***
Inside, music thumped behind the ballroom doors. I stopped with my fingers on the handle.
Noah waited.
I breathed once, then opened it.
The room went quiet.
Someone near the photo booth whispered, “Oh my God, Damien?”
A small laugh came first. Then another followed. Then more joined in.
Phones came out.
Noah’s hand tightened around mine. “Damien.”
“I know,” I whispered.
But I looked at the phones.
Jada appeared beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushed mine. “Don’t give them fear.”
I swallowed and lifted my chin.
Noah looked at me. “We can still go.”
“No,” I said, though my voice came out thinner than I wanted. “We came to prom. I’m nervous, but I’m okay.”
Jada nodded toward the dance floor. “Then go dance!”
I almost laughed. “Right now?”
“Right now.”
Noah held my hand a little looser, waiting for me to choose.
That mattered, so I stepped forward.
We made it maybe five steps before the footballers showed up. Chad moved in front of us. Nathan came up beside him, already smiling like he’d found the funniest thing in the room.
Ali lingered behind them, quiet enough to pretend he wasn’t part of it.
Chad looked me up and down. “Wow.”
I stopped. “Use a full sentence.”
His smile twitched. “Big entrance.”
“Move, Chad,” Jada said.
“I’m not in your way.”
Nathan looked at Noah. “You really walked in with him like that?”
Noah’s jaw tightened. “Of course I did.”
Chad gave a short laugh. “Come on, Damien. You knew people were going to say something.”
“I knew you would,” I said. “That’s different.”
His face changed for half a second.
Then Nathan looked around and raised his voice. “So are we all pretending this is normal?”
The word hit me harder than I expected.
Normal was the word I’d spent most of high school pretending not to care about.
Jada’s voice sharpened. “Nathan, if you need everyone’s help deciding what normal is, that sounds like a you problem.”
“Stay out of it,” Chad said.
“No, you should,” I said.
He looked back at me, surprised.
I felt Noah glance at me too.
My hands were cold, but I kept them still.
People started gathering. A few drifted over from the punch table. Someone left the photo booth line, and a couple near the DJ stopped dancing.
Then the phones lifted higher.
That’s when the room changed.
It stopped feeling like prom and started feeling like something people wanted to capture.
Nathan clapped once. “Go on, then.”
I frowned. “Go on what?”
“You dressed up. Give them the moment.”
A few people laughed.
Chad smirked. “Yeah. Dance.”
Someone behind him repeated it.
“Dance.”
The word moved through the circle until it became a chant.
“Dance. Dance. Dance.”
They weren’t cheering for us.
They were trying to make us prove we could take it.
Noah leaned close. “We’re leaving.”
I wanted to argue, but the truth came out first.
“Okay. I want to.”
His face softened. “Then we go.”
He started to turn with me, but Jada caught my wrist.
“Wait.”
I looked at her. “Jada, please.”
Her eyes flicked to Noah, and my stomach dropped before she even spoke.
“You didn’t tell him?”
Noah went still.
The chant blurred around me.
I pulled my hand from his. “Tell me what?”
Noah looked at me, and for the first time that night, he looked more afraid of me than the crowd.
“I was going to tell you after.”
“After what?”
He took a breath. “I entered us for Prom Court.”
The chant faded into a dull noise.
“You put our names in? Together? Without asking me?”
His eyes lowered. “I thought it would be good.”
“For whom, Noah?”
He looked back up. “For you. For us.”
I shook my head. “Noah.”
“I thought you deserved to be on that ballot like everybody else.”
“And I deserved to know before I became part of your plan,” I said. “You don’t get to decide when I’m brave.”
His face crumpled a little.
“It was my name,” I said.
He went quiet.
Chad stepped closer, his smile returning. “Wait. You two are actually on the ballot?”
Nathan laughed under his breath. “That’s rough.”
