Prom Crashers Read online

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Prom Crashers

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  Prom Crashers

  ERIN DOWNING

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Prom Crashers

  ERIN DOWNING

  SIMON PULSE

  New york London Toronto Sydney

  Copyright © 2007 by Erin Soderberg Downing

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Designed by Ann Zeak

  The text of this book was set in Garamond 3.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Simon Pulse edition February 2007

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  Library of Congress Control Number 2006928447

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-3559-9

  ISBN-10: 1-4169-3559-2

  eISBN-13: 978-1-439-10857-4

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  For my parents.

  who have always supported my adventures

  and who taught me that a weird sense of humor

  is not optional.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Barb Soderberg (my wonderful, goofy mom), my cute and clever husband, Greg, and superauthor Robin Wasserman for all your help creating and plotting this story in a hurry. Good ideas, guys! Thanks for letting me steal them.

  Ginormous thanks also to my editor, Michelle Nagler, whose suggestions, compliments, criticisms, and humor make me love writing—and writing for her, in particular!

  Finally, thanks to Duluth, Minnesota—my hometown—and all the amazing people and places there that inspired a lot of these characters and experiences Very little in this book is based on reality, but some of it sure comes close. But I’ll keep those details to myself, thankyouverymuch.

  One

  Prom was in less than a month, and Emily Bronson still didn’t have a date.

  No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t make herself not care. It was so unlike her. Homecoming rallies, student council, the one consistently clean table in the lunchroom … she didn’t get hung up on any of that. But prom—prom was another story.

  So Emily was busy doing what she’d done every night for the past several weeks: leaning against the counter at her after-school job, twisting her silky hair into tiny tangles, and daydreaming about—what else?—prom.

  Emily worked at the Leaf Lounge, the tragically unhip “tea lounge” in the mall, almost every school night until nine—as well as weekends—which gave her more than enough time to daydream. The mall wasn’t a superfunky boutique mall with trendy shoe shops and retro bags, either. It was just your run-of-the-mill, suburban mall with four Auntie Anne’s pretzel out-posts and an Abercrombie in both the east and west corridors. In a word, boring.

  The Leaf Lounge—less a true “lounge” than the Gap was trendy—didn’t have the urban-funk feel of a hip downtown hot spot. The beige and teal walls were adorned with shoulder-high shelving that boasted the complete collection of “Teas of the World” teapots. The Leaf Lounge’s owner, Gary, was thrilled that his was one of the ten shops in the United States that sold those teapots. It was his claim to fame.

  As such, Gary wanted all his employees to take great pride in their tea expertise. It was already bad enough that Emily had to work there The thing that made it worse was being forced to wear a name tag that read:

  EMILY, TEA CONNOISSEUR

  HOW MAY I HELP YOU?

  And she had to act like she cared. Emily had been awarded the distinction of “Tea Connoisseur” after completing a three-hour (mandatory) class in proper high tea preparation. The class had been held in the back room of the Leaf Lounge one Sunday morning before the mall opened, and was run by a woman named Meadow.

  Meadow had shouted “pinkies on alert!” repeatedly during the session, which had elicited countless snickers from Emily’s cousin and co-worker, Charlie. Needless to say, the knowledge Meadow had imparted had been used a total of zero times since the class—there wasn’t a lot of demand for fancy high tea in a suburban mall. Their customer base was just slightly less classy.

  “I divide, you choose,” Frank, one of the Leaf Lounge’s regulars, called to Emily across the coffee shop’s formica countertop, breaking through her don’t-have-a-date- for-prom obsessing. He was gesturing to a prepackaged muffin split down the middle on a plate in front of him. He was the only other person in the shop at that moment, and he seemed eager to chat. “Banana walnut, Emmy.” Frank insisted on calling Emily “Emmy,” and she had never made an effort to correct him. She thought the nickname was kind of cute. Emily slid half the muffin off Frank’s napkin and popped a piece in her mouth.

  “Tasty as ever,” she declared. “Packaged preservatives. Thanks, Frank.” Frank was one of the regulars who spent too many hours at the mall and considered the Leaf Lounge’s employees among his best friends.He came in every night around six and stayed for exactly fifteen minutes. He always ordered a prepackaged muffin and a cup of coffee and insisted his seventy-year-old waistline couldn’t afford eating a full muffin. So he shared his snack with Emily, knowing it would buy him a few minutes of conversation.

  “How’s school, Emmy?” Frank smiled through a mouthful of gummed-up muffin. “Lots of gentleman callers?”

  “Same old story, Frank.” He asked the same question every night. Her answer was always the same. “Zero gentlemen and zero callers. In fact, I don’t even have a date for prom yet—got any friends you could set me up with?”

  Frank beamed. “Back in my day, the boys would have been lined up around the block to sign your dance card. I bet they’re all just too shy to ask.”

  “That’s what I keep telling her.” Charlie winked as he slid a tray of cookies across the counter. He had been hiding out in the back room for the pa
st hour, smoking clove cigarettes and pretending to do dishes. “I keep offering to take her myself, but I guess I’m not good enough for her.”

  “Right—that’s what it is.” Emily nodded. “It couldn’t possibly be that you’re my cousin.That’s not at all sad.”

  Frank studied Charlie carefully. “How about you, kiddo? You must be quite the lady-killer.” Emily and Charlie exchanged a look. “You don’t have a date yet?” To anyone under the age of fifty, it was glaringly obvious that Charlie was 100 percent gay. But Frank was of a totally different generation, and the thought never crossed his mind.

  “I do okay,” Charlie finally responded seriously. “But no—no prom date yet. My fingers are crossed, though, that the girl of my dreams will turn up one of these days and steal my heart.”

  Emily shot him a look as she stacked cookies in the cookie jar next to the register. Charlie couldn’t say anything without dripping sarcasm. It was part of the reason she loved him, and part of the reason she often lovingly loathed him.

  Frank sighed, then tumbled gently off his stool. “It’s been a pleasure, Emmy. Charles”—he winked at Charlie—”your time will come…with the ladies, I mean.” He nodded and shuffled toward the door.

  “Sweet guy. Totally clueless,” Charlie muttered through clenched, smiling teeth. “So, what are we doing now?”

  Emily closed the lid of the cookie jar and turned to Charlie. “Bored?”

  “Completely and hopelessly. I can’t stand this place for one more second. Entertain me.”

  “It is so not my issue that you’re bored. Maybe you could serve a customer or two, and your shift wouldn’t feel so long?” Emily pushed past her cousin and into the back storage room. Charlie followed her like a lost puppy. “Hey,” she said, thinking about what Charlie had just told Frank about prom. “Aren’t you going to prom with Marco?”

  “Ah, Marco.” Charlie sighed. “Don’t I wish.”

  Emily shot him a confused look. “Am I missing something? Can’t you get him to come up for prom?” Marco and Charlie had been dating for almost a year, but things were complicated by the fact that they had been long-distance almost since the day they had met—Marco lived in a suburb of Chicago. Emily could never keep up with the drama.

  “He doesn’t believe in prom,” Charlie stated simply. “He thinks it’s an antiquated social custom that should have died with the eighties.” He shrugged. “Plus, I’ll see him in June when we get to the villa.” The words rolled off Charlie’s tongue as if spending a summer at an Italian villa was totally normal.

  Charlie and his parents spent six weeks every summer in Northern Italy, which is where he and Marco had met the year before. Their romance had been kick-started during four shared weeks in the Italian Alps. Emily could think of nothing more idyllic, and every ounce of her wished that (1) she got to spend the summer in the Italian Alps instead of her suburban backyard, and (2) Marco was straight so it could have been her fairy tale (in addition to the Italian setting, Marco was hot). But she was happy for her cousin—when she wasn’t overcome with jealousy.

  “You tell Marco,” Emily teased, “that prom is a rite of passage that should be respected. Prom rocks.” She furrowed her brow seriously. “Unless I don’t find a date, and then prom sucks.” She grabbed a big bag of coffee beans off one of the shelves and returned to the front of the store. Charlie was still trailing behind her, hands empty.

  “I’m with you,” Charlie agreed, hopping up to sit on the counter. “I’m hoping he’ll call me one day and tell me he’s fully into prom and on his way here, but I think it’s a lost cause. I’ll find someone to go with—I can’t say I’m worried. So let’s focus on you.”

  “Let’s not,” Emily declared. She set the bag of beans on the floor. “Much as I want to go to prom, I really do not want to be a pity case. I’ll either go on my terms or I won’t go at all. I am not going to get desperate.”

  Charlie’s eyes widened. “Sheesh. Touché.” He poured himself a mug of coffee, then immediately poured it down the drain. “God, I’m bored,” he declared again. He repeated his pour-coffee-dump-coffee routine. “Let’s talk about what you’ll wear to prom when you find your date.”

  “Here’s a thought.” Emily grabbed the mug out of Charlie’s hands and set it in the dishwater. She loved working with Charlie—he was a thousand times more normal than Edna, the close-talking day-shift manager—but she had come to realize he was virtually useless and actually created work instead of doing work.

  Luckily they almost always shared the evening shift, when demand for tea and coffee was low. They were never very busy, and usually work was just a good excuse to stand around and gossip. “Maybe you could go in back and check inventory on leaves. We should probably fill the canisters out here and put in an order for the stuff we’re low on.” She wanted to change the subject away from prom, and knew Charlie would just keep bringing it up if she didn’t get rid of him.

  Charlie lifted his arms over his head and cheered. “I’m on it! I’ll be in back if you need me.” As he pushed through the swinging door, Emily watched him pull his iPod out of his pocket and spin through his playlists. She doubted he would even bother checking inventory—Charlie had come to realize that whatever he didn’t do during the evening shift, the morning shift would take care of the next day.

  Emily bent down to pour tea leaves into one of the huge glass canisters on the shelf beneath the front counter. When she stood up again, her breath caught in her throat as a living incarnation of Prince Charming strolled past the Leaf Lounge’s open store-front. She stared in admiration at his profile and held her breath when he stopped just outside the entrance to the lounge.

  Let it be said that Emily usually didn’t go for the quarterback look. But as Prince Charming walked through the doors and leaned against the counter, Emily gained a newfound appreciation for sandy blond hair, chiseled cheekbones, and long, lean muscles tucked under a black T-shirt. His body screamed strong, but his face murmured soft, sensitive, and oh-so-perfect.

  It had only been five seconds, and Emily was already in love.

  “How’s the chai?” he asked, staring above Emily’s head at the menu posted on the wall.

  Emily twirled her long, shiny black hair around her finger, putting on her biggest flirt. Her hair was her greatest weapon, and she had every intention of using it. “Give it a try,” she responded with a coy smile, realizing too late that she was being neither clever nor charming.

  But the hottie smiled back, flashing his teeth at her! (Okay, maybe it was just a really big smile that got all shiny in the neon lights of the menu—because, really, whose teeth actually flash?) “I’ll take one.”

  Emily pulled a glass off the shelf. “For here, right?”

  “To go,” he answered, but Emily thought she saw him pause. “I have to get home. I’m supposed to compose a sonnet for AP English by tomorrow. Haven’t started.” He flushed.

  Aha, she mused. A smartie! She replaced the glass and pulled a paper cup off the stack next to the register. “Oh. Well, good luck with that.” Emily foamed the milk for his chai while digging for another line of conversation. She finally settled on, “Do you go to Humphrey? You don’t look familiar.” She knew he didn’t go to her high school—and knew she hadn’t been required to write a sonnet for her own AP English class—but asking about school was always safe.

  “No, I don’t go to Humphrey. I was checking out the tux shop—you know, prom.”

  “Oh,” Emily looked down. Of course he has a girlfriend, she thought. Why wouldn’t he be going to prom? “Right.”

  He rested his elbows on the countertop, leaning over the counter toward Emily. “I’m going with one of my sister’s friends, which sounds pretty sad, I guess.” Emily didn’t think that sounded sad at all—it sounded like hope. “I was looking forward to it, since I’ve known her forever and it should be fun going with a friend, but she’s sort of making me regret asking her.” Emily frowned—she was torn between feeling ecstatic th
at he wasn’t going to prom with the love of his life, and sort of disgusted that he was dissing on his date.

  The guy continued, laughing. The corners of his eyes got all crinkly, which Emily loved. “That came out wrong. The thing is, I didn’t realize she would have all these rules about what I can wear. She wants me to rent this tux she saw in a magazine that has some sort of lining that matches her dress color exactly. I guess I’m a little irritated, since this is the fifth tux shop I’ve been to that doesn’t carry the style. I’m starting to run out of time.”

  “You know where you could check?” Emily said, stirring chai tea into the foam cup of hot, frothy milk. “There’s this vintage shop downtown that has the weirdest mix of stuff. Formal wear, vintage hats, Victorian gowns—they have a sign on the door that says ’We’ve got what you’re looking for and more,’ or something like that. I bet they could order it, even if they don’t have it in stock. They’re pretty helpful. It’s worth a look, right?”

  “Thanks for the tip.” He smiled. Emily thought she caught him checking her out. Woo hoo, she thought happily. She twisted her hair and flipped it over one shoulder.

  “I’ll check it out,” he said, nodding appreciatively. She wished he was talking about her, but knew he was referring to the store.

  Emily set the cup of chai on the counter. “Whipped cream?”

  “Please.”

  “I’m Emily, by the way.”

  “I know.” Emily furrowed her brow. “Your name tag,” he explained.

  Emily squirted whipped cream on the drink—it sprayed out too quickly, and a big glob plopped off the hot drink and landed in a messy splat on the counter. She reddened. Prince Charming didn’t seem to notice. He was staring at Emily in a very, very positive way. Maybe I have hope of finding a prom date after all, she mused. We would look fine together.

  “I’m Ethan. Thanks for your help, Emily.”

  “No prob.” She wiped a blob of whipped cream off the outside of the cup and handed it to Ethan. He was watching her face carefully as he grabbed the cup.