Dropping the Ball

19. Senior Year

Senior Year

Micah

I look around the art room, not really seeing it. Mr. Lew, the art teacher, lets me spend lunches in here even though I’ve never taken studio art. He seems to get that I need to be in here anyway. Art teachers are like that.

Normally, I like to look for new work on the walls or any pieces that are in process. But I spent lunch in here yesterday, and there’s nothing new.

“You okay, Micah?” Mr. Lew asks, stopping by the table I have to myself.

“Fine. Letting my brain rest.” That’s a lie, but he nods and moves on. My brain is speeding like it always does, currently calculating whether I can get away with hanging out with Kaitlyn in the library. If I do it too often, she’ll avoid me for a few days. If I space it out enough, we’ll pull out our lunches and our work but end up chatting instead of studying.

Three days seems to be the sweet spot where she won’t retreat. I should wait until tomorrow. But we didn’t end up doing partner work in Chinese today, so we haven’t talked since lunch two days ago.

Whatever. This is stupid. Lunch barely started, and I’ll have talked myself into going to the library by the end anyway, so might as well go now.

She’s at her usual table, one that keeps her out of the main flow of traffic but gives her a good view of the door. I know that feeling. Not wanting to be in the mix. Always needing to see what’s coming.

“Hey,” I say as I set down my backpack. I always take the spot across from her but one seat down so we never have to make accidental eye contact. I want to know that every time I feel her eyes on me, it’s because she chose to look my way.

She blinks up at me. “Hey.”

She doesn’t smile. She never does when she says hi. It makes it even better when she does smile because it’s opposite of her eye contact. It’s unintentional, like she’s surprised to find herself doing it. I like when I’m the reason it happens. I’ve learned over the last three years what kinds of things will do it, saving each instance like a crow with a shiny thing, waiting to trot it out and use it again.

If she’s not okay with me being here, in about five minutes she’ll remember somewhere else she has to go. If she’s okay with it, we’ll eat our lunches and end up in a conversation. I never know what it will be about. I never try to think of things because something always comes up, sometimes from her, sometimes me.

She pulls a bento box from her backpack, peels off the lid, and sighs.

“Tuna fish?” I guess. She hates tuna, even the fancy sushi-grade kind their housekeeper uses.

“Worse.” She tilts the box my way to show me the contents.

I squint. “You got a botany project for lunch?”

She takes her chopsticks and picks up different items, naming them and dropping them. “Bean sprouts. Pickled beets. Cabbage. Snap peas. Cauliflower. My mom has decided we’re all eating plant-based diets now. Raw plants.” She wrinkles her nose at the box. “I like meat. And there’s not even any dips. I’d sell my soul for hummus right now. But at least I’ve got these.” She brandishes a baby carrot. “You are my only joy.” Then she chomps it.

My uncle’s tuition check doesn’t cover the fresh meals served in the Hillview dining hall. My mother’s paycheck doesn’t cover a housekeeper. Or even groceries, sometimes. But cutting lawns on the weekends covers a crap-ton of frozen burritos, and I pull one out of my backpack, nuked and double wrapped in foil before I left for school this morning.

“Trade you for the cabbage and beets.” I can put them in my other burrito and make it more filling. Hopefully the oversalted ground beef (allegedly) will cover the taste of the beets.

“Done.”

We trade and eat, and halfway through my burrito, Kaitlyn pauses and points her chopsticks at it, then clicks them together. “So, why use forks, even?”

We have found our topic for the day. It wanders from there to a conversation about Vikings and how much we both hate Beowulf, which leads us to someone’s dog named Beowulf and on to dogs in general to parks and near the end of lunch, we’re somehow on the subject of what tattoo each Disney princess would get.

Kaitlyn is arguing that Cinderella is the one princess who would never, under any circumstance, get a tattoo while I’m pointing to proof of her rebellious streak as counterevidence when the slight crackle from the PA system signals an announcement coming.

“A reminder that tomorrow is the last day to buy prom tickets. They will be available before and after school and during lunch. If you are bringing a non-Hillview student, they will need a signed faculty endorsement from their own school to be submitted to a junior class officer before prom.”

My stomach tightens with every word of the announcement. I’m not a school activity guy. Maybe I would be into a few of them if I could afford them. But prom is different. Iconic even if school social stuff isn’t your thing. And Kaitlyn is very much a school activity girl. She’ll be there. With someone who can afford to take her.

I don’t care about the pictures or dinner or any of that stuff, but I think about her out there, dancing to the one slow song they’ll play at the end of the night, and I always see her dancing with me.

Your boy doesn’t have three hundred dollars for a pair of prom tickets. Hillview is a prom-at-the-Four-Seasons school. I don’t even have prom-in-the-school-gym money.

“Do you have tickets yet?” Kaitlyn asks.

I’m trying to read her tone. It’s heavy on irony, like Haha, Micah Croft at prom, what a joke. But there’s an undercurrent there, like maybe she’s . . . is she fishing? She’s not quite pulling off the casual conversation vibe. Is she trying to figure out if I’m going? If she’s not asking straight-out, is it because she wants to work the conversation around to me asking her?

It might not even be what she’s getting at. Library time and debates about Disney princess tattoos is as social as we’ve ever gotten. Is she hinting she wants to go as friends? Because that’s not what I would want. Are solid couples or friend dates the only options for prom? Is prom a thing where it can be a first date that turns into a more-dates situation?

I wish I had the option of pulling on this thread and finding out. Maybe for the first time ever, it truly sucks that I don’t have the money for this. Even if I scraped together enough for the tickets, there’s dinner, pictures, corsages . . . I’m not even sure what else would crop up.

My nasty beet-and-“beef” burrito settles in my stomach like a rock, and Kaitlyn is waiting for her answer, looking like she wishes she hadn’t asked after my stupidly long pause.

I start gathering my burrito trash as I answer. “Not doing prom.”

“Right. Probably not your thing.”

Couldn’t be my thing if I wanted it to be, which for her, I do. “I have plans that night.”

“Doing something cool?”

Babysitting the two neighbor kids for the single dad next door who works swing shifts at a shipping warehouse. I watch them most Saturday nights. The pay isn’t enough for me, and it’s too much for him, but he’s a good dude, and he helped me build shelves in our garage.

Instead of telling her that, I say, “My only plans are not to be at prom.”

“Right.” She stares down at her bento box.

“Gotta go grab a thing from Ms. Neely,” I say. She’s the college counselor, and seniors have to grab so many things from her throughout the year that it’s an excuse to leave any situation.

She doesn’t look up, only nods and chases a snap pea around with her chopsticks like she’ll get a trophy if she gets it.

I don’t want to leave her feeling like crap, but I don’t know what else to say. So I turn and walk out on Kaitlyn without looking back.

We don’t talk about it when I find her in the library the next week or ever. When prom photos start showing up on Instagram two weeks later, I don’t know if I feel better or worse after scrolling through enough to figure out that she went with friends and not a date.

When a picture pops up with her and one of her friends instead of the whole group, I get a good view of her dress and answer my own question. She picked a strapless sparkly dress about as light as pink can go before it becomes white, and she looks . . .

She looks beautiful. I feel worse. It confirms what I’ve known since ninth grade. The only girl I’ve ever wanted at Hillview is the one furthest out of my league.