“Oh crap! My other dress. I have to return it tomorrow by ten am or they’re only going to give me store credit. My mom’s going to kill me. She told me to take it back weeks ago.” She looked up the swooping staircase in her house.

“I can take it back. It’ll give me a break from my prison sentence.”

“You’re the best.” She hugged me and came down with the dress on a hanger with a plastic bag over it.

Their limo dropped me off at my house on the way to the all-night dance extravaganza.

Back at home, there was a twinge in my chest as I watched them drive off. I couldn’t say I was sad to be missing an overpriced rite of passage that most people said was overrated to begin with, but a part of me wondered what it would have been like.

I went back inside and sent Dare a text.

He’d been quiet all day.

I’d thought I didn’t have the words to talk him through any of what he was going through, but the words came to me right along with a melody. I rushed upstairs and finger-picked the strings, keeping them quiet, and scribbled down all the thoughts I wasn’t brave enough to tell him.

My mom’s footsteps came up the creaky steps. I slid the guitar under my bed with the heel of my foot. She rapped on my bedroom door and pushed it all the way open.

“You’re still technically grounded.” Her arms were folded over her chest.

I looked back down at my notebook. A new song had been gnawing at my chest from the time my head hit the pillow beside Dare. “I know.”

“But I do know how important these high school milestones are.” She dropped her arms and held out one hand.

Out of the shadows, Dare stepped into the doorway of the room beside my mom—in a tux.

I shot up from my bed. “Dare! You’re here. Where have you been? Why are you here?”

“I’ll take these one at a time. I went on a last-minute college visit.”

A college visit. I grinned stupid-wide at him, so excited his dreams might still come true. “You could’ve told me.”

“I know, but I didn’t want to jinx any of it. And for your last question…I came to take you to prom.” He held out a corsage.

Mom clasped her hands to her chest, looking on the verge of tears.

Relief that something terrible hadn’t happened to him, swamped my urge to shake him for dropping off the face of the Earth. I looked down at myself. “They’re probably not going to let me in wearing this.”

He looked to the hanger on my bedroom door.

My jaw fell open. “You planned this.”

“Piper helped.” He pulled the plastic off the dress and there was a note pinned to the hanger.

There were three words on the paper in her big, looping handwriting. No excuses now!