Page 20 of The Prom Queen Project
“Down the hall to the left.”
“I’m gonna go for a quick smoke, too. I definitely need it after this.”
“Not unless you want my dad to greet you with a shotgun, you won’t.”
He puckered his lips. “Alright. Never mind, then.”
Elliot nodded tersely and rose to his feet, practically sprinting out of the library.
I chuckled and pulled his book toward me so that I could review his work while he was gone. As my eyes scanned the text, my face soured.Wow. His annotations…they were complete shit.
Under one of the paragraphs, in pencil, Elliot wrote ‘He feels sad.’
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mumbled
Erasing a few of the vague annotations he scribbled in the margins, I replaced his words with my own as I tried to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the story. As I flipped from one page to the next, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the small sketches Elliot had drawn along the edges of the text. It reminded me of a style similar to anime. There were several expressive half-body portraits with funny little captions. My favorite was one of a boy who looked like he was yawning with the phrase,‘Laziness is such an ugly word, I prefer selective participation’written underneath. I audibly laughed as I shut his book.
Pulling out my phone, I sat patiently waiting for Elliot to return so that I could tell him how much his annotations sucked. It was only when I found myself watching videos of random objects getting annihilated by some kind of crusher that I realized I had been scrolling on TikTok forwaytoo long.
I furrowed my eyebrows.
Did he get lost? The houseisn’tthat big. Eh…maybe he just fell into the toilet bowl and got stuck somehow.Only one way to find out.
I quietly crept down the hall toward the bathroom, pressing my ear against the door. It was silent. My eyes darted to the small slit at the base of the frame, but there was no light. With a gentle nudge, the door eased open, only for me to find that it was empty. I turned my head left and right, scanning the hall for any signs of where Elliot could be, and that’s when I saw it—my bedroom door slightly ajar. I was sure I had closed it after I got my book.What the fuck?I walked over cautiously, and as soon as I looked inside, my eyebrows shot up, nearly meeting my hairline. Sitting on my bed with his nose buried in my journal was none other than Elliot fucking Keller.
“Excuse you!” I fumed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“This is a stupid plan,” he replied flatly.
I snatched the journal out of his hands. “What makes you think you have the right to touch shit that isn’t yours? This isn’t your house, Elliot!”
“The name’s kinda stupid too.”
I looked down at my journal and saw it was open to the page that detailed my plan to win Prom Queen. My fists tightened as I slammed the journal closed.
“Why were you reading my journal?”
He shrugged. “Because.”
“Because? That’s it? So, what then? Am I supposed to believe that you just so happened to trip and fall right into my bedroom and then the journal spontaneously landed in your hands?”
“I honestly don’t care what you believe.”
My nostrils flared. “What the hell is your problem, Elliot?”
“Your plan! Your stupid fucking plan, Clarke!” he yelled standing up abruptly, yanking the journal away from me.
“My plan? Why the hell do you care about my plan to win Prom Queen?”
I was blinded by rage.
Elliot seemed so hellbent on trying to make this my fault when he was the one who invaded my privacy and was trying to mess with shit that wasn’t even his to mess with in the first place. I clawed at the journal, desperate to keep it away from his prying eyes, but Elliot was faster, pulling his arm back in the opposite direction.
“You know, you almost fooled me today, Clarke.”
“Fooled you?” I scoffed. “What are you talking about?”
“For a second, you almost made me believe you weren’t as shallow as everyone says you are.” He thrust the journal into my abdomen. “Turns out they were right.”
