Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson Page B

flipped.”
    “She is thrilled she’s getting a new kitchen out of this. In fact, she took the boys to stay with her at Linny’s to help me out.”
    “I bet.”
    The toilet flushed and boots thudded on the stairs. Dad put his gloves back on. “If you’re making sandwiches, why don’t you slap together a couple for us? That way we can keep working.”
    I got up on my tiptoes to reach to the very back of the cupboard, where I knew my mother hid her stash of premium chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies.
    The boots came down the hall.
    “There’s still meat loaf in the fridge,” I said. “You can split it. So who’s helping you? Uncle Danny?”
    Found it. A full box. I put the cookies in the bag and looked up at Dad to say good-bye. His helper was standing next to him wearing oversized work boots, a torn Eagles sweatshirt, and jeans slipping off his butt.
    “Hey, babe,” said TJ.

73.
    Ever have one of those moments when you couldn’t think of a single thing to say, not even if a guy put a gun to your head and TV cameras were showing the scene live to the whole world, but then when you went to bed that night, you thought of a hundred perfect things you could have said, and you wanted to scream so loud your pillow explodes?
    Me standing in our ruined kitchen, looking at TJ holding my Dad’s hammer with a moron grin, was one of those moments.
    “You bring us dinner?” TJ asked. “Awesome. I’m starved.”
    I still couldn’t think of anything to say. I took the olives out of my bag, put them on the counter, and left.
    I slept over at Nat’s that night. She talked in her sleep about the price of table favors. I thought about all the smart things I should have said back in my kitchen.
    I couldn’t sleep, so I went downstairs. Grandma was watching a Spanish-language news show and sewing a hem into Nat’s prom gown. I sat down next to her. She put her sewing away in a basket and got a can of ravioli and two forks. We sat and watched the news in Spanish and ate.

74.
    Breakfast was homemade blueberry muffins served by Grandma wearing a nightgown and her red bathing cap. The muffins were amazing. I said “ spasibo ” (Russian for “thanks”) and took two, then Nat pulled me out the front door.
    “How come she bakes all this great stuff for breakfast but cooks animal guts and cabbage for dinner?” I asked.
    “Some questions have no answers,” Nat said. “Come on. We have to get the posters up before school.”

75.
    I popped the last bite of muffin in my mouth as we pulled into the parking lot. Monica, Lauren, Junie, and Aisha were waiting for us by the door.
    Nat handed out flyers, tape, and muffins, and we split up in three groups. Each group took a floor of the school.
    We had an hour.
    “What if nobody reads these things?” I asked Nat as I taped a flyer to the door of the boys’ locker room.
    “Flyers are like old-fashioned Internet news flashes. I’m not worried.”
    “We really should have made a video. They could play it on cable. Everybody would see it.”
    Nat ripped off a piece of tape. “You’re right. We should have postponed the prom for a year so we could make a video. Why didn’t I think of that?” She stuck the tape on the flyer and moved down the hall.
    “You don’t have to get all sarcastic,” I said. “It was just an idea. Where are you going?”
    “We’re done here. We have to do the band room.”
    “Don’t you want to go inside?”
    “Inside where?”
    “The locker room, moron. We could stick flyers over the urinals.”
    “Shut up, that’s sick.”
    “No, not shuttin’ up. They need something to look at when they’re taking a leak.”

76.
    By the time the busses started arriving, the flyers were all over the school. Monica high fived me for the urinal idea. Aisha got points for putting the prettiest flyers on the lockers of the coolest girls in school. She made sure that Persia Faulkner had the hippest flyer of all.
    Nat was still freaking. “There’s so much