Page 43 of The Promposal

Ella repeated Mercedes’s name and then used some words I had no idea she even knew. Of the four-letter variety.

Some part of my brain heard Victor ask, “Why didn’t you tell me?” but mostly all I could think about was that Mercedes had done this. I knew she was up to something, and here was the proof. What did she care if she ruined prom? Ever since Ms. Rathbone had caught Mercedes sneaking into the masquerade ball after she’d been suspended, Mercedes had been banned from all dances. Including prom.

And I guessed if she didn’t get to go to prom, no one did.

“We just have to find somewhere else to have it,” Ella said. “We have all the other elements in place. The decorations, the DJ, the crowns for prom king and queen—”

“Not the food,” I reminded her.

“Okay. We need food. But Shoshana’s dad owns a bunch of restaurants. Maybe he could get us some stuff to serve last minute?” she asked in a hopeful voice.

“I’ll call him right now,” Shoshana said, walking over to the corner of the room.

“It’s prom and wedding season,” I told Ella. “We’ll never find somewhere else to hold it.”

“Maybe we should call Dad.”

That was like the one thing we couldn’t do. “We can’t go to the adults asking for help. Not after we made such a big deal about them not coming.” It was bad enough that Shoshana had to ask her father for help on the food, but we didn’t have a choice there. We would find a place to hold the prom, on our own.

Ella clapped her hands together. “Okay, everyone get on their phones. Call around to hotels, restaurants, any place that has a space big enough for us to hold our prom in a fifty-mile radius.” All the kids around us did as she asked.

Except Mindi and Victor, who left. Which seemed unfair, given that she’d caused this mess. The least she could do would be to help us get out of it.

My sister and I watched them go, and then Ella said, “I am going to find that Mercedes ... and ... and rip off her head with my bare hands!”

I’d never heard her threaten someone with physical harm before. Me? I did it all the time and had even carried through with it at least once (although Jake claimed it was twice). Maybe if Ella was rubbing off on me, I was rubbing off on her, too. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. “There’s no point. If you rip off one head, she’ll just grow two more to replace it.”

“Why would she even do this?”

I’d long ago given up trying to figure out why Mercedes Bentley did anything. “You know how it is for her. The end justifies the mean. I’m sure she’s off somewhere doing a victory dance or slaughtering a goat or whatever it is that makes her happy. I told you that I thought she was up to something.” I just had no idea it was something this big and this destructive.

“Just like the triangle opposite the hypotenuse.”

Huh? “You know I don’t know what that means!”

“It’s means you’re right.”

I sighed. “Fat lot of good that does me. I shouldn’t have just blindly trusted Mindi. I should have followed up. Verified her information.”

“You couldn’t have known this would happen.”

“But prom is one of those things people remember most from high school, and now it’s totally screwed up.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “We can fix this. Don’t give up. Don’t let Mercedes win.”

“Don’t let her win?” Ella didn’t get it. “Mercedes has already won.”

That became even more evident a half hour later when we all had to admit defeat. Ms. Monson had been right. There was nothing available. Everybody was booked solid. Some places even laughed at us for trying to schedule a venue that big with such short notice.

“Maybe we can have it at somebody’s house. Lots of people here have big enough houses,” someone in the back volunteered.

It was a valid suggestion and probably our only option at this point. That didn’t mean I had to like it. “Having it at a student’s house feels like admitting to the alumni that we couldn’t pull this off.”

Ella shook her head. “We could pull this off. We almost did. We were just sabotaged, and nobody could have predicted that.”

I should have expected it, given what I knew about She Who Shall Not Be Named.

The door flew open, and Victor Kim stood there, looking a bit angry. Which surprised me. I’d never seen Victor displaying an emotion before. “You don’t have anywhere to hold the prom now, right? So I have a proposition for you. My family has a ballroom. A huge ballroom. My mother’s a diplomat, and they entertain constantly. Our ballroom was featured inArchitectural Quarterlya few months ago.”

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