AS SOON AS WE walk in the front door, Lincoln uploads the video to YouTube and posts links everywhere he can.
“And now, we wait,” he says dramatically, sitting down at the kitchen table and staring at his phone.
“I’m going upstairs, okay?” I say. “I’ll check on it in the morning.”
But before I can even get into bed twenty minutes later, Lincoln bursts into my room.
“Does no one in this family knock?” I ask. But Lincoln just shoves his phone in my face.
The video already has hundreds of views. I read through comment after comment.
Mallory deserves to be homecoming queen!!!
Mayfield High is going down!
Mellissa Sullivan is the ultimate badass. #haltintruder
That last one got my name wrong, but this hashtag is much better than the last one I inspired.
“If this is what leaving the house feels like, I guess I should do it more often,” I say, sitting down on my bed.
“Typically, it doesn’t involve a foot chase, but I’ve been meaning to tell you—you should get out more,” Lincoln says, eyes still searching his phone.
Throughout the night, he bursts into my room a couple more times to update me on views and comments. “Everyone on Twitter is saying that you’d better get five million spirit points from this,” he says. He won’t leave me alone until I threaten to tell Scott about his surprise party pee story. But still, I fall asleep with a smile on my face and spirit points in my dreams. I don’t even check We Are Not Alone before bed because, for once, my real life is actually more exciting than my online one.
And, apparently, BeamMeUp thinks so, too, because when we talk on Wednesday, he breaks up with me. Well, as much as you can “break up” with a platonic Internet friend.
It’s a pretty typical night for us—we’re talking about how much we hate the second X-Files movie—when he asks me how my week’s been going.
I decide to break my normal rules and tell BeamMeUp something about my real life.
AlienHuntress: I sort of apprehended a vandal.
BeamMeUp: Really? Is AlienHuntress living up to her name?
I tell him an abridged version of the story, leaving out any identifying details—but definitely leaving in the part about how I led a foot chase and coined a catchphrase.
BeamMeUp: Wow, AlienHuntress. You’re basically a high school version of Dana Scully. What can’t you do?
I snort, and before I even know what I’m doing, I tell more of the truth.
AlienHuntress: Everything except get the most popular guy in school to ask me out.
BeamMeUp is typing out a message, but when it pops up, it’s not anything that I expected.
BeamMeUp: Listen, I’ve been busy lately, and it sounds like you have a lot on your plate with homecoming and everything, so maybe it’s best if we just don’t talk for a while.
My mouth falls open in shock just as my thirty-second warning pops up.
I start to type back, but all that greets me is the message “BeamMeUp Is Out of This World” before the screen flicks off.
* * *
Being rejected by BeamMeUp stings, but Jenni doesn’t leave me any time to dwell. When I tell her about the whole pathetic situation, she insists that it’s for the best.
“BeamMeUp only exists on the computer. You need to focus on what’s in front of you, especially since we only have one school week until the dance.”
So instead of moping, I help her sort out homecoming dresses by color, shape, and sparkle in my living room on Saturday. Lincoln brought home a trash bag full of dresses from his part-time job at Nickel and Dime, the tiny thrift store on Main Street, which Jenni promptly ripped opened and scattered in piles all over the couch, chairs, and floor.
“Everyone else is going to look like a lemming in their boring-ass department store dresses—no offense, Jenni,” Lincoln says.
“Whatever. I’m going to look like a disco ball,” Jenni says breezily, flicking her hair away from her face.
“But you.” Lincoln pulls a black feathered dress out of a pile. “You’re going to be unique. Like Pretty in Pink, except that Brad is hotter than either of the dudes in that movie.”
“You guys, I can’t even remember the last time I got dressed up. Do I really have to do this?” As I paw through a pile of tulle and organza, I don’t have Jenni’s and Linc’s confidence that Brad is going to ask me to homecoming—we’re a week away and he hasn’t done it yet.
“Well, you can’t exactly wear a T-shirt and sweatpants,” Jenni says, gesturing to my current outfit.
“And you have to look good, because we’re all going together,” Lincoln insists. “You’re pretty much Reardon’s hero right now, and I just want to bask in the glory of being related to the high school’s golden girl.”
He waves a gold-and-silver-sequined dress like it’s a flag. I cover my nose against the mothball smell. From somewhere under the dress mountain in front of me, my phone starts to ring. I dig it out.
“Oh my God!” I shout, throwing it back into the dress pile. “It’s Brad!”
Lincoln and Jenni shoot each other a look.
“Um … answer it?” Lincoln offers.
“Why is he calling me?”
“He must have seen the video!” Lincoln says. He grabs the phone, answers it, and throws it at me, leaving me no choice but to catch it. I dive into the kitchen.
“Hello?” My voice cracks.
“Mallory? It’s Brad. What’s up?”
“Good,” I blurt out. “I mean … nothing. You?”
I rest the heel of my hand on my forehead. Brad says, “I just saw the video Lincoln posted. That’s insane! You were a beast!”
I cringe. “Beast” doesn’t necessarily translate into “girl I’d like to ask to homecoming.”
“Thanks,” I manage to say.
“I just wanted to ask you something.…”
I gulp. This is it—the moment Jenni and Lincoln were so sure was going to happen. A week’s cutting it close, but better late than never, I guess.
“Do you have some time today to work on our project? Like, maybe in twenty minutes?”
Feeling like a rapidly deflating balloon, I peer into the living room and see that Jenni and Lincoln are standing right on the other side of the kitchen doorway, listening to every word of my conversation. Jenni’s eyes are big with concern. I shoo both of them away.
“Yeah, that would be good! See you then!” We say our good-byes, then I stomp into the living room. Jenni and Lincoln are going through the dresses intently, like they’ve been there the whole time.
“(A) You guys are the worst, and (B) Brad’s coming over in twenty minutes.” I sit down between them.
“That means we have time for a fashion show!” Jenni shouts, throwing her arms above her head. She picks up a red sparkly dress and holds it against my shoulders while Lincoln tries to unzip a blue dress with a full skirt.
“You guys know this isn’t going to be some eighties-movie makeover montage, right? The kind of thing where you put a dress on me and take off my glasses and all of a sudden I’m the hottest girl in school?”
“You don’t need a makeover,” Jenni says, unconcerned. “You just need to put on a dress. And maybe not put your hair in that weird braid.”
I grab my hair, insulted. “I like this braid! It keeps my hair out of my face!”
“You kind of look like … you know, women in cults, how they wear those big prairie dresses? That’s the look you have right now. Like you’re in a plural marriage,” Lincoln adds.
Jenni cracks up. “It’s an easy fix, Mal,” she assures me. “Just let me turn you from homebound to homecoming queen, okay?”
I try on five dresses. The only one that doesn’t look terrible is covered in big red splotches that look like bloodstains.
“Do you honestly think I would wear that?” I ask, gesturing toward the sleek purple dress with a barely-school-dance-appropriate slit up the side. “I’d be a walking hepatitis risk.”
Lincoln shrugs. “I guess there’s a reason these were all shoved into the back room.”
“Thank you so much for letting me have your thrift store’s rejects, Linc.”
“The one you have on looks nice!” Jenni says.
I look down at myself. “It’s okay, but I’m not really feeling…”
“The va-va-voom,” Jenni says, nodding sagely. “Homecoming is like a wedding. You only get one shot at queen, so you want to get the perfect dress. We’ll keep looking.”
She takes my hair out of its braid and creates an updo with the bobby pins that, no surprise, she carries around in her purse.
“Okay, so it won’t be quite as messy when I do it for real, but here’s a prototype. What do you think?” she asks, handing me the mirror she, no surprise again, also keeps in her purse.
It’s messy, but still less messy than my apparently cultlike braid. Jenni left some waves loose around my face and the rest of my hair is pinned up in the back.
“You look like a candid photo of Vanessa Hudgens at Coachella,” Jenni says admiringly.
“I love it,” I say, just as the doorbell chimes. I run to answer it, and Jenni starts to shove the pile of dresses back into the bag.
“Should I have worn something different?” Brad asks, gesturing to his Reardon T-shirt and jeans.
I look down at my dress. “Crap! Sorry. Jenni, Lincoln, and I are trying on dresses … I mean, I’m trying on dresses, and Jenni and Lincoln are helping.”
Brad steps inside, his eyes flicking down to my toes and back up. “You look really pretty.”
I know he’s just being polite, but I still can’t help blushing. Over his shoulder, I can see Jenni and Lincoln watching us from the living room. Their tongues are practically hanging out of their mouths.
“It’s too bad Jenni and Lincoln have to leave now,” I say loudly enough for them to hear us.
“We’re heading out for coffee!” Lincoln says. He stuffs the bag of dresses behind the couch.
“You guys get a lot of coffee,” Brad says as Lincoln and Jenni walk between us.
“We are highly caffeinated individuals,” Lincoln responds, patting Brad on the back. Then he turns so only I can see him and pretends his hand is on fire.
“Have fun!” Jenni chirps, giving me a wink as they head out the door.
“Ready?” Brad asks, holding up his backpack.
“So ready. Just let me go change first.”
When I come back downstairs, Brad has all of the parts, including his old cell phone that we’re using for GPS tracking, set up on the table, along with a giant drawing on graph paper.
“Okay, here’s the problem…,” he starts. “Pretty much everything is going according to plan. But what I don’t get is how our parachute is going to stay attached,” he says, pointing to the parachute and then to the drawing. “It doesn’t look secure like it does in this plan. Or this one. Or … this one.”
Looking back and forth between the drawing and the parachute, I realize that we may have gotten in a little bit over our heads. We’re basically completely submerged at this point.
“Well … where did you get this blueprint?” It’s a jumble of shapes and measurements, with what I think is a parachute at the center.
“Jake did this,” Brad says like it’s completely obvious.
I deflate faster than our defective parachute probably will. “Listen, I know Jake likes to work on his car, but that’s not exactly the same thing as working on a physics project.”
“I’ll just get him to come help us,” Brad says, pulling out his phone.
“No need to do that,” I say, thinking about the weirdly nice but still definitely awkward window-washing interaction we had. My face flushes, like it’s remembering the sunburn Jake pointed out.
“It’s okay,” Brad says, holding the phone up to his ear. “Pretty sure he’s not doing anything important.”
About twenty seconds later, the doorbell rings again.
“Having some trouble?” Jake asks, stepping past me and into the house.
“No, we just called because I really wanted to see you,” I say drily.
Jake turns around and looks me up and down. “Nice hair,” he says as he heads into the kitchen.
I self-consciously touch my hair and follow him.
After a few minutes of looking it over and Googling some things on Brad’s laptop, Jake picks up our rocket, bringing it close to his face. “You guys have done a lot of work, but as it is, this thing is going to crap out and fall down somewhere around Reardon without even getting above the tree line. And the phone is going to fall right out,” he says, shaking it to make a point. The phone falls out and clatters to the table.
“Well, that’s bad,” I say. “Because we kind of need it to go to space.”
“Really?” Jake says, looking at me with his eyebrows raised. “You mean you don’t want to look at the physics behind your project crash landing?”
I ignore his jab and ask, “So what are we supposed to do?”
“Short version: You need a couple more parts. Lucky for you, I’m pretty sure I have them. I’ll just bring them when I see you guys tonight.”
For a second, I think that I must have misheard him. But then Brad says, “I haven’t technically told her yet.”
“Told me what?”
He turns to me and, with a big, handsome smile, says, “I got us an awesome surprise for tonight. You know how you were so concerned that we didn’t have enough examples of real-life physics for our physics journal?”
I nod.
“Well, we’ve got free, after-hours passes to Adventure’s Peak!”
“The … amusement park?”
Brad nods. “Roller coasters are all about physics, right? I mean, centrifugal force, or something?”
“I—I guess…,” I stammer, already trying to think of ways to get out of this.
“I hope you’re ready to ride the Canyon of Fury!”
I gulp and look at Jake. He’s looking at the rocket in his hands, but I can see the tiniest smile form on his lips.
My insides start to do their own roller coaster loops.