superficial, Marino? I just want to prepare myself now if you’re going to be firing shots like this for the next five weeks.”
Gabi ignores her and smiles at me instead. It’s bright and reassuring, the one she uses when she feels confident and needs me to feel it too.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, Lizzie,” she says. She holds out her hand and wiggles her fingers expectantly. “If you would hand over your Declaration of Intent, please. I’ll take care of those signatures.”
I reach into my backpack and give it to her hesitantly. This is really happening.
“You’ve made the right decision, Lizzie.” She slips the paper into her purse and places both her hands on my shoulders, and although she’s so much shorter than me, it somehow makes me feel like we’re on completely even footing. “Call me tonight, okay? If you go into the prom court kickoff meeting tomorrow without me prepping you on what to expect, it’ll be like seasoning yourself and stepping directly into a lion’s mouth.”