In the middle of all this insanity, the teachers started to talk to us about final exams, graduation and the senior prom. Normally, I didn’t think about dances. Jeff and I had gone to a few dances in junior high school, but they were always the same thing all the guys sat on one side of the gymnasium and all the girls sat on the other. Occasionally, we’d ask a girl to dance–Holly McFadden. She was cute and funny, but we were just old friends and there was no spark between us. Most of the time, Jeff and I just went to the dance and goofed around.

So, I didn’t give a second thought to the senior prom; I probably wasn’t going to go anyway. That changed one afternoon on my way to class, when Katie came bouncing over to me.

“Scott! Scott! Hey!”

“Hi.” I managed to say.

“Do have a date for the prom?” She leaned into me. Did it just get hotter?

“Uh… prom? Uh… no. No, no I don’t have a date. Why?”

“Well, I know this is a little weird, but I just moved here, you know, and I don’t know many people, and you’ve always been really nice to me, and I was wondering if maybe you wanted to go together to prom. Maybe.”

I stood there, dumbfounded, for a second or two. This was my chance! Say something! “W-wha… you want to go to the prom with me?”

She jumped up and down and clapped. “Oh, I was hoping you’d ask!”

Did I ask? “I didn’t know you wanted to go to the prom.”

She punched my arm. “I was just waiting for the right guy to ask me.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“Thank you, Scott!” She grabbed my shoulders, leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “You’re the best! I’ll call you. Bye!” Then, she ran away to her next class.

She’d kissed me. Her lips touched my cheek. They were soft and wet and warm on my face. My whole body tingled and I liked it. Moments passed while I played the scene in my mind again and again. Several people must have passed by me and talked to me, but I was oblivious to everything else. Eventually, it dawned on me: I had a date. No, not just a date. This was prom. Prom was a big deal, especially to girls. There were plans to be made and I had no idea what I was doing.

Who should I go to for prom advice? I couldn’t talk to my dad about romance. To him, I was still ten years old. He didn’t know how to treat me like an adult. The logical confidant would have been my mom, who was: 1) a woman; 2) experienced with dating; and 3) sensitive.

Years prior to this, when I reached puberty, instead of having “the talk,” Mom gave me a book about sex. It was a pop-up book. Jeff and I used to come up with scenarios and dialogue for different pages. For the man, it was usually something like, “Hello, my dear. Nice to see you.” For the woman, it was “The baby is coming. Look at how big my breasts are getting.” Mom had said that I could talk to her if I had any questions about sex, but I never did.

Hence, I felt equally uncomfortable asking Mom about romance and dating. Instead, I went to the most romantically inept person (after me) that I knew: Jeff.

“I need advice,” I begged.

Sensing the terror in my voice, Jeff dropped what he was doing and gave me his undivided attention. “I’m here for you, dude! What’s up?"

“It’s about the prom.”

He struggled to keep a straight face. “Of course. What did you need?”

“Katie’s been texting me all about her dress. I’m supposed to find flowers to match her dress, which is some kind of light green; ‘spring,’ she said.”

Jeff wheeled over to the desk. “Let’s see.” He addressed the monitor as he started typing on the keyboard, “Mr. Computer, my friend is going to the prom and doesn’t want to make a bigger idiot of himself in front of his date. Her dress is spring green. What kind of flowers should he buy?”

The search returned five million or so websites. “We’ve got green weddings, green bridesmaids. Here we go: green dresses for prom. I guess you’re not alone. There’s a whole Q&A about it.”

“What does it say?”

Jeff read the question, which obviously came from another desperate and confused guy going to the prom, “My date is wearing a green dress. What kind of flowers should I get her?”

“And?”

“It lists three types: pinned on, handheld and wrist corsage.”

I could see the pinned on corsage becoming a comedy scenario: do I let her pin it on? Should I pin it on? What if I touch something? No, I wasn’t going to be that guy! Wrist corsages didn’t really appeal to me either. “I guess I’ll go with hand held.”

“Okay, hand held. What color?”

“Color?”

Jeff typed. “Some people say white, some say pink, some say yellow.”

This was frustrating. I collapsed on the bed. “How many different colors of flowers can there be? What’s the difference?”

Jeff closed the web page he had been reading and started a new search. “Colors of flowers. How about this: Colors of Flowers and Their Meanings?”

I sat up. “That sounds promising.”

Jeff clicked on the link. “Okay. Check this out: red flowers suggest romance.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Maybe too obvious, though. I’ll come back to that. Go on.”

“Yellow suggests friendship.”

“Not my first choice. What else?”

“White says purity. Oh,” he turned to me and arched an eyebrow, “orange means excitement!”

“Excitement! I like that! Wait a second. Orange flowers? What kind of flowers are orange?”

Jeff looked at the screen and cocked his head. “They’re roses and they look mostly white, but with swirls of color.”

“What kind of mutant, alien, hybrid type of roses are they?” I stood up and walked over to him. Sure enough, the picture on the screen showed white roses and the tips of the petals were colored. “Huh. Actually, to me, it looks more red or pink instead of orange. But, what do I know? They are rather exotic. Does orange go with green?”

“Good question.” Jeff turned around and started typing. “Does orange go with green? This website says yes, they are excellent together!”

“Awesome!” I said. “Orange it is!”

“Wait,” Jeff said as he hit the print button on the keyboard. “Maybe you should show her what they look like. Some women freak out when you get this stuff wrong.”

“You’re crazy,” I said, taking the printed page out of the printer. “Katie doesn’t strike me as that kind of person at all.”

The next day, I approached Katie with my decision. I wanted to tell her in person and see her reaction. “Orange flowers,” I said, showing her the picture. “Hand held.”

She took the print. “Wow. Exotic.”

“That’s what I said!”

A smile spread across her face and she did a little dance, as if electricity was running down her spine. “They’re very cool!”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Great!” she said. “Hey, rumor has it Jeff asked a girl to the prom.”

“What?”

“He didn’t tell you? Some cheerleader, Julie something.”

“Julie Tate?”

“Yeah. That’s her. Who is she? How do you guys know her?”

“Wow. Jeff asked Julie to the prom," I said, almost to myself. "When we were kids, 10 or 11 years old, I guess, Jeff had a huge crush on Julie. She was nice to us in those days. On weekends, we’d all go over to Jeff’s house, Jeff’s mom made us lunch and we’d watch the afternoon monster movie. When we got older, stuff happened, she joined a clique, started dating some jock, became popular.”

“Cheerleaders!” Katie sneered. “They’re all snobs! I’m glad they rejected me! Sorry, that’s a story for another time. Go on.”

I continued. “Jeff and I became… well, us. She was too cool to spend time with us anymore. She was the first girl to break his heart.”

“Poor guy.”

“Then there was the accident. Women don’t exactly line up to date the guy in the wheelchair.”

“So this is a revenge date?”

“No. He wouldn’t do that.”

“I didn’t think so,” she said. “Then, why would he ask her to the prom?”

Which is what I asked Jeff the next time I saw him.

“You were going to the prom,” Jeff said, “so I figured I’d shoot for the stars too.”

“But, Julie,” I said. “Why would you ask her after the way she left us in the dust?”

Jeff looked at me as if he were about to explain how the universe worked. “She just broke up with her loser boyfriend. I figured she’s probably looking to date someone just to piss him off. This may be my only opportunity. I’m really not looking for anything romantic to happen.”

“What are you expecting to happen, then?” I asked.

“Go to a dance. Be seen with a cheerleader. Make some people jealous. Maybe roll around on the dance floor. That’s it.”

“You’re not looking for revenge?”

Jeff shook his head. “What happened before was a million years ago. That ship has sailed.”

“Good,” I said. “That’s what I told Katie when she asked.”

“Katie asked about Julie?”

“She was curious about Julie, so I told her you had a crush on her at one time.”

“You told Katie what?” he asked. Why did he sound so annoyed? “Why would you tell her that?”

“I didn’t think you’d care,” I said. “You just said you didn’t care.”

He moved closer. “Well, did you happen to tell Katie about Holly McFadden?”

“I told her that we used to dance with Holly, yeah.”

“Then I think I’ll tell Katie about the time you bought Holly that great big bottle of expensive perfume. She loved it so much that she wore it to the Winter Dance… with Mark Manners.”

“I hate that guy,” I seethed. “Wait. Yeah, tell Katie that. It could work in my favor. Sympathy points, you know.”

Jeff’s eyes became slits as he considered that. “In that case, I won’t tell her.”

“The Julie thing is ancient history. Why are you getting upset about it? Besides, you’ve got your date with her now.”

Jeff unclenched, leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “She’ll probably cancel it. You watch. At the last minute, she’ll come up with some stupid excuse why she can’t go.”

I had to think of something positive to say. “You don’t know that. She said yes, right? Out of curiosity, how did the conversation go anyway?”

Jeff adopted his ditzy girl impression. “Jeff! It’s been so long. Bill? Yeah, we are so over. I’m tired of, like, being the only mature one in the relationship. I’ve given up on the cute guys, and I’m going to try dating a geek, ’cause they’re more sensitive or whatever. Blah, blah, blah.” He looked up at me. “Look, I don’t doubt for one second that she’s just using me to make Bill jealous. If she actually goes to the prom with me, I’ll do my best to show her a good time. If she dumps me afterward, think of the sympathy points I’ll get with other girls.

“You’ve got it all planned out, I guess.”

“Yeah. Now, I just have to figure out what flowers go with red. Julie is wearing a red dress, because she wants to make an entrance.” He wheeled over to the desk, apparently to begin another web search.

“One more thing,” I said. “We need a ride to the prom. Should we ask my mom or your parents?”

He turned to me and started beaming. “Actually, I have another idea.”

Next Chapter: Chapter Eight