Chapter 3 - The Invitation
The idea had come to me two weeks before graduation.
The whole school was in a fever pitch. Flashy, thousand-dollar "promposals" clogged the courtyard every afternoon. Boys hired skywriters, rented supercars, or arranged flash mobs in the cafeteria to ask the prettiest girls in class. It was a circus of vanity funded by parents who treated their children's teenage social lives like high-society pageantry.
I had no interest in it. My prom suit was a thrift-store jacket that I had spent three nights altering with a needle and thread under the yellow light of our kitchen table.
"Aren’t you going to ask anyone, Cole?" Doris had asked me one evening. She was sitting on the worn floral couch, rubbing menthol balm into the swollen, arthritic joints of her knees. Her legs were covered in varicose veins that looked like dark, twisted rivers beneath her translucent skin.
"No," I replied, scrubbing a skillet in our tiny sink. "It’s a waste of money, Grandma. Tickets are eighty bucks a pop. We need that money for the electric bill."
Doris sat up straight, her mouth set in a firm, stubborn line. She reached into the pocket of her faded cardigan and pulled out a small, crumpled envelope. She set it on the kitchen table.
"Take it," she commanded softly.
I walked over and picked it up. Inside were four crisp, folded twenty-dollar bills.
"Where did you get this?" I asked, my chest tightening. I knew down to the exact penny how much money entered our household.
"I worked four extra weekend shifts cleaning the gym after the district basketball tournaments," she said. Her hands rested quietly in her lap, but I could see how much they shook. "You are graduating at the top of your class, Cole. You worked harder than any of those spoiled brats who were born with everything handed to them. You are going to that prom. You are going to put on a suit, walk into that hall, and hold your head high."
A lump formed in my throat so large it felt like I was swallowing glass. She had worked sixty additional hours—on feet that could barely carry her from the bedroom to the bathroom—just so I could spend one evening standing in a room full of people who hated me.
I looked at the eighty dollars. Then I looked at her.
"I'll go," I said, my voice thick with emotion. "On one condition."
"What condition?"
"You have to be my date."
Doris stared at me as if I had lost my mind. Then she laughed—a dry, startled sound. "Don't be ridiculous, Cole. Old women don’t go to proms. People will laugh at you. You find a nice girl from your biology class—"
"I don't care about any girl in that school," I cut her off, kneeling down in front of her chair so I was looking directly into her tired, faded blue eyes. "Nobody in that school spent eighteen years keeping me alive. Nobody in that school worked three jobs so I could have sneakers that didn't have holes in them. You’re the only person who earned the right to be there with me, Grandma. If you don't go, I’m tearing this money in half right now."
For a long time, she didn't speak. Her eyes searched my face, looking for hesitation, looking for pity. But all she found was unyielding, immovable resolve.
Finally, she bowed her head. A single, quiet sob escaped her lips.
"I have an old dress," she whispered into her hands. "In the back of the closet. From your grandfather’s sister’s wedding. It might... it might still fit."
"You're going to look like royalty," I whispered back.
May you like
We had made our pact. But what we didn't know was that Julian Montgomery and Principal Vance had their own plans for that evening.
***
