LOUIS

Meanwhile, Jessie’s still talking about Prom because she’s on the planning committee. Honestly, I don’t care. And I don’t know what a ‘prom committee’ does. I’m working trying to prep my work for the Hello, Dolly! set design thing.

“Are you listening to me?” she asks.

“I promise I am.” I’m not. I don’t care enough. I wanna leave this school. I’m done here.

Jessie takes the script away from me. “What did I just say?”

“…you were…talking about…how the hotel isn’t providing food because of what happened last year.”

She glares and throws the notes back at me. “Lucky guess.”

‘Lucky my ass.’ I go back to reading through the script and noting down stuff that might be important. I have zero clue what I’m doing. So I toss the notes to the side. “I’m done. I can’t with this fucking script anymore.”

Jessie smiles and scoots closer to me. “What’s going on with Alice?”

I look at her. She doesn’t ask about Alice. Like. Ever.

“She’s…she has her ass marks on the couch.”

“Wow.”

I lean back a little. “Mom’s working. Dad’s hermit. The usual.”

“How can you possibly defend having such a big house?” she asks. My house can have a family of 7 in it really easily.

I shrug. “I don’t. It’s my parent’s house.”

She sighs. Jessie hums something but then looks at me and asks, “I have a question. If you don’t have a date to the prom, wanna go with me?” She asks it like it’s a throwaway thing. Not serious.

Except she’s lying.

I can tell.

There’s no segway into this conversation. She just wanted to ask me.

I look away. “I have different plans that night.”

“What?!” She moves to her knees. “You’d really like it! And Prom is, like, the big rite-of-passage for seniors.”

“So is doing those senior pranks, but I’m not interested in buying vibrators and dropping them down the P Stairwell and getting suspended because of ‘rite-of-passage’.”

“It’s our last big thing we get to do as seniors!” I don’t know why she’s trying so hard to get me to go.

Well, I kinda do.

“Jess, Prom’s gonna be super cool. Probably. But - ”

“What do you mean, ‘probably’?!” Her nose twitches. It does that when she’s pissed. “It’s going to be fucking amazing!”

“Okay. Great. Still means I have other plans that night.”

Jessie scoots away and leans back against the wall. She’s mad. Like, royally pissed off. Except part of me wants to just smile and nod along with her, and another part of me is more concerned with what she’ll say to everyone when they find out I’m not going to Prom.

“Look…Louis - ”

“I’ll see what I can do, okay?” And she smiles. And I feel like shit. Because I’ve just lied to her again.