A Come to prom and we’ll figure your summer out after. I bet we can talk Mr. Garcia into letting you come.

Nah not feeling it C

FaceTime me from the dance floor C

It’ll be like I’m there except better cause I won’t be there!!! C

lol jk I’m done being an ass C

you guys have fun and we’ll do something special the three of us after graduation OK? C

Hellllooooo? C

Texting into the abyss here… C

To avoid the smothering pressure of dealing with the post–high school oblivion, I’ve pledged to stay in my room until I’m thirty. It’s only when my mom calls through my closed door that I realize my mistake in hiding someplace that basically has my name on it.

“You’re not tweezing your eyebrows in there, are you, Cham? Don’t change yourself for prom. I think the asymmetry is really—”

“Ahh, Mom!” I yell as she opens the door and a fierce ray of hallway light exposes me. “Stop it, I’m not going to prom.”

“What do you mean, you’re not going?” she asks, taking in the whole Cham-in-her-universe situation I’ve got going on: lights off, projector on, antenna up, and waiting for an extraterrestrial life-form to claim me as their own. “You can’t not go.”

I sit up and squint at her. She smells like organic lavender bleach. “In fact, I can. I am not going to prom.”

“Cham, you have to go,” my dad says, wheeling in behind her.

“No, it’s so fake.” I run a hand through my bedhead and estimate the nest in my hair to be perfectly sized for a squirrel. “It doesn’t have anything to do with our friends, which is basically all I got out of high school. It’s just a photo op, and I don’t wanna waste my time on things like that. You can’t do meaningless stuff your whole life. That’s pretty much what I learned in English this year.”

My dad frowns. “I always thought the Gill School was a little out there. Is it too late to send you to high school somewhere else?”

“Very funny, Dad.” I smile when I realize he’s joking. Today’s looking like a good day.

“Just because Gene isn’t your date anymore doesn’t mean you should miss out on such a big night,” my mom says sympathetically, as if all this has to do with a boy. “It’s a milestone.”

“Yeah, but just ’cause the yearbook lays out certain moments for us to be world-rocking or whatever doesn’t mean they are.”

“But they could be,” she prods.

“I’m still not going.”

My dad parks his wheelchair in front of my dresser and holds up his hands. “Well, I’m still going.”

I summon some patience. “You’re not going to prom, Dad, remember? You did that a long time ago. Ice ages ago, probably.”

“No, I mean, in life.” He looks me in my eyes. “There’s no cure, but I’m still going.”