All the Way Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Berkley JAM titles by Megan Stine

  PROM NIGHT: MAKING OUT

  PROM NIGHT: ALL THE WAY

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd. Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2007 by Parachute Publishing, L.L.C.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  BERKLEY JAM and the JAM design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley JAM trade paperback edition / January 2007

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Stine, Megan.

  Prom night : all the way / Megan Stine.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After moving to a new school her senior year, Carmen would do nearly anything to get a date to prom, but when a very popular classmate blogs that she went all the way on their first date and it seems all hope is lost, unless she can get a role in the school play and the atttention of her secret crush.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14393-3

  [1. High school—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Theater—Fiction. 4. Proms—Fiction. 5. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 6. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S86035Pq 2007

  [Fic]—dc22

  2006027938

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Chapter 1

  It’s one thing to be desperate to go to the prom—so desperate that you’d do almost anything to get a date.

  It’s a totally different thing to break every rule in the book and do the outrageous, out-of-control stuff I did at my senior prom.

  If you had told me four weeks ago that I would deliberately rip a slit halfway up the side of my dress so I’d look like a cross between Britney Spears on her honeymoon and Paris Hilton on an average day, and then throw myself at some guy on prom night, offering to give him wild sexual favors like he’d only ever read about in magazines, I’d have said you were insane.

  But that was four weeks ago.

  A lot can happen in four weeks.

  I guess the whole thing started the day Rachel McInerney and I were hanging out in the spare studio over my parents’ garage, which is the only place I can stand to be these days. I’ll spare you the boring details, but my parents are deep into renovating the house we live in—that’s what my dad does for a living. He buys older houses, fixes them up, and then sells them for a ton more money. Then we move to a new house in the same town and start the whole thing over. It’s cool if you don’t mind living in chaos and eating a lot of sawdust.

  Anyway, the last time my dad sold our house, my parents couldn’t find anything else to buy. So after living our whole lives in a small town south of Cleveland, Ohio, we packed up and moved to another town about twenty miles away.

  I had to change schools just a week into the beginning of my senior year. It totally sucked.

  Welcome to my life, a little something I call Senior Hell.

  “I’m just going to have to crash the prom,” I told Rachel as we sat in the studio on a warm Friday in April. Rachel is my best friend from my old school, so I didn’t have to spell out for her that I meant crash the prom at our old school, not the new one. She caught my drift.

  “Not an option,” Rachel said. “I mean, I so wish you could, Carmen. You know that, right? But Mr. Duffy made a big deal about it on morning announcements. No prom crashers. If you’re not a current student, the only way you can come to the prom is with a date.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed, because I already knew that. The schools around here are obsessive about keeping the “bad element” out of the prom. Like if they’re not careful, a gang of Harleyriding, bong-selling, speed-demon bikers are going to crash the gates and try to make off with all their precious little virgins or something. “It’s the same at Norton.”

  Norton is my new school. I still refer to it as Norton, and to my old school, Woodward Baines High School, as “school.” At least when I’m with Rachel.

  “So you’re going to have to come up with a date,” Rachel said for the fiftieth time. “What about Ben Sarber?”

  “Ben Sarber? Are you kidding? He spits when he talks!”

  “Oh, come on. He does not. He’s kind of cute, in a weird math/science kind of way,” Rachel said. “And I think he has a thing for you. He keeps asking me how you’re doing.”

  “He does?” That surprised me. How come guys only ever want what they can’t have? I mean, he never asked me out when I was there.

  “He’d take you to the prom if you asked him,” Rachel said.

  I considered it for about thirty seconds and shook my head. “I couldn’t handle it. He really does spit when he talks—or sprays, actually. I can’t believe you never noticed it.”

  “He’s not exactly on my radar screen,” Rachel said. “But how bad can a little spit be? I mean, do you want to go to the prom or not?”

  I knew she was grasping at straws here, because we’d already run through a long list of guys I’d gone out with and dumped, or wouldn’t even consider dating. And the rest of the good ones were taken. “I swear to God, my makeup would be running down my face by the end of three dances. Why do you think Miss Nagin moved him to the back of the room in French last year? He was spitting all over her every time he said, ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle.’ ”

  Rachel shrugged and picked through a box of beads on her lap. She’s a really talented jewelry designer, which is perfect, because I like to think
I’m a talented clothing designer. Between the two of us, we can put together the whole package. She was stringing a necklace of green, gold, and bronze-colored beads as we talked.

  “How does this look?” she asked, holding up the partially finished necklace and gazing into the mirrored wall across from us.

  The studio over the garage in this house is a narcissist’s dream come true. Not that I’m a narcissist. But what girl doesn’t like to stare at herself once in a while? One whole wall is mirrored, with a ballet bar running along it. The family who sold us the house had two little girls who wanted to be ballerinas, so they made this space into a rehearsal studio. Now, it’s my own personal dust-free project space and private retreat, with a worktable, two old soft love seats, and a bunch of floor cushions.

  It would be a fabulous place to hang out with all my new friends from my new school—if I had any.

  Okay, I’m lying. I have friends. Like, two.

  One of them is my cousin.

  Trying to fit into a new school as a senior, when all the social groups are basically set in stone, is brutal.

  I stared at the necklace in Rachel’s hands and noticed how it picked up glints of gold in her long red hair, and complemented her pale clear skin and green eyes. “It looks perfect, of course. You’re a genius. You’ll have to make me something for the prom—if I ever get a date.”

  “Don’t panic, we’re working on it.” Rachel tried to be reassuring.

  But we’d been “working on it” for three full weeks, and we had nothing. And the prom at Woodward Baines was only two weeks away.

  “Don’t you think I could just go with you and Jeremy?” I begged, only half joking. Rachel and her boyfriend had been going out for two years, so I didn’t think I was going to intrude on their big romantic totally-in-love moment. “Maybe Jeremy could tell Mr. Duffy that he couldn’t choose between us, so he brought two dates.”

  “Carmen, you know I love you, but I’m not sharing Jeremy on prom night.” She raised both eyebrows as if she had something totally debauched and sexy in mind.

  “I don’t see why not,” I said, laughing. “It’s not like you guys are going to do it or anything. I thought you were saving yourselves for marriage.”

  “We are.” Rachel frowned like she wasn’t sure she was happy with that decision. “We’re definitely waiting for marriage. Or college.” She paused. “Or at least until prom.”

  “Amazing!” I said. “Don’t tell me you’ve decided to break down and go all the way.”

  “I might not be able to resist,” Rachel said. “Not that Jeremy’s pressuring me. He keeps claiming he’s okay with waiting, but you should hear him moan. Like he wants it so bad.”

  I rolled my eyes and laughed and shook my head, waving the topic away. This was not what I wanted to hear right then. I didn’t even have a date—let alone a hot one.

  “Just don’t tell me about it while I’m sitting home on prom night, dateless, eating Häagen-Dazs out of the container. It’s just too cruel.”

  “Well, if you’re that desperate, what about Sam?” Rachel asked me.

  I gazed at my own reflection in the mirror and tried to imagine getting back together with Sam Bradstone, the guy I’d gone out with for eleven months. Sam and I were such a hot couple when we were together at Woodward Baines. Everyone said we were destined to be voted Most Attractive in the school yearbook, mostly because we just looked good together. Sam had thick, dark brown hair the color of mine (although mine has some dark golden highlights—thank you, Marcella at the Spa Salon); and large, dark eyes like mine; and golden-bronze skin like mine. My lips are fuller than his, but otherwise we practically looked like twins. We were a pretty couple, I had to admit it.

  Then I broke up with him a month before I found out my parents were moving me to Senior Hell. Talk about hindsight.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Sam knew I was tired of him. He wasn’t the one. So I doubt he’d want to get back together now. He’d know I was just using him for the prom, which is totally beneath me.”

  Rachel raised an eyebrow.

  “It is beneath me!” I protested. “I mean, using my ex as a date for the prom? When I already broke his heart once? That’s way too low.”

  “Whereas using some new guy isn’t entirely out of the question, since maybe it could develop into something, and besides, maybe he’s using you, too, so who cares?” she asked.

  “Exactly.”

  Rachel laughed, and I got up to pace around the room in a state of what was rapidly becoming misery. The truth was, we’d already run through all the available guys at Woodward Baines. There wasn’t really anyone I could ask or hope to snag. So, if I was going to go to my senior prom, there was really only one remaining option—something I’d been avoiding thinking about.

  The Norton prom.

  Somehow I’d have to find a date at my new school for their prom instead.

  Ideally, it would be someone like Tyler North, this cute Norton guy I’d been crushing on since I first laid eyes on him last fall.

  Ideally, it would not be someone like David Ulster, the geeky guy who’d been crushing on me ever since I walked through the front doors of the school.

  The minute I thought about the Norton prom, I glanced out the window toward the house next door to see what was going on over there. I couldn’t help it. It was Friday afternoon, after all—the time when my next-door neighbor, Molly Barton, held her famous after-school parties that everyone in the whole school knew about, even though only a small handful of people were invited.

  Let me just say this: they were the kind of parties you didn’t have if your parents were home.

  Molly was one of those cliché most popular girls in school you usually only read about in books: a cheerleader, senior class president, a good A- or B+ student who volunteered at the homeless shelter and whose father just happened to be a big shot on the school board and owned half the commercial real estate in town. I mean, seriously, how many people do you know like that? Usually natural selection managed to spread the wealth around at least a little bit. At Woodward Baines, we didn’t have a perfect most popular girl in the senior class. One girl was the gorgeous cheerleader and the homecoming queen, but someone else had the rich father, and a third one had the killer grades.

  But Molly had it all—plus the silky blond hair straight out of a shampoo commercial and a body that would put a lot of models to shame. And she didn’t stop there. She apparently had an appetite for just about everything, because I’d seen her after school on Fridays, hanging out with her Juicy Couture-wearing friends, drinking or smoking dope, making out with Joey, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, in front of everyone, and then taking him into her bedroom, where things really got down and dirty. Not that I was spying on them or anything. But you couldn’t help noticing. They didn’t even bother to pull the shades.

  Except today was different. I stood there staring openly, not even trying to duck behind our curtains, just watching what was going on in Little Miss Perfect’s bedroom.

  I thought I’d seen everything over at Molly’s house, but this was something new.

  “You could stand to spend prom night with Evan D’Unoffrio, couldn’t you?” Rachel went on. “He’s funny and . . . Carmen, you’re not even listening to me. Hel-lo. Carmen, you pervert, what are you doing? Spying on the slut next door again?”

  “Shh,” I said, as if I thought Molly and Joey could hear us, which of course they couldn’t. “Look.”

  Rachel got up and came to the window to see what I was all worked up about. From the studio window, we had a clear view into several rooms in Molly’s oversized house. We could see straight through the French doors of the family room, where five or six of her friends were still hanging out, their beer cans spread all over the coffee table, probably leaving stains.

  Straight into Molly’s apple-green and gold bedroom, decorated with an antique armoire and tons of green silk throw pillows that were usually pushed off the bed onto the flo
or, so she and Joey could go at it.

  Today, though, the bed was still made. Molly and Joey were fully dressed.

  “Oooh, trouble in la-la land,” Rachel said, watching the scene below us.

  They were having a fight—a real yelling and screaming fight. It was nothing violent, nothing to make you pick up the phone and call 911 or anything. But it was obvious she was really mad, and he was shouting back.

  Then she whirled away and flopped down on her bed, sulking. He just stood there awkwardly, like he didn’t know whether to leave or stay, waiting for her to say something else, but she didn’t. It was so weird, and fascinating at the same time, watching their little drama play out without being able to hear what was going on.

  “What are they fighting about?” Rachel wondered out loud.

  I shrugged. “They can’t be fighting about sex. She puts out plenty.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t put out enough,” Rachel joked.

  “Joey? Ha. He’s a total stud.”

  “Yeah. So what else is there to fight about?” Rachel wondered, then answered the question herself. “Maybe she’s pissed because he spends too much time with his friends.”

  “Could be. He hangs with his buddies a lot. Or maybe he’s been flirting with some other girl,” I said.

  Rachel shot me a glance. “That would be you, if I’m not mistaken. Right?”

  “Me? Oh, God. No way,” I said, flustered. I hadn’t even thought of that. “I mean, yeah. He was sort of flirting with me last Friday afternoon, but it was just some lame attempt. It didn’t mean anything . . . I don’t think.”

  My voice trailed off, wondering. Did it mean anything? I had already told Rachel all about Joey—how he was the captain of the football team, and one of the most popular jocks in school, despite the fact that he was kind of an arrogant jerk. I couldn’t quite figure out why people at Norton put up with him, let alone liked him so much—he was so full of himself. He had this blog called Joey’s Joint (and believe me, the dirty pun was definitely intended). It was all about himself, all these totally conceited accounts of his weekends and his exploits. Everyone at Norton checked out his blog on Sunday night to find out what outrageous thing he had done, or at least claimed to have done, the two days before.