Nice Guys Finish Last

Chapter 5

“Oh, how adorable!” exclaimed Mrs. Simmons. “Of course she can help out!”

Sayu smiled. “Thank you!” she said. Sayu had begged me to join the Prom Planning Committee so that she could help out, too, and I had reluctantly agreed. I was kind of regretting it now, but it was too late. Mrs. Simmons, the teacher in charge, seemed to love her, though. Sayu’s really good at acting cute in front of adults. I looked around the room. There were barely any other students that had signed up, and the ones that had were all girls. I scanned the faces for anyone I knew and noticed that Jay and Maria were both there. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I thought.

“Okay, everyone!” said Mrs. Simmons, calling us all to attention. “Well, as you all probably know, the prom is happening in just over a month, and we need to plan out all the decorations! So I would like everyone to brainstorm a list of ideas for prom themes this year. Everyone is welcome to write their ideas down on the board. Now, I have to leave the room for a few minutes, so I’m leaving Sayu, Tyler’s sister, in charge.”  With that, she turned and left the room.

“She’s leaving YOU in charge?” I grumbled to Sayu.

She grinned. “You can be in charge if you want. In fact, yeah, I’m gonna leave for a few, too. Hey everyone!” she said, directing her voice to the whole room. “I’m putting Tyler in charge!” She began walking towards the door.

“Hey, where are you going? Sayu! Ugh…just don’t get lost, okay?” She turned and nodded to show that she heard me, then left. Great. I sighed, then noticed a bunch of girls walking out of the room. “Hey, you guys can’t just leave the room…”

They turned. “Oh, if Mrs. Simmons comes back, could you just tell her we went to our lockers?” I sighed and nodded. “Thanks, Tyler!” They all walked out, and I turned around, only to find that pretty much everyone had left. In fact, everyone had left, except for Jay and Maria. They were talking to each other in a corner of the room.

 Jay noticed me looking at them. “Hey, Tyler!” she said.

“Hey,” I said, walking over. “So…just the three of us now?”

Jay nodded. Suddenly I heard footsteps walking in. I looked at the doorway and saw Rohan. “Rohan!” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to Jay,” he said in a serious tone.

She came over. “Yeah, what do you want?”

“No, I mean, like, alone. Could we go out in the hallway or something?”

“Sure, I guess,” she said. I figured Rohan probably wanted to apologize to her. That was a first for him. Maybe he was changing for the better. They both left the room, leaving just me and Maria. Well, this was going to be awkward.

“So, just us now,” I said.

“Yep,” she said.

“Well, since everyone else is gone…should we brainstorm some prom ideas? Mrs. Simmons won’t be happy if she comes back and no one has done any planning.”

“Sure,” she said. “You first.”

“Uh…” I said. I hadn’t thought of any ideas. “Um, I guess there’s always the masked ball option,” I said, my voice cracking. I cleared my throat quickly, hoping she hadn’t noticed.

“Oh, yeah, that’s good,” she said.

“What about you?” I asked, a bit too quickly.

“Well, I was thinking an underwater theme might be good.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea! We should totally do that. I mean, unless you have other ideas, which you probably do, because you’re so amazing…I mean, like, at thinking of prom ideas and such. Not saying you’re not amazing at other stuff…oh, gosh, this is coming out wrong, um…”

Maria stared at me for a second. Then she burst out laughing. “You’re so weird that it’s funny,” she said.

Just then, Mrs. Simmons came back in. “Oh, goodness, where did everyone go?” she asked.

I shrugged.