The Real Prom Queens of Westfield High (15 page)

Finally, a little sympathy for the victim
.

As he strokes my hair, I can't help but notice Luke is seriously dreamy. It's no wonder Grace feels burned over losing him. And obviously my mother approves. She's excused herself, dragging Josie and Thomas with her, so Luke and I are alone in the living room. Well, that is, alone with all the hidden cameras and stuff.

Luke smiles and leans in. As his gorgeous eyes close, I think,
Well, I knew I'd have to make some sacrifices going into this competition
. I feel his breath on my lips, which, unlike my forehead, feel just fine. I close my eyes.

I like his kiss
much
better than his throw.

I'm putting my books in my locker after first period when Rick grabs my arm and guides me into the math room. I try to resist, but he seems determined to get me alone.

He swings on me the moment the classroom door closes behind us. “What the hell, Shannon?”

I want to hide behind one of the desks. I've been so focused on getting even with Grace and winning Luke over to gain a foothold in the competition, I somehow managed to ignore Rick's feelings for me. And the fact that they might be reciprocal.

Rick looks so angry I can't think, and despite all my Prom Queen training, I find myself stammering, “I-I-I…j-just…”

“Yeah, that's what I thought.” He takes a step toward me, and I back up to one of the desks. Looking around wildly, I try to figure out whether or not this classroom is wired. If anyone walks in right now, I'm boned.

“What's the matter? Afraid you'll get caught talking to me?” Rick's anger flashes and I want to explain everything. Instead, I keep my palms flat against the desk underneath me and shake my head no.

The emptiness of the classroom fades as Rick fills the space in front of me. Drawing closer until I'm leaning back against the desk, we stare at each other eye to eye. He glances down at my mouth, and my heart gives a dip. I lick my lips and realize my body language is practically begging him to kiss me right now.

Rick wraps an arm around my waist, and I instinctively press forward. He touches my cheek. I close my eyes. I don't care about being a bottom three loser, or getting even with Grace Douglas, or anything except for how much I want his lips on mine. Wait for them.

“Shannon?”

I open my eyes and see hardness has seeped back into his gaze. “What is going on between you and Luke Hershman?”

“I-I-I…” I start stammering again, and the spell is broken.

“Yeah, that's what I thought.”

Rick releases me, pushes off the desk, and turns away.

“Wait,” I call, but he just keeps walking. At the door, he turns to give me a look of sadness, but I can't think of a single thing I'm allowed to say that will make him stay.

***

It turns out Marnie must have been right about Rick's “I'll reject you before you can reject me” complex, because when I try to tell him later,“It's not what you think,” he won't even look at me. Instead, he gets suddenly absorbed with something buried deep in his backpack.

At the end of the day, when I walk by his locker, he starts studying his BlackSpot sneakers as if they've sprouted wings.

“All right already,” I say to him, holding my palms up in surrender. “I get it.”

Some of us don't need a 150 IQ to know when we're being blown off.

The cameras must have caught Rick dragging me into the math room, because Victoria asks me about it at our next SACC meeting. She reminds me that there are strict rules regarding off-camera zones, and I nearly faint with relief that there's no footage of our near-kiss.

I tell her Rick was just helping me with a science assignment, and then I launch into a detailed description of a bogus project.

I don't know if Victoria believes me because I've become so skilled at lying or if she starts waving me off just to make me stop talking all science-y stuff. But she quickly moves on to matters of great consequence. With a flourish, she sets out samples of the new Nőrealique lipstick shades on the table before me.

I need to pick a signature color that will be named
Shannon's Sugar Bliss
. After the show starts airing, it will be released for sale wherever Nőrealique products are sold. I try to design a quilt in my head to commemorate having my very own shade of hot pink lipstick named after me, but the only pattern I can come up with is a giant pair of lips in the center of a square.

Meanwhile, I've decided that wearing a hunky football player's arm casually over one's shoulder translates to ballistic armor against things that suck. The same hallways I used to drag my black boots down with my head bowed are now a welcoming haven. Instead of a nightmare, high school is starting to feel like a dream that I don't want to wake up from.

Of course, our expensive clothing, new lipstick, and SACCs aren't actually magical. Kelly, Amy, and I are working our asses off to become popular. We have ongoing Poise Perfection Classes with Victoria giving us tips on things like how to make our peers crave our approval and maximizing lunch time as
launch
time
!

We finally master the fine art of house parties too. The trick is to remain sober but act adorably tipsy and make a point of saying hello to every single person in attendance. Then we can head home once things get sloppy and people are too drunk to notice we're gone.

As the weeks pass, our extracurricular calendars get so loaded up they practically require the use of time travel in order to function. The three of us toss our hair, give sideways glances, and remain mysteriously aloof toward everyone. The aloof part is the easiest to fake since we're constantly exhausted.

By mid-October, Amy, Kelly, and I are on everyone's lips. In a good way.

“How has Amy kept the weight off?”—
Starvation. That girl should be worshipped
. “I still can't believe Kelly used to be the biggest burnout in the school.”—
Not
even
Kelly
can
resist
enjoying
the
praise.
“Have you seen Shannon's outfit this morning?”—
Everyone
has. And it is fabulous.

All I have to do now is keep moving forward with my head in the game and hope that when my old friends finally find out about the show, they'll come around. I know I'm willing to forgive them for not having all that much faith in me.

PART FOUR

The Royal Premiere

When spring arrives and the show's teasers start airing, they're mysterious and enticing and absolutely everywhere. It's being promoted as “The boldest reality show ever conceived” and “Filmed in secret for an entire year” and “Maybe YOU are one of the stars and don't even know it.” Mickey says they expect a healthy tune-in for the premiere episode.

“I'm betting the show's not even about a real high school,” I hear a girl saying as I walk down the hallway, and I can't help but smile. People are going to go batshit when they find out this is all about us.

I swallow down my nervousness as I greet Amy and Kelly at our lockers and take a moment to marvel over how much things have changed for us since that devastating meeting in the guidance office. Mickey was actually right about that being the beginning of everything.

Those first weeks of school after Prom Queen Camp were like pedaling uphill with training wheels compared to the way the three of us are soaring along now. I feel invincible as I touch up my signature pink lipstick in my locker mirror.
Shannon's Sugar Bliss.
I've come to think of it as my war paint.

“You guys ready to be reality show stars?” Kelly asks Amy and me.

The first show is airing next week, and Amy is practically vibrating with anxiety. I soothe her, “Come on, girl. Just imagine you're onstage.”

Amy was amazing in Westfield High's winter musical a few months ago. The drama club performed
The
Sound
of
Music
, and her Maria von Trapp demanded everyone's attention. I was worried that she'd barf onstage, but she tapped into something deep and solid, and gave a killer performance. Grace did a decent job as Liesl, but it was absolutely Amy's show.

“There's my girl.” Luke materializes in front of me and gives me a rib-crushing hug hello. His buddy Pete moves in to embrace Kelly, but she twists so that her shoulder juts into his chest when he hugs her. I try not to laugh at Kelly's look of disgust. Amy is already giggling about something with George, her own hunky football star who she met at the gym.

Just as our SACCs predicted, dating hotties has galvanized our social positions at Westfield. Although Kelly complains about playing constant
DE-FENSE
against Pete's displays of affection, Amy is genuinely smitten by her lumbering linebacker. A feeling that's clearly mutual.

Looking down the hallway, I see Deena, Grace, and Kristan huddled together, shooting us occasional glares. I thought Grace hated me as the Elf Ucker, but she downright loathes me now that I've ditched her nickname. Oh, yes. Plus stolen her boyfriend. I stand on my toes to give Luke a peck on the cheek and smile innocently in her direction.

Grace's hatred actually makes me feel strong. Like I finally stood up to the school's Alpha Bitch and now nobody needs to submit to her ever again.

The one gaping hole in my awesome life is the one that Marnie ripped out. The last time she and I even spoke was just after Buy Nothing Day, which takes place the Friday after Thanksgiving every year. Marnie is all into it as part of her anticonsumerism crusade, and the idea is to purchase absolutely nothing for twenty-four straight hours as a boycott against the frenzy of holiday shoppers. I've always supported Marns because she feels so strongly about corporate greed ruining the world and all, but by Thanksgiving, the two of us were almost completely unraveled anyway.

Plus I really, really needed a bottle of Silver Linings nail color for my New Year's Eve date with Luke.

Instead of lying to Marnie, I mentioned my Buy Nothing Day Fail, and she acted as if I'd stormed the gates of Buymart with all the middle-aged door-busting zealots.

“I can't believe how selfish you're acting, Shannon” she said, which hurt like a sewing machine needle to the heart. But it also made me realize that Marnie is not as loyal and understanding as I've always thought she was.

Apparently, for some reason, she preferred being friends with a total loser. To let a few rhinestone lip logos and a bottle of nail polish destroy our relationship showed me what kind of friend she really was. And I guess it's better I found out now, instead of waiting until we both got old like my Mom and Aunt Kate when I might
really
need her for something. I'm sad that she didn't choose to rise up the social ranks with me, but honestly she did have a choice.

And Marnie chose to watch me move on.

***

When
From
Wannabes
to
Prom
Queens
premieres, there are a number of dramatic clips they could choose to open the show with. There's the first day of school. Our makeover session in the Beauty Room. Or even my sprawling fall on the runway.

Instead, the episode opens with the shot of Luke Hershman leaning over my living room couch to kiss me. Right after he knocked me unconscious with a football. Except that nobody watching knows anything about the football. The onscreen image of Luke and me kissing tenderly shifts into a split-screen with my heinous before picture. Victoria brightly narrates, “See how Shannon goes from frumpy to fabulous and snags the captain of the football team!”

Then there's a shot of Amy on our school's stage wearing a wedding dress and singing her lungs out as Maria. The split-screen cuts in with a revolting before picture, and Victoria invites, “Follow Amy's journey from withering wallflower to superstar siren.”

Next, we see Kelly modeling a mini-dress as she poses at a photo shoot. She eventually caved in to pressure from her SACC and took up fashion modeling. “And watch Kelly turn from ghastly mess to model-fabulous!” Victoria says cheerfully as Kelly's shot splits with a picture of her metal minefield face from last year.

Kelly groans beside me. She and Amy are watching the premiere at my house since we can all use the support, even though Kelly acts like she doesn't need or want it. Over the past year of pretending to be a clique, the three of us have gotten sort of close. I mean, we're technically still competing against each other, and there's been plenty of casual backstabbing and confidence undermining, but we get along well enough.

Amy is always quick to cheer people up when they need it, including Victoria, and she remains sweetly introverted when she's not onstage. And Kelly's ongoing disdain for playing fashion whore manifests in biting comments that seriously crack me up.

Our classmates are just finding out that the show is about the three of us at this very moment, so we've all turned off our phones. This two-hour premiere episode will cover our six-week stint at Prom Queen Camp, which makes sense, since they can't air any footage from the school until students or their parents sign their waivers.

Josie is in her room right now watching the show with a friend who's sleeping over, and Mom and Thomas are out on a double date with Aunt Kate and her husband. After nearly a year of secrets and anticipation, I can't believe the time is here.

Onscreen, Kelly, Amy, and I each morph from our humiliating before photos to glamorous after shots with fans blowing our hair off our heavily made-up faces. I can almost hear the director still calling “And…look!” over and over as the three of us dramatically turned toward the camera.

There were lots of blooper takes with hair blowing in our eyes and sticking to our lipstick, and one time during the group glamour shot, Amy flipped up so fast, I konked my nose on the back of her head. We had to wait for it to stop bleeding before we could go on.

As ridiculous as it all felt at the time, I must admit we look pretty hot onscreen. Amy and I are a little stiff, but Kelly is a natural at posing, and it's easy to see how her modeling career took off so fast. The name of the show melts into view and I'm a little annoyed that it reads
The
Prom
Queen
Wannabes
, instead of the original and slightly less humiliating
From
Wannabes
to
Prom
Queens
.

“Oh God.” Amy grabs my hand.

“Here we go,” says Kelly from the armchair. Her alert posture betrays the fact that she's definitely invested in what's coming next. How can she not be? The three of us are being exposed in a very big way.

The room is completely silent as a commercial comes on featuring us oohing and aahing over our Nőrealique lip gloss. It is by far the cheesiest commercial ever created. They tried giving us lines, but we were all really terrible at delivering them. Hey, it's harder than it looks, okay? Anyway, they had to ditch the narrative, which makes the whole point of the commercial a little hazy, until they display the tagline, “Transform your look, transform your life, with Nőrealique Cosmetics.”

As if glossy lips were our ticket off the slow bus to Loserville.

A montage of humiliating moments from boot camp plays as Victoria narrates from the
foy-yea
of our Prom Queen Camp mansion. Onscreen, we're taught to apply cosmetics as if we're three chimps who have never seen a blush brush. Then there's Amy yelling at Kelly and me for leaving hair in the bathtub drain. Again. And of course my flailing fall off the runway plays over and over about twelve hundred times. It's so humiliating I can't even watch it.

And then there are the confessional moments. “I am living with swine.”—
Amy. And she is
. “I can't believe I'm trapped here with a pair of dingbats.”—
Kelly. And she is not
. “I'm living in a mansion!”—
Me, said with smiling ecstasy.
I wince at the flaky image I was projecting back then.

The show ends with the three of us completely transformed, walking in slow motion down the runway/hallway of Westfield High on the first day of school. Chins held high, postures erect, we seem more confident than any of us felt that day. We are frozen midstride and tiaras are photoshopped onto our heads. The show's throbbing theme song ends abruptly as the big pink words
The
Prom
Queen
Wannabes
are stamped across the screen.

Victoria invites viewers to tune in next week to see our peers' reactions to our amazing makeovers. Plus, she cheerfully promises a huge surprise twist to be revealed later in the season. Amy, Kelly, and I exchange looks at that, but I figure it's probably something lame, like someone at home can win a pair of spike heels by texting in a random trivia answer. Or maybe they'll be flown to meet us here in the middle of nowhere.
Great
prize
.

“Well,
you
guys looked fantastic.” Josie is cranky when she and her friend emerge from her bedroom. She wasn't on camera at all. “The show will definitely be a huge hit and you three will get totally famous. Congratulations. We're going to bed.”

She ignores my goodnight, and I feel bad that she's so disappointed. Still, at least she no longer has a socially catastrophic older sister tarnishing her image. That is, unless everyone at school decides to turn on us now that they know about all the help we've been secretly getting.

I bite my lip and glance at my cell phone.

Kelly says, “Well, I guess it's time we face our adoring public.”

We switch our phones on, and I say, “I wonder how everyone will treat us after this.”

“Reminding our classmates what losers we used to be may have just broken the spell,” Amy says, and I nod my agreement.

I'm relieved that my old nickname wasn't mentioned even once, but my runway fall was pretty damn humiliating. At least I resisted the urge to run away flailing.

All three of our cell phones start ringing at once. Kelly's techno overpowers Amy's ballad while mine quacks loudest of all. The bizarre mix of mismatched ringtones is unnerving.

We each take a deep breath, hold up our phones, and say, “Hello?”

***

The way that our peers decide to react to our huge secret is pretty damn crucial. If they choose, en masse, to not sign their permission slips, the show will probably get canceled immediately. That is, unless they decide to air it with everyone's faces blurred out, the way certain celebrities need to have their “oops” panty-less crotch shots blurred. But that does not sound like a very good show.

When Luke calls to say he loved our scene, I hear the football team whooping in the background. I was finally allowed to tell him about the show earlier today. It was only so he could sign a release for them to air our kissing scene, and he was supposed to keep it a secret, but I doubt he did. He was wildly excited by the news and invited all his buddies over to his media room to catch the premiere. Judging by the feral animal sounds coming through the phone, they either really loved the show or there is booze involved. Possibly both.

For the next solid hour after
The
Prom
Queen
Wannabes
ends, Kelly, Amy, and I are busy fielding calls. I swear, a representative from each and every clique and sub-clique in our school checks in with at least one of us. Well, that is, except the clique of Grace and the former Alpha Queens. But we can pretty much guess their reaction.

Of course, I don't hear from Marnie, James, or Rick either, but they've probably lost my number by now. It's also possible they didn't see the show. I mean, they're not exactly television fiends. Rick's parents don't even subscribe to cable on account of it “causing brain rot.” I'm tempted to send them a link online so they'll realize why I've been acting different all year long. But guaranteed they'll hear about it soon enough.

Based on the collective phoned-in responses, it seems we'll be enjoying yet another bump in status. Everyone wants to know where the cameras are hidden and if it's too late to get a bit of screen time. It's clear our classmates will happily sign away whatever rights and dignity are required in order to be on television.