Page 14 of The Promposal

Ella opened the fridge and peered between Jennifer’s health food. I couldn’t blame her for looking in such a weird spot. When Dad was distracted, as he usually was, he tended to do strange things. Like stick cell phones next to kombucha.

“I know I didn’t have it at cheer practice because I wanted to film London doing her backflips to show her how she twists to one side, and I couldn’t find it.”

“Cheer practice?” I echoed. “Aren’t you done with that?”

“I was helping to run the clinic for the girls who want to try out for next year’s team.”

Of course she was.

Ella grabbed her purse and dumped the entire contents onto the kitchen table.

“See? Doesn’t that feel better? Making a mess?” I asked, but Ella ignored me. I was always trying to get her to come over to the noncleaning side, but she loved things being spotless. She sifted through the dumped out contents, but it was plain that her phone wasn’t in her purse.

“Maybe I left it at school. I’ll check with the office tomorrow to see if anyone’s turned it in.” She let out a sigh of defeat and sat down. “Now what?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “We could watch a movie.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen all the movies.” Her grumpy demeanor was so unlike her.

“All the movies?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m very industrious.”

It couldn’t have been too bad if Ella could still joke with me. “We could sit and talk about how much our boyfriends suck.”

She shook her head. “A movie. Something to make me forget about”—she waved her hand around—“all this other stuff. We can even watch a John Hughes one.”

“Seriously?” Ella loved horror movies and almost never watched rom-coms with me. “You are the best, you know that?”

“Sometimes. And you should take this as proof of how much I love you that I’m going to watch another one of your uber-romantic movies. Again.” She stood up and linked her arm through mine. “Which one do you want to watch?”

“NotPretty in Pink.” That was mostly about going to the prom. “And definitely notSixteen Candles.”

“Agreed.”

I did not need the reminder of Jake’s former romantic gestures.

The next day I sat in my US history class, wanting to stab out my eardrums so that I could no longer listen to the inane presentation on the Revolutionary War by Scott and Mercedes. They made it so boring I wished the British had won just so that this presentation would never have happened.

I watched the clock, and I swear the second hand was going backward.

Then finally, finally, finally they finished, and I let out a long sigh of relief. Ms. Robinson stood up and said, “Er, thank you, Scott and Mercedes, for that ... for that presentation. We have about fifteen minutes left, so we’re going to break up into our small groups to work on the finishing touches for your presentations. If you’ve already presented, you can spend the rest of class reading quietly in your seat.”

Ella and I hadn’t gone yet, and she pulled a desk next to me so that we could talk about Pearl Harbor.

We’d been assigned our topic, and the irony of the name of the Japanese invasion during World War II having the same name as my mom was not lost on me.

That prickly neck feeling was back, and I looked up to see Mercedes with a malicious look in her eyes. I mean, more so than normal. She gave me a weird grin, again like she knew something I didn’t and was enjoying the evilness of whatever she’d done.

It made me nervous.

Which was probably the whole point. To psych me out and upset me. Determined not to let her do it, I looked at the notebook Ella had pulled out of her backpack, filled with our notes about the battle.

Despite my resolution, the uneasy feeling remained.

“Why are you fidgeting like that?”

I gestured toward Mercedes. “Just wondering when she’s going to unhinge her jaw and finish us off.”

---