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It's three days before the school dance, and the entire student body of Abigail Adams High has turned into a flock of panicked, headless chickens over who's asked who to the big event.
The obsession with grand asks is even more ridiculous this year. For a whole week now, every time Maya has been in the corridors between classes, balloons have popped out of every second locker, confetti rained from the ceilings, people who can't carry a tune to save their lives have caterwauled for their prospective dates, and Yogi (on skates) has helped at least a dozen people ask someone out. And with the school resembling some kind of bizarre garden with all the flowers being exchanged, Maya is sure florists across New York are making a fortune.
She's thoroughly sick of it. Never has she loathed a school event more. That's why this year, she's not going to the dance.
She's not sure if the others are all planning to go, or if they have dates. (Or if she does know, she doesn't care. They can go with whoever they want.) For once, her group of friends has acted sane and not been obsessed about the dance, because hardly anyone has brought it up. And if they did, they barely discussed it for a couple of minutes before changing the subject to more important things, like what movie to watch at their weekly movie night (which is on Saturday, the day after the dance), and what snacks to bring.
She's not going to the dance because she has more important things to do, she assures herself, and not because she heard through the grapevine that someone had asked another girl to go with him right when she had been about to ask him. Nope, that's definitely not the reason.
Maybe if she tells herself that enough, she'll believe it.
She sighs.
Maya is okay not rushing into things. She figured Lucas was being as cautious as her about not letting anything hurt their friendship, which is why he hadn't asked her to the dance (and which is why she'd come to the conclusion that she needed to ask him, even if she had absolutely no plan as to how to go about it), or tried to kiss her again, the way he'd nearly done when she'd ended up at his house a few months ago. But they've definitely been more flirty with each other lately, which is why she'd thought—
No, she'd done more than just thought, she realizes. She'd expected. She'd assumed. She'd all but taken it as given that she and Lucas would go together to the dance. Which was stupid of her. After all, who knew better than her that hope is for suckers? She can't believe she's fallen into that trap again, especially after learning her lesson in the not-so-distant past.
Okay, maybe hope isn't entirely for suckers, she allows, thinking of the way Shawn had come into her and Katy's lives. He'd married her mom and become Maya's father. They are a family, the way Maya has always wanted.
But maybe hope only got you one thing, maybe it didn't work if you get greedy and hope for too many things.
Or maybe she's wrong. Maybe she's made a mistake and completely misinterpreted Lucas's feelings for her once again. Maybe she's wrong about thinking that she's the reason his eyes light up, maybe she imagined that his hands lingered when they brushed against hers, maybe he's only doing nice things for her because she's his friend. Just his friend, nothing more.
Which means it's her own fault for expecting more, and getting hurt again, she thinks, irritated at herself.
She starts when Shawn's voice cuts through her thoughts and brings her back to the dinner table.
"I spoke to Cory today," Shawn says, cutting a piece of chicken on his plate.
"You speak to your boyfriend everyday." The response is almost automatic, but it distracts Maya from her preoccupation with Lucas. She pushes the food around on her plate, rearranging it to make it look as if she's eaten some of it, when in reality, she's barely taken a couple of bites.
"You're hilarious." Shawn deadpans. (He's always been able to take Maya's teasing more easily than Cory, who'd have taken the bait and responded just as she'd expect, with a shrill "Shawn's not my boyfriend!".) "Anyway. Cory says Riley's pretty excited about the school dance."
Katy swallows a gulp of her juice and widens her eyes as she looks from Shawn to Maya. "Oh, she is? That's so sweet."
Oh no, Maya internally groans. Her parents weren't supposed to find out about it.
"Yeah," Shawn says, "Cory was a bit worried because Riley didn't seem very enthusiastic at first, which is completely unlike her. But now that she has a date and a dress, she's back to radiating unicorns and bunnies and..." he waves his fork vaguely, "you know, fluffy stuff."
Katy laughs. "That definitely sounds like Riley. So when exactly is this school dance that we haven't heard about yet from our own daughter?"
"Friday, I believe."
"Oooh, just a couple of days from now. So, what are you wearing?" Katy waggles her eyebrows at her daughter.
"I'm not going," Maya informs her mother, as nonchalantly as possible.
Katy's smile falls. "Oh, why not, baby girl?"
"It's just a dumb dance," Maya says with a casual shrug. She takes a bite of her chicken and vegetables to prove that she's completely okay talking about it, even though her vivid imagination is pairing Lucas with girl after girl, trying to figure out who he's asked and why he didn't ask her. Or wait for her to ask him. "Besides, I want to work on one of my art pieces. I haven't had the time for that lately."
That's a load of nonsense if Katy's ever heard any. She opens her mouth to say so, but Shawn speaks first.
"Good," he says. "You focus on your art. There's no need to go to some lame school party where there will be boys and holding hands and all that crap, if you don't want to."
"Yeah." Maya smiles, but she knows it's very obviously fake. Luckily, Shawn isn't very observant.
But Katy is. After mentally facepalming at Shawn, she kicks him under the table.
"Oww!" He looks at her accusingly.
Katy widens her eyes and gestures with them to Maya, who's meticulously cutting up her food into equal bite-sized pieces as if it's an assignment on which she's going to get graded.
Shawn looks at Maya, and seems to finally realize she's more upset than she's letting on.
"So," he starts, with no clue at all about how he's going to approach this, and ends up saying the first thing that comes to his mind. "What about Friar?"
The mention of Lucas makes Maya sit up straight. She's not going to let that boy make her miserable anymore. If he doesn't want to go with her, fine. She's not going to care, and she's not going to obsess about it. She has better things to do.
Maya shrugs. "I don't know," she says in her most I-couldn't-care-less voice.
She misses the worried glance Katy and Shawn exchange.
"Well," Shawn says, trying to make her feel better, "How about we order from Paco's on Friday night and have ourselves a Star Wars movie marathon?"
The mention of Paco's reminds her of how Lucas got her a taco from there last week. For a second, she'd thought he was going to ask her to the dance right then, with the taco instead of flowers, which would have been hilarious and perfect, and just the sort of dorky thing he'd think to do. But he hadn't. He'd just said that he got her one because he knows she likes them. She was disappointed, but still touched, especially because Lucas hadn't exactly been in a good mood himself that day. He'd been preoccupied and mopey despite her attempts to cheer him up, and Maya hadn't for the life of her been able to fathom why. And yet, he'd gotten her her favourite tacos. Stupid Huckleberry, always doing all these stupid nice things for her and making her care.
"Maya?"
Shawn's question brings her out of her thoughts — she'd wandered off again.
"Okay," she says quietly, trying not to let her misery show, and completely forgetting the excuse about working on her art project she has planned for the evening of the dance.
