The Great Big Could Have Been | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: The Great Big Could Have Been | Previous Challenge Entry
By DJ Evans
01/13/08
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“Mommmm!” I wailed. This was it. The most major life crisis I had ever faced. Tomorrow was the Senior Prom. I was still the new kid at Lakeview Prep, but I thought that I was becoming popular enough, so why didn’t I have a date? Because I had been dumb enough to listen to Sarah Stedman, that’s why—instead of listening to myself. I needed to talk to my Mom now. She would know what to do. She was weird that way.
“Mom!”
“What is it, Abby?” Mom looked up from her laptop, her blue eyes shining through her “granny” reading glasses that she hated wearing but couldn’t do without. I felt instantly calmer. She would fix everything, I was sure of it.
“I have got a total meltdown coming on. You know what tomorrow is, don’t you?”
“Prom, right?”
“Yes. And you’ve noticed that I haven’t even gone shopping?”
“But Abby, you’re only a sophomore. I just assumed you weren’t going this year.”
“Mom! Focus! All the popular sophomore girls are going! I have to go!”
“So go—lots of girls went with their friends and no dates in my day.”
“Eww! Why don’t I just tattoo ‘Loser’ on my forehead now?”
“I don’t understand, Abs. What exactly can I do for you about this?”
I swallowed hard. What I had to say wasn’t going to be easy. She was going to be disappointed in me, I knew it. I was disappointed in me. I had done the exact opposite of what she had taught me all my life. I had not only treated someone who was decent and nice really badly, but I had done it just so that my friends wouldn’t think I was uncool. I took a deep breath and spit it out as fast as I could while not looking her directly in the eye.
“The problem isn’t exactly that no one asked me. Matt Bailey asked me two weeks ago and I almost said yes because he’s really nice and then Sarah Stedman told him to bug off and ask someone in his own “sphere” and to leave me alone like I would ever be seen dead with a loser like him and I didn’t say anything and it really hurt his feelings and she told me that she was sure that Brody Doermer was going to ask me out and that if he didn’t Jeff Showalter was definitely going to and I believed her and they didn’t, but I really want to apologize to Matt anyway but if I do it now doesn’t it look like I’m just desperate for a date to the prom?”
Mom managed somehow to keep up with me.
“Oh, Abby.” She sighed. “Well, I am glad you are talking to me about this, and I know I don’t need to tell you I am disappointed that you would act that way. We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of. You’re right, it might look like you are just looking for a last minute date if you call and apologize right now, but I think you should do so anyway and risk it. Just be sure you don’t blame Matt if his feelings are still hurt.”
I felt so much better. Mom was right. Matt was really a nice guy, after all, and he would probably forgive me if I explained everything. So I called him right up.
“Matt?”
“Umm, yeah?”
“This is Abby. Blankenship? From school.”
“Oh.”
I paused and then just decided to be direct and brief.
“I just really wanted to apologize for acting like a jerk when you asked me to go to Prom with you. What Sarah said wasn’t true and I should have said something. I don’t usually act like that, and I’m sorry.” There was almost no sound on the other end of the line. For a minute, I thought he had hung up.
“Okay then. See you in school.”

Matt Bailey took Vanessa Pettigrew to Senior Prom. She was a junior and the president of the Writer’s guild. They dated for the rest of senior year and seemed really happy. I stayed home that night and vowed that I would never turn down a suitable date for something I really wanted to go to again just in case “someone better” might come along, and that I would never let someone else decide for me how I should treat people.

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