It’s Not Summer Without You

It felt like forever before Jeremiah spoke again. I was pretending to be asleep, and he was drumming his fingers along the steering wheel. Suddenly he said, “This was my prom’s theme song.”

Right away I opened my eyes and asked, “How many proms have you been to?”

“Total? Five.”

“What? Yeah, right. I don’t believe you,” I said, even though I did. Of course Jeremiah had been to five proms. He was exactly that guy, the one everyone wanted to go with. He would know how to make a girl feel like the prom queen even if she was nobody.

Jeremiah starting ticking off with his fingers. “Junior year, I went to two, mine and Flora Martinez’s at Sacred Heart. This year, I went to my prom and two others. Sophia Franklin at—”

“Okay, okay. I get it. You’re in demand.” I leaned forward and fiddled with the air conditioner control.

“I had to buy a tux because it was cheaper than renting over and over again,” he said. Jeremiah looked straight ahead, and then he said the last thing I was expecting him to say. “You looked good at yours. I liked your dress.”

I stared at him. Did Conrad show him our pictures? Had he told him anything? “How do you know?”

“My mom got one of the pictures framed.”

I hadn’t expected him to bring up Susannah. I’d thought prom would be a safe subject. I said, “I heard you were prom king at your prom.”

“Yeah.”

“I bet that was fun.”

“Yeah, it was pretty fun.”

I should have brought Jeremiah instead. If it had been Jeremiah, things would have been different. He would have said all the right things. It would have been Jeremiah in the center of the dance floor, doing the Typewriter and the Lawn Mower and the Toaster and all the other stupid dances he used to practice when we watched MTV. He would have remembered that daisies were my favorite flower, and he would’ve made friends with Taylor’s boyfriend, Davis, and all the other girls would have been looking at him, wishing he was their date.