‘No, you do. Your features are more from me. Well, more from your grandma. Same difference. But you and your dad have that same look in your eyes.’

I smirked despite myself. ‘What look?’

She put a warm hand on my cheek and let it sit, looked through me instead of at me. ‘Like you know too much.’

Leo arrived when he said he would, pulling up the driveway in his second-hand Buick. I met him there before he could even ring the doorbell.

‘Look at you!’ he said, clutching a little plastic container with my corsage.

He wrapped me in a hug that felt tighter than usual, and I breathed him in: he smelled like some generic dude cologne, but it was comforting regardless. ‘Thank you for everything,’ I said.

Mom made us take pictures in the front yard, which I wasn’t happy about but Leo relished, positioning me like a mannequin into all manner of awkward prom positions.

We did go to Ol-eev Gar-dain two towns over where we gorged ourselves on unlimited breadsticks and when the waitress called us a lovely couple, we didn’t correct her.

And by the time we got to the high school, I felt I had loosened up. I told Leo this.

‘It was probably the breadsticks,’ he said.

We joined the horde of kids all funnelling in, moving like a school of fish, like one sentient mass. ‘Where are all the black people?’ Leo asked, after scrutinizing the crowd. ‘Am I in Get Out? Is this actually an auction?’

‘Pleasant Hills, dude.’

‘Mmph. Pleasant indeed.’

We made our way through the entrance, past a parent-run bag check. Bea’s mom said hello to me but gave both of us a double take.

Balloons dotted the floor and hovered above us; fairy lights flickered along the walls, whole strings of them strewn everywhere, across the ceiling, on the floor, along the tables.

I was looking for June at first. Of course I was. I kept thinking I saw her, but no one else had hair like her so really I was just kidding myself. Leo noticed I kept looking, so once we’d filed into the gym, which was packed and loud and full of blacklights, he physically turned my head to face him, and said, with no ounce of romance or misunderstanding or malice, and his hands on my face, ‘Hey. Be here with me, now.’

At first it felt like a betrayal.