The Year I Missed the Prom

During my junior year, I had a fleeting crush on a boy in my stake named Joseph Berryhill. I don’t really know why, because I didn’t know him all that well at all. I do know that he was one of the nicest guys I had ever met in my whole life, and he was fun to be with. There was nothing about him that hinted I would never be good enough for a Berryhill. Don’t get me wrong, I was still completely infatuated with Ronny Bjarnason, but let’s face it. I kind of subconsciously knew that would never happen, because a Chandler would never be good enough for a Bjarnason. (I did get that impression quite frequently, and while it wasn’t enough to cure the infatuation, it did allow me to have shallow little temporary crushes on other boys sometimes).

Joseph lived in Ceres, and went to a different high school than I did. And for some reason, I got it in my head that I would ask him to my junior prom. So I did, and he said yes. He was my first date. We went in a group with all the other Mormon kids, and it was okay. It definitely was not as fun as it would have been if I had gone with someone I actually knew better. I was absolutely not an outgoing kind of person, so there was an element of awkwardness about the whole thing.

The real prom zinger was my Senior year. I was head over heels for Stefan, and he and I were best friends. Being with him was easy, talking to him was easy, hanging out with him was always, always fun. We were not ever officially anything, but everyone knew we were just best friends. I just took it as a given that we would go to prom together.

But one day he mentioned to me that he was going to prom with my friend Lauri. I was dumbfounded! What?! I was hurt and confused. He told me that our friend Richard had told him that he was going roller skating with me the night of prom, and then Lauri asked him, so he said yes. Later I found out that Lauri (who was Richard’s best friend, but Richard was gay, so not a candidate for prom date) convinced Richard to tell Stefan I was going skating with him so that he would say yes when Lauri asked him to prom. What a double cross! I was stabbed in the back, and it hurt. Stefan said to just leave it, and he would go with Lauri, but after prom he would drop her off and hang out with me at his house. So that’s what we did.

Nothing ever came of Lauri and Stefan. She got to go to prom with him, but I won’t deny it felt great, after he went back to Germany, to tell her that he kissed me. For a split second, she had that super jealous look on her face. And then she recovered herself and never admitted that it burned.

Oh, high school.