“Are you, like, going to the prom with him?” Raven asks me when I approach.

“With who?” For a minute this wild, irrational hope takes over that Raven knows something I don’t, that Bo’s about to pull in with his truck and take me to the prom like I’m Cinderella.

“Oh, Miss Innocent,” one of them says.

“Well,” says another. “We just want you to know that if you go to the prom with Junior—” I reach for a beer from a case on the ground.

“We think it’s unethical,” Raven finishes. “She used to be your friend, you know.”

When she says that word, I realize that’s what I’ve been waiting for, that judgment. Guilty as charged. It’s kind of a relief to finally hear it, instead of all the help and understanding. Inside my head, I hear a noise of falling glass. It feels like my insides have turned to glass and then shattered. A sound like a waterfall continues in my ears. It lasts for a while. I never get to the beer. I just stand there with my hand outstretched listening to the sound in my head. I walk away from the cheerleaders. Junior is still in the backseat of his car. His math book is open on his knees. I get in next to him. He’s excited to see me.

“Hey,” he says. “I think I got it! It was the plus-or-minus part that screwed me up. I never knew you were supposed to get two answers.”

I watch him do a few problems. “You know,” I tell him eventually. “You’re actually pretty good at this stuff. If you concentrate on the math and forget about the word problems, you’ll probably pass.”

“Don’t even mention word problems to me,” he says. “I have bad dreams about word problems.” He looks at me. “You don’t believe me, do you?” he asks. Junior Davis has beautiful blue-green eyes, the color of the sea. He looks back down at the math. I put my hand on his head. His hair, which I had always thought was wiry, is actually very soft.

“Hey, Junior, will you go to the prom with me?” Everyone will hate me, but I deserve it.

He stops calculating and considers. “Will you give me another kiss?”

“No. But I’ll help you pass your math final.”

“Okay,” he says. “I was planning on asking you, anyway.” The look on his face is so sincere that I can tell the thought has never once crossed his mind.

Mom is too busy to take me to get a prom dress, and so Scot takes me. Mom tells him to spend some money, and we get a skinny, shiny red thing. Allegra helps me put my hair up, and sure enough, the Serena impersonator looks much better than the real one ever did.