Six Ways to One Day

Chapter 13

The month of September goes by in a blink of an eye. You haven't gone out to lunch with Tae again, but you eventually acquiesced to his relentless invitations to join him for lunch and started eating with him on school grounds. Since then, doing so has become a fairly regular thing between the two of you.

Throughout the month of September, Tae continued his efforts to try and get you to spend more time with him outside of school, but thus far, you've been able to deflect his advances. Every time you'd entertain the idea of taking him up on his offer, your mind would conjure up the memory of Amanda's crying face, and the possible role that Tae may have played in the happy couple's sudden breakup. So, you kept him at arm's length and tried your best to remain aloof. But despite your conscious efforts to keep yourself closed off to him, a genuine friendship between the two of you had started to grow. Not that you'd ever admit that to yourself.

It is now mid-October. The weather has gotten progressively cooler, and the leaves have started to change from green to the beautiful colors of brown, red, orange and gold. Last night, Roosevelt High's Varsity Football team – Go Wolverines! – won the game against their archrival, and tonight is the school's Homecoming dance.

Before the school year started, you had received an email from the administration, asking you to volunteer your time and services to at least one of the student activity committees. Wanting to sign up for something short term and fun, you had volunteered to be a part of the Homecoming dance committee. When you had signed up for it, you had assumed that you'd be helping with selling tickets or assisting in decorating the gymnasium for the dance. You never thought that you'd be tasked to chaperone the dance. If you had known that it would involve having to herd three to four hundred hormonal teenagers for an entire evening, you wouldn't have signed up for it.

In an attempt to get out of this particular duty, you had said to Jenna Brown, who is the committee's chairperson, "I thought the PTA parents would be chaperoning the dance."

Jenna replied, "Yes, they are. But they'll also be tending to the decorations, food, and beverages. Some of them will be chaperones too, but there won't be enough bodies to just leave it up to them."

And now, here you are, tasked with chaperoning the Homecoming dance.

When you say you've tried your absolute best to get out of doing it, you'd be putting it mildly. You had literally begged, bribed, and finally threatened the lives of all of your best friends, but they all laughed right in your face before telling you, a resounding no. The general consensus was, "I have to see these kids during the day. There isn't anything that you can say or do that will convince me to hang around them after school."

Because you had convinced yourself that you'd be able to find another chump to do this for you, you didn't get yourself ready for this. You've never chaperoned a dance before and aren't sure what it entails. Sure, you've been involved in some of the school field trips, mostly during school hours, and a couple of overnighters. But those were much more controlled, and the expectations for the students were quite different.

So, now, you're standing in your walk-in closet, in your bra and panties, trying to decide what to wear. When you asked your friends for suggestions as to what to wear to the event, the answers you got from them were so vastly different from one another that you decided against taking any of them. The suggested outfit ranged from something in the realm of IBM business casual to a full-on ball gown, topped with a tiara. A fucking tiara! You ended up spewing out some choice expletives at your so-called best friends and disconnected the call in a huff, leaving behind the sound of those traitorous hags' laughter.

You tell yourself, "You're over thinking this. Just pick something that you'd wear to a formal dinner party. Yea... that's it."

You decide on a black vintage dress that reminds you of the one that Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The only difference is that this dress isn't floor length, but it cuts off right above your knees and poofs out a bit. Accessorizing it with a pair of pearl earrings and matching necklace, you feel dressed up enough, but not over the top. Unlike Audrey Hepburn, you decide to leave your hair down, allowing it to cascade down your back. You keep the makeup at a minimum, like you usually do for work.