Will the Real Prince Charming Please Stand Up (6 page)

“So, I’m thinking we need to do something different for Halloween this year and not go all-out crazy,” Talia said a few days later as we stood in the cafeteria line. Since Homecoming was over, it was time to plan our costumes for the Katzes’ annual Halloween party.

“Oh, no,” Ally said, eyeing her warily. “What do you have in mind?”

Talia smiled mischievously. “We should all dress up as cave girls!”

“Uh, that’s so lame,” I whined. “What fun is it if everyone knows what you are on sight?”

“I think that’s kind of the point,” Ally said. “Not every costume needs to be so cerebral.”

Talia nodded in agreement. “You’ve been hanging out with Finn too long. We shouldn’t have to explain our costumes.”

They weren’t going to let me live down last year’s idea when I’d suggested we all dress up like the title characters of
Heathers
. Ally wore red, Talia wore green, and I wore yellow, and we all carried croquet mallets to school. And, to my surprise, no one had known who we were, even though we called each other “Heather” all day.

“Fine. What do you have in mind?” I asked, putting my tray onto the metal counter and sliding it down the line. “I’m just not wearing some cheesy costume that barely covers anything.”

“Duh. That’s why we’ll make our own.”

Ally nodded. “I’m in.”

“Hi, baby,” Dante said. He put his arm around my waist as he squeezed between Talia and me and kissed me on the neck. I saw her roll her eyes at his greeting and made a mental note to tell him I didn’t like being called “baby.”

“Hey,” I said. I kissed him before turning my attention back to the lunch offerings.

“Hi, Dante!” Ally greeted him, but he ignored her.

“You girls look like you’re up to something,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“We’re planning our Halloween costumes,” I explained. I studied the limp salads in the open refrigerators, grabbed one, and put it on my tray.

“Awesome! What are we going to be?”

Talia glared at him. “‘We?’ I don’t think this includes you.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“This is a girl thing,” Talia said with a sneer. “You aren’t part of it.”

He glanced at her, annoyed. “Of course I am. Bianca’s my girlfriend.”

“And she’s
my
best friend!”

“Talia, behave,” I said. I pulled Dante to my other side so that I stood between them. “I’m sure we can make this work for all of us, okay?” I looked up at Dante and grabbed his hand. “We can still look like a couple if it means that much to you,” I said, “but I want to do stuff with my friends, too.”

His brow was creased in an irritated scowl, but he didn’t protest.

“We’re talking about being cave girls,” Ally said.

“It’s Talia’s idea,” I said. “And you can be a cave man. It could be fun.”

Dante’s eyes grew large. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” Talia asked with a tight-lipped smile. “Does it hit too close to home?”

“Talia!” I shrieked.

Ally pursed her lips as she thought. “Maybe the three of us could dress as angels, instead?” she said.

“And Dante can be the devil,” Talia said with a laugh. “Perfect! It’s total typecasting!”

His eyes narrowed. “The only way you could wear a halo is if your horns were holding it up.”

“Both of you, cut it out,” I pleaded. I took my tray to the register and motioned for Talia to do the same because I owed her lunch. The cashier took my twenty-dollar bill and returned my change, which I shoved into my bag.

Ally looked contemplative while she paid for her food. “We’re going to have to consider another theme.”

I spotted Finn and Jake at our usual table. Finn’s laptop was open, and the two of them were totally engrossed in whatever was on the screen.

“How about, like, hippies at Woodstock?” I asked, setting my tray down across from him. “We can paint our faces and be total flower children, and Dante could wear, like, cool tie-dyed stuff.”

“No,” Talia said. “I draw the line at bell bottoms.”

“And I’m not wearing a rainbow.”

Finn and Jake both looked up.

“Do we even want to know?” Finn asked, concern lining his face as he eyed Dante and Talia. I shook my head, and they returned their attention to the computer.

“At least you guys are agreeing on something,” I murmured.

“We could be first responders,” Ally suggested. “You know, like, firefighter, police officer, and paramedic?”

Talia and I glanced at each other. “No,” we said in unison.

“We’re open to your suggestions, too, you know,” I said to Dante, but he didn’t say anything.

“Ooh!” Ally squealed. “How about Charlie’s Angels!”

“Aren’t you forgetting someone?” he said.

I sighed. Between Dante shooting down every idea we came up with and Talia’s open animosity toward him, I was getting frustrated. I pulled him aside.

“Look,” I said loud enough for only him to hear, “this is just a Halloween costume. We really don’t have to match, you know.”

“But you’re my girlfriend,” he reminded me. “We should do stuff like this together. You don’t need to go along with your friends anymore.”

I frowned. “I’ve been your girlfriend for, like, ten days. I’ve been Talia’s best friend for, like, ten years. And the three of us have been doing this together since third grade.”

“So? That’s history. You’ve got me now.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do stuff with them, too!”

He lowered his gaze, and his mouth curved downward. “I feel like I’m being left out.”

I took his hands and said, “No, Dante, it’s not like that at all. I promise I’m not leaving you out. But it’s, like, Halloween is a really big deal for my friends and me.”

“And it’s important to me that everyone knows we’re a couple,” he said, stroking my cheek.

I thought about the previous Thursday when Mr. Jorgensen had issued us warnings for making out in the hall, and my cheeks flushed. “Everyone knows we’re a couple, Dante.”

He touched his forehead to mine. “I want us to do something memorable for our first Halloween together.”

“Well, maybe we can still do both.” I kissed him on the cheek and turned back to my friends. “Hey, Talia, how about if the three of us each dress up as a Greek goddess?” I held my breath, hoping she’d agree.

“Oh! Like we’ll wear those flowing white togas?” Ally asked.

“Chitons,” Finn said without looking up from his computer. “Greeks wore Chitons. Romans wore togas.”

Ally made a face in his direction. “Fine, we’ll wear chitons or whatever. But it’s brilliant. I call dibs on Aphrodite.”

Talia furrowed her brow and pursed her lips. “It’s different,” she said, stretching out the word as she considered the idea, “and we’ve got, like, two weeks to piece costumes together.” Her face brightened. “Yeah, I think we could possibly make that work.”

I looked at Dante. “And if I dress as Hera, then you can be Zeus, and he’s, like, the king of all the gods. Would that make you happy?”

“It sounds lame,” he replied.

I hung my head, feeling a bit defeated. I just got Talia to agree to something that left an opening for Dante and me to have a couples’ costume, and he was shooting down that idea, too. “Please?” I pleaded. “For me?”

“You’re asking for a lot.”

I glanced at my friends and saw they were watching us with curious expressions.

“I’m asking you to compromise on this,” I said, lowering my voice. “I don’t think that’s asking for too much.”

“I’m starting to feel like your friends mean more to you than us.”

I thought of how Dante must have felt as a little boy every time his parents chose a business trip over time with him. I didn’t want to make him feel unimportant. I reached for his hand. “They don’t mean more to me, Dante,” I promised.

“Then you should act like it.”

I gasped. “Are you asking me to choose between you and my friends?”

“I shouldn’t have to.”

I couldn’t even think of a retort. I just stared at him, stunned.

The Katzes’ legendary Halloween parties had been around since Ally was still a baby and her oldest brothers were in elementary school. Her parents were known for going all-out every year. The process of transforming their elegant two-story colonial house into a spooky masterpiece took a few weeks to complete, and Talia and I looked forward to helping with preparations every year. Ally’s brothers came home from college to help decorate, but since she wasn’t much of a fan of her family’s macabre hobbies, Ally began complaining about the metamorphosis at the end of September.

This year, Mr. Katz decided to scrap the graveyard on the front lawn that he had put up the last couple of years and replaced it with a patch of robotic zombie pumpkins that rose up on metal vines and moved. Giant mechanical spiders climbed up and down the oak trees lining the long driveway, and red-eyed bats hung from the branches where concealed speakers emitted shrill bat calls.

Inside, Mrs. Katz transformed the house to make the downstairs area look like an abandoned abode. Cotton sheets, distressed to look yellow with age, covered the furniture, and a thick layer of dust coated almost every surface. Amid myriad snacks on the dining room table, peeled frozen grapes floated like eyeballs in a large bowl of dark, blood-red punch. Cobwebs hung in darkened corners and from chandeliers, and every light in the house flickered eerily.

In a word, it was awesome.

Because Dante insisted, I agreed to leave Ally’s house a few hours before the party to get ready at home instead of prepping there. He’d said it was bad enough that he’d barely seen me the last two weeks because I’d been helping the Katzes decorate. He wanted us to show up to the party together, too.

“Are you sure you don’t want to get into costume here?” Ally asked as I packed up my stuff. “I can do your hair.”

“No,” I replied. “I still have some finishing touches to put on my dress.” They didn’t need to know it was really Dante’s idea.

“But you’re breaking tradition!” she cried.

“I know.” The reminder stung. I felt bad enough as it was.

“Well, you’re going to miss out on seeing all the little kids,” Talia said. “That’s, like, the best part.”

I frowned. Dante had told me last week that he’d changed his mind and didn’t want to go to Ally’s party, even though almost everyone from the entire school would make an appearance at some point in the evening. I’d had to promise that we’d have some alone time away from curious eyes before he agreed to go. Even then, he’d dropped snide remarks about the party and my friends at least twice a day.

He’d also seemed really annoyed when I told him that I wanted to spend the night at Ally’s house.

“A sleepover?” he’d asked after school one day.

I ignored his sneer. “We’ve done it every year since, like, fifth grade.”

“But do you have to?” We had stopped by my locker, and I’d set down my backpack. “If I’m going to this party,” he’d said, wrapping his arms around my waist, “I want us to be together as much as possible.”

“And we will,” I’d promised, kissing him. “But Brady can take you home when everyone leaves.”

“That’s not what I had in mind,” he’d said with a sullen pout.

So I’d relented, and for the first time since our tradition began, I’d be coming home from the party instead of staying up into the wee hours of the morning with my best friends.

About an hour after Ally’s brother dropped me off, I was sitting at my vanity, twisting a lock of hair and trying to pin it above my ear when Brady entered my room, unannounced.

“You decent?” he asked as he walked in.

I scowled at his reflection. “If I wasn’t, it’s not like you’re giving me a chance to cover up.”

“You’re my kid sister,” he scoffed. “You used to run around the house naked.”

“When I was, like, three!”

He sat at the edge of my bed, and I studied his reflection in my mirror as I worked on my hair. He and Tim had decided to dress as the Blues Brothers, so he wore a dark suit with a crisp, white shirt and a skinny black tie. He toyed with the brim of a black fedora as he watched me.

“Are you going to ride around in a chariot pulled by peacocks so people know who you’re supposed to be?”

I turned and stuck out my tongue at him. Brady knew I liked having props with my costumes and teased me about it every year. “Like anyone besides you and Finn would even know the significance of that,” I replied. “But now that you mention it, I probably should have something.” I looked down at the flowing white dress I’d made from a pattern I’d found online. “I look like I’m wearing a bedsheet. No one’s going to recognize this costume.”

He shrugged. “If they don’t, then they’re not cool enough to be your friends,” he said, tossing his hat into the air. “I think you look great.”

“You’re supposed to say that. But thanks, Brady,” I said. I pinned the twisted lock and checked it in the mirror before I started working on the other side of my head. After a few messy starts, I finally got the twist to look like the first one. “I swear,” I muttered, “fixing my hair goes so much faster when Ally’s doing it.”

“I can’t believe you aren’t sleeping over there tonight,” he said.

I tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “I know. But Dante said he didn’t want to leave the party by himself.”

“That’s a lame excuse. It’s not like he’s driving himself home.”

“Well, whatever. Relationships are all about compromise, right?” I turned and looked at him. “Weren’t you the one who told me that when you agreed to see that chick flick the weekend after you took Kira to see the Cardinals play at Dodger Stadium?”

“I think that’s a little different,” he said. “She and I each picked something for us to do together. I’ve never told her not to hang out with her friends.”

I pouted. “He doesn’t tell me I can’t hang out with Ally and Talia,” I said. “He just wants to spend more time with me.”

My brother snorted and I glared at him.

“So what is this perfect boyfriend of yours going to be dressed as when he gets here?” he asked after a long period of silence while he watched me finish doing my hair.

“Odin.”

Brady laughed but stopped when he saw I wasn’t joking. “Wait, seriously? Doesn’t he realize that Odin’s a Norse god and not Greek? Or did he not pass English last year?”

I sneered at him before I said, “He said he didn’t realize a chiton was like a dress.”

My brother stared at me in disbelief for a moment. “So he’ll be the Norse god of war, instead. Should I be concerned?”

“Ease up, Brady.” I rolled my eyes.

“Why are you even going out with this guy?” he asked.

“He’s a good guy,” I said, emphasizing each word.

He paused before he shook his head. “I have my doubts.” He got up, clutching his fedora. “You can definitely do better,” he said before he left my room.