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“Let it go,” Josh murmured. “She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”
Ash disagreed. Sona was like a timid baby deer outside the house... That was one of the main reasons their parents sent Sona to a very small private school for gifted artists.
“Why don’t you come to the mall with me? You’ll see what I’m talking about.” Ash turned her attention back to her father. “Please? Please, please, please? I’ll write the band’s next song.”
“Your mother’s the decision maker on this one, love. I’m sorry.”
“Next two songs.”
“No.”
“Daaaaaaaaaaad.”
“Some cheese with that whine?”
“Dad! Come on. Why don’t we have a gig and charge cover this weekend? We can play the new stuff. I swear I’ll learn it fast. We’ll earn enough for the dress in a night.”
The best thing about having Josh Montague home full-time was that there was more music in the house than ever before. He and Ash had started a band with a few other neighbors and were in the process of working on their first real set to play at the next neighborhood barbecue.
“I can pretty much assure you that giving people opportunities is more important than any dress. Ever.” Josh had that stern note in his voice, signifying that he was no longer playing.
Ash sighed. Of course that was true. She’d even come up with the idea to donate any gig money they made to the inner-city school Josh had grown up in.
Josh always said he owed his life to the music program at his high school. Many of his friends had ended up in juvie...or worse. Josh had spent his teenage years learning every instrument from piano to guitar to the French horn. He vowed to always give back whatever he could, whether it was a little or a lot.
It had been very little the past year due to the family’s financial situation. Josh had left his small tech company the previous year when it had started to go under. He’d been actively job hunting, but the opportunities were slim in an industry that was obsessed with kids out of college, not “people old enough to have kids in college.”
He’d spent the last year writing apps for phones to earn some income, while her mother’s law firm had been cutting out billable hours for the attorneys. Money had been tight on just her mother’s salary, especially considering Ash’s Seattle Academy tuition and Sonali’s specialized art school. The family’s lifestyle was far different from what Ash was used to...or from what all of her friends at school had.
Ash had heard her parents fighting—actually fighting—for the first time in her life over their financial worries. She understood their reasons for not wanting to spend a lot on the prom...but she knew she could find a way to pay her mother back for the dress if she only had a chance.
“Prom is a night when women are objectified. I think I’ll boycott mine,” the know-it-all piped up again, as if someone had asked for her opinion. “I’d rather give that money to an education program for young artists.”
“Quiet, or I’ll beat you, too,” Ash ordered.
“Don’t maul your sister. House rule number two,” Josh said automatically, without looking up from his laptop screen.
“You actually went to the prom, Dad.” Ash directed her tantrum at her father. “How much did your date’s dress cost? I bet it was over a hundred dollars even in the ’70s!”
“Hey, hey, hey. My prom was in the ’80s, thank you very much. And Jeannie made her dress with her older sister’s help. It was a big puffy yellow thing. Like one of those marshmallow-chicken things you get at Easter. Do you want me to call her and ask if you can borrow it?”
Ash shot eye daggers at her father.
“Just being helpful.” Her father shrugged. “You’ve got to get with the program before the program gets you.”
God, her parents were dorky.
“You people are seriously going to drive me crazy,” Ash muttered as she grabbed her coat. “I’m going to Sebastian’s!”
Three
Ash glared at Sebastian in the middle of their drafting class the next day. He was still completely unconcerned about the prom situation, as he’d been the previous evening.
“I should just tell Armstrong I can’t go with him. I mean, why drag it out? I should call it off now so he can find someone else. Someone with a dress instead of some belly dancer–looking costume.”
Sebastian was focusing a little too hard on their drafting project still. No answer.
She knew she was being kind of a brat, but couldn’t help herself.
“I should just call it off right now.”
Still no answer.
“Like today.”
She sighed loudly.
Sebastian finally glanced up from the giant sheet of paper he’d been leaning over.
“Oh, is it time for drama? Is it my turn? Noooo, Ash, you can’t. You and Armie-boy belong together. Like forevvvvver.”
Did no one have sympathy for her plight? Did no one understand that she was actually not going to be able to go to the prom this year—her senior year? She wouldn’t have prom pictures, she wouldn’t have the first dance, she wouldn’t have that magical night she’d be talking about for years to come with her own kids and grandkids. And most importantly, she wouldn’t have another chance with Armstrong.
“I don’t like you,” was all she could think of to say to Sebastian.
“You love me. Now, we need to do our assignment. What do you think? How many watchtowers, if any?”
“I don’t care.”
“Hey, you wanted the front of the school. You at least have to choose if you want a watchtower or not.”
“I want a moat.” Ash stuck out her lower lip. “And alligators. And that dress!”
Sebastian sighed. “Just have the tantrum and let me know when you’re done.”
Ash glared at him.
Sebastian ignored her and went back to sketching pointy roofs. He wrinkled his forehead and chomped down hard on the corner of his mouth as he worked expertly with the protractor. He looked cute today, in a dark blue University of Michigan T-shirt that clung well to his arms, a fact every girl, freshman through senior, had clearly noticed.
He was easily one of the cutest guys in the senior class. He knew it, but he also knew he was smart. He’d already gotten accepted into Michigan’s honors program and amazingly, was still invested in keeping his GPA a 4.0.
“You can fail and repeat senior year and have another shot at the prom.” Sebastian could tell she was not working without even looking up. “Get to work.”
The small, twelve-person drafting class had a joint assignment. Each team of two was to choose a section of Seattle Academy to redesign into whatever style they wanted. The second part of class would be to take the flat sketches, make them into 3-D models and actually build a miniature version of the school redesign. The redesign would be displayed in the front entryway of the school to show off their skills.
Other teams had predictably chosen the gym or the cafeteria, which would’ve been much easier. Ash had insisted on choosing the front of the school—saying it needed to look majestic and haunting all at once. Plus she wanted her work to be the thing people saw first when they looked at the miniature. So far, Sebastian had done all the actual drawing work, while Ash had tossed out opinions every once in a while when things looked off. She was the creative force. Every team needed one.
When Sebastian still didn’t respond to her threat of not going to the prom, Ash grabbed her pencil and within minutes had replicated the dress on the corner of their sheet of paper.
God, it was beautiful. She darkened the lines of the cutouts on the bodice. She didn’t care what her mother said, the bodice was beautiful and it had looked great on her.
“How goes it?” Mr. Watkins’s voice caused Ash to drop her pencil and let out a small scream. “Sorry, Ash, didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Uh...” Ash tried to cover up her dress sketch with her arm. The drafting teacher was very young and pretty cute, and generally gave interesting assignments, but he was also very detention-happy. If anyone was caught texting, tweeting, on Facebook, taking selfies, thinking about taking selfies or generally doing anything else but the assignment, he immediately gave them weekend detention, which meant cleaning the garage for auto shop, which he also taught. She did not want detention.
“What’s this?” He turned the paper around to see what Ash had been working on.
“Oh. That.” Sebastian cut in before Ash could make up a lame excuse. “Ash and I were having a discussion. An argument, let’s say.”
Mr. Watkins’s eyebrows rose. “About some ugly dress?”
“It’s not ugly!” Ash’s mouth dropped open. “You guys are mean!”
Sebastian grinned. “I was attempting to prove to my lab partner here that there are so many similarities between classic drafting professions such as architecture and...fashion.”
“There are not.” Ash rolled her eyes, not playing along, as she assumed Seb would want her to.
“Actually...” Mr. Watkins tilted his head. “I’d like to hear what Sebastian has to say on this one.”
Ash looked to Sebastian. “Let’s hear the crazy.”
“Drawing flat sketches. Visualizing them in 3-D. Being able to put pieces together that fit and stay that way over a course of time. It’s architecture,” Seb insisted. “Look at the dress Ash is wearing for example.”
Both of them looked. Ash self-consciously smoothed down the puffy skirt of the navy cap-sleeve dress with tiny white bicycles printed all over it.
“The flat sketch of the sleeves—” Sebastian pulled the sleeve away from Ash’s arm “—would look something like this.” He quickly sketched a triangle. “But when it was modeled in 3-D, it would look more like this.” He made the triangle into a pyramid. “And the three pieces of fabric to make the sleeve would have to be sewed to make the pyramid. Fashion is an engineering problem.”
“Mr. Diaz, I’m impressed by your knowledge of both fashion and architecture.”
“Thank you.”
“Carry on, you two. But please save your debates for when you’re done with the assignment.” He walked away.
Ash breathed a sigh. No scrubbing oil off the floor of the garage this weekend!
“Thanks for the save. Though the excuse was such BS. I can’t believe he fell for that.” Ash picked up her pencil again and started to actually work on the watchtower of their castle entranceway.
“It wasn’t a save.” Seb was being serious. “Your dad has Project Runway on 24/7 in your house, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Ash gave him a so-what look. Her dad had become oddly obsessed with any show where people gave up everything to pursue their life’s dreams. She was pretty convinced he’d run off and audition for The Apprentice one of these days.
“I’ve been absorbing that show while I’m at your place. So much of it sounds like the stuff we learn in here.”
Sebastian had been building a website for his family’s church and had been working on it mostly out of Ash’s house so he could get Josh’s input on design. Apparently he’d been learning a thing or two, however wrong, about fashion, as well.
Ash leaned over and gave Sebastian a side-hug. “You’re cute when you’re wrong. But thanks anyway.”
“I’m not wrong!” Sebastian looked insulted.
“I love having a guy as a best friend, but seriously Seb. Fashion...definitely not the same as some boring old building!”
* * *
“Hey.” Ash tried to sound casual as she slipped into a seat behind Armstrong Jones in their Brit-lit class. Every time she got near him, she lost her nerve to say the fun, carefree line she’d come up with the night before. Every. Time.
“Cute dress. I like it with the Vans.”
She’d worried that checkered Vans with a printed dress was too much, but apparently not. Before Ash could thank him, he was off on a tirade. “Don’t you hate the reading list? God, it’s so mainstream. Do we really all need to read Emma or Wuthering Heights? Why can’t we find something a little more obscure... Something actually original? Like The Doctor’s Wife. Or East Lynne. Or at least some Kipling everyone hasn’t read a hundred times over. God.”
“I know!” Ash nodded along. She had no idea what he was talking about. She loved all the Jane Austen readings they’d done, but didn’t want to look overly mainstream.
Armstrong was unflappably awesome. She just loved the way he knew everything about literature. And even though she had no idea what he was talking about half the time, it had played to her advantage.
Ash had watched Armstrong from afar for years—commenting on the pieces he wrote for the school blog, sitting in the first row when he had the role of Jean Valjean in the previous year’s Les Misérables, admiring the fact that he made being a scholarship kid look cool. He relished being a thrift-store junkie and the fact that his parents were frequently unemployed.
Ash had found out Armstrong was taking Brit lit that semester and had immediately registered for the class. She had made sure to grab the seat behind him on the first day, knowing the teacher considered those seats permanent.
She had also gladly accepted Armstrong’s help when he’d offered to proofread her second paper on Jane Austen when the first one she’d written hadn’t gone over so well. Laila had had a fit when she’d seen Ash come home with a B. “An English paper? A ‘B’? You’re half British for heaven’s sake, you should be teaching the class!”
Ash had gotten an A on her second paper and despite this, had asked Armstrong to help proofread her third, as well. He didn’t have too many changes to suggest, but she’d effervescently attributed the A-plus, the highest grade in the class, to his help. He’d asked her to the prom shortly after.
“Want to go thrifting this weekend?” Armstrong asked without looking up from his phone, where his fingers worked furiously to live-tweet whatever was on his mind.
Ash burst into a smile. “Absolutely!” She cursed herself for sounding so pathetically pleased.
“I could use a suit for the prom. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Ash’s smile slowly faded. Here she was totally freaking out about what to wear and he hadn’t even thought about it?
“So...the prom after-party. What are you thinking?” Ash asked casually, hoping he would ask her what she wanted to do. The senior class was planning an all-night “lock-in” at the school with dance contests, food, music and movies. Her parents had already agreed to let her go given that it was chaperoned and didn’t cost anything extra. Ash was almost more excited about that than the prom.
“After-parties are so...I don’t know, cliché. Don’t you think? I mean the prom is such a cliché alone, right?” Armstrong turned back to face her. “I love that about you—you hate clichés.”
“Hate them,” Ash agreed, though she didn’t understand what was so cliché about the after-party. This was the first year the school was having it.
“I’m sure every other girl is probably fixating on her dress right now. Trying to find something ‘different’ while getting the exact same thing as her six best friends. I love that you’re not even stressed,” Armstrong continued.
Ash was relieved she hadn’t sent him the dress freak-out text she had almost hit Send on the night before.
“Why don’t we go to Belltown after the prom and get into an open mic? You got a fake?”
Ash blinked, not realizing what he meant for a second. A fake ID? No, she didn’t have one. Where was she going to get one?
Great, one more thing to worry about. She had no dress. She had no fake ID.
“Sure, I have one. I mean, who doesn’t, right?” Ash smiled weakly. She’d just only gotten her real ID a few months ago.
“You’d be surprised. I gotta finish this blog. Text me later?” With that, and without waiting for a response, Armstrong turned around.
