A Little Less Sixteen Candles

So here's the story.

A couple of months ago, Aylla (Cameron Ashby's "girlfriend") asked me to ask Jessica Simpson out to prom. Tina Edmunds, Allya Sylvanstoke, and Jessica Simpson are like the three musketeers...except not...okay, try the three Muses. They are inseparable. The three of them "just have to" go to prom together.

I like Jessica, and I think she's very nice. We're not best friends, but we are more friends than we were last year. So I say sure, why not.

Last week, Aylla started telling me that I needed to ask her very, very soon. According to her, Jessica bought a dress last year but never got asked, so this year Jessica's mom said that she has to get asked before she buys the dress. Jessica had to buy the dress she wanted in the next two or three days.

At first I was like, "Okay, thanks for the memo." But deep down, I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to even go to prom at all. Aylla continued by telling me that she would have it all set up for me to ask her, and all I would have to do is go to a party at her house on Friday.

When I got home and thought about it, I realized that even if I could go to prom, there was a different girl I wanted to ask: Kristen Southerland. But she and Jordan Sorenson were pratically "going out" (even though they aren't really, or something like that). My sister found out that Aylla had basically taken the entire operation into her own hands: she had made a DVD slideshow out of Jessica's baby and child pictures up to her current age, and at the end of the slide show it said, "Will you go to prom with me? Love, Marcus." I had nothing to do with the DVD.

One of my teachers told me that I had to be honest with Jessica. I couldn't go to prom unless it was with someone I had picked--otherwise I'd spend the whole time looking at Kristen. That wasn't entirely true...but she had a good point. So right then, in the middle of fourth period, she went and got Jessica Simpson out of class. I talked to her. Apparently, there was no dress deadline, and she had just worn the prom dress to Homecoming. She said it was no big deal, and she felt a bit uncomfortable about Aylla arranging all this. In fact, she knew that I was supposed to ask her because Aylla had told her. "And where's the surprise in that?" she said.

I still felt like a heel. Without thinking, I told her that there was another guy who would ask her. NEVER LIE! She smiled, and told me to keep his name a secret.

After a moment, I came up with someone: my friend Eric Smith. Surely he would take her. They had been in The Forgiener together. That night, at the party Aylla showed me the movie. She was angry at me and at herself for "getting involved". And she gave Jessica the DVD, to which Jessica had replied, "This is to remember the time I almost got asked to prom."

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Downstairs, I asked Jordan about asking "his" girl, Kristen. He actually was glad. Since everyone thinks they are going out, he felt pressured into asking her because he was afraid no one else would--and they've already been to a dance. But if I was gonna ask her, then that made things cool. I sighed with some relief.

The next day at work, Eric told me that he was actually already planning on asking someone. I panicked. Now I was in some deep trouble. Desperatly, I asked Julie Garbutt this morning to talk to Trevor Robertson (the Jim Carry of Orem High) to ask Jessica. I have yet to hear from her.

As Julie and I talked, Ben came up, and it was mentioned how he thought of asking her to prom. She said that if Ben asked her now, after the way he treated her during the play Seven Brides, she would essentially tell him to drop dead. "He lost his chance," she said.

I hate dramas.