Free Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson Page B

reading. What a shock.
    I cleared my throat, but nobody looked up. They just stared at their books or their newspapers, turned the pages, and stared some more. Was there a special Englishy-password I needed to use? Maybe they didn’t speak to students until they were on the clock.
    I stood there looking like a total putz until Ms. Neary, who gave me a D+ on my Our Town poster in ninth grade, put her book down and said, “Is there something wrong, Ashley?”
    “Umm, I want to talk to youse about the prom,” I said. (Bad start. These were English teachers. I should talk right.) “I mean, I would like to talk with you, all of you, you all, about the prom.”
    The cute guy teacher who had played basketball at Villanova lowered his newspaper. His hair was still wet from the shower. Made me wish for a second there that I was interested in World Lit or Amer Lit Heroes, because he taught them.
    “Prom’s back on?” he asked.
    “We think so,” I said. “But we need your help. Want some pastry? They’re killer.”
    Nat was right. Once the sugar kicked in, the English teachers were nice as could be.

65.
    The third item on my list was a meeting with Vice Principal Gilroy to discuss security.
    That had to wait. Now that I was a Goody Two-Shoes, I had to go to class.

66.
    Our Math sub was an oldish guy with gray hair that was too long in the way that let you know his wife dumped him and he was trolling for a girlfriend. He told us he gave up his career as an insurance agent to become a teacher because he wanted to give something back.
    Why he thought being a Math sub gave anything back to anybody was beyond me.
    He asked us what we were studying. Twenty people gave twenty different answers. He offered to calculate how much life insurance we should have. That didn’t go down too good. Finally he said if we were quiet, we could do whatever we wanted.
    Big Mike raised his hand and asked for a pass so he could go to the nurse. Said he was having ligament problems in his knee. The sub asked how he hurt himself, and Big Mike said it was a football injury. This could have been true, because Big Mike played football in middle school, but I heard he hurt his knee stealing a keg from a frat party. The sub wrote the pass.
    I laid down my head on my books. I was thinking I should ask my aunt Linny to light a candle at St. Luke’s for the prom. She should light one for me, too, because I was sure I had a brain tumor. A tumor would explain why I agreed to help Nat. It might actually make life easier. If I had a brain tumor, Gilroy couldn’t make me serve all those detentions. TJ couldn’t bug out on me. It would bum out my brothers, though. Well, not Shawn, but Steven and Billy would miss me when I died. I hoped Ma would pick a coffin that looked like wood, instead of a tacky white one.
    Then I realized planning my funeral was sick.
    Hector Gonzalez raised his hand and asked the sub for a pass to see Mr. Kotlyar, the Physics teacher. Hector didn’t take Physics, but the sub didn’t know that, so he wrote the pass. Hector waved to us as he left the room.
    One by one, the other kids raised their hands. They needed a pass to see the guidance counselor about a college essay, or to make up a test they missed last week. Dalinda said she had to see her daughter in the preschool. That was a good one, because Dalinda didn’t have any kids, and our school didn’t have a preschool. But she got her pass. The stories kept coming, the sub kept smiling and writing out passes. The door opened, closed, opened, closed, and the room got emptier and emptier until it was just me and a couple guys in the back who were dead asleep.
    The sub whistled softly and pulled a newspaper out of his briefcase.
    And then it hit me.
    “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” I asked.
    “Excuse me?” he said.
    “Letting everybody go. They were all playing you.”
    “Yep.” He unfolded the paper and turned to the page that had the story about Miss Crane’s