10 Things I Hate About Prom, page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2024 by Assemble Media, LLC
Cover art copyright © 2024 by Rebeca Alvarez, bouquet icon by Muhammad/stock.adobe.com, hands showing heart shape icon by Pixel-Shot/stock.adobe.com, smile emoji by Vadymstock/stock.adobe.com, bee drawing by nenilkime/stock.adobe.com
Caught in a Bad Fauxmance excerpt text copyright © 2023 by Elle Gonzalez Rose. Cover art copyright © 2023 by Cannaday Chapman.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Joy Revolution, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
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Hardcover ISBN 9780593705179
Hardcover Library Binding ISBN 9780593705186
Trade Paperback ISBN 9780593705209
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Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Excerpt from Caught in a Bad Fauxmance
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For the real Nurse Oatmeal: Doctor Porridge
Chapter One
There’s nothing worse than working a double shift on the last day of spring break.
Except turning around to find a guy you barely know holding up a sign that says PROM?
My jaw locked the second the bell over the door chimed. Most weekends I don’t get a moment to breathe. The rush at Casa Y Cocina is constant from brunch all the way through dinner, the hours passing by in a mad flurry of fritura samplers, piña colada mimosas, and crumpled dollar bills. But today was unusually slow. Like, keep-an-eye-out-for-tumbleweeds slow. Tío Tony even gave me the green light to head home at two if no one else came in after I finished wiping down my tables. The last time he let me dip early was when I chipped my tooth nosediving to save a plate before it hit the ground. Nepotism isn’t a word in the Santos family dictionary.
I can feel Tío Tony’s glare on the back of my head as my gentleman caller, Chris Pavlenko, sets the box under his arm on a table so he can get down on one knee.
Chris’s brow quirks, his hot-pink duct tape sign halfway into the air when he pauses. “You’re Ivelisse, right?”
Wow. A promposal from a guy who isn’t even sure who I am. Shakespeare could never.
The temptation to say no is strong. Chris is usually stoned on days that end in y, and last month he almost drank a beaker of liquid iron because he thought it was green-apple Gatorade. But even if he doesn’t immediately smell the lie, roll call in chem tomorrow will be a pretty big giveaway.
I take my time replying. Opening my mouth too soon could lead to (a) projectile vomiting, (b) saying something I’ll regret, or (c) saying something I regret while projectile vomiting. So I take a deep breath, decide to use the rational part of my brain, and nod instead.
Chris grins, his eyes half open and tinged pink. “Sweet.”
The smell of weed and stale tortilla chips comes with him as he shifts closer to me, overpowering the usual smell of sautéed onions and cilantro wafting from the kitchen.
“So, you down?” Chris asks as he holds the sign up over his head.
“To go to prom?”
“Yeah,” he says in the same tone one might say, “Duh” or “No shit, I’m holding a sign that says PROM?”
My cheeks flush as I choke out a laugh, scratching the back of my neck just to give my hands something to do. It’s not like he walked in here to ask Tío Tony or one of the fry cooks to prom but asking me makes just as little sense. In the four years we’ve known each other, Chris has said maybe ten words to me. Five of which were Did you do the homework? You can’t blame me for being shocked that prom? is the eleventh.
“Ivelisse,” Tío Tony barks, wiping down his knife as he slowly approaches us. “You good?”
“Yep, fine,” I reply to keep the peace. Tío Tony’s heart may be made of marshmallow fluff, but he definitely gets a kick out of leaning into his “bulging muscles and intimidating tattoos” exterior. I wouldn’t put it past him to lift Chris up by the scruff of his neck and toss him onto the street like a rag doll.
“Oh!” Chris exclaims with a grin, as if there isn’t a six-foot-five man with a meat cleaver glaring at him. “I brought these.”
He gets up off his knees to grab the box he set aside. My nose wrinkles as he pulls up the lid with a lazy wave of his hand, the hairs along my arms rocketing to attention as a familiar scent wafts over me.
The peanut butter cookies make me recoil like a vampire would at garlic. Any hope I had of getting through this interaction without throwing up is long gone. I’m not afraid to admit that a box of cookies can strike the fear of God into me—not when one wrong move could land me in the emergency room with anaphylactic shock.
I jump back as Chris takes a tentative step toward me, nearly tripping over a broom. He frowns, glancing from me to the box. “I guess you don’t like peanut butter?”
At this point, expecting him to remember my nut allergy would’ve been too much to ask.
“I’m allergic.” I take another step back for good measure. “Really allergic.”
“My bad,” he replies as he closes the box. “Anna likes these, so I figured you might like them too.”
All the nerves that calmed within me when Chris put the cookies away come again. “Anna?”
He nods, picking his PROM sign back up and wiping some dirt off the R. “I asked her yesterday.” He wrinkles his nose, picking at a dust clump that’s now stuck to the tape. “But she said no.”
Finally, this bizarro situation starts to make some sense. Chris spends more time sighing over Anna Adebayo’s perfume than he does taking notes. If he spent that time actually listening to her or paying attention to the pins on her backpack instead of trolling “How to Get Girls” subreddits, he’d know she’s a lesbian.
“So…you decided to ask me instead?”
Anna and I don’t have many other friends at Cordero High besides each other, which is how we prefer it, but that doesn’t make us interchangeable. I guess proximity makes me his runner-up.
He shrugs, giving up on the dust clump and flipping the sign around to face me once more. In the new light, I spot the patches where tape has been pulled off. Sticky residue spells out Anna.
“You seem chill.”
At least I have that going for me.
The silence goes from awkward to strained to painful as excuses sit on the tip of my tongue and die when I open my mouth. If Chris wasn’t actively stoned, he might call out my hesitance. Instead, he grabs a cookie for himself, not noticing when I put a safe distance between us. Even a crumb could send me down a dangerous spiral. Though breaking out into hives would be a very effective way of getting myself out of this situation.
Maybe I can sneak off and camp out in the kitchen. Hiding from my problems isn’t the solution I need, but I do my best thinking after a long, cathartic scream into a bag of frozen corn. There’s a reason freezer screams are the backbone of the service industry. Plus, it’ll give me time to think of an excuse or, better yet, an escape plan.
“I actually—”
“Chris!” another voice cuts in before I can finish.
My heart leaps from the pit of my stomach as my best friend and saving grace, Joaquin, sweeps Chris into the bro-iest of bro hugs.
“I thought you lived up in Anch
“Y-yeah, I do.” Chris gives Joaquin a bleary once-over before glancing at the front door, as if to confirm he didn’t materialize out of thin air. “I was just—”
“Oh, I meant to ask you,” Joaquin interrupts, wrapping an arm around Chris’s shoulders and guiding him toward the door. “I had this issue with my bike last week, and one of the guys mentioned you might know what the deal is.”
Their voices trail off as Joaquin leads them to where his bike is locked up out front, letting the door shut behind him. I collapse onto the chair beside me, heaving a sigh with every bit of breath I have left in me.
“Ivelisse,” Tío Tony calls out yet again, hovering by the entrance to the kitchen. “No more boys allowed unless they pay for food.” As if I had any choice in the matter. His thick gray mustache bristles as he peeks through the front window, jutting his chin toward Joaquin. “Except for El Conejito.”
Over a decade of friendship and Joaquin still can’t shake off the nickname my abuela gave him when we were six. My family watched in awe as Joaquin happily nibbled on his carrot sticks instead of begging for more cake like the other sugar-high six-year-olds at my birthday party.
In our defense, he does have rabbit teeth.
I give Tío Tony a nod and sink back into my chair, massaging my temples in hopes of fighting off the steadily building headache. The smart thing to do would be to haul ass and slip out the rear exit while Chris is distracted, but I never make smart decisions when I’m under extreme duress.
Thankfully, Joaquin was smart enough for the both of us in that moment. My heart has stopped pounding and my headache has subsided to a dull throb by the time he returns, sans Chris Pavlenko, wearing a cocky smirk that tells me I’m never going to live this down.
“So,” he singsongs as he drops into the chair across from me. “Seems like you had fun while I was gone.”
I’m still too mortified to do anything other than groan and let my head fall onto the table with a thump.
“Gotta say, I didn’t see this relationship coming but it makes sense. Y’know, since you two have”—he pauses to do a drum roll on the table—“chemistry.”
His corniness is enough to bring me back from the dead. “Shut up,” I snap as I lean across the table to smack his shoulder.
He tries to appear wounded, holding a hand over his heart, but he can’t hold in his giggles. “Don’t fight your feelings anymore, Ive. This could be the beginning of a very beautiful romance.”
I roll my eyes as I slump back into my seat. “I’m sure my grandkids would love to hear about how their grandpa only asked me to prom because the girl he asked first said no.”
Joaquin lets out a hiss. “Oof. Okay, never mind, that’s harsh.”
That’s an understatement, and I didn’t even tell him about the peanut butter cookies. As sad as it is, having a close brush with death the first time a guy asked me out since freshman year is a very appropriate metaphor for my love life: dead on arrival.
Using a dishrag to protect myself from any stray crumbs, I take the box Chris left behind to the kitchen and write out a note for the line cooks to help themselves.
“He did say I was chill, though,” I add. Joaquin snorts, immediately trying to cover it up when I turn to glare at him. “What? You don’t think I’m chill?”
He scrunches up his nose in thought, waving his hand from side to side. “On a scale of one to ten, I’d say you’re like a…four?”
Great, so I don’t have that going for me.
I go to whack him with the dishrag—a very chill response—except he catches the tail end of it before it can hit him. “Jesus, you’re fast,” I mumble as he lets go of the towel with a shit-eating grin. “Did you get any radioactive spider bites over break? Because you can’t get a tan and superpowers in the same week. That’s just not fair.”
“I wish.” He leans back in his chair, one hand coming up behind his head while the other gestures down the front of his shirt. “But I did get this.”
His new shirt is…loud. Somewhere between a Hawaiian shirt and a bowling jersey, complete with orange, blue, and white palm fronds. Paired with black jeans, it’s definitely a switch from his usual wardrobe of hoodies with gray sweatpants or basketball shorts and slides.
“Interesting choice,” I reply delicately as I slide back into my seat across from him.
He quirks an eyebrow. “The good kind of interesting?”
I take my time replying, rubbing my chin as I take in the full ensemble. “You look like my abuelo.”
His smirk falls into a frown. “Well, then, I’ll just have to give your souvenir to someone who appreciates my fashion sense.” With a humph, he stands up from the table and heads for the door.
Roasting Joaquin Romero is by far my favorite hobby, but I’m a material girl at heart. I bolt from my seat, racing to cut him off before he can get to the exit. “Souvenir?” I ask with a raised brow.
A smirk plays at the corner of his lips for a brief moment before he slips back into his role, lifting his nose high in the air and crossing his arms as he turns his back to me. “I have nothing more to say to you.”
The man plays a dirty game. Then again, he learned it from the best: me. And the hours of telenovelas we watched in middle school. But mostly me.
I give it a few seconds before finally admitting defeat. “You’re a fashion genius. An icon. Your invite to the Met Gala will arrive any day now.”
He tries and fails to hold in his amusement. “You’re forgiven.” He holds up a warning finger as he faces me. “Just know you’re on thin ice.”
If that was true, the ice would’ve cracked five years ago when I told him his new haircut made him look like an egg. But I give him an overly gracious smile and hold out my hands like the greedy gremlin he knows and adores. “The souvenir…?”
“Is at my place,” he finishes, nudging past me to open the door. “Come over after your shift’s done?”
“Actually, I get to cut out early today.”
Joaquin gasps dramatically, bracing himself against the doorframe. “Did hell freeze over?”
I untie my apron and let my hair down from its oppressively tight bun. “No, but I did see some pigs flying around this afternoon.”
After I promise to be ready in five, I head to the storage closet and grab my stuff. I rush through pulling on my sneakers and storing my apron in my designated cubby. With my luck, a party of fifteen will come strolling in any minute now and keep me here past closing.
“Bye, Tío!” I call out as I hurry across the dining room, backpack in hand, and close the door behind me before he can change his mind.
Joaquin’s waiting for me on the curb, his bike propped against a fire hydrant. Before we do our usual dance to squeeze onto the seat together, I pause on the sidewalk to breathe in a deep lungful of the cool spring air. “Sweet, sweet freedom.”
Joaquin takes a sniff of his own, his face crumpling into a grimace. “Freedom smells like car exhaust.”
It does, but that doesn’t make it any less sweet.
Chapter Two
Either Joaquin’s right and I’m a four on the chill scale, or his cycling skills have seriously tanked.
It’s a miracle that we manage to get home with our limbs intact. Maybe that’s thanks to the prayer I said under my breath when he almost sideswiped a soccer mom’s minivan. It’s only a ten-minute journey and yet Joaquin managed to make my life flash before my eyes twice.
“Are you trying to kill us?!” I shouted into his ear when he plowed through a stop sign.
“Calm down. Car rules don’t apply to bikes.”
“They do if you want to survive.”
My protests went ignored, so I chose to squeeze my eyes shut and bury my face in the crook of his neck instead. If we were going to die at the hands of a Suburban, I didn’t want to see it coming.
