Page 44 of The Promposal

“That was your house?” Ella said, her eyes going wide.

Victor nodded.

She turned to me and murmured, “It’s gorgeous. As nice as any hotel. It wouldn’t seem sad if we had it there.”

“It will still be a glorified house party.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” she whispered back.

“I’ve already called and cleared it with my parents, and they said we could use it.”

“And what is it you want in return?” I asked. Because he was making it obvious he wanted something.

“I know it’s going to be hard to forgive Mindi, and I’m hoping that by using my house it might help out a little in that area. What I’m asking is that you don’t all hate her without at least considering things from her side. You guys don’t know what it’s been like for her growing up in her house, how strict her parents really are. I just need you to try and see things from her point of view.”

What I wanted to do was make a really sarcastic retort, but I bit my tongue. I thought about me and Jake. About what I would do if my father didn’t allow us to date, despite me loving him the way that I did. There probably wasn’t much I wouldn’t have done to be with him. I wouldn’t have destroyed a prom for the entire school, but I was capable of doing something maybe just shy of that so that we could be together.

And even if Mindi was obnoxious and I was still really furious with her, Victor’s request wasn’t an unreasonable one.

I stood up and offered him my hand, sensing he’d appreciate the formality of it. “Done.”

A hint of a smile shadowed his mouth, and then it was serious Victor again. “Thank you. She really is sorry about everything.” With a nod, he left, presumably to keep comforting his backstabbing girlfriend.

Try to see it from her point of view, my conscience reminded me.

“Wow. Being in love really has changed you,” my sister remarked. “It wasn’t too long ago you would have torn that girl apart verbally, up one side and down the other.”

“Mindi is just a pawn. Mercedes is the one who masterminded this whole thing.”

“We should turn her in. Go to Ms. Rathbone with Mindi’s confession.”

If her parents were as bad as Victor and Mindi said, not much good would come from involving Mindi further. Especially if Mercedes decided to ignore their arrangement because Mindi turned her in. “If we do that, Mercedes could go to Mindi’s parents. I don’t think any of us want that. The problem is this time, Mercedes was much more careful. She got somebody else to do her dirty work. And it would just be Mercedes’s word against Mindi’s. There’s no proof. No paper trail.”

“Paper trail ...” Ella’s voice trailed off as she reached for her phone. “Like the text we think she sent to Trent. That could be proof. And what if she—” She started scrolling and then suddenly gasped. “Oh no!”

“OMB, what is it?” I couldn’t take much more bad news.

“It wasn’t just the prom itself that Mercedes ruined. Look.”

All I saw was a text message. “What is it you want me to see?” I asked my sister.

“This is a text sent to our seamstress. Telling her that prom has been canceled and to sell our dresses. That we didn’t need them or want them anymore. And this is her reply saying that she did. She sold both of our dresses to a blonde teenage girl.”

My throat closed in on itself. “What?” My dress. My perfect, beautiful, silver, sparkly princess dress was gone?

“And there are more texts. To the hairstylist and makeup artists. Also canceling our appointments. Our limo is gone, as are our reservations for dinner.”

“I need to sit down.”

“You are sitting down.” Fire blazed in Ella’s blue eyes. It was one thing to attack her and say bad things, because she was a very turn-the-other-cheek kind of person. But my sister did not tolerate beauty and fashion interference. “And worst of all? All these texts were sent at the same time as the one breaking up with Trent. Mercedes has to be responsible for this. Who else would do it?”

No one else would. Nobody else hated us the way she did. It was the only thing that made sense.

“She took your phone and used it to destroy your relationship with Trent and then canceled all our prom stuff?” It was so far outside the realm of normal that I didn’t know how to react.

Or maybe I was in shock.

“What are we going to do?” Ella asked.

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