21 Proms Read Online Free PDF Page A

like a good little geek. My skinny ass wouldn’t have exactly won in a fair fight, so I didn’t play fair.
    My mother says that I don’t think about consequences until it’s too late. That might be true.
    But seriously, most of the reasons why Wallingford girls think I’m crazy are stupid rumors. Like it wasn’t my fault that after the school trip to France, everybody said I brought back the head of some guy who got into a motorcycle accident on the Rue Racine. Come on, anybody who believes that is a moron! How would I have gotten a head through customs? They won’t even let in some Anjou pears. And painting my fingernails black is a cosmetic choice, not a symbol of my eternal devotion to Satan. It’s also one of the only things I can do to get around the dress code — makeup is allowed, and the handbook doesn’t specify only on girls.
    Yeah, so I guess you picked up on my lack of school pride. Want to know what Wallingford is really like? Every year, they send out a fund-raiser to restore Smythe Hall — that boarded-up eyesore I mentioned earlier — and every year the only thing that gets built is an addition on the dean’s house. That’s also why we have to have our prom in our own banquet room. Sure, it’s better than a gymnasium, but the public school kids get to dance and eat rubbery chicken in the ballroom of a Marriott.
    It’s not like I don’t do any extracurricular activities, though. I’m the founder and president of the Wallingford gaming club — the Pawns. Our shtick is to break into empty classrooms and project PlayStation games on the whiteboard or jerry-rig Doom 3 tournaments with our laptops. Sometimes we even go old-school and play paper-and-dice Dungeons and Dragons. It’s my job to decide. That pretty much makes me Lord of the Losers. Which is great if you want a Phantom Blade with a Fiery Enchantment, but not so great if what you want is a date to the prom.
    Luckily, my best friend, Danny Yu, VP and secretary of the Pawns, doesn’t have a date, either. There are many reasons why I love Danny, but the biggest one is that he’s the only person at Wallingford as crazy as me.
    Like one time, when he was home sick, he saw some daytime talk show that had a bunch of KKK members on it and gave out their official website. So Danny flips open his laptop and sends them an e-mail: I am very interested in starting my own chapter of the Klan. Can you tell me what thread-count sheets we should wear? A half hour later, he sends another one from a different account: Do you believe that white bread is racially superior to other breads? They never e-mailed him back.
    Come on, you can’t blame that shit on DayQuil. That’s plain genius.
    So it’s the week before prom and we’ve already been shot down a couple of times. We’re in Latin class and we’re supposed to be translating something about Dionysus. Danny’s going over our seriously limited prom choices instead.
    â€œI could ask Daria Wisniewski,” he says. “She likes comics.”
    â€œShe has that creepy doll with the goggles she takes everywhere. Odds are she’ll put it in a matching prom dress and bring it along.”
    â€œIt could be your date, then,” Danny says. “Perfect.”
    â€œWhat about Abby Goldstein?” I list off the reasons this is a good idea on my fingers. “Hot. Redhead. Talked to me twice without actually needing to.”
    â€œDude, she’d never go out with you. Not even if she had a nasty fetish and you were the only one discreet and desperate enough to take care of it.”
    â€œVery vivid — that fantasy of yours. Weird that it’s about me, though.”
    â€œBoys,” says Ms. Esposito. She’s tiny, shorter than a sixth grader, but not someone you want to piss off. She drinks coffee all day long out of a thermos that has a French press built right into it. “How