I’m not the last to arrive in Studio 2B, so I get my choice of seats. Azure or Connor? Azure or Connor—
“Hey,” Connor says. I slide in next to him and convert from solid to liquid.
Mr. Rosen opens the meeting with, “I’m afraid Mollie and Haley decided to drop out. They still want to participate, but maybe on the decorations committee, after all the planning is done.”
Azure’s hand shoots into the air. “Can we ask someone else, then?”
“We can’t all agree now,” Shauna says under her breath.
Azure seethes. “Well, if we have to do as much as you say, we’re going to need more people.” She says to Mr. Rosen, “It’s Radhika Dal. I don’t know if you know her, but she’d be a real asset.”
“Yeah, because she’d be on your side,” Shauna goes.
I see smoke coming out of Azure’s ears.
Connor goes, “Radhika’d be awesome. I’m for asking her.”
Without even meaning to, I mimic to myself, Radhika’d be awesome.
Mr. Rosen looks like he can’t decide. Azure makes up his mind for him. “She’s in the library. I’ll go get her.” She takes off.
“Did you find a new location for the prom?” Shauna’s eyes dart between Connor and me.
“I got a few hits,” I say. I unclasp my man bag to take out my netbook.
Connor reaches into his backpack and pulls out a folded sheet of paper.
“There weren’t too many hotels with a ballroom available on April sixteenth,” I say. “Or even a big enough meeting room.”
Shauna crosses her arms, like, Told you so.
Azure returns, practically dragging Radhika behind her. “You’re at school anyway. You said you wanted to spend more time with us, and here we are.”
“Azure…” Radhika scans the room, checking everyone out.
Mr. Rosen introduces himself. He asks Radhika if she knows everyone. Radhika nods and says, more to Azure than to Mr. Rosen, “I really don’t think I can be on this committee.”
“Please,” Azure implores. “We need you.”
I think, I need you. In ways you can’t even imagine.
Shauna clears her throat. “We were talking about hotels?”
Mr. Rosen says, “It might be a good idea to elect a secretary. To record our decisions and keep minutes.”
“I can do it,” Azure says. She pulls Radhika down beside her.
“You can’t even read your own writing,” I say. “Here, I’ll key the notes on my netbook.” I open a Prom file.
“So what did you come up with?” Shauna asks.
I return to my Hotel file. Every hotel I called, I noted yes or no as far as availability. I also keyed in cost. “I ended up with five that said they had a room big enough for a thousand people.”
Connor says, “When I mentioned it was for a prom, no one had a room, like we were juvie d’s planning to torch the place afterward.”
Azure goes, “I only found two hotels. One’s clear out by the airport, and the other’s at the Tech Center.”
Mr. Rosen asks, “Are all of these within our budget?”
“You never told us what the budget is,” I say.
“Didn’t I?” Mr. Rosen fake-stabs his forehead. “Space case.” He opens his folder and flips through the first couple of pages. “We have two thousand dollars budgeted for prom out of the student activities fees. Plus around eight hundred from corporate sponsors.”
All at once, Connor, Azure, and I say, “What?”
“My lowest-priced hotel is four thousand dollars,” I say. “And that’s with their biggest discount.”
“Mine’s thirty-five hundred,” Azure goes. “How do they expect us to stay within the budget when it’s impossible?”
“You guys.” Shauna shakes her head. “Don’t you know anything?”
We all stare at her.
“We have to do fund-raisers. That’s how we can afford to put on the prom at all. In addition to the site, we have to pay for food and decorations and favors and the photographer and the DJ….”
“We want a live band, don’t we?” I say.
Azure says, “We have to have a live band.”
Shauna says, “Then we have to find a way to pay for it.”
“It’s a little late to do much fund-raising.” Mr. Rosen sighs.
Shauna goes, “Duh.”
Mr. Rosen says, “Unfortunately, Grease Monkey and Ace Hardware had to drop out as corporate sponsors. The economy, you know.”
I don’t know why it strikes me funny that Grease Monkey would be a corporate sponsor, but I start laughing. Then I can’t stop, and Connor has to smack me on the back. When I get myself under control, everyone is gawking at me. “Sorry,” I say. “I’m on my period.” I don’t even want to ask who else sponsors us. But now I have to know. “Who else sponsors us?”
Mr. Rosen consults his list. “Black Forest Bakery, Midwest Bank, and Artful Framer.”
I’d used Artful Framer once for a watercolor I did for my parents for Christmas. They charged an arm and three legs. Mr. Rosen adds, “It’d be nice if we could find a couple of replacement sponsors. Would anyone like to take on that project?”
Shauna says, “That’s not usually something we have to worry about. Mrs. Flacco always found the corporate sponsors.”
Mr. Rosen hesitates. “Okay. That’ll be my responsibility. Make a note, Luke.”
Radhika speaks up. “My dad might have some contacts. I could ask him.”
Mr. Rosen looks like he wants to kiss her. Me first, I think.
Azure says, “Too bad we don’t have a nice gym or cafeteria. We could save big bucks.” Roosevelt High should be condemned. Neither the gym nor the cafeteria is big enough for a prom. A new high school is being built, but it won’t open until next year, after we’ve all graduated.
“Everyone I talked to said I should get my reservation in now,” I tell the committee. “The party and conference rooms fill up fast. And we should go check out the hotels to make sure they’re not dives.”
“I can’t go any night this week because I have soccer,” Connor says. “What about Saturday?”
“I can do Saturday,” Shauna says.
Azure goes, “I thought Connor, Luke, and I were looking at sites.”
“But we should all go. It needs to be a group decision.”
“I can’t go.” Radhika lowers her eyes. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Azure says.
We go back and forth about when we all have free time, or could make time. Finally, we settle on Sunday. Shauna sulks because it’s the one day she can’t make it.
I say to Shauna, “We’ll take pictures, okay? Like you said, we need to divide and conquer if we’re going to get everything done in time.”
Shauna must realize she’s lost the battle. She moves on, saying, “We need a way to communicate with each other. Last year we had a Google docs file. Do you want me to set one up?”
“That’d be super,” Mr. Rosen says. “Thank you, Shauna.”
“And we should clear out Prom Central and get it ready for this year. But the first thing we need is a theme.”
Azure groans.
“We do!” Shauna insists.
Connor scoots back his chair. “Sorry, guys. I have to leave.”
Is it three fifteen already?
Mr. Rosen says, “Think about themes for our Wednesday meeting.”
Azure says, “Can we also talk about how we’re going to make this prom different? More alternative?”
“Sure,” Mr. Rosen says. “It’s your prom.”
“It isn’t yet,” Azure mutters.
On the way home, Radhika says, “Please, please don’t let my parents know I’m on this prom committee.”
“Promise,” Azure and I say in unison. That must mean she’s going to join!
I add, “Thank your mom for the tandoori. It was tandelicious. And gone before Owen could sniff out the curry.”
“I never asked you this, and tell me if you don’t want to talk about it, but how is it living with Owen?” Radhika asks.
Azure snorts.
“He’s your basic butthole of a brother. I’ll survive.”
“Not to mention bigot,” Azure goes.
“Yeah, there’s that. It’s only for a few more months, though. If I don’t get accepted to an art school, I can always go to Germany and live with my parents. Except I’d probably travel around Europe instead.”
“Take me with you,” Azure pleads. “I can fit in your backpack.”
“With all your piercings, you’ll set off every train and airport scanner.”
Azure sticks out her tongue at me. Her silver stud glistens.
Radhika jumps out at home and races inside without even stopping to wave good-bye. Azure climbs into the front seat and turns to me. “Do you think we forced her to do something she didn’t want to?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “She’d tell us. Wouldn’t she?”
Azure worries her tongue stud until I drop her off.
Owen’s in the driveway with a bucket of soapy water and the hose, washing his black stretch limo. His prize possession. He calls it Black Panther. It must’ve gotten a microscopic mud splotch on it, because it came back from detailing two days ago, and he’s already washing it again. Steam rises from the hood and Owen’s breath is visible in the chilly air. A sane person would just run his cars through a car wash, no?
He hitches his chin at me, like he acknowledges my existence. It’s a first. I sling my man bag over my shoulder and walk up to him. “Did you go to your prom?” I ask.
He stops for a second. “My prom?”
“In high school. Did you go?”
“No.” He dunks his sponge in the water.
“All the hos had johns that night?”
He doesn’t even bother to squeeze out the sponge before he pitches it at me. It smacks me square in the face. He tries to stifle a laugh, but can’t. I want to drop everything and attack him, take him down and pulverize his acne-scarred face and bust his nose and just scream, “I hate you!” But I know he’d kick my ass. Anyway, I have my dignity and gender queer pride to protect.
I turn and saunter casually into the house. Four months, I count to myself. Four months to freedom.