Page 46 of The Promposal

Obviously not. “No.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why? He’s supposed to love me and ask me to go.”

My dad folded his arms and had his “I’m thinking deeply” eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound like you. You’ve always been the girl who stands up for what she wants. For what she thinks is right. Why wouldn’t you ask Jake about it?”

“I don’t know ... because look how things turned out for Ella. What if I ask him what’s going on and he breaks up with me?”

“So what if he does?”

“Dad!” He so didn’t get it. “I don’t want us to break up. I want him to ask me without having to nag him. I want us to go to prom and have a great time. It all just feels so ... so unfair.”

“Life is pretty much a massive dresser filled with drawer after drawer of unfair. And I’m sure he’ll officially ask you with one of those proposal things. Don’t count out a man in love. You’d be surprised at the lengths he’ll go to for a girl as special as you. And don’t forget that Jake loves you for you. For the girl who does ask questions. He loves the Tilly who stands up for herself when she thinks she’s being mistreated. You don’t have to change to be with him. And you shouldn’t be so worried about losing him that you end up losing yourself.” He tugged me over so that my head was against his shoulder.

Every word he said was so true. I knew better, and yet I had been choosing to live in fear. Maybe it was time for that to change. “You’re actually pretty smart about some stuff.”

“Hey, I’m kind of a relationship expert. I have been married six times.”

“That’s not a good thing, Dad.”

I sat in my room, thinking about my dad’s advice. I should have stood up for myself with Jake. I shouldn’t have let my worries or promposal obsession quiet my voice. I had been so worried about losing him that I had started losing pieces of me. And neither one of us should be happy about that.

My situation with Jake wasn’t the only recent time that I’d failed to speak my mind. I grabbed my laptop and found the interview with my mother. I listened to just the beginning, to get the reporter’s name and who she was with. After a quick Google search, I found her contact information. I fired off an email, telling the reporter that Pearl Li Mitani did have a daughter. Me.

I wasn’t doing it to be vindictive, but to take back something my mother had tried to take from me. My sense of self and who I was. I wasn’t someone she could brush under a rug and pretend like I wasn’t there. My mother had told the world that I didn’t matter enough to acknowledge. And if I wasn’t the daughter she wanted? That was fine. She most certainly wasn’t the mom I’d hoped for, either. I mean no Mothers of the Year had to worry about my mom giving them a run for their money. But I decided not to sit idly by and let her lie about me.

The reporter answered a few minutes later, which surprised me, because that meant she was really working late. The online magazine she was with was based in New York, which was three hours ahead of us. She asked me questions about myself and about my dad, and I answered them all as truthfully as possible.

Not to cause my mother pain, but to help ease some of mine. To reclaim my identity.

Now I needed to do the same thing with Jake. I had to be me, and if he didn’t like it, then I’d learn how to live with it. I’d even go to prom alone, if I had to.

I realized that being true to myself mattered more.

Ella blew into my room, like a massive clothing hurricane, throwing dresses on my bed. “Okay. I have enough formal dresses that I decided to take the top from this one”—she showed me a champagne-colored dress covered in sequins—“and the skirt of this one and make a new dress. It’ll be so cute.” The second dress had a black tulle full skirt. I didn’t get how it would work, but if anyone could make it look good, it would be Ella.

“And I was going to make you a dress out of my stuff, but we’re ...”

“Not the same size,” I finished. She was petite and tiny, and I was not.

“You don’t have hardly any formal or ball-gown type dresses, except for the ones Jake’s already seen. And that is not good. You need something new. So maybe we go shopping?”

We both knew the malls and formal wear boutiques had been picked clean. Girls from Malibu Prep who didn’t have couture dresses would buy every size of the dress they picked from the store, just to make sure nobody else showed up in it (the ultimate social humiliation). And now there wasn’t enough time to order anything online that would be worth wearing. Ella stood inside my closet, riffling through what I had, and I could tell from her discontented sigh that she wasn’t happy. As if she’d expected the perfect dress to jump out and solve all our problems.

She even kicked the wall out of frustration and let out a yelp of pain. She yelped again when some of the boxes on my shelves fell on her head. I ran over to see if she was okay.

Before I could ask, she had something in her hands, something from one of the fallen boxes. “This is it!”

It was the purple kimono my grandmother had sent me. “I’m not going to wear that.”

“Not like this. But I’m going to make it gorgeous. I mean, it’ll be a little matchy-matchy with your hair, but this will work. I’m going to make a new dress out of it, if that’s okay with you.”

I nodded. “Fine by me.” I’d been very worried about not having anything to wear to our downgraded prom.

She had a fixated and slightly scary look in her eyes. “It will be very Anna Niponica meets Christian Lacroix. Gorgeous.”

That meant nothing to me, but I continued to nod because that was the best way to soothe crazy people.

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