Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 100612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“I won’t turn you in to my parents. Or to school. Or to the police. If…” She hesitates, as if she’s still deciding on her next words, and turns the flashlight on. “If.”
It’s dark, but that light shines on her face, and I can see her worrying her bottom lip as she debates.
“If…what?” Jesus Christ, spit it out. “Do you need me to drive you to school every day for the rest of the year?”
Kiss her? Carry her books in the hallway at school? Buy her hot lunch until the end of the year? Buy her a gift card to Target?
I’d be willing to do all those things if she’d just let me—
“Be my prom date and do a promposal like you invited me and I was your first choice.”
If I could fall over from shock, I would. As luck would have it, I’m still flat on my back in a frozen state of surprise.
Be her prom date? I don’t fucking think so.
“That’s extortion. Coercion.”
Her face is a mask of pure innocence, wide-eyed and blinking. “Is it?”
“Yes,” I grind out.
“Well, what you’re doing”—she taps the Parker Lane Prep rhino head with the tip of her shoe—“is a crime.” She tsks. “Plus, not only did you trespass by breaking into the school to steal the Rhino, you trespassed on private property wearing stolen goods. And I have the evidence to prove it.”
“Once again, that’s extortion.”
Harper rolls her eyes into the flashlight so I can see it good and clear. “What’s worse, Easton? Extortion or breaking and entering? Or wait—theft? No—trespassing?”
She is laying it on thick.
“I didn’t break in,” I protest. “I went into school through the side door like everyone else.” Parker Lane was unlocked because there were students and staff in the building, along with student athletes and plenty of people milling about.
No one looked twice at me when I walked down the hallway.
No one looked twice when I asked where the locker rooms were; zero people were in the supply room when I entered, zero people were in the equipment closet. All I had to do was linger until the coaches and janitors walked past. Then I slipped in, grabbed the mascot costume, and walked confidently out of the building the same way I’d come in.
Walk with a purpose and no one will suspect you’re up to no good.
“It was like stealing candy from a baby,” I boast.
“You went through the door like everyone else?” Harper scoffs, crossing her arms. “Is that what you plan on telling your parents?”
I glower at her. “Are you so hard up for a date to prom that you’re willing to blackmail someone?”
Her chin notches defensively and I can see I’ve hit a nerve.
“That’s not the point.”
I laugh for the first time all night. “That is exactly the point.”
“Listen,” Harper says, trying to reason with me. “I’m offering you a deal. I help you; you help me.”
“Or.” I laugh again. “You help me up and let me walk away because you’re a senior, too, and you should be thanking your lucky stars you didn’t get chosen to pull this stupid prank.”
She’s quiet. “Look. I’m really excited about prom, okay? And I’m on the stupid decorating committee, and let’s be honest, no one is going to ask me to the dance. They’re just…not.”
“How do you know?”
“ ’Cause. No one wants to ask a bossy book nerd to be their date.”
Is she that clueless?
Harper is cute and smart, but she does sound convinced she’ll be dateless, and just like that I realize how double fucked I am.
“Be my date and I won’t say anything to anyone about this. Literally no one, not even Macy. Once prom is over, you can watch me delete the pictures.”
She had to go and bring up those pictures…
“In fact,” she continues, “if you agree to be my date and be on the decorating committee, I’ll—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said anything about the prom committee?” Screw that! “First you said you needed a date. Now I have to be on the damn decorating committee?”
She ignores my ranting, warming up to this whole scheme. “If you agree to be my date and be on the committee, I’ll help you deliver the mascot to school and help you raise the head up the flagpole.” I can see her white teeth in the dark, biting down on her lip.
“How?”
She pauses, the silence stretching out in the dark. “I have the one thing you don’t.”
“And what do you have?”
Harper removes her foot from my chest. Extends a hand to help me off the ground and says the four words that seal our deal:
“I have a car.”
Chapter 6
Harper
And that, my friends, is how Easton Westermann became my prom date.
Not to brag or anything, because the way I got my prom date is the same way I became a willing accomplice in his second petty crime of the evening: getting undetected onto school property and raising the stolen Rhino up the flagpole.