Saving Prom Read online

  Saving Prom

  Mia Archer

  Contents

  1. Saving Prom

  2. At First Sight

  3. Enchantment Under the Stars

  4. Dateless

  5. Unrequited

  6. The Question

  7. Terrifying Truth

  8. Tickets

  9. Denied

  10. Confession

  11. Radio Silence

  12. Walk Home

  13. Confusion

  14. Emergency Meeting

  15. Trouble

  16. Fight

  17. Making Up

  18. Performance Anxiety

  19. Promposal

  20. Zero Tolerance

  21. Support

  22. Suspended

  23. Ground Rules

  24. Viral

  25. Media Storm

  26. Invitation

  27. Pre-Show

  28. Live From New York

  29. Exhausted

  30. Ride Home

  31. Queer Ally

  32. Cancelled

  33. Misused Funds

  34. Called Down

  35. Prom Committee

  36. Ticket Sales

  37. Control Room

  38. Surprise

  39. Dance

  40. Apology

  Subscribe

  Also by Mia Archer

  Saving Prom

  By Mia Archer

  Copyright 2018 Mia Archer

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Individuals pictured on the cover are models and used for illustrative purposes only.

  First digital edition electronically published by Mia Archer, April 2018

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  1

  Saving Prom

  My name is Lily Coleman, and I’ve lived every teen’s worst nightmare.

  I’m not talking about Saving Prom. I’m not talking about all of the outcry from the town. I’m not even talking about all the national media attention or some of the crap the adults around here pulled.

  No, I’m talking about the ultimate nightmare of having to reveal to your crush that you have a thing for them. Oh, and did I mention that it was totally worse because my crush also happened to be my best friend? And my best friend happened to be a girl?

  I mean I’m a girl so I guess it makes sense that my best friend would be a girl. I’m sure there are some boy/girl BFFs who grow up together and stay friends instead of trying the whole dating thing, but that wasn’t the case here.

  We were best friends and I’d been crushing on Felicity hard for a long time. It was bad enough when I was suffering in silence. It was even worse when my crush became national news because there are still some ass backwards idiots in the world who think me loving my girlfriend is going to make God smite them or something.

  Yeah, talk about a perfect storm of events that would terrify just about anyone. Talk about a story of heartache that’s played out for plenty of gay teens over the years.

  Right, but that’s not the reason you picked up this book. No, you’re here for the really juicy stuff. Because it turns out there was something way worse than revealing to Felicity that I’d had a thing for her for years.

  There’s been a lot said, broadcast, and written about me and Felicity. A lot of nasty stuff being thrown around from the usual suspects who will take any opportunity to go on TV and spew their hate to other talking heads who politely disagree with them instead of screaming at them that they’re fucking bigoted idiots.

  Heck, there’s been a lot of nasty stuff going around the rumor mill in our small town which in its own way is worse than everything that happened nationally. Talking heads on TV spewing hate and trying to disguise it as love can’t give you dirty looks while you’re trying to shop in peace at the grocery store.

  The most annoying thing of all, though, is all the people who decided they were going to try and profit off of my story. I figure I’ve always wanted to do the writing thing, and so it was a no-brainer when a publishing company got in touch and invited me to tell the real story. In my own words. In our own words.

  At its core this is a story of two girls falling in love. I hope everyone reading this keeps that in mind.

  That old dude who said love is all you need in that song was wrong. It turns out sometimes you need love, some attorneys from the ACLU, a lot of negative press attention embarrassing the people in your town, and most of all the help of friends, family, and loved ones, and even strangers from halfway around the country who have your back no matter what. Who ultimately do the right thing no matter what.

  This is the story of Saving Prom. The tempest in teacup that rocked our small town and then the nation for a month or so. And it all started with something simple. Something that’s as American as mom and apple pie.

  A girl with a crush. Though this wasn’t any crush. No, this was a girl with a girl crush, and so I figure what better place to start than at the beginning?

  2

  At First Sight

  I know they always say you’re supposed to begin a story in the middle of the action, but for this I think I’m going to begin at the beginning.

  Besides, the action all started at a sleepover. I can still remember parts of it like it was yesterday even though we were in like fifth grade or something. A long time ago, is what I’m getting at. Fifth grade was the year when all the classes from a couple of different elementary schools in our county came together for the first time, so there were lots of new friendships being made and old friendships being broken up.

  Which meant lots of drama.

  The sleepover was hosted by Connie Thomas. Everybody who was anybody was there. At least in terms of the fifth grade. It was the sleepover event of the year, and naturally I got invited because Connie and I were best friends.

  We still are best friends. She just wasn’t a friend I crushed on. Then or now.

  I walked through the door and I was suddenly unsure of myself even though I’d been to her house hundreds of times before. Sure Connie and I had been friends for years, but I was suddenly seeing girls I’d never met before. Sure I recognized them from the halls, but they were all complete strangers.

  Some were watching a movie. A couple were rattling all the presents and trying to figure out what might be inside. They couldn’t decide whether one small box was a 3DS or maybe just a box of makeup.

  Talk about bridging the gap between elementary school life and middle school life right there.

  But there was one girl in particular who immediately caught my eye. Long blonde hair. Pretty green eyes. When I looked at her my breath caught in a way it never had before, which should’ve been my first hint there was going to be something very different about this girl.

  It was my first hint that there was going to be something very different about the gender I crushed on. That’s for sure.

  Connie had told me about crushes she had on guys in our class, of course. The kind of puppy love everybody starts feeling around that age. I just figured it wasn’t something that had hit me yet. I figured eventually I’d look at one of the guys in our class and decide that yeah, he was kind of cute after all.

  I figured I was just starting later than other girls because I was still firmly of the opinion that guys were all carriers of terminal cases of the cooties.

  Only when I looked at her, looked at Felicity, I knew there was something different about me. It was like a lightning bolt from a clear sky. It was as though clouds parted a
bove me and a shaft of light hit me while choirs of angels danced around my head singing that this was the girl for me.

  To say I was confused would be putting it lightly. I tried to work through exactly what that feeling meant as best as I could with a fifth grader’s understanding of the world.

  Girls weren’t for other girls. Girls were supposed to like boys, and boys were supposed to like girls. At least as far as I knew back then that’s how it was supposed to work.

  So why was my brain scrambling the program? What was wrong with me?

  Hey, what can I say? I grew up in a small town that wasn’t much different when I grew up from what it’d been decades ago. It’s the kind of place in rural America that just doesn’t change all that much over the years.

  Occasionally a building would fall down because people hadn’t kept up on the maintenance. Sure sometimes the landscape changed just a little, but mostly things were the same for me growing up there as it’d been for my parents and grandparents growing up in the same town.

  Well, scratch that. There’d been jobs and a chance at a good life when my parents and grandparents were growing up. Not so much these days.

  The upshot is it never occurred to me that I might be gay. That was something that happened out there. In the cities. Where there were weird people. Not something that happened to good girls like me in our small town!

  I knew I had to talk to this girl. I wanted to get to know her better, and yet at the same time I felt hesitant about going to introduce myself to her in a way that I’d never felt hesitant to talk to another girl before.

  It’s a good thing my brain wasn’t calling the shots. My feet carried me over to her even though my brain was trying and failing to put on the brakes.

  “Hi,” I said.

  I probably blushed as I said it. I can’t really remember even though I remember pretty much everything we said that day. It’s like those feelings I suddenly had froze everything in my mind. Kept it in my memory permanently.

  Meeting the girl of your dreams? That’s the kind of memory you want to replay in your head time and time again.

  “Hi!” she said, even then showing off the bubbly personality she always had. That always made her so popular.

  “What are you playing with there?” I asked.

  “I’ve got some Stacy dolls here,” she said. Then she leaned in, and this is something I’ll always remember. It was like she was letting me in on a secret. “But they’re not playing house or anything stupid like that.”

  “They’re not?” I asked.

  That blew my fifth grade mind. I distinctly remember that. It’s funny the things you remember from when you were a kid. It’s funny the way a child’s mind works.

  I distinctly remember having trouble conceiving of a world where somebody might do something other than playing house with a Stacy doll. After all, that was the whole point.

  “No,” Felicity said. “She’s on a secret mission to fight space aliens!”

  I giggled. I wasn’t sure what to think of this strange girl who sent Stacy dolls on missions to fight off space aliens, but I knew that I liked the idea.

  I’d like just about anything she suggested.

  “Sounds fun,” I said.

  “It is,” she said. “I’m Felicity. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Lily.”

  “Lily? Let’s be best friends Lily,” she said.

  Honestly I was already dealing with the beginnings of a crush that was confusing me and that I was already starting to deny even at that tender young age. Still, if she wanted to be friends then I was more than eager to be her friend. To be near her.

  That was the simplicity of making friends back then. You could declare yourself to be friends and that was that. There weren’t any games or the bullshit that would come soon enough.

  Not to mention all the confusion that was going to hit me when we got to middle school and everyone started feeling puppy love. Meanwhile all I’d feel was the terror of hiding deep in a closet I didn’t even know was closing in around me that day at Connie’s sleepover.

  I grinned. “Yeah, let’s be friends!”

  I couldn’t explain it, but I liked the idea of being friends with this girl. I wanted to get to know her better. At the time I just figured it was because I thought she was cool. It would be a few more tortured years, and puberty hitting, before I started to realize exactly what I’d signed up for when I decided to become best friends with Felicity.

  It would take all the way to my senior year of high school before I started to realize the full extent of what I’d been signing up for. When all of the prom nonsense started.

  But I wouldn’t go back and change a moment of it. No, that day at that birthday party is forever etched in my mind. The perfect day when I met the perfect girl and fell in love.

  Even if I didn’t quite realize that falling in love was what I was doing right then.

  It all started that day. Begin at the beginning, and all that.

  Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get on to the good stuff. The stuff I’m sure was the reason you bought this book in the first place. The innocent prom date that swept the nation and caused a whole bunch of people to make a mountain out of a molehill.

  Let’s talk about what led to Saving Prom.

  3

  Enchantment Under the Stars

  Announcement: Enchantment Under the Stars!

  The New Morton High School junior/senior prom committee is pleased to announce the theme for this year’s prom: Enchantment Under the Stars!

  Big changes are coming to prom for New Morton High School. We will be holding prom at an off campus location this year rather than in the gym.

  Stay posted for exciting new updates about when and where you can expect to enjoy a night of love and enchantment under the stars with that special someone!”

  4

  Dateless

  Felicity sat down at the table in the library and let out a mighty sigh that earned her an irritated look from the librarian on the other end of the massive room. She held out a flyer I’d seen and ignored walking in announcing a new prom venue.

  She slammed the flyer down on the desk to let me know just what she thought of the prom announcement.

  “You know you’re going to get us kicked out of here, right?” I asked.

  “What?” she said, smiling easily. She looked over at the librarian and smiled. Gave a wave.

  I waited for the explosion. Mrs. Simmons was not known as a friendly and bubbly person, but she actually smiled and waved back at Felicity. Felicity turned back to me and her smile wasn’t even triumphant.

  No, that was just the world she moved in. In her world people smiled and they naturally reacted to her bubbly outgoing personality.

  “I don’t see what you were so worried about,” she said. “Mrs. Simmons is a sweetheart!”

  She spoke a little louder than usual, but again Mrs. Simmons just smiled and shook her head. I gaped. Amazed.

  Though I suppose if anyone was going to melt the heart of the iron librarian it would be Felicity.

  “I don’t know how you do that,” I said.

  Though of course I knew exactly how she did it. She was just her natural happy self. All the time. She was one of those people who never got down no matter how bad things got.

  Not that things had ever really gotten bad for her. It was one of the many reasons why I was madly head over heels in love with her.

  Which, of course, meant I had problems of my own. Because I was madly head over heels in love with a girl who had no idea that I wanted to be something more than friends.

  Yeah, the plight of the gay kid who falls for their best friend. I know it’s a cliche, but what can I say? There’s a reason cliches exist, and in this case I was a walking stereotype carrying a hell of a torch for my best friend.

  “So what are you so frustrated about?” I asked.

  “The announcement, duh,” she said.

  “Oh,”
I said, glancing over the flyer. “So they’re moving prom out of the gym this year? Good for them.”

  To be honest I didn’t follow the prom news all that much. I always figured I wasn’t going, so why bother?

  At least I never figured I’d go to prom with the person I wanted to go with. Sure there’d been a couple of guys who’d asked me out last year, but I’d declined.

  “That’s not the problem!” Felicity said.

  Even when she was frustrated she managed to make it sound so bubbly and happy. It boggled the mind how she was able to pull that off.

  “So what’s the big problem?” I asked, wondering if I was going to regret asking.

  She leaned forward. Glanced around. Hissed out her next words as though she was keeping a secret.

  “Because I don’t have a date,” she said. “Ever since Terry broke up with me…”

  I frowned. Right. Terry. The guy she’d been dating for a couple of months. It’d torn me apart to see her actually getting serious with a guy.