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SHAY:Oh. I’d forgotten. You were being nice, since no one had asked me the year before.
JAMIE:Mmm.
SHAY:Even my mom was proud of me. She came into the bathroom after I got out of the shower and gave me her face mask, the expensive one. We hadn’t been close since Mr. Trevors, so for a while, we just stood there awkwardly, looking at our reflections in the mirror. She used to say I was the spitting image of my dad. As I stood there, my heart started pounding, because I never knew if looking at me made her happy or sad. Finally, she broke the silence and said, “I used to dream of being prom queen.”
Her voice was soft, and I realized she was looking at herself in the mirror, not me. Then she said, “You already have a better shot than I ever did.”
I said, “At winning?”
And she said, “At all of it. At life.”
JAMIE:And you did win. That’s the thing, Shay. You have this picture of yourself in your head that I don’t understand, because you won so many times. You became the prom queen. Slow-danced in the gym in front of everyone.
(Silence.)
JAMIE:What?
SHAY:The dance was the last good part of the night.
JAMIE:You’re talking about the after-party. If you’re worried I’m still mad, I’m not. Everyone gets wasted and does things they regret. Besides, I was probably being overprotective.
SHAY:I can’t remember, to be honest.
JAMIE:You remember what happened with Anderson, though.
SHAY:That’s the thing, Jamie. I don’t.
JAMIE:You’re saying…
SHAY:I was so excited to win and be Anderson’s date, be at that party as queen, that I made a stupid mistake and drank too much. People kept passing me shots, and I felt so grateful to be there, I just kept accepting. The last thing I remember is all of us dancing in Anderson’s living room.
JAMIE:Do you remember climbing on top of the coffee table?
(Silence.)
SHAY:In front of everyone?
JAMIE:You were wearing your crown, and it seemed like…you wanted the attention. Like you were onstage.
SHAY:I don’t remember that.
JAMIE:Which means you probably don’t remember Anderson picking you up and trying to carry you upstairs, and me yelling at you.
SHAY:What did you say?
JAMIE:That you needed to go home. That’s what started our fight. You were furious.
SHAY:I don’t think I want to know what I said.
(Silence.)
Tell me.
JAMIE:You said I was jealous. That I judged you for everything you’d done—pageants, cheerleading, going on dates. And I was just some wannabe rebel who thought I was smarter than everyone, too good for the town, when in reality, I was just an average guy from a nice family. Nothing to write home about.
SHAY:Shit.
JAMIE:It was a really good insult because it was true. All the more impressive, considering how drunk you were. But the part that really hurt was when you said I’d always tried to keep you to myself, and now that other people liked you, I was losing it. You said I was a bad friend.
