Chapter Seventeen

What were the requirements for becoming a prom king or queen? They had to be an upstanding and model student with a grade point average maintained over 3.0. They had to be positively involved in the community to show commitment to when they were elected – and when they were responsible for representing the student body and events and further fundraisers for the rest of the year.

The deadline for signing up to be a part of the royal court or otherwise known as the prince and princesses was the Friday of the last party. The electronic voting for the student body's monarchs began first thing Monday morning and would end at the same time as tickets stopped selling on the thirteenth of February at 3'clock sharp.

People had plenty of time to cast their votes and truly consider who they wanted to win the popularity contest.

Anna and I set up a table that day to fend questions any of the students had while they voted – all the while Anna hadn't said a word to me that didn't relate to the prom committee duties.

The only positive thing that came out of that morning sat together was the surge of votes for Parker and Sabrina who had a healthy lead in front of Jack and Gerald, and with a grand sum of two votes, Sasha and Chester were last.

"Yeah, you have to use a school email account, or it won't process the vote," Anna addressed a student, pointing to the screen of her iPad. "It's so people can't create multiple accounts to vote and to make sure only students are voting."

"That makes sense. You guys won't start sending me spam emails, will you?" the guy joked.

"If you see at the bottom, you're agreeing to let us send you one email closer to the day with all the information to do with prom, but other than that, we won't send you anything." Anna raised two fingers, making the guy smile. "Scout's honour."

"Okay. Thanks so much."

"You're welcome. If you've got any more questions, feel free to drop by again."

As soon as the hallway cleared, Anna started packing up the two tablets and the rest of our stuff on the table.

"It's like half the school can't read," I muttered.

"No point complaining. We volunteered for this, remember?"

"I know that. It's worth spending extra time with you. Are you still mad?"

"What do you think, Sam?" she said.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not even the fact that you're both . . . doing whatever it is you're doing. I really don't want to think about that. It's that you lied to me. You get that, right? And yes, withholding information like that is lying, before you say anything."

"I wasn't going to say anything like that."

"Look, I'm still feeling icky, so I don't want to talk about this right now."

"Okay," I agreed and took the bag from her hands.

"Okay," she sighed out. "Bye, Sam."

I frowned as she walked away. "When can we talk about it?"

"I don't know. Some other time."

"Okay," I repeated. "Feel better soon."

She had the gay-straight alliance meeting to go to. It kind of seemed that she didn't care if I wanted to go to that meeting anymore, which was a bummer. She'd been so excited for me to go in the first place and was one of her first suggestions for both of us to do to spend time together.

Maybe she needed space.

Before heading outside, I got Sabrina's beanie out of my locker, having not brought a hat of my own to school that day and went to the bleachers on the opposite side of the school.

It was cold outside, to the point where my breath was visible, and my ears were freezing beneath the hat.

It was because of the weather that there wasn't anyone sitting on top of the bleachers to watch the football team and the cheerleaders as they practised – leaving me all alone in the middle of the seats to read the book for the book club.

Out of nowhere, squeals and laughter were coming from down in the field. Students started swarming around the truck that parked into the parking lot. In the back of a trailer, there was a bunch of barking.

Jack and Gerald got out of the car behind them and quickly set up a pen inside the field with the help of the people down there for practice. Then a swarm of golden retrievers were led inside the enclosure.

My eyes bulged out of their sockets when Gerald held up a megaphone.

"Spread the word! With permission from the principal to make up for our detention the other week, we have set up a dog farm to destress the students! Only for the next two hours so get the word out before your friend misses some one on one time with this . . ." He cuddled with one of the golden retrievers. "Adorable fella right here and his siblings!"

Jack caught sight of me up on the bleachers and jogged up to me. "Hey, Sam," he said out of breath, "glad I caught you, I wanted to apologise to you about the whole misunderstanding the pictures we had of you."

I was an impartial prom committee member. I had to be in this moment. "I appreciate that, Jack."

"Good. And Gerald asking you about that whole Maisie situation . . . Yikes. I put off talking to you for a while after that."

"That makes sense."

"We're okay?

"Yeah, Jack, we're okay."

"Awesome."

"So, you're gay, then?"

"Yeah." He thumbed behind him. "Want to go pet some dogs? It's the only apology I got so I hope you're not allergic."

I took his offered hand and let him pull me to my sit. "Lead the way."

He led me down the steps. "And to answer your real question, no, we weren't perverts. We genuinely didn't see anything or intend to see anything like that."

"I believe you."

"Good because I've been really anxious about that and want you to know that you've got nothing to fear from us and if you want to come to gay-straight alliance or the book club, please don't not come because of us. We want you there."

As soon as my hand bopped the nose of one of the golden retrievers, I admit, maybe I forgot about my promise to Sabrina and Parker to help with their campaign. These cute dogs deserved all the pets, love and affection from not only me but from the entire student body.

The dogs lapped up the attention, and soon there were signs set up that read 'please do not scare the dogs by screaming and shouting' and 'only one person per dog' and finally the last one, 'please respect cues from dog'.

Ten minutes after the announcement, the whole field had students lined up waiting to have their session with one of the cute dogs.

My emails started blowing up as people were actively voting to vote while they stood in line.

Oh shit.

Parker found me first. "Hey, Sam, walk with me?"

I patted the dog on the head one last time. "Enjoy your day, doggo."

"How's it looking?" she whispered as we walked off the field.

"You were in the lead all morning and then . . ."

"The dogs happened."

"It's going to be close by the end of the day."

"Shit."

"Yeah.

"Come on. We'll discuss tactics with Sabrina. She's waiting for us in the book club room – which everyone ditched for the dogs. Except you ditched before that."

I remained quiet and refused to comment on her last statement and let her drag me down endless hallways until we were in the classroom for the book club. Sabrina turned around in the computer chair as we came in, dramatically pushing unneeded sunglasses off her face to greet us.

"The party was worthless in the end," Sabrina commented casually.

"Not really. Without that, you wouldn't have any votes compared to Jack and Gerald," I reminded her.

"I know. It just feels like one step forward and two steps back. We need to do something. Something bigger than pictures and videos of us. Something bigger than a party. Something so big that they can't compete."

Parker sat beside Sabrina and placed her hand on her thigh. "Any ideas?"

I cleared my throat and knew it was time. "I don't think I can be a part of this campaign anymore."

"What?" Parker shot us both a panicked look. "Why?"

"Let's face it; you don't really need me. You're good enough together to win this thing without my input. All I did was hold a camera and suggest you throw a party. You could have done that without me. Really, the integrity, apart from you not being together, is still intact. You can win this fairly. Don't you both want that?"

"But . . . Sam, we made a deal," Sabrina reminded me.

"What was the deal, really, Sabrina? You got two weeks of detention. Check. I'm on the prom committee. Check. You get to choose my date to prom. You still have to set that up by the way. Me helping you with Parker? Helping with the party? Making your relationship seem authentic? That was a bonus and you know it. And I did it because our deal seemed a little lopsided in my favour. Now it's even."

"Hey, Parker, would you mind giving us a minute?"

Parker stood up and nodded slowly. "I'll be right out there."

She left the room, and when the door clicked shut, Sabrina was up and out of the seat, placing both hands on my shoulder and maintaining solid eye contact with me. "What's really going on here?"

I tried turning away, but she wouldn't let go. "Sabrina, it's like I said, really."

"No. I know what's really going on here."

"You do?"

She knew that every time I saw her and Parker together, it shredded my soul into little pieces? Really?

"You're upset about Anna." She slid her hands around my neck and brought me into a hug. "You're spending all this time helping us when you wanted to do the prom committee to spend more time with her. And now she's mad at both of us, so you're probably a little resentful of me for coming between you two and sad that she's mad at us. Here you are, doing this massive amount of work and it's all for nothing if she's mad with you."

Her speech was somewhat accurate. The stress had built up, and her low tone and her warmth pressed against me with her fingers rubbing soothing circles into the back of my neck must have triggered an unlock button. The next thing I knew, my arms wrapped around her, my face was pressed into her throat, and my shoulders were heaving with the effort not to cry.

"It's okay, it's okay, Sam," she said, kissing me on top of the head.

"It's not okay, though."

"Do you know what? Here's what we're going to do. Anna mentioned wanting to go to prom with you," Sabrina told me. "How about we set up the best prom proposal for her? Show her how much you care? We'll set something amazing up. Something so great that she'll know in her heart that we had no malice."

"You'll help me? Even though I'm just after quitting your campaign?"

"You've helped me so much already. It's time to help you now."

"Sabrina . . ."

"The point in us being all light and breezy was so we wouldn't hurt Anna, and that backfired. Let's put it right."

Finally taking my head off from her neck, I smiled and nodded. She wiped under my eyes with her thumb and smiled back at me.

"Who were you going to set me up with?"

"Not Maisie Adams, that's for sure," she teased and turned around, "Parker, you can come in now! Change of plans. We're setting up my sister and Sam here for the perfect prom proposal."

Parker's eyebrows knotted together. "I thought Anna was aromantic?"

Sabrina laughed. "She is. But it's a friend's proposal."

Parker nodded and offered a thumbs up. "You've done so much for us, Sam, so it'll be my pleasure to help you out. Especially after that whole date disaster with Maisie. Again, my bad."

I rolled my eyes at the reminder. "Hopefully, with Anna, it'll be perfect."

"It will," Sabrina promised. "I'll make sure of it."