"Well?" Caroline urged me not so subtley while patting my back a bit too violently to be simple encouragement.
"Well, I remember who she is now." I answered.
"You... I won't bother asking, but aren't you going to ask her to dance?" Caroline struggled to say through frustrated sighs.
"Yeah, right. Me? Go voluntarily join the cess pool in front of me? And with a girl I'm sure hates my guts at that. Sometimes it's best to keep fiction and reality separate, Ms. Caroline. Even if you're an english teacher and all." I answered her absurd proposal with conviction.
"Oh? Is Cay getting a little nervous?" She taunted me.
"Nervous to voluntarily do something my heart has done everything within its power to advise me against doing? Yeah, I'd say I'd be pretty nervous about what kind of mental illness I contracted if I did that."
"Huh, I guess it's just too much for you. Don't feel too bad about it, Annie is pretty enough to make most boys nervous, after all." She said and I didn't relent although I clicked my tongue.
"How about this, you get her to dance with you tonight, and I'll stop thinking you're such a wuss." She wagered.
Nice try, but I'm not weak enough to fall for such low stakes.
"Well, looks like you're running out of time." Caroline said and I looked over at Annie again to see a couple boys that eyed her from the surrounding as they slowly grew closer with red faces.
"Like I said, I'd really rather not." Why would it matter to me what happened to that rude woman? If anything, I imagined the tongue-lashing one of those vermin would get for trying to approach her in the first place.
"I guess she's going to be dancing with someone else tonight." Caroline continued, and suddenly the strange scenario of Annie dancing with one of those normies entered my mind.
'Tch'
"Eh, looks like you never really had a chance in the first place, huh? So much competition." Caroline's final provocation ignited something strange in me, hammering in the final nail in the coffin as I began to walk over swiftly in Annie's direction.
Although I wasn't the most social person, I was quite confident in my looks. I went to the gym regularly, took care of my hygiene, and almost completely cut out all the junk food I used to eat. Although, that part was more a financial motivation...
I could almost sense Caroline's triumphant smile behind me as I walked across the gym, quickly passing the horny monkeys that were taking their sweet time approaching the girl.
"Hey, you alone?" I asked, flatly once I reached her. Ignoring the groans of the surrounding boys that despaired at the missed opportunity.
'Too bad, maybe take the stick out of your asses next time.'
"Oh -uh, Yeah! Sorry, d-do I know you? I don't have my contacts in right now, it kept on getting in my makeup so.... haha. Well... now I can't even see what's going on so I'm stuck standing here. S-so t-there goes my homecoming night, right?" She looked up at me and spoke nervously in a way that nearly had me checking to see if I'd walked up to the wrong girl. But sure enough, it was the same brown-haired, green-eyed brat that treated me like a 3rd-hand butler the last time we met.
'Thank god it was me.' I caught a strange thought before shaking it away.
'Still, she can't recognize me? That makes this considerably easier.' I coughed a few times, making my voice a little deeper before talking.
"The name's Jake." I lied confidently, no hesitation present in my voice now that I knew she couldn't recognize me.
"Jake...?" She asked in a strange tone and I suddenly got a little nervous as her squinted eyes looked up at me.
"Y-Yeah, something wrong with Jake? hah.." I asked nervously, forcing out a chuckle. Perhaps I was a little too confident she wouldn't know who I was.
"O-Oh, no!" She abruptly shouted before covering her mouth with her hands in embarrassment.
'Jesus, she's realllly nervous.' I thought inwardly, my own anxiety having faded away completely in light of the new information.
"N-no, it's nothing like that. Just... my ex-boyfriend's name was Jake too." She fumbled through her words.
"Oh...." I answered, before coming up with an idea. "Wait... Annie, is that you!?" I suddenly shouted in surprise.
"...J-Jake...? W-why are you... -no, before that, h-how-"
"Pffft." I couldn't hold in my laughter as I slowly began to chuckle at her increasingly panicked voice.
She took a few seconds to stare in shock before her expression reflected her realization and she punched me lightly on the shoulder as I was hunched over, still losing my mind.
"You asshole." She said, dejectedly at my ill-natured prank.
"Aaaah, I'm sorry -I'm sorry." I apologized, still recovering from my laughing fit. "I mean, how couldn't I? I have the same name as the guy, how crazy is that?" I tried to explain myself, thinking in my mind it was too hilarious that I happened to choose the same name as the guy she broke up with.
"Come on, it's funny. You gotta admit." I finished, and Annie began to chuckle slightly. "I think it's funnier how much mileage you're getting out of this, asshole." She said through terribly veiled snorts of laughter.
It was only then that I noticed her pink lips that curved upwards as she laughed. The rest of her face was similarly adorned with all kinds of makeup that brought out her emerald-green eyes and wolf-cut hair that bobbed up and down on her head.
'Caroline wasn't lying about her being pretty enough to bring in competition.' I shook my head a few times to dispel my strange thoughts before speaking again.
"Well, I can't promise to dump you afterwards, but do you wanna hit the floor?" I asked, remembering my bet with Caroline.
'Hit the floor, really?' I cringed inwardly at my improvised proposal.
Annie's voice went strangely cold at my words and she stopped smiling entirely.
'Shit.'
"Ah, too far -too far. Sorry, no more ex jokes." I hurriedly apologized for my mistake.
"Oh no, it's not that, just..." She spoke dejectedly as she looked down at the ground below us. "I... can't really go dance there either." She began to wiggle her leg as she said so and I followed her gaze to see the long red heels that she wore on her feet.
'Damn, she really did overdress for this.' I realized, looking down at my own cheap button up suit that I'd bought for Halloween the year before. It was literally just a suit that buttoned up at the middle, made to be torn off at a moment's notice for whatever reason the person who made it thought it would be a good joke. But to be honest I could hardly tell the difference between it and a real suit when I put it on, buttons connected of course.
"Damn, you're right. Looks like you can't be jumping in place like a broken jack-in-the-box with those on." I said, sarcastically, looking back towards the crowd behind me.
"Oh, but I have an idea!" I faked enlightenment. "What if, instead of hopping like all the other clowns, we danced for real? Something like, I don't know, anything that takes a modicum of creativity." I suggested in a voice that oozed sarcasm and she giggled again.
"That is a lovely idea." She joked back in a posh accent. "However, you seem to be forgetting one minor detail, Jake. I was not taught of any of these 'real' dances of which you speak. Plus, even if we did both know how to dance, I've never even met you before. So, how are suddenly supposed to be able to coordinate anything?" She offered a logical counter which I immediately rejected.
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, I know all about your dancing habits. Us Jakes communicate these things to each other. How else do you think we're so popular with the ladies?"
"Pfft." She scoffed.
"But seriously, I'll guide you through it. So, come on." I gestured for her to follow me as I took a single step back towards the dance floor. She looked back up at me with her eyebrows raised incredulously and a nervous smile on her face.
"Come on." I reached out to grab her hand and pulled her out with me towards the center of the room.
'Jesus, this Jake guy is a bold bastard'
"Hieeee -Jake!" She squealed fearfully as I pulled her, tripping over her heels multiple times as I held her stead with my other arm firmly gripping her shoulder.
"Jeez, settle down. You're fine." I told her as I felt the eyes of a few students around us begin to lock on me as I walked with her. For some reason, I hardly cared.
Annie's eyes darted fearfully around the room in front of us, looking through several of the students and the crowd as if a cornered animal.
"Relax, no one's staring." I lied through my teeth. "Aren't they just blobs to you right now, anyways? Let em' stay that way."
My eyes trailed over to where Caroline had challenged me earlier. Spotting her now leaning against the wall herself, I gave her a smug grin. She looked back, tilting her head slightly towards me and raising her eyebrows as if saying 'Not yet.'
I felt a light tugging at my side and I turned to see Annie's cast down face as she repetitively fiddled with her red dress and jewelry.
"I don't think this is a good idea. Can you just take me back to the wall?" She said dejectedly.
"Don't be like that." I started, not wanting to give up after getting this far. "You only get one homecoming. You don't want to remember this as sitting against a wall and watching a bunch of waving blobs, do you?" I argued.
"That's Prom."
"Huh?"
"Prom is the one that's only once. We get a homecoming every year." She explained.
"Oh... really?" I didn't care enough to know. "Why the hell would they call it homecoming if it's every year? Homecoming sounds pretty final to me. Well, I guess if we wanna get really technical about it people come home every single day..." As I continued to trail off in my perfectly logical train of thought, a smile began to form on Annie's face in front of me.
"You're an idiot, you know?" She said something insanely rude with the most innocent smile etched on her face.
"Woah." My eyes widened in shock before I began to look down at her with a stern expression. "How rude of you, and to think I almost danced with such a vile-mouthed woman. I hereby revoke my offer." I stated in an exaggerated tone.
She continued to laugh, a bit harder now, as I was confused on whether this was a good or bad thing that was going down in front of me.
'A break down? Right here in public? Even for my first time asking a girl to dance isn't this a bit much universe!?'
"You know." She started as I hurriedly focused on her next words, knowing they would determine the fate of my social status for the next two years at this hellish battlefield disguised as an 'educational institute'.
"I don't feel like going back to the wall anymore." She said, cryptically, and it took me a few seconds to derive the meaning behind her words.
"O-oh, so..." I said out loud cluelessly before a voice shouted in my mind 'ASK HER TO DANCE DUMBASS'. I turned immediately around to see Ms. Caroline glaring daggers at me. I suddenly had a strange feeling that the feminine whisper-shout in my mind wasn't my sub-conscious' doing.
"W-would you like to dance?" I asked in such a formal way that my face inwardly squished together in disgust.
"Yes, I would love to." She answered without hesitation, grabbing my hand with her own as I nearly jumped in shock at her sudden vigor.
"So?" She asked, her warm hand gently resting in mine that hung limp at my side. I felt my face heat up as my heart thumped quickly in my chest.
'C-calm down, dumbass.'
"What dance was it you were so confident in that you yanked me all the way over here?" Annie asked me, the feeling of her hand in mine almost overpowering the sound of her words as she spoke.
"Oh... yeah, about that." I answered sheepishly.
'God rest my shriveled soul when this is over.'