The Prom Night Planner

2. Serena

School hours have ended for everyone else exclude me. Acting as an over smart student I'm going to sit in the school library for three additional hours and do some research. It's the detention actually.

For testing my patience level, Miss Simpsons has asked me to prepare a 1000 word essay on human group behaviour. There's more. I'm not allowed to use online sources, but to take help from the books in the library. I mentioned it earlier that her teaching methods are old fashioned. But I don't think it's the case this time. She is only doing this to punish me.

Now I have to go through the table of contents of dozens of books that are in the psychology section of the library and write an essay in three hours. However, my dear teacher gave me some relaxation here that I can take some more time if I want to, but I can't go home until I finish the essay. This is illegal! This is torture! I want to just beat myself right now for trapping myself into this situation.

I can't even say I hate Miss Simpson because she has given me the biggest news of the year. The Prom, my very own prom. It's like a longing dream came true. When I look back it feels like yesterday when I used to enviously see seniors preparing for their special night and creating posts on the social media to show off their photos, boyfriends and celebrations. Now it's my time, my prom night and I want to now start planning for it.

All of these thoughts give me some positive vibes that would help me in completing my today's tasks and just go home. My phone starts ringing when I'm about to enter the library. I stop just outside and take the call.

"So what are you going to do today in your detention time?" It's Ariana.

I sigh helplessly, "An essay about 1000 words."

"Man, she's overreacting."

"It's all because of you." My tone becomes slightly snappish, "Party invitation and detention came together."

She laughs, "At least you've one good thing to be happy about."

"Meanie." I grunt, "Now in return you'll do my math homework. After this essay I won't have enough time to complete it."

"Yes, Serena." I can imagine her nodding her head like an obedient kid, "We've been doing each other's homework for years. You know I would've never refused you even if there wouldn't be any detention problem."

I chuckle, "Clever way of lessening my anger."

"Damn woman, I can swear on strawberries I'm telling the truth."

She and I love strawberries a lot and everything that has strawberry flavour so it's just our way of proving our honesty to each other. Not that I doubted her. She's telling the truth. Most of the time, she does my maths homework and in return I do her chemistry homework because she hates chemistry and I hate maths.

"Okay, Okay, meanie. I believe you. Now hang up. I've got work to do."

Pocketing my android phone, I step inside the library. But my whole body freezes at the entrance when I see Jayce at one of the racks. He's looking through books. Jayce is my ex. Let me correct. If I talk about my dating life, Jayce's was my first ever boyfriend and then we broke up. No, again rephrasing is required. He broke up with me without any appropriate explanation.

It's not like I've any leftover feelings for him, but I just avoid him. I don't talk much to him and he does the same. It's just uncomfortable to be in his company after what happened between us and I think it's completely normal if I'm avoiding any sort of relation with him.

But right now I have this problem. He's here and I don't want him to see me. I curse that moment when I decided to choose psychology as my elective. Now I'm paying the price.

His face is buried in the book. His short hairs are arranged in French crops way, little messy, hiding half of his forehead. He has given a touch of light, soft copper shade to his natural warm brown hair. Since he's a celebrity now so he keeps changing his looks. Last month he had blond highlights.

Anyways, he has tall built almost 5 ft. 11 inches, perfectly defined waistline, mighty, broad chest, but not too broad and then comes his athletic biceps that are right now on full display because of the short sleeves of his parrot green tee shirt.

When he looks up, his gaze meets with mine, leaves me startled. I compose myself immediately and try to act casual. He passes me a forced but confused smile, closes the book in his hands. I return the small smile.

I walk few steps towards him, not to talk to him indeed but to walk past him and reach to the psychology section. There are only few other students in the library, reading their books silently. I wonder why he is still here when school hours are over. I look at the empty table just a step away from him where a laptop is on and a pile of books is placed just beside it, explains that he's doing some work here.

Books related to my subject are just beside the literature section which is of his interest probably because he's searching through literature books. Pretending to act completely normal, I start my search.

I can feel his gaze on me. Through my side glance, I see him turning around, "Why are you still here? Do you love school that much?" His voice is filled with a hint of humour. Jayce has rich, but smooth voice.

I don't look at him, because I'm checking the titles of the books, "It's called detention."

I pull out a book and start looking at its contents' page when I hear him chuckle, "What? How?"

"Texting." I'm not in a mood to tell him the whole story so I just told him the central part.

"It must be with Ariana. The inseparable friends. But she put you in trouble."

I close the book and look up at him, "It was not entirely her fault. Anyways, you tell why are you here? What about literature?' I point towards the book in his hands, "Additional research or just regular classwork?"

He has deep, army green eyes, rounded nose, soft pink, heavy upper lips and slightly pointed chin. The colour of his skin is similar to beige. His eyebrows are thin, brown and arched. His face skin is rough, but smooth, rugged but flawless with tiny brown freckles on his cheekbones. He has a tantalizing outer appearance mixed with a touch of generous persona.

That's how he actually looks, but person's demeanor can be deceiving because for me he is an ultimate jerk and complete opposite of generous.

"Oh. Just regular class work. There's a lot of pending assignments." He creases his lips. Involuntarily my eyes fall onto his mouth and stubbornly stay there. Despite my personal loathe for him, I can't deny the tempting aura of him. He does look good, more than good and alluring and flavoursome. Ewe!

However, at this point, I can't just forget the past when his face act as a constant reminder to me. He broke up with me when he was not a celebrity, then there is no way I'm worth his time when now he's living his golden days with massive fan following and around 500k YouTube subscribers.

I meet with his eyes again, nodding, "You can do the work at home, why here?"

He put the book back on the rack while saying in low, dull voice, "This place is better than home."

My brows pull down in confusion, but I decide not to prolong the conversation any further. He's not worth my time either. I randomly take few books from the rack and turn to him again, "Okay, I should work now. Bye."

"Okay." He nods.

I take the empty table and start going through the books to find the content related to my topic while completely ignoring Jayce's presence, but memories of the past keep crossing my mind. Jayce is a singer by profession. Last year his debut music album released and received a million views on YouTube in just a month. Everyone in school knows him and follows his social media profiles. He is popular among young females and seniors as well because they have seen his debut album.

Jayce always had one goal as much as I know. He wanted to pursue career in singing maybe because his family has a relatable background. His father owns a huge, reputable entertainment company that launches new singers. Even his first song is also produced by his father.

After our break up, he dropped out of school without completing his Final Year. He's two years older than me. I'm eighteen and he's twenty. He didn't give any proper, reasonable explanation for dropping out even to his very own friends. What angered me the most that in his opinion I didn't deserve to know his reasons. During the time he was away, I only heard about him through news, interviews when his first album came out.

Somewhat I understood he left school to focus on his career. And he was doing well. But then after two years all of a sudden I saw him again at school. He came back to complete his Final Year and this time, he was not just a normal Jayce. He came back as a celebrity who has a huge fan following across the country. People at school were happy and surprised and felt honoured that Jayce is choosing to study here, study among them.

With all these thoughts, I completed my essay. When I turn my head to check on him, I find him there. Jayce is still there, sitting. His fingers are continuously moving against the keyboard of his laptop. He looks engrossed in his work. I pack my things in my bag and leave the library.

✶

Finally, it's time for some fun; my favourite kind of fun; being with my best friend, watch a rom-com and then laugh our asses out at the movie's silly jokes. Plus wearing our denim shorts and baby pink, loose one shoulder tee shirts and oh two big bowls of popcorn. All of these are essentials if we want to feel like we are having our private hangout.

Right now, Ariana and I are in the same condition; with our shorts on, lazily half sitting on her lounge's leather couch and watching Someone Great. The beginning part of the movie reminds of my own life story. Just like Jenny becomes shock when her nine years long relationship ends in few seconds, mine experience was the same.

However, my relationship was not nine years old, it lasted for only six months, but I was so into it that I thought I found my right man, happy ending and blah blah....all those fairy-tale crap. I was broken. I was shocked because I never saw it coming. I was not expecting a breakup.

"Look at her floral, printed short skirt. It looks good, right?" Ariana put a popcorn in her mouth and then points the finger towards the LCD screen, "We can try it on next time we go to Emily's Dress up."

"No way. We're not going to that shop ever again." I stuff my mouth with popcorn and start chewing like a hungry cow, "I can't forget those salesgirls' scary glares. They'll never let us enter in their shop."

Few weeks ago when I and Ariana went for dress shopping. We randomly entered into one of the clothing stores with our vanilla latte disposable glasses. We didn't see the rule written on their glass door that food and drinks are strictly not allowed so for some time I didn't understand why the staff their stared at us. For a while, we drank our lattes and checked out a few dresses, but then all of a sudden, Ariana's foot tripped and the latte spilled over the fancy, expensive dresses. I swear all the dresses in that section had coffee stains.

We were so embarrassed, and then the staff came and insulted us in every humiliating way possible. They forced us to pay for all the dresses or else they'll call the police. I was scared that if our parents would know about our adventure they would ground us for a month. I had no other option, but to listen to them. Thankfully, I had Mom's credit card with me that day. I bought all those stained dresses and afterwards, the salesgirls threw us out of the shop.

That day I learned a lesson I would never enter a shop until I read all their rules written on the entrance door. Ariana is clumsy at times. I don't know why she can't hold a damn coffee glass properly. We have those designer dresses with us. We divided them equally. Some are with Ariana and some are with me. We tried washing away those stains several times, but nothing worked. All those beautiful, pretty dresses now deserve to be in the garbage bin.

"Yeah, I can't forget that day." She let out a loud breath.

"You better not."

Ariana sits up and unlocks her phone. Ariana has neck-length blonde hair, light brown eyes, inverted triangle face and tan skin colour. She has a weird fashion style. She loves to follow bohemian style....wild textures, geometric patterns and printed trousers. It makes her less feminine, but that's how she likes to look not too girlish, but not too tomboy look either. She always wears a coin-shaped locket with a long silver chain and plain band rings on both of her index fingers.

"Guess what James and Rose are going out." She moves the phone in front of my face.

I see a picture of a guy in muscle tee shirt, that's James and a girl in a tank top, that's Rose. James arm is around Rose's shoulder. The caption of the picture is 'It's official.' James is the basketball captain, handsome, popular guy of our school and Rosaline is the cheerleader, a sweet, but hot chick.

"We saw it coming." I comment, "Tell me more."

She nods and moves back her phone from my face, "I've also added Lucas in this fake account."

I laugh, "It's obvious. I knew that you've made this account specially to stalk him because you're a chicken and can't grow balls to send a friend request to him from your original Facebook."

Lucas is a long-time crush of Ariana. I don't know why she's hoping for some miracle when there's nothing to hope for. Lucas doesn't even talk to us. He has a different peer group and above all he's the popular dancer of school. There's a long list of girls he can go out with. Don't get me wrong. It's not like I don't want Ariana's happiness, but it's been three years now since the feelings are only from Ariana's side and Lucas never once made a move.

"Believe me. I've tried hundred times." Her face is down, thumb scrolling down Lucas's f*******:, "Oh no, Serena. Look, he just commented on Violet's photo, calling her beautiful."

I fix my eyes on the screen and read the comment. It's just a regular, f*******:-styled profile picture; perfectly done hair, light makeup and not-so-natural smile. Violet is a dancer too. "What if he asks her out? What should I do? Tell me, my friend, tell me."

"Relax, Ari." I slap her shoulder, "He has only commented on her photo. She's in the same dance team with him. They are probably good friends. And I don't think Lucas is her type. She's more into athletes."

She throws the phone on my lap and quickly leans back on the couch, closing her eyes, "I don't want this fake f*******:. You take it." Her voice cracks, "He can't call her beautiful."

"Ariana...' I exasperate, "Don't ruin your mood."

She ignores me and stays unmoved. I sit straight and pick up her phone. Now it's my time to do some stalking. I go through the friends' list. She has also added sophomores and juniors. One name catches my attention; Jayce Eugene. Yeah, nothing surprising. She's also a fan. I mentally roll my eyes.

At first, I try to resist the temptation to go to his profile, thinking I shouldn't be prying on him. I'm not interested in knowing his recent activities, but then I think it's not like I'm going to stalk him as his some secret admirer, but only as a curious cat. I click on his name. His profile opens up.