Mary was standing there. I watched as she twirled her hair in her fingers as she talked to the new exchange student. The way she laughed, talked, and moved her body brought light to my day. I knew that she was the right girl and the only girl I wanted to go to prom with.
Truthfully, I didn’t even want to go to prom. Alas, with a mother like mine that was completely out of the question. I merely mentioned that I didn’t want to go and she sent a whole cast of demons on me. They and the devil herself gave me a lecture on how I would regret it if I didn’t go. So then I knew what I had to do. I had to march right up to Mary’s pretty little brunette head and offer to take her to prom.
That conversation, however, proved to just make the whole situation worse.
“Hey, Mary,” I said, “would you be willing to go to prom with me?”
“I would love too. Only I can’t,” she said with a sigh.
“Why?”
“Well you know how I’m in student council. They decided to have a competition this prom. With me being the prettiest, they decided to put me up for the prize. Meaning who ever will win the competition will go to prom with me.”
“Well that blows. Maybe I could be the winner.”
“Yeah, that sounds great good luck, Drew I hope you win!”
With that she walked away. I went to student council right after and retrieved the terms and conditions. Nothing could have been easier. All I had to do was look the best, buy the best bouquet, and reserve the best dinner. My mom was just the help I needed. She knew all about the prom stuff for some odd reason. I had her help me set everything up.
First, she said we needed to take care of the tux. She took me to get fitted and I felt a bit awkward. The whole tux thing just felt uncomfortable. It was definitely something that should just be saved for special occasions. In the end though I thought it looked good on me. It was black with a pink vest so that it would match the pink dress Mary would wear. At least that’s what I was told by my mom.
The flowers my mother handled completely. I had no clue about what to do when it came to those. I mean the only part I played was telling my mom that she was extremely beautiful and deserved the most beautiful flowers that could be found. Mom did the best job imaginable though. She bought a huge bouquet that would definitely win in that area.
The dinner reservation came next; that was something that I could do. I knew all the sweet spots in town. My job would help me take care of the money issue. The place that I decided would be the best was a nice expensive restaurant called “Silvio’s.” It was a perfect Italian restaurant with authentic food. It was sure to be a attention getter.
My mom and I couldn’t be any more wrong though. When the day of the competition came I found some really surprising results. They all looked great, they being the other five men that stood beside me in the school auditorium. We stood with our bouquets outstretched and watched as Mary’s student council buddies walked by with their clipboard. The council gave each of us little smiles and nods and walked on to the next contestant. The German exchange student Mary had talked to earlier looked the best and I knew that he was my greatest competitor.
At the end of the display the council went into a back room to make their final judgments. The other contestants and I sat down and chatted for a bit. To my surprise I found out they were all pretty nice guys, but didn’t care nearly as much as I did about winning. For example, Clark who I thought was just a simpleton jock turned out to be really caring about people. The only reason he was in the competition was because Mary was his only hope at getting a prom date. Apparently the girls also felt the way I had about him.
When the judges came back from the back room, we all went silent. We stood back up and presented ourselves nicely once more in a fine line. The smallest of the council members stood and spoke to the group.
“We want to thank you all for attending,” he said, “and we are proud to announce that the winner of this competition is… Piotr! Everyone give a round of applause to today’s winner and come claim your beautiful date.”
When Piotr walked down to Mary, she gave me a look that said she was sorry. I watched as they walked back out of the auditorium. I stood crushed as if I had lost everything. The other guys gathered their things and gave each other applause for trying. When they started to leave, I hurriedly picked up my stuff to join them. Mary was not fully gone. For the night was still young.
