When Lannie Freston and I first started going out last summer, I felt like I’d won the lottery.
I’m still not sure how it happened. I was just minding my own business at the beach with my buddies Jerry and Ahmed when all of a sudden Lannie and her girls showed up and spread their towels a few feet away from us. In no time at all, she was asking me to put lotion on her back. I sure as hell didn’t put up a fight.
It was as easy and as quick as that. Suddenly I was her boyfriend. She told me later that she’d been eyeing me up for a while and that sitting near me at the beach was no accident. It was like she’d just flipped through the yearbook and decided that I was the one she wanted to go out with. And on the seventh day, Lannie looked at Paul and said, ‘Let him be mine,’ and it was so.
Obviously, I wasn’t going to complain. Lannie’s one of the hottest girls in Granite Ridge. She’s smart, athletic, popular and even has her own car. We spent the rest of the summer going to the beach, driving into the city and hanging out with her friends. Every long summer night ended with us parked somewhere secluded, doing what you do when you’re sixteen and Lannie Freston is your girlfriend.
Then the summer ended. We went back to school, and just like that, because I was going out with Lannie, I was at the top of the heap. I know it sounds arrogant, but it’s true. I’m not going to lie—it felt good to walk down the hallway and know that people were turning to look at us. Wishing they were us. For someone who had spent most of his life trying to fly under the radar, I was surprised at how much I liked the attention.
A lot of things changed when we started going out. For one thing, I didn’t see nearly as much of Jerry and Ahmed anymore, except at school. I just didn’t have much free time anymore. Whenever there were other people around, it was usually Lannie’s best friend, Darrah, and her boyfriend, Ryan Penner. I’d never really known Penner all that well, but now I was hanging out with him all the time. Penner’s pretty cool, I guess. Besides, it was easiest to just go with the flow.
So anyway, Lannie had been talking about prom for months. She wanted to go all out. She bought an expensive dress and took me into the city to order a tux, even though we’re juniors and only seniors wear tuxes. She said she wanted us to make a splash. In those last couple of weeks before the big night, it seemed like every conversation we had was about prom. What kind of corsage I should buy her, where we’d get our pictures taken, what restaurant I should take her to beforehand.
I went along with everything—rented the tux, got a haircut, made dinner reservations at the fancy restaurant she suggested. I went along with all of it, because it was no secret how important all this stuff was to her. But yesterday, after we picked up my tux, something shifted. I got home and hung it on the closet door and then sat on my bed and stared at it.
That’s when I felt it, for the first time in years.
At first it came on pretty soft, as if someone was carefully wrapping his fingers around my brain and gently squeezing. It was definitely there though—I could tell the minute it started. I lay down on the bed for a few minutes, taking slow deep breaths, and by the time Mom called me for supper, I felt okay.
I had hoped that was the end of it. But today I woke up super early to the sound of my phone vibrating on my bedside table. I reached over and groped for it. It was a typically early text from Lannie.
Rise and Shine! Big Day!
I groaned and checked the time. Seven thirty AM.
This time it came on instantly, and instead of fingers lightly pressing on my brain, it felt like a belt was cinched so tight inside my head that my thoughts were going to suffocate. My heart started to race and my skin got cold. I snapped off the ringer, tossed the phone onto the floor and pulled the covers over my head. I tried to remember my breathing exercises from a few years ago, and eventually I managed to calm myself down a little bit. It still wasn’t good though. My head was spinning and buzzing, and every slight movement made me want to puke. I couldn’t imagine getting out of bed.
I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but at some point Mom knocked on my door.
“Lannie’s on the phone!” she called from the hallway.
She knocked again, and when I didn’t answer, she stuck her head into my room.
“Paul, Lannie’s on the phone. She says she’s been trying to reach you all morning.” I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. “Paul?”
I pulled the covers off my head, and when she saw my face, she raised an eyebrow at me.
“Is it back?”
I could only nod.
“Is it bad?”
I nodded again.
“Does Lannie know about this?”
I shook my head.
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”
She went downstairs, and after a minute I could hear her talking on the phone. I managed to sit up and swing my legs sideways, and somehow I made it down the stairs. I stopped, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, and watched as she finished her conversation.
“Okay, dear,” she was saying. “I should probably get off the phone and see if Paul needs anything. Okay, I will. Yes, definitely.”
She hung up and looked at me with a concerned expression I hadn’t seen since I was maybe thirteen.
“Is she pissed?” I asked.
“She isn’t a happy camper,” Mom said. “She’ll live though. You okay?”
“I guess so,” I said, shrugging.
“Oh, sweetie,” she said, walking over to reach up and hug me. Not an easy task considering that I’m six foot three and she’s tiny. “I’m so sorry that your prom is ruined this way.”
“What did you tell her?” I asked.
“I told her you’re sick, and that you’ve been in the bathroom with diarrhea all morning.”
“Mom!”
“Trust me,” she said. “She didn’t ask any more questions after that.”
I went back upstairs to my room and picked up my phone from where I’d tossed it. There were already three new texts from Lannie. I didn’t bother reading them. I already knew the gist. I dropped onto the bed, lay flat on my back, closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. The thing about a panic attack is that once you get your breathing under control, you’re halfway home. I started to feel a lot better, but I knew it could come back without much warning.
I couldn’t even think about the prom right then. I just lay there, breathing deeply. In and out. In and out. I felt my mind steadily relaxing, tension rising from my body like steam.
When I wake up, my alarm clock tells me I’ve been sleeping for hours. I feel better, a lot better, although a bit groggy. It’s six o’clock, which means we’ve missed our dinner reservation and Lannie is probably on her way to Terry Polish’s house for the pre-party.
I glance across the room at the tuxedo and an uncomfortable shiver goes down my spine. I haul my ass out of bed and shove the tux into my closet so I don’t have to look at it.
A movement across the street catches my eye, and I look out the window in time to see Andrea Feingold climbing out of her bedroom window and onto the roof of her garage. Weird.
I watch as she scrambles over the edge and hangs there before dropping to the ground. She lies there for a minute, staring at the sky, then gets up and turns back to glance at her house before running away down the sidewalk. I’ve known Andrea for a long time, and I’ve never seen her act like this. I wonder where the hell she’s going.
I go downstairs and out the sliding glass doors to the back deck.
Dad is home from work, and he and Mom are relaxing at the patio table. My brothers are wrestling in the backyard. “We’ve already eaten,” she says. “We didn’t want to disturb you.” She slides a plate with a couple of burgers and some potato salad across the table at me.
“So, you’re missing prom, eh?” Dad asks as I tuck into my food.
I nod, my mouth full.
“Can’t say I blame you,” he says. “I always hated that kind of thing when I was in school.”
“Do you think I can borrow your truck?” I ask him once I’ve finished eating.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Mom asks.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I just need to get out of the house for a little while. Get my mind off things.”
She looks like she wants to say something else, but she keeps it to herself.
I expect my dad to tell me to take Mom’s Corolla, like he usually does. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and tosses me his keys.
“Sweet, thanks!” I say.
“Be careful where you show your face,” says Mom. “I’ve convinced Lannie that you’re on death’s door. She probably wouldn’t enjoy seeing you bumming around town.”
Yeah, no shit, I think. Funny thing is, now that I know I’m not going to prom after all, I feel like a million bucks.