Chapter 18
Kimmy met Ilana outside of Lance's door. The blonde was just coming out, and Kimmy was telling her, "We discovered that they escaped through the window" when she stopped at her friend's completely ecstatic look on her face. "What is it?"
"I- we- Lance and I- we're going-"
A grin spread across her face as she realized what Ilana was trying (and failing) to say. "You're going to Prom with Lance?(!)"
Ilana just nodded, still dumbfounded. She didn't know exactly why she was so happy. She knew that, really, they were just going to get Amy and bring her back before the pod to take them back arrived. She knew that they weren't actually going to Prom in the definition of a usual Prom- that is, dancing, socializing, having a good time, etc. - but for some reason just the thought of going (and, peculiarly, the thought of going with Lance) excited her. So, with a further congratulations from Kimmy (who also proceeded to get ready hurriedly and demanded that Newton put on his tuxedo), Ilana rushed into her room to get ready for Prom as fast as she could.
-o-o-o-
Amy and Andre held hands as they ran across the street, stifling their laughter, extremely giddy for no apparent reason. About two minutes after leaving their house, Andre steered Amy towards a park. "Come on", he told her. "I know a shortcut."
They crossed the park and came out through some bushes three minutes later to appear in front of Andre's house, and as he fumbled with the key a man walking his dog with his young daughter stared from across the street. The young toddler began to call out to the two teenagers, curious, but her dad stopped her gently, patting her head and saying, "Shh, Clara. We don't talk to the bush-people." The little girl nodded importantly, pretending to understand the situation, and continued with her dad and their poodle towards the park and its swing set, Amy and Andre having heard none of the exchange.
Twenty minutes later the two teenagers emerged once again from Andre's house (his parents were out on a date night for their wedding anniversary, which the two adolescents noted was rather convenient), the young man dressed in a spiffy navy blue tuxedo with a light purple dress shirt underneath and a black tie (it was the kind of causal tuxedo one wears to a dance, as the girls who had helped him pick it out made sure he didn't pick anything too business-y). His chestnut hair was combed back neatly, and his emerald green eyes seemed to be on fire with excitement. He was tan from all his days in the sun, but you couldn't tell since the light from the nearby streetlight cast shadows across his body.
Amy, having brought a bag consisting of her dress, shoes, and makeup, had changed as well. She exited the house in a beautiful, glimmering white dress, which stopped right above the knees in waves of fabric that couldn't be classified as ruffles but weren't anywhere near straight. It was a fairly simple dress, with a white ribbon about three inches wide circling the stomach just above the waist ending in a beautiful bow on the side of her hip with ends that were wavy in a way similar to the bottom of the dress. Towards the end of the ribbon there was a unique mix of glitter, rhinestones, and sequins that matched the same glittering pattern that lined the top and bottom of the dress, which was supported by two pieces of fabric that attached to each sides of the top of the front of the dress and came together behind her neck, which then twisted together down the back of her back to connect to the top of the back of her dress just above where the ribbon ran around.
The blush on her cheeks deepened from a light pink to a maroon red as the silence between them grew longer, and the air seemed to thicken in both of their throats - but no matter how much Andre's common sense might have been screaming at him to tell her she looked beautiful or to kiss her again or to do something other than stare at her with his mouth halfway open, it took a minute or two before he could form a coherent thought. "You - uh, you - beautifu - I mean, look you - um." Okay, maybe not as coherent as he had hoped.
Amy laughed, and the light sound transferred the blush to both of them. "Thank you", she said good-naturedly, and gave him a small kiss before pulling away to pin on his boutonniere. It was makeshift, and she wished that she could have gotten him one that wasn't made out of last-minute flowers picked on the way to his house (some of which didn't even match his tux) and a safety pin and some ribbon she had found in her pockets when she was changing, but she could tell that in some weird way, he thought it was the best thing in the world.
"Thank you very much", he said, and after a moment of thinking, grabbed two white roses from his neighbor's yard.
"Oh, no, you don't need to-" Amy started to say, but was interrupted.
'Of course I do!" He said almost indignantly, and after stripping the thorns from their stems with the pocket knife he carried around in his car in case of emergencies, and a roll of twine from an earlier repair job for the yard, triumphantly presented the last-minute corsage to Amy, who found it quite impressive.
"Thank you..." she said softly as he put it on her wrist.
"Of course", he replied. "Now, let's go do the Proms!"
The sound of his street was soon full of the puttering motor of his car driving away and the laughter from the couple at Andre's purposefully terrible grammar.
-o-o-o-
It was a bit late for a limo.
However, the four soon found that the world - at least, this one - revolved around money and the amounts it came in, and in the end Octus, Kimmy, Lance, and Ilana hailed an empty limo returning from dropping its previous customers off, and before they could even call a taxi, Octus naturally whipped out roughly ten times the regular fee for a rental (the money mysteriously came after a whooshing sound eminated from his back). Octus himself tried to rationalize inside his processor that a vehicle that was already at their house was more practical anyway (they couldn't exactly activate their armor with Kimmy right there), but the part of him that had lately felt more human knew that it was because of the longing in Kimmy's eyes as it approached them, and the excitement that made them appear as if they were on fire when they climbed in, ducking their heads to avoid hitting themselves on the ceiling.
"YEEEEEEEE! THANK YOU, HONEY!" Kimmy squealed as she threw her arms around Newton in excitement, and he laughed as he hugged her back. Ilana and Lance sat opposite of them in a somewhat awkward fashion, and Ilana noticed her hand move towards Lance's on its own accord, inch by inch closer on the seat, but Ilana looked away from their hands with a small blush and a catch in her throat as she made no effort to control that particular limb.
Contact.
Lance jumped as if he had been electrocuted. Newton and Kimmy looked at him in confusion as his head hit the ceiling of the limo with an audible thump and he came down about a foot away from where he'd been sitting before. "Sorry, Princess," Lance mumbled. "My bad."
"No, that's fine," she said in a cheery voice, though she was struggling not to let her disappointment and frustration show on her face as she, too, looked away. Not only had her subconscious effort failed, it had failed on the night of Prom, their lastchance to be anything more than acquaintances upon their return to Galaluna - and even worse, he had gone back to the formalities of Princess!
Ilana blinked a few times. Since when had Lance's formalities started to upset her? And 'more than acquaintances'? She dismissed it as the air of Prom, and tried to ignore the voice in the back of her head telling her that no matter how much romance was in the air, it couldn't activate something that wasn't already there.
Naturally, Newton and Kimmy had no problem holding hands, and a small electrical current ran between their two fingers as the limo driver rushed to get his rich customers to their dance, taking as many chances as he could without getting a ticket.
The rest of the ride was spent in nervous anticipation, and though a pinch of melancholy wafted around them as well, they tried to make the best of it. Well, at least three of them did. Army boys aren't really trained for anything called a 'Prom'.
-o-o-o-
The last-minute couple stood outside the gym and looked up at the lights and banners strewn on the outside of the gym.
"Um...wow. It's a good thing we had Ilana on the homecoming committee... I mean, it's Prom, not homecoming, but you know... same committee... thing..."
Amy laughed and agreed with him. Supposedly, Prom at Sherman High had a history of being, for lack of better words, lame. Tonight, however, thanks to the dedication of Ilana and her fellow committee members, both the outside and inside of the huge gym was decorated with lights and decorations that set the mood perfectly for their theme of a luau. The top of the gym was covered in an accurate depiction of the Hawaiian night sky at that time of year, with guides on the wall detailing the constellations for those who cared to identify them. Around the walls, other than the constellation guides, hung electric torches and ivy with hibiscus (fake, of course, but still). The food was also luau themed, with barbecue chicken and mahi-mahi sandwiches, with fruit salads and roasted corn for vegetarians and vegans. Low lines of light bulbs whose brightness fluctuated with the type of music playing hung above the dance floor, right out of reach, and leis were available within twenty feet of wherever you were standing (there was also fruit punch, but the security guard that made sure no one spiked it repelled most people in favor of the water cooler instead).
"Wow, nice", Andre grinned.
Amy nodded, and turned to him. "I figure that they've found out by now that I'm gone. My ride leaves at midnight, and I've only got a five-minute window to load everything and go, so... I guess that we have anywhere between a half an hour and an hour before they find us, drag me back home, and..." Amy trailed off, but on Andre's curious look, reluctantly said, "and for Lance to nearly hospitalize you". "Don't worry, though", Amy rushed to say upon seeing her date pale at the thought. "I can control him, more or less... anyway, I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't punch me if I got between you two, and I was technically the one who asked you to do this, so if we can just avoid them until roughly eleven, we'll be short enough on time for Lance to agree with me, though reluctantly."
Andre nodded. "So, let's see, right now it's... five after ten. We have about fifty-five minutes, give or take the amount of time it takes for them to find us."
Amy nodded enthusiastically. "So come on, let's go!"
-o-o-o-
The limo driver dropped them off, took the money, and bailed before they could blink twice. Since the dance had started about an hour prior to their arrival, there was no line to get into the gym, and since Prom this year was free if you had an ID card (thanks to Ilana's fundraising and decision to hold the dance at the school this year instead of on a cruise ship or some other expensive venue), they were inside in minutes.
No sooner had they stepped through the door, Octus and Kimmy holding hands and Lance and Ilana maintaining an awkward space that hadn't existed since their first week on Earth, were they bombarded with a flash. Lance, momentarily de-sensitized, swung blindly as an automatic reaction, and luckily only ended up knocking a few leis off of a table. "Jeez, man," The photographer said shakily. "Just taking your picture... you know, the job... here!" he said as he hurriedly shoved a copy of the picture he had just taken into Newton's hand and ran off. Newton tucked the picture in his breast pocket and gave Lance a disapproving look, but said nothing once he realized that the young man was already embarrassed.
"We should split up and look for Amy", Lance muttered and began to walk off before Newton called him back.
"We should go in groups of twos." Lance raised his eyebrow, and Newton explained to the naive boy something even a robot could understand. "Look, Lance, it's Prom, and we're moving away tonight, and... I want Kimmy and I to have at leastsome Prom experience, and you should make sure that Ilana is safe and doesn't drink spiked punch or anything like that - because I know that you're not stupid", he hurriedly continued upon receiving the princess's icy glare, "but some kids here are, and it just makes more sense this way, anyway."
"I'm fine with that", Ilana said, inwardly excited for no apparent reason other than to be alone with Lance at Prom. She turned to her supposed date. "What about you?"
To her surprise, she saw a thin sheen of sweat on his neck as he tugged nervously at his tie, an awkward - and nearly nervous - expression taking the place of the previously angry one at the thought of Andre and Amy sneaking out to come to Prom. "Uh, yeah, sure, whatever. Let's - let's just find her and get out of here, okay?" He left no time to answer, though, because before the last word was even out of his mouth Ilana found herself being pulled by her wrist through the crowd, following a fleeing Lance. She shot Newton and Kimmy a look of confusion that mirrored theirs, and allowed herself to be led through the crowd.
Kimmy sighed and turned to Newton with a smile in an attempt to hide the sadness that came with the knowledge that tonightwas the last night he would ever hold her. If you had told her that she would fall in love with Newton - or anyone, for that matter - and that it would be real, mutual love, something that counts even in high school, well, she'd have called you crazy and dismissed you through the laughing of her posse as they agreed with her. Still, he had made her a better person, and she liked to think that, in some way, she made him more human.
"Lance seems to be nervous tonight," she said with a small giggle. "Wonder why?"
She noticed the look of nervousness that flashed across her date's face before he regained his composure. "Um, no idea. Come on, let's look for Amy on the dance floo-"
"Oh, come on, sweetie", Kimmy said with a laugh as she put a hand on her chest and allowed herself to be led towards the dance floor as a song ended. "You don't have to hide anything from me. Your odd little family may have a lot of secrets, but Lance and Ilana liking each other isn't one of them."
Newton stopped mid-step. "Wha... wait, what?" He asked as his brows furrowed. "I thought... I thought I made a miscalculation... they really Kimmy nodded good-naturedly to her naïve boyfriend. "Oh, boy... not good..."
"It's fine, darling. They're adopted anyway, so they're not related by blood, and honestly, they're pretty cute together. I mean, if Lance would ever stop doing awkward stuff like calling her 'Princess' - I mean, it's kinda cute, but weird - or running away from Ilana whenever she says something that makes him blush. And she has to acknowledge that she likes him..." Kimmy sighed. "Hey, when you move, promise me that you'll make sure they get together, mmkay?"
Newton gave a small laugh. "I'll try, but things will be very different, I think. You know, new beginnings and all that. Anyway, I think Amy's got that covered, for the most part, unless her involvement really was a miscalculation I made."
"No, no, you're right about that," Kimmy said as they started dancing to a slow song the DJ had just put on. "And it wouldn't be a miscalculation, just a mistake." Upon seeing the startled look that passed across his face, Kimmy reassured Newton: "You're only human, after all."
He gave her an odd sort of smile like something suddenly made sense, and responded, "Yeah, I guess so," before bringing her closer and dancing slower.
-o-o-o-
Meanwhile, Ilana found her patience with the situation she was in running out around the point that Lance's grip on her started cutting off circulation to her hand. She finally decided to say something when she started losing feeling in her fingertips and her dress started to fall down a little.
"Lance...stop... ow, Lance, stop! Please?" He looked behind her in alarm at the 'ow' part, and immediately released her hand with a look of minor horror at her pale hand and blue fingertips.
"I, um - I'm so - uh, sorry... we should keep looking," Lance said as he looked down and started moving once more through disgruntled couples.
"Lance, wait!" She called after him, hopping after him on one foot as she re-adjusted her shoes. Beautiful white sandals with jewels on the fabric, being completely ignored by the boy who was supposedly her date, even though it was really only a cover, a lie...
He turned around once more and made his way back to her somewhat impatiently, glaring at her shoes in a way that reminded her of that day at Aldo and those hideous shoes she hadn't even worn, but bought simply as a memory of a good day shopping and a source of laughter every once and a while at the ridiculous fabric. He might have thought of the same thing, because a small smirk appeared to break the frown he had previously been wearing.
"One sec," she told him, and turned around to follow him back out into the crowd in resignation as she pulled up her dress a little. As she turned, she found herself right next to him, closer than she had thought he was, her face two inches away, and her adjusted dress nearly touching his tux.
His face turned so red that it seemed to light up the dance floor. He started to back away, and his sudden retreat gave Ilana an odd sense of disappointment. She reached after him, for what she didn't know, but ended up falling forward rather than retrieving her date.
"Ilana!"
He, of course, caught her, just... just like that first day in the shoe store. She had fallen then, too, and ended up with her face buried in his chest just like it was now, with one arm around her back and one steadying her hand, balanced on one foot, his head right above hers...It was different this time, though. Instead of a worried look and a humorous laugh, a fierce blush and look of intense unease was on his face as he looked at her in concern.
"Um... you all right?"
"Yeah, thanks..." she replied as she steadied herself, but the hand he had used to steady her wasn't removed before a slow song came on. Ilana recognized it as one of her favorites, and Lance got curious as her eyes lit up the way he secretly loved.
"What is it?" he asked, looking around.
"Oh, nothing, I just... I like this song, I guess," she replied with a small, almost melancholy smile.
"I see..." Some part of Lance knew that what he was about to do next was a very, very bad idea if he had any common sense at all, but he knew that when it came to her he didn't, and before he had even realized what he was saying, the words had already tumbled out of his mouth.
"Do you want to dance?"
I am so, so sorry... life has been really, really shitty, but my meds are stabilized now and I'm already working on the next chapter, but figured that this was a good place to stop for now. How're you guys? I know my sophomore year was...well, the reason I didn't update... don't get put down by something, kids. It's, uh, yeah. I'm better now, though, so yeah! Please, please review... I'd like to not feel guilty for people leaving the story because I was gone for almost a year... anyway, have a good day, and I love you all so much! (PS - it's almost graduation again and this kind of sucks because all the seniors are amazing. If you're a senior in high school, I wish you the best of luck wherever you go in life!)