CHAPTER THREE
“What’s on for tonight, Sky?” Dad hands me a slice of pizza, then starts serving up salad from the foil take-out container. I get up to grab pepper flakes and Parmesan cheese before joining him back at the table. Mom just got home and is getting washed up. I can hear her humming to herself in the bathroom.
“Tons of homework,” I say as I doctor up my pizza. “Trig test tomorrow and quizzes coming up.”
“Ah, I hated trigonometry.” Mom comes into the kitchen wearing one of her sympathetic looks. “I remember when I was your age, I could not wait to be done with math.”
“The struggle is real.” Overall, my GPA is pretty good; the weighting from my AP English and History classes helps balance out the mediocre grades I bring home in math every year. “But honestly, this one might kick my butt.”
“Can I help?” Dad offers.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll go to review night.”
My dad hasn’t tried to help me since seventh grade, or what Piper ever so graciously dubbed “The Year of Tears.” Mom was out of town a lot helping my grandparents sell their house and move to a retirement community. I, meanwhile, had a math teacher with the personality of a drill sergeant, who expected that everyone in our class turn out to be mini Stephen Hawkings. Dad tried to see me through my homework each night, but his explanations made no sense. I ended up wading in a swamp of anxiety, numbers sliding around the page like one of those carnival games where you have to guess which cup a little red ball is hiding under. Dad, the let’s get ’er done workaholic, tried to hide his frustration. He failed, which sent me into an even deeper tailspin.
Meanwhile, my sister breezed through her work, making my troubles look even more pathetic.
“Maybe Skyler wouldn’t have such a hard time if she didn’t turn everything into so much drama,” she sniped one night. “She can’t freak out like that when she gets to high school.”
And that right there says a lot about my relationship with Piper. She floats through life while I get stuck knee-deep in it. She blazes trails that I can never hope to follow. Then, every once in a while, she drops in with some unsolicited advice.
Most recently, the day after Christmas, right before she left to go back to school. Mom and Dad had gone over to see the neighbors, and we were sitting in the den finishing off a leftover cheese ball, when she said, “How’s school?”
“Fine,” I replied, thinking she meant school as in friends, show choir, yearbook…the whole shebang.
“You should really try and buckle down this next semester. Bring up your grades.”
A cracker got stuck in my throat. I coughed and said, “My grades are fine.”
“They might not be if you want scholarships for college.” She reached for the last Triscuit, sounding very worldly. “And maybe you should be applying for some. Mom and Dad can’t really afford full tuition now.”
“We have college savings.”
“But you’d be surprised how expensive everything is. Mine didn’t last long when I had to figure in books and food and the dorms and everything else.”
“I’m applying to State. How expensive can that be?”
“Get online and look—it’s a lot more than you think.”
She went back to her cheese and crackers, while I had lost my appetite. Before Piper left for college, I constantly had to listen to people rave about her bright future. Now here she was lecturing me about mine. I couldn’t let her have the last word.
“Where I go and how I pay for it is none of your business, Piper. Especially since you already got your expensive college at Duke. Now you’ve got law school, which I’m sure is not cheap either, so who are you to say anything about what I’m doing?”
“Geez, calm down,” she said. “I’m just telling you the truth. You can’t coast by anymore and assume things are going to be okay. You have to step up and take more initiative.”
That sparked a shouting match, which led to a superawkward rest of the day and an even more awkward goodbye when she left for Lake Champion the next morning. And now things are awkward between us, and they’ll be awkward between me and Dad, too, if he tries to help me with trigonometry. So I tell him “I think I can handle the test,” and count it a win when he and Mom start talking about his casework at Legal Aid.
The doorbell rings. Jordan’s voice carries down the hall as she makes her way toward the kitchen.
“Oh yeah, and Jordan’s here.” I get up, grabbing more pizza for me, plus a slice for her. “We’re doing some prom-planning stuff.”
“I saw the video of Eli asking you yesterday,” Mom says. “That was sweet of him to go to so much trouble.”
“I know. Isn’t he perfect?”
Maybe sometimes too perfect. The thought pops into my head out of nowhere, making me frown. That reunion site is messing with my head, making me doubt things I was certain about less than twenty-four hours ago.
All the more reason to figure out what the hell it is.
“So look at this.” I tap the link and wait while my phone decides whether or not it’s going to work. When the site comes up, I scroll through, giving Jordan a mini tour. “You really didn’t do this?”
She studies the screen. When I land on a thumbnail with her name below it, she commandeers my phone, pulling the photo up big.
“Wow, my hair looks awesome. Yours too, Sky. Everybody wonders what they’re going to look like when they’re pushing thirty but you and I don’t need to worry. We are fiiine!”
She chuckles to herself. The sound jangles my nerves.
“Looks are the least of my concerns right now.”
“I’m just saying. If we’re going to have to start going to bed early and taking calcium and paying taxes, we should at least look fierce doing it.”
I take back the phone, scrolling away from Jordan’s photos. None of us should be surprised that she would strut into the future with impeccable style, but that’s not what this is about right now.
“I don’t even know if it’s real. We could be looking at ourselves put through the world’s best aging filter. Or Photoshop.”
“If that’s what it is, then it’s extremely good Photoshop.” She pokes around my bedroom, peeking behind my desk and under the bed. “Are there hidden cameras in here? Because if you’re going to end up on some prank compilation you might want to wear something a little nicer than holey old sweatpants. I see London, I see France…”
“Nice.” I shift to a position that doesn’t allow any part of my London or France to be seen. “Way to make me paranoid.”
“But here’s the thing. If this whole site is a joke, how come you’re only in, like, twenty percent of it? Someone would have had to doctor up hundreds of pics of everybody else, too. It seems like a lot of trouble for a prank on just one person.”
“Maybe other people got the link too, not just me.”
“No. If something like this was going around, people would be talking.”
I click some more. “But what is it?”
She scrolls and scrolls. She goes back to my Instagram, then back to the reunion site. Her whole being radiates excitement as she opens picture after picture.
“I know this sounds unreal, Skyler, but maybe it’s exactly what it looks like.”
Her expression is full of awe now, and my stomach drops like I just went over a speed bump at full throttle. I expected her to have a plausible explanation; instead, my most practical friend looks like she’s just seen the ghost of reunions yet to come.
“Oh my God, what if it really is real?” she says. “Wait a minute, can you see my future Instagram too?”
She taps the profile that sent me the reunion URL. Nothing happens. “Damn.” She goes back to my Insta and looks at the dog, the coffee shops, the sunsets. “You need to make a note to your future self to have a more interesting feed, Sky. This is boring AF.”
“That’s not funny….”
“You’re right. There is absolutely nothing funny about this sad future feed.”
“Stop it. This is horrifying!” I feel like I might throw up. “What if we really are looking at the future? And why is this only happening to me?”
She pulls up the DM again. “It says I sent it, but that’s not my profile. At least not right now. Maybe, for some reason, Future Me thought you should see this?”
I take off my glasses to scrub my eyes with the palms of my hands. “My brain hurts. This is some serious Doctor Who shiz, Jordan.”
“It’s also seriously awesome.” She jumps back onto my bed. “What else can we see?” More scrolling, more tapping. “Okay, note to Future Me: make sure the reunion site has a current events section or something. I can’t even tell who’s president. We also need some bios. I can’t see who I end up with. I don’t know what my career is…Future Jordan, do better!”
“Future Jordan probably had no idea High School Jordan would want that information,” I say.
“At least we can see how everybody else turned out.” She rubs her hands together. “Who should we look up first? How about Brynn Lischer?”
“Ugh, Brynn.” Top of the Alton High School A-list and class-A bitch. I watch as Jordan types Brynn’s name into the search bar.
“You know what they say. The most popular people in high school end up being losers as adults. They peak early and it’s all downhill from there.”
I point at the perfectly turned-out woman whose image pops up. “If that’s really Brynn, she doesn’t look like a loser at all. She looks even more fabulous.”
Jordan points out the other figure in the photo: Brynn’s trusty sidekick today and, it looks like, as an adult too. “McKinley Peterson, on the other hand…”
“…definitely looks like a train wreck. Though is anybody really surprised what smoking and obsessive tanning will do to a person?”
“Hold up,” Jordan says. “Who’s that?”
I tap the thumbnail. “Looks sort of like Kevin Kallaos in a dress and long hair.”
“The caption says Kristin.”
“Unless they have a sister we don’t know about, it looks like there are some changes coming.”
“Huh,” Jordan says. “Good for Kristin.”
Exploring further, I open an album titled Recognition. What I find there makes me do a double take. “Check this out: Ten-Year Achievement Award. It’s Anna Larkin.”
“Awkward Anna? The one Brynn and McKinley love to torment?”
“Apparently she’s going to get the last laugh.” I read the caption under the photo. “Started her own company, a multimillionaire by age twenty-five—”
“And what a makeover! I never would have recognized her.”
I sit back against my headboard, feeling lost. “I guess it’s nice that everybody turned out so great. Except…”
“Except for the part with you and Truman. Are you positive you don’t have any feelings for him at all? I mean besides complete and utter loathing?”
“No! Gross! It’s Truman Alexander.”
“Yeah. He’s weird.”
“Even in a bizarro parallel universe, there’s no way he’d be the love of my life.”
“But maybe you’re the love of his.” She gasps. “Maybe this is part of the most epic promposal of all time!”
“But why? I already have a prom date.”
“Do you really think that would stop him? You know how the guy loves to win. Even though I’m supposed to stay neutral, I can tell you that this beats Eli’s barbershop thing hands down.”
“Ughhhh…no.” I bury my head in my arms. “Truman argues with me in class. Truman does not compete with me—or for me, or whatever—in private life. And most of all, Truman does not love me.”
Jordan lets me moan and protest until she checks her own phone and finds it’s later than either of us realized.
“I need to go.” She nods to my screen. “What are you going to do?”
I look at the image of Truman and me smiling with our arms around each other. I turn my phone off.
“I don’t know. But until I figure it out, don’t tell anyone, okay? Especially not Eli. He doesn’t need to know how ridiculous this Truman drama has gotten.”
“Eli wouldn’t care,” Jordan says. “It’s not like Truman is competition. Is he?”
“No!” I smack her leg as she slides off the bed. “Truman’s probably doing this because he knows it’ll freak me out, which is why from now on I’m keeping calm and keeping it to myself. Truman is screwing with my head, and it’s not going to work. He’s messing with the wrong girl.”
Which is why, when I arrive for prom committee after school the next day, the sight of Truman there nearly makes me turn around and walk right back out again.
He’s sitting on a bench slightly apart from the rest of the group, next to the arched door of the garden. When Harper and I walk in, he locks eyes with me. Harper goes to talk with some of the volunteers, while Jordan grabs my arm and drags me behind a bush.
“Before you say anything, I knew you wouldn’t want him here,” she says. “Which is why I didn’t text you in advance. Truman asked if he could come.”
And of course, who should pick this very moment to appear around the corner? Truman eyes Jordan and me.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“I’m just trying to figure out why you’re gracing us with your presence,” I tell him. “Did you join prom committee? Or have you decided to torment me literally everywhere now?”
“Actually,” says Jordan, “Truman has something we all need to hear.”
She pulls us both back to the main courtyard as the other committee members put down their phones. She calls the meeting to order, making sure we take a moment to appreciate our surroundings.
“I decided to meet here instead of school because I’m really excited about this place. I think we all agree it would be amazing to have prom here, am I right?”
People are nodding, envisioning photos in front of the rose wall, hookups by the fountain, couples in tuxes and gowns swaying under the stars.
“But there’s a problem. That’s why Truman is here.”
Jordan has just answered the question everyone’s been thinking: Why is Truman, who no one would ever expect at a prom meeting, standing there next to her? They’re an odd couple, but for the moment they appear to be a team.
Truman clears his throat.
“I’m sure you’ve all heard that the city is bringing Everest Outfitters to town.”
Of course, we’ve heard. For the past six months, the Everest deal has been topic number one in the news. The company wants to open a massive distribution facility here. It’s going to bring a ton of new jobs.
“Well, they’ve already bought the Eagle Mills plant,” Truman continues. “But they’re buying up smaller properties too. One of the places they’re looking at is right where we’re standing.”
“Everest is buying the mansion?” I ask.
“This year’s debate topic is property rights, specifically imminent domain, so I went to city hall for some case study materials, and I found a paper trail of plans in the zoning office that nobody outside of city council has paid any attention to—at least not that I know of so far.”
He pauses, expecting the rest of us to be as fascinated as he is by the details of his tournament prep. I raise an eyebrow and roll my finger, signaling him to get on with it.
“According to what’s on file with the city, the mansion would house some of the Everest offices,” he continues. “This garden would be a parking lot.”
Gasps ricochet through the group. I look around for Harper, but she’s off helping in the shed. I can hear her laughing while the volunteers haul bags of potting soil from a pile by the door.
“Why didn’t they tell us that when we booked this place?” asks Kailey Lopez. “The lady we talked to never mentioned it.”
“If she’s a volunteer, then I’m not sure she would know,” Truman answers. “I dug through a year’s worth of council meeting minutes, and I think it’s safe to say they don’t want anyone knowing the details until it’s too late to do anything about it.”
“Prom’s only a few weeks away. They can’t get everything done before then, can they?”
“There’s a final hearing and a vote coming up soon. Unless something is done to stop it, the odds don’t look good.”
The group goes silent.
“So…,” I say. “Should we find another place to have prom?”
“I don’t want to have prom somewhere else,” Jordan insists. “The only other option is the cheesy banquet hall where everybody and their dog has their weddings.”
“I’ve got a plan to stop it,” Truman says.
Jordan gestures toward Truman like, Great. Somebody’s actually going to do something.
“So who will help Truman with his plan?” she asks.
Crickets. Surprise, surprise—-nobody wants to work with Truman.
Jordan shoots me a look. I mouth a No way. I am the only person here who knows him on more than a purely superficial level, so I am the most likely suspect to team up, but no. Not going to happen.
Her eyes narrow, and there’s something hard in them: the frustration I’ve been sensing lately concentrated into a stare that tells me I’d better play along or else.
Or else what?
Jordan is my best friend, so why am I feeling anything close to an or else from her?
Just do it. It’s not worth getting into a fight over.
I decide to obey the voice in my head and give in. I flash Jordan a you owe me look, and her face lights up again.
Great.
I get up and trudge after Truman, who’s already disappeared down a nearby path. I follow it to a koi pond ringed with big rocks, under a tree just starting to bud out. Truman sits on one of the rocks, obviously expecting me to have a seat next to him.
Not so fast.
“Before I work on anything with you, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t know what you’ve been trying to accomplish these past couple of days, but I find it incredibly offensive.”
“Is this the website you were talking about yesterday?” He pulls out a pen and a thick black notebook. “The only digital communication I’ve had with you recently is a text about debate. I get that you’re not interested, and I won’t ask again. But I’m confused why one three-word message would be so offensive, even one that came from me.”
Is he messing with my mind, or is he serious? I plant my hands on my hips.
“It’s all a little convenient, Truman. First the website, and now you here at prom committee. I have a date to prom already, okay? So if this is part of some elaborate promposal, you can call it off.”
A smile, still tinged with confusion but infuriatingly smug, creeps across Truman’s face.
“Now I really do think you have the wrong person. Even if I did want to take you to prom, I would not be doing a promposal. Even the name is ridiculous. No offense, but can you imagine?”
At any other time, I would be taking major offense to his prom snobbery. All I can feel now, though, is the fading of my hope for a rational explanation.
“You’re telling me you didn’t send me a link? From Jordan’s Instagram?”
“How would I get into Jordan’s Instagram?”
He looks genuinely baffled now. But if Truman didn’t create it, who did? I scroll through a mental file of everyone I know, and no one else pops up as a prime suspect. The crumbling of that option leaves few others left. I plop down onto one of the boulders by the pond, staring into space.
“Skyler? Are you okay?”
His voice is soft—caring, even. Definitely not what I’m used to hearing from Truman Alexander.
“It’s just, weird things have been happening. You really only sent me that one text? Nothing else?”
“After the way you responded, I didn’t think it’d be wise to try anything else. You’ve made it clear you have no desire to join debate.”
Something about the way he says that—like it hurt to get shot down a second time—makes me feel bad. It’s true I’ve wished Truman a host of unpleasant fates over the years, but it’s easy to wish those things on someone who’s behaving like a cartoonishly awful douchebag, and cartoonish doesn’t even begin to describe how awful Truman can be sometimes. But I don’t enjoy kicking puppies, and right now Truman reminds me of a slightly dejected shelter dog.
“It just bothered me how you went about asking,” I tell him. “And then you were an ass about my activities. I don’t need to be lectured.”
“I’ve always had this thing about saying what I think is the truth, even if it gets me in trouble. It gets me in trouble a lot.”
I can’t help smiling. “I can tell you’ve done the required Ms. Laramie reading, because you sound alarmingly Darcy-esque right now.”
“Does that make you Bennet-ish? Or Elizabethan perhaps?”
Amused by the play on words, I feel my smile growing. “Was that an attempt at a compliment?”
“I guess it was. I don’t always agree with you. Actually, I pretty much almost never agree with you. But I have to respect you. You aren’t afraid to stand up for what you believe in and you have a natural talent for making a compelling argument, which is why I thought you’d be good at debate.”
Truman is looking at me with that unblinking stare I’ve always found so creepy. Only it’s not creepy now. It’s intense, but there’s a sincerity in his expression that is hard to deny or dislike. I’ve spent so little time with Truman outside of school, close-up, that I never really noticed the details of what makes Truman Truman. His complexion is clear, with ruddy patches at the apples of his cheeks. His hair has an endearingly shaggy quality. Then there are those eyes. Up close they are an almost shockingly vibrant shade of green.
The corner of his mouth quirks up. And suddenly I’m thinking about how things ended for Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy—about the reunion website and what it shows for Truman and me.
I spring to my feet. “I need to go.”
He holds up the black notebook. “But we need to go over my plan.”
I pick up my bag, reminding myself that (1) I have a boyfriend, and (2) I find Truman repulsive.
“Text me and tell me what you want me to do. I’m good at handing out fliers and stuff.”
“But it’s more than—”
“Seriously, just put it in writing. I forgot I have to pick my dad up from work. His car’s in the shop.”
Truman’s voice follows me back up the path, still protesting. I escape into the courtyard just as the meeting is breaking up.
“I’m sorry I did that to you,” Jordan says. “I know you hate him and things are weird, but nobody else would help, and…What’s wrong?”
My phone buzzes. I pull it out, thinking it’s Truman texting me his plan. Instead, it’s an email—and it looks like it’s from the reunion site.
“What in the hell is this?”
I hand the phone to Jordan, who squeals.
“I was going to ask if you’d checked it today. Get Harper over here, I want to show her how great my hair looks.” She opens the reunion site and starts scrolling. “Ooh! It’s even better now. Those extensions are so good!”
“Wait, what? It’s different?” I snatch the phone back to find that she’s right. Not only does Future Jordan have a different hairstyle, but the site itself has more features, including bios and fun facts about Alton High School. I search for photos of Truman and me. We’re still together, but my hair is darker and he’s wearing a hat.
“I was just with Truman, though. He didn’t have his phone out at all. And when I looked at this right before I got here, your hair was still short. So that means it just changed within the last hour.”
Jordan looks at me, puzzled. “So that means Truman can’t be the one who’s doing it.”
“Ugh.” I shove my phone back into my bag and head for the exit. “I can’t handle this on an empty stomach. I need food.”