Free More Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

has a ridiculous ass, man. It’s crazy. It is a crazy ass,” my friend Dan said to me as we walked out of class one morning during our senior spring.
    “It is. She’s super cool, too. I was thinking of asking her to prom.”
    “I’m not trying to be a dick, but she’s not going to prom with you. She fucks college dudes.”
    “You know that for sure?” I asked.
    “Not really. I just made that up. But she seems like she fucks college dudes. Like, I could picture a college dude fucking her, but I can’t picture you fucking her.”
    I couldn’t picture me having sex with her either. Then again, I couldn’t really picture me having sex with anyone. I had never even touched a bare boob. Since my first kiss, I’d gone on a few dates, had a couple make-out sessions, and done enough dry humping to cause a rash on my thigh. But I was ready to move forward.
    “I’m just gonna ask her. If she says no, she says no. No big deal,” I persisted.
    “Yeah, but if she says no, then all the girls will find out, ’cause that’s the kind of stuff they talk about. Then, when you try and ask another one of them, they’ll know they’re sloppy seconds and say no.”
    I resented Dan’s pronouncement that he had “dropped a fuckin’ logic bomb” on me, but he had a point. I didn’t want to risk missing what could be the greatest night of my life by overshooting and asking someone out of my league. Within minutes, I’d scrapped my original plan to ask Nicole, and decided to ask someone I knew would say yes.
    That not-so-special someone was a classmate named Samantha, who was small and thin, with dark sunken eyes that made her look like a creature out of a Tim Burton movie. She and I were usually the first people to arrive at our English class, and she often came over to my desk and asked me how I was doing and whether I needed any help with my homework. She rarely talked to anyone else, so I was pretty sure she had a crush on me.
    The next day, I waited until our first-period class was over and caught up with her as she was walking out of the room.
    “Hey, Samantha,” I said, following her through the doorway.
    “Hey. What’s up?” she replied brightly as we strolled out into the quad.
    “I was wondering if you wanted to go to the prom with me,” I said confidently.
    “Uh, I . . .”
    As her voice trailed off, she started picking up speed.
    I tried to keep pace. “Did you hear what I said?” I asked between breaths.
    But then her walk turned into a jog, and then into a full sprint, zigzagging through the crowd like she was returning a punt in the NFL. Within ten seconds she was fifty feet ahead of me. I sprinted after her for a while, but she kept running, and ten seconds later she faked left, then made a hard right, and was gone.
    A few hours later, in sixth-period P.E., I sat in the bleachers of the football field with Dan and our friend Robbie, lacing up our running shoes for a jog, and explained what had happened.
    “What in the fuck?” Robbie said.
    “Yeah, she just took off running,” I said.
    “Why did you chase after her like a rapist?” Dan asked.
    “I just chased her. I didn’t do it like a rapist,” I snapped.
    Privately, I was surprised and hurt that Samantha wasn’t the shoo-in I’d taken her for. And with only nine days till prom, I was still dateless and starting to worry. Still stinging from the rejection the next day, I tried commiserating with a classmate who, I’d heard, was the only other guy in our class who didn’t have a date, a tough, stocky Filipino guy named Angel. Before fifth period, I turned to him and said, “Girls are so picky with this prom crap, huh?”
    “Maybe with your skinny ass. I got a date last week, homey. She’s from my neighborhood. My brother says she likes to fuck without rubbers,” he said proudly.
    I was officially the last man standing.
    “I’ll go with you,” said a quiet voice.
    I turned around to see Robbie’s ex-girlfriend, Vanessa, who sat