Prom Ever After: Haute Date / Save the Last Dance / Prom and Circumstance

Five

“Hi.” Jessica Moriarty dropped into Armstrong’s seat in Brit lit.

Ash glanced up from her reading. “Yes?” She was hoping to have a chance to chat with Armstrong before class started—lately it felt like the only time they talked was online via Twitter or his blog comments. She certainly didn’t want drama-queen Jessica hanging around eavesdropping on their conversation.

“What are you doing?” Jessica wanted to know.

Ash tried not to roll her eyes. “Reading, Jess. For our assignment today. Have you finished it?”

“Nope.” Jessica continued to stare at her.

Ash tried to read another few lines of The Tempest and failed.

“Okay. What is it?” Ash closed her book. The staring was getting creepy.

“So...Sebastian Diaz.”

“Ah.” This was normal. A lot of girls liked Sebastian and most were afraid to talk to him. At least one or two girls asked Ash about him every week: whether he was single, liked them, et cetera. As if Ash were his keeper or something.

“Has he said anything about the prom?”

“Yep, he’s said a lot about it.” Ash was enjoying this now. Jess had never been particularly nice to her before. Ash was still annoyed at the “vintage” comment she’d made in the dressing room when Ash had been trying on the orange gown.

Jessica’s eyes widened. “OhMyGod, are you guys going together? Did you dump Armstrong?”

“No!” Ash looked around, hoping no one had heard. This was how rumors got started. “I’m going with Armstrong.”

“So...Sebastian doesn’t have a date yet?”

Ash sighed heavily, as if divulging a huge secret, and lowered her voice. “He’s still available.”

Jess smiled as though she’d just heard that her grandmother’s pecan pie was now available in the vending machines. She was from the South and was constantly lamenting the lack of good Southern food in Seattle.

“Do you think he’d go with me?”

“Um...” Ash pretended to think about it. Honestly, she had no idea if Sebastian even knew who Jessica was. That was probably for the best. Jessica wasn’t the sharpest stick in the forest, and Sebastian tended to only hang out with the AP crowd. He’d only had one girlfriend during high school, the one girl in Computer Club who’d moved away their junior year.

“You’ll have to ask him and see,” Ash finally said.

Jessica’s face fell. “Can you find out if he likes me?”

“I’ll let you know.” Ash picked up her book again when she saw Armstrong enter the room, exactly a second before the bell rang. “Go sit down before you get detention. Sebastian hates girls who get detention. His mother would disapprove.”

Jessica hurried to her seat and was replaced by Armstrong a few seconds later.

“So...your Facebook page hinted at something very interesting about your prom attire. Along the lines of something no one at this school had ever seen before? ‘Drafting class plus fashion unite’? Care to share a sound bite for my blog?”

Ash felt a rolling thrill down her back that Armstrong not only checked out her Facebook page, but also was curious about her cryptic status update from the previous night.

“You’ll see on prom night,” Ash said, she hoped, enigmatically.

“You tease.” Armstrong shrugged. “I like it. I don’t know what I’m wearing. It’ll be good, though.”

Lucky guy with that confidence. Despite her hopefulness about the idea she and Sebastian came up with last night, she didn’t actually have a plan for what would happen next.

Neither of them was exactly Van Gogh. Nor was either of them Coco Chanel. They needed to make a drawing, make it into 3-D, then get it into a real garment. Were the modifications even going to be possible? Who was going to do them?

* * *

Ash barged into Sonali’s room without knocking. Her sister barely glanced up from the huge book of oil paintings she was poring over.

“You’re supposed to be offended that I’m invading your privacy, kid.” Ash stood over her sister, who continued to sprawl across the carpet.

“Get out. You’re invading my privacy,” her sister said without looking up.

“Get ready. We need to go.”

“We have fifteen minutes,” Sonali mumbled. Ash and Sonali went to their weekly tae-kwon-do lesson on Wednesdays. Ash enthusiastically, since she loved punching and kicking out her aggressions for an hour. Sonali hated it, but Josh insisted both of his girls learn basic self-defense.

Ash reached over and tousled Sonali’s still-knotted hair.

“Want to tell me who did this?”

Silence.

“Okay. Want to do me a favor?”

“Nope.”

“Sure you do. Listen, so Sebastian and I came up with an idea to turn that lehenga of mom’s into an actual dress that I can wear to the prom.”

Sona said nothing.

“I need your awesome drawing skills to make a sketch for us that we can turn into 3-D.”

Sona raised an eyebrow. “You want me to do fashion design? You told me I dress like Dora the Explorer.”

“I don’t need you to come up with something from scratch, genius. Just make a sketch of the lehenga we started to modify downstairs.”

Sona shrugged. “I want a cut of the royalties if it becomes famous and Dolce & Gabbana wants to make it in bulk.”

Ash had to laugh. “Do you even know what royalties are? Do you even know who Dolce & Gabbana are?”

“Dad was watching Project Runway reruns all afternoon.”

Ash rolled her eyes. “Dad needs to get a job.”

“Royalties?”

“How about, five laps around the gym if you’re not ready in five minutes?”

“Let’s not go today.” Sona rolled over onto her back. “Let’s just stay here. Let’s make microwave s’mores instead.”

Ash sighed, putting her hands on her hips. “Do you want to ever get your green belt?”

“I don’t want to break a board in half.”

“It’s not that hard.” Ash didn’t understand how Sonali could be satisfied with her white belt after two years of training. Ash had sailed through the belts and now taught the more junior students with her brown belt.

“Why does no one understand that I’m a pacifist?” With a huge sigh, Sonali rolled to her feet. She started grabbing her gloves, helmet and uniform out of the closet.

“It’s about to become ten laps. And why do you know that word?”

* * *

Ash was assigned to lead three junior students in their sparring in class that evening. As a brown belt, she was allowed to use body contact in her sparring, though the white belts never were. Her job was mainly to make sure they used full force to throw their kicks and jabs, but always stopped short of actually killing each other.

Ash circled around Sonali, a timid, moppy eight-year-old named Jacob and a fiery little twelve-year-old girl with hair as bright as carrots, who was eyeing Sonali in a way Ash didn’t like.

“Okay everyone, the next move all of you should do is the jumping front snap kick.”

All three of them stood there and stared at her.

“That move sucks,” complained the little red-haired one.

“Let’s keep our opinions to ourselves and do the move,” Ash suggested.

They still just stood there.

“I mean today. Now. Do it now.”

All three halfheartedly hopped in the air, then threw out their right feet in the air in front of them.

“At someone. You’re hardly ever going to have to fight thin air in the real world. Here, Jacob, you throw a kick at me. Sona, throw a kick at...” Ash gestured toward the red-haired girl.

“Angela, duh.”

Ash resisted an eye roll. “At Angela Duh.”

“It’s just regular Angela. Duh.”

“Sona, throw a kick at Regular Angela.”

“That’s not my name!”

Everyone got into their positions.

“Okay, let’s circle.”

The four of them circled one another in pairs, Jacob and Sona throwing out timid jabs toward their opponents. “Now, jump snap kick. Go!”

Jacob’s little foot brushed the air near Ash’s hip. “Good job, Jacob!”

Ash looked to see if Sona had done the move yet. She hadn’t. She was still circling Angela.

“Come on!” Angela whined. “You’re so lame!”

Sona tilted on her side and did a tentative kick.

“Wrong kick, Sona. Jump and kick. Come on, just one,” Ash called out. Where was her sister’s head today?

“God, you suck.” Angela folded her arms. “Everyone is going to get their green belt before you, loser.”

Jacob did another jumping front snap kick gleefully as if to prove Angela’s point.

“Sona, the eight-year-old is doing better than you. Let’s see a real kick,” Ash said sternly. She was not going to let that bratty Angela get away with insulting her sister.

Sonali hopped back and forth, hands in a defensive posture, but staring at her feet.

What was Sonali’s problem? Ash was going to make her do the kick before the night was over.

“God, why don’t you just give up? Why are you even in here?” Angela dropped her defensive stance and stood with her hands on her hips. Ash could tell she was going to be a real pain in a few years.

“Sona, for the love of—” Ash started toward her sister.

Bam! Suddenly Angela went flying backward.

Sona stood there looking shocked. Jumping front snap kick success.

Ash didn’t know whether to applaud or scold. Sona had never, ever initiated contact in class before. Now, Angela sat on her butt five feet away, her face crumbling.

“Uh, no contact, Sona,” was all Ash could think of to say.

The head tae-kwon-do instructor blew the whistle. “No contact! Now back to circling.”

Wow. Ash was stunned by her sister’s sudden aggression for the rest of the hour.

After class, the sisters headed back to the locker room to change and wait for Josh to come pick them up. He didn’t like them to walk home from the studio after dark, and he certainly didn’t like for Ash to take Sona as a passenger on the Vespa.

“Did someone do something to you? Is that why you won’t walk home the normal way?” Ash asked as she sat down on a bench and started running a comb through her hair.

“Are you spying on me?” Sona slammed her locker shut, piercing Ash with an accusatory stare.

“Clearly! Because I have nothing else to do,” Ash snapped back. “I saw you come through the backyard. It’s like you were dodging the other kids on your bus. Were you? Is that where all this aggression is coming from?”

Sona gave her a suspicious look and started shoveling her uniform into her gym bag. “No.”

“God, I hope I sound more convincing when I lie.”

“You don’t.”

“Who’s messing with you?”

“I’m handling it, okay? In my own way. You don’t need to interfere in my life.”

“I never interfere!”

Sonali snorted.

“Yeah right. Like you never interfered when you beat the shit out of that Billy kid who was messing with Sebastian.”

“Sona! Language!” Ash was hardly offended, but she knew if Sona used that kind of language around Laila, she would be in deep trouble and be blamed for being a bad influence.

“It’s true, though. Remember how he used to trip Seb in the shower in gym class and call him a dirty—”

“Sona!”

“I wasn’t going to say it.”

Ash doubted it. “Why do you know all this, by the way? You were seven.”

“Seb told me.” Sonali went back to packing away her helmet and gloves. “He told me that somehow you just knew. He never said a word to you about Billy, but you just knew what was going on.”

It had happened at the end of eighth grade. Sebastian had grown quieter and quieter the whole year, starting when Billy Walters had transferred to their school—and to Seb’s gym class. Sebastian had always been shy, but that year he’d started to avoid even his nerd friends and hang out in the computer lab during lunch instead of going to the cafeteria.

Worst of all, he wouldn’t tell Ash why and would snap at her when she pursued it too fervently. Ash started to think it was because they had started getting teased for being boyfriend-girlfriend because they were together so much of the time.

Hurt that he was so offended at being called her boyfriend, Ash had started to pull away from him and had hung out with some of the more popular kids...Billy Walters included.

She’d started to walk to Pacific Place mall after school with her new friends to people-watch and make comments at random strangers, rather than going home to watch TV and do homework, as she always did with Seb.

It had been awesome to finally feel like she belonged. A total thrill to have every day be a total unknown. She knew she was getting set up for a good place in the high-school food chain and it felt great.

On the last day of eighth grade, she was walking down the hall with some of her new friends when she overheard Billy Walters and his cronies start slamming closed all the open lockers while kids were still trying to empty them out. She’d never liked it when Billy harassed people who hadn’t done anything to him, but up until then she’d never cared enough to stop him.

She’d looked down the hall and had seen Sebastian spot Billy and his gang as they started toward his locker. Sebastian hurriedly started emptying everything into his backpack. Ash heard Billy call out to him, by a very derogatory name.

Sebastian turned as white as Ash had ever seen him.

She’d looked from her former best friend to the group of guys who were now backing Billy as they stalked toward Sebastian.

She saw something she’d never seen before in Sebastian’s eyes. Fear. In an instant, she realized what had been causing Sebastian’s weird behavior that year. And she knew that she needed to do something to make sure Seb never felt that fear again.

She’d gone after the guys and stepped between them and Sebastian. She’d stood in front of Billy, half his size, and smiled sweetly. She’d whispered some nonsense under her breath. When he’d leaned down to hear what she was saying, she struck. She kneed him under the chin, punched him in the solar plexus, then flipped his entire body over her shoulder.

Just as she’d done to pass her green belt test for tae kwon do the week before.

After Billy’s body hit the ground in front of his shocked friends, she’d planted her left foot, clad in her first pair of high heels, in his chest and said quietly, “Bully someone again and see what happens.”

Her father had been proud of and impressed by her.

Her mother had been convinced she’d go to jail.

Billy had never again looked her in the eye.

Her so-called new friends never spoke to her again.

Sebastian had grown six inches that summer and had never gotten picked on again...but had never stopped trying to make it up to Ash ever since.

Six

“I am your hero, go ahead and admit it.” Sebastian dropped a giant gizmo that looked like an old-school soda machine on the drafting table.

“I don’t want a soda. They’re bad for you, anyway. This is what you had to show me?”

When Ash had received a text from Sebastian asking her to skip lunch and meet in the drafting classroom, she’d been expecting... Well, she didn’t know. But it certainly wasn’t a soda machine.

“Do you even know what this is? Hint—not a soda machine.”

“Slushees?”

“No.”

“Frozen yogurt?”

“Stop thinking about food!”

“I’m supposed to be eating curly fries right now—just tell me.”

“It’s a 3-D printer!”

A 3-D printer. Ash’s curiosity was piqued. “There’s such a thing? What does it print?”

“Stuff in 3-D.”

“Thank you, Wikipedia Brown. Like what stuff?”

“Like...” Sebastian paused for effect. “This sketch for example!”

He slapped down a gorgeous sketch of the lehenga modified and shown in a 3-D perspective using their CAD software. He’d spent the past three evenings working on it at Ash’s place after school with Sonali.

It was even better than Ash had imagined it would be. And so much better than the schoolfront they were supposed to be working on. She’d taken over the school project so Sebastian could focus on the dress, and she had to admit she’d been having a lot of fun with designing a new entrance. Too much fun, probably, since none of the ideas she’d had were very practical.

Sebastian logged in to his PC and sent the sketch to the printer and pressed a series of buttons.

“How do you know how to do this?”

“The internet has all the answers,” Seb replied as he made sure the printer was turned on. “We’ll see if it knows the right answers anyway.”

Ash watched in amazement as drops of some weird liquid started dropping, then accumulating and sticking together at the base of the strange machine.

“That’s plastic and acrylic. It’s going to shape the dress.”

Ash continued to watch. She could see the hem of the dress taking its shape. “I see it!”

Even Sebastian looked surprised at his handiwork.

“Wow, I never thought this would work just like in the YouTube video.”

“Where did you get it?” She squeezed Seb’s arm. He flexed it tightly in response under her fingertips. She held on for an extra second, loving how he always wanted to protect her.

“The drafting department just got it from a donation. This local start-up sank and had to start giving up its stuff. I promised Mr. Watkins I’d clean the auto-shop garage if I could borrow it during lunch.”

“Seb. No.” There he went with the heroics again. She needed him to know she was willing to do her own bargaining punishments. “I’ll do it. You’ve done enough for me.”

“Too late. You’re not the kind of girl who is ever going to clean a garage floor. Not while I’m around anyway.”

Ash opened her mouth to protest.

“Anyway, he thinks we’re printing our school sketch, so we need to do that, too. Why don’t you work on making sure it looks kind of finished?”

For once, Ash didn’t complain and started up the CAD software on her PC. She couldn’t believe Seb was doing garage cleanup for her. He wasn’t even getting anything out of this—it wasn’t his dress, or his date’s dress. Knowing Jessica, she’d chicken out and not ask and he would remain dateless. She still didn’t understand why he hadn’t asked anyone yet. Any girl would say yes.

Sebastian, however, didn’t seem put out by it at all. Instead, he seemed really happy and sat with his hands folded under his chin, watching the dress get created, an intensely focused expression on this face.

Ash, in the meantime, deleted her more lame ideas, such as a moat and drawbridge, from the CAD drawing of the school and verified that all of Sebastian’s great ideas were still in place.

She straightened out the pillars and archway and saved her work. It wasn’t great, but at least they wouldn’t fail. It was a hundred times better than the boring, boxy, ’70s architecture the school was made with right then anyway. When she turned back to see how the 3-D dress printing was going, she gasped.

The lehenga bore no resemblance to what it had been. It was halter-style, came in at the waist, left a sliver of midsection visible, and then flowed into a mermaid-tail skirt that just erupted into a bouquet of sparkly ruffles at the bottom.

Somehow, it was better than even the orange dress she’d been lusting over.

“Oh, Seb,” Ash gasped again as the last few drops of liquid solidified the neckline of the dress.

“Hit print.” He gestured pointedly at her PC. “We need to get the schoolwork done so you’re not doing garage cleanup with me. I want you to have a good weekend.”

Ash did as he asked and then went over to admire the dress again. “Can I touch it?”

“Let me make sure it’s not hot.” Sebastian reached out and touched it first. “Yep, all yours.”