Scholarly

October Again - The Thing About Homecoming

Hi, guys! I'm back. Sorry about the delay - again. Things are still a little nuts. That said, I hope you like this! In other news, I'm on spring break, so I finished another story that I was writing. It's a 72-page fantasy novella - probably sucks, but does anyone want me to post it?

Sydney did not care about boys.

At least, she thought she didn't care about boys.

But then Tristan Myers got 100% on a geometry test that she had scored 91% on, and she had to admit she cared a little...if only because he was a creepy stalker, and creepy stalkers needed to be shown up.

And then Jeremy Ahn asked her almost-best-friend Leah to the Homecoming Dance.

And then her sole male friend, Brandon, asked his best friend Jess, even though they were about as platonic as they could possibly be.

And then Tristan asked Vivian.

That was the last straw. That was when Sydney began to feel obgliated to care.

He had been following Vivian around like a shadow. No, more than her shadow; that went away when the sun was in the wrong position, but nothing could get rid of Tristan. Half their conversations turned into long rants about how annoying he was. Try as she might (polite refusals had turned into a silent treatment lasting weeks), she could not seem to get rid of him. So they'd all seen this coming. As Vivian had put it, his asking her to Homecoming was, statistically speaking, his most likely next move. But that didn't make her any less irritated when he did. They'd been talking in a cluster by the library when he came up to her.

"Hey, Vivian," he began, wringing his hands.

Vivian narrowed her eyes. "Hi...Tristan," she replied tentatively.

"So, I'm sure you know what I'm going to ask you."

She raised her eyebrows. "Oh, do I?"

Tristan bit his lip nervously. "Uh, yeah, I think so?"

"Probably, but I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of saying it myself," she said flatly.

"Well, if you're gonna be that way..." He jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Bring it over, guys." He addressed a group of five girls from the drama club who were standing off to the side, too conveniently-placed not to be part of his plan. They trudged over, carrying a huge sheet of paper between the five of them and attempted to hold it upright.

"It's upside-down," said one of the girls holding the sign, who she recognized as Amy Parea (better known as the best thing that had ever happened to ASA's drama department). The other four hastily attempted to flip the sign and dropped it.

They finally set the poster up correctly after an awkward five minutes, Sydney scanned it. "I'M 100% SURE YOU'RE THE ONE FOR ME. HOMECOMING?" It inquired in huge orange bubble letters, the "100%" accented in blue for emphasis (probably a reference to Vivian's claim to fame). One of Tristan's friends, smirking, shoved a bouquet of white roses into his shaking hands. He turned to Vivian, holding the flowers awkwardly in front of him.

"Um." He stared at the ground. "Uh, V-vivian..." He paused. "Will you...um...go to homecoming with me?"

Sydney was pretty sure she could hear Vivian's heartbeat screech to a halt.. "Sure, why not," she sputtered before she had a chance to talk herself out of it.

Later, she'd be subjected to a long interrogation from Leah about this decision, but she confessed to Sydney after the fact that - despise him as she might - she'd thought the proposal was too sweet to turn down. Sydney agreed. Yes, he was a stalker, but at least he was sincere - so much so that Amy Parea had broken down in tears when Vivian accepted. He'd clearly been terrified, and none of the drama girls he'd recruited for the project thought she would say yes. (Later, it somehow surfaced that Chloe Wilcox and Grace Chang had been filming the whole thing. Sydney made a mental note to remind Vivian to stay on their good sides.) And she'd have been lying if she said she wasn't just a tiny bit envious.