I parked Uncle Frank’s Buick between a BMW and a pickup truck with a flag in the back.
I turned off the engine. I sat there for a second with my hands on the wheel.
“Well,” I said, forcing a smile. “I hope tonight won’t be too terrible. I guess your dad really wanted you to go to prom.”
Georgia didn’t smile back.
She opened her door, but she didn’t get out.
Instead, she turned in her seat and looked me straight in the eyes.
“Wait,” she said.
That’s when she told me her father hadn’t chosen me by accident.
And she showed me his strange message.
I stared at her phone.
Remember our agreement. Don’t make things too easy for him.
“Don’t make things too easy for him?” I read out loud.
Georgia nodded. “My dad wants me to make tonight difficult.”
“Why?”
“To see how you react.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“He suggested I complain about everything,” she said. “Make unreasonable requests. Be rude. Be a total nightmare. And then he wants me to tell him whether you lose your patience.”
I looked out the windshield toward the gym. I looked down at my grandfather’s funeral suit and the shoes I’d borrowed from my neighbor, which were half a size too small. I thought about the mustard-colored Buick with its squeaking left turns and its haunted radio.
“So,” I said slowly, “I’m wearing borrowed shoes and driving a car that sounds like a shopping cart because your father wants to test my patience?”
Georgia stared at me for a second.
Then she burst out laughing.
It was a real laugh, loud and surprised, like it had escaped from her.
“Pretty much,” she said.
“Does he know there are easier ways to annoy me?”
“Brent!”
“I’m serious. He could just ask me to reorganize the warehouse again. I did it in February. Took three weeks. He changed his mind about where the paper towels go four times.”
Georgia laughed harder. She put her hand over her mouth.
“He told me about that,” she said. “He said you didn’t complain once.”
“I complained,” I said. “Just not out loud.”
Then her expression changed.
“I told him I wouldn’t do it,” she said. “The whole difficult thing. It wasn’t fair to you.”
“Then why did you look so miserable back at your house?”
“Because my dad was standing right there taking forty pictures, and I didn’t want him to think I’d agreed to his ridiculous plan.” She shrugged. “And because I was annoyed with him. Not with you. Sorry. I should’ve said something sooner.”
“Then why are we here?” I asked.
“Because I still wanted to go to prom,” Georgia said. “It’s my senior prom. I bought this dress in February. And I thought you deserved to know what he was planning before you spent the whole night wondering why I was being horrible.”
I studied her.
“Planning for what?” I said.
Georgia hesitated.
“That’s the part I can’t explain yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want you to hear it from him,” she said. “It’s not my news to tell.”
I groaned and put my forehead on the steering wheel.
“Georgia,” I said, “you’re making this sound like I’m about to inherit a castle.”
She smiled. It was a real smile this time.
“No castle,” she said. “But you might be surprised.”
Inside, the gym was covered in balloons and string lights.
The theme was “A Night Under the Stars.” Somebody had hung hundreds of little silver paper stars from the ceiling on fishing line. They turned slowly in the air from the heat of the crowd. The basketball hoops were wrapped in white fabric. There was a DJ booth under one of them with colored lights that pulsed with the music.
It smelled like floor polish, hair spray, and too much cologne, which is exactly what every high school dance smells like.
I felt about a hundred years old.
Georgia grabbed my arm and pulled me through the crowd toward a table near the back.
“Come on. I want you to meet Madison.”
Madison was Georgia’s best friend. She was short and blond and wearing a bright red dress with sequins that caught the light every time she moved. She was sitting at the table eating a cupcake.
When she saw us, she put the cupcake down and looked me up and down.
Then she grinned.
“So,” she said. “You’re Brent.”
I blinked.
“Why does everybody say my name like that?” I asked.
Georgia rolled her eyes.
“Madison knows about Dad’s little experiment,” she said.
I stared at them both.
“Wonderful,” I said. “Does the DJ know too?”
Madison laughed.
“Not yet!” she said. “But the night is young.”
Her date was a tall, quiet boy named Theo who played on the basketball team. He shook my hand and said, “Hey, man,” and then went back to looking at his phone. I liked him immediately.
We found our seats. A waiter, actually a junior from the culinary club, put plates of chicken and green beans in front of us.
“So,” Madison said, leaning forward on her elbows. “How’s the test going so far?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nobody’s told me what the test is.”
“That’s part of the test,” Madison said wisely.
“Madison,” Georgia said.
“What? It probably is.”
About thirty minutes later, we were standing by the edge of the dance floor. Georgia handed me her purse.
“Hold this,” she said.
I took it. It was small and sparkly and weighed about as much as a sandwich.
Then she handed me her phone.
“And this.”
“Okay.”
Then she handed me her drink, a cup of red punch.
I stood there holding a purse, a phone, and a cup of punch. I looked at her suspiciously.
“Is this the test?” I asked.
“No,” Georgia said. “I’m tying my shoe.”
She bent down, fiddled with the strap on her high heel, and stood back up. Then she looked at my face and started laughing.
“You’re going to question everything I do tonight, aren’t you?” she said.
“Your father,” I said, “has destroyed my ability to recognize normal behavior.”
For the next hour, Georgia teased me by pretending to make ridiculous demands.
“Brent,” she said, with a completely straight face, “could you ask the DJ to play ‘Midnight Sparrow’ by The Clementines?”
“Sure. Who are The Clementines?”
“They don’t exist.”
“Then how am I supposed to…”
“That’s your problem.”
I walked to the DJ booth. I actually walked over there. The DJ was a bored-looking guy in his thirties with headphones around his neck.
“Hi,” I said. “Do you have ‘Midnight Sparrow’ by The Clementines?”
He looked at me.
“Never heard of it.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
I walked back to the table.
“He’s out of stock,” I told Georgia. “He offered me a substitute. Something by Taylor Swift.”
Madison choked on her punch.
Then Georgia complained that the punch wasn’t cold enough.
I went to the drink table, filled a cup with ice, and poured the punch over it. I brought it back to her with a napkin folded into a triangle on top.
“Chilled to perfection,” I said. “And I’ve added a complimentary napkin.”
Georgia took it and sipped it.
“Hmm,” she said. “Acceptable.”
Then she requested a chair facing exactly northwest.
“Northwest?” I said.
“Exactly northwest. Not north. Not west. Northwest.”
I pulled out my phone. I opened the compass app. I turned around in a slow circle in the middle of the gym while Madison and Theo watched.
Then I looked at Georgia.
“Georgia,” I said, “I can offer you north or west. The budget doesn’t cover both.”
Madison laughed so hard she nearly dropped her cupcake. Theo actually looked up from his phone and grinned.
Georgia was laughing too. Really laughing, with her head tipped back and her eyes squeezed shut.
For the first time all evening, I relaxed.
Then a woman came over to our table.
She was in her forties, with short gray hair and reading glasses on a beaded chain around her neck. She was wearing a black dress and a name tag that said CHAPERONE.
“Brent?” she said.
I stood up. “Yes?”
“I’m Evelyn. Georgia’s aunt. I teach chemistry here.” She held out her hand. “I’m one of the chaperones tonight.”
I shook her hand.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“So,” Evelyn said, smiling, “you’re the young man Sheldon keeps talking about.”
I glanced at Georgia. She was suddenly very interested in her green beans.
“Hopefully nothing terrible,” I said.
“Oh, no. Not at all.” Evelyn’s smile got bigger. “He says you’re excellent under pressure.”
I frowned.
“Does everyone in your family discuss my job performance?” I asked.
“Aunt Evelyn!” Georgia said, covering her face with both hands.
Evelyn laughed. She patted my shoulder.
“Have a nice night, Brent,” she said. “Don’t let my niece make you fetch the moon or anything.”
She walked away toward the punch table.
I sat back down slowly.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said.
Excellent under pressure.
Later, Georgia and I stepped outside for some air.
The night was warm and smelled like cut grass. There were a few other couples out there, sitting on the steps or standing by the flagpole. The music from the gym was muffled through the brick wall, a thumping bass line I could feel in my feet.
We stood by the bike rack.
“Okay,” I said. “Enough games.”
Georgia looked at me.
“What?”
“Your dad keeps asking me strange, unexpected questions at work,” I said. “Like, all the time. For months. Then he asks me to take you to prom. Then he wants you to test me. Your aunt apparently knows my entire employment history. Madison knows. Probably the guy who sold me the corsage at the grocery store knows.”
Georgia sighed. She leaned against the bike rack.
“He’s been thinking about something important,” she said.
“Yes, and?”
“Something involving the company.”
My stomach tightened.
“Is he selling it?!”
“No.”
“Is he closing it?!”
“No.”
“Am I getting fired?!”
“No,” Georgia said. “Brent, calm down. It’s definitely not that. I promise.”
“Then what, Georgia?”
She hesitated. She looked at me for a long moment.
“You’ll know soon,” she said.
I put my hands on my head.
“Your family is exhausting,” I said.
She laughed.
“Imagine growing up with them!”
Before I could respond, Madison burst out the gym doors in her red sequin dress.
“Georgia! Group pictures! Right now! The photographer’s leaving in ten minutes!”
Georgia grabbed my arm.
“Come on!”
As we walked back inside, I noticed something.
Georgia had stopped acting annoyed with me. Completely. She was holding my arm. She was smiling. She kept glancing at me like we were sharing a joke.
Whatever her father was planning, she seemed to be on my side.
That made me feel a little better.
Only a little.
The photographer had set up in the corner of the gym, under an arch made of silver and white balloons. There was a long line of couples waiting. When it was finally our turn, he waved us forward.
“Couples, stand together! Closer!”
Georgia moved beside me.
“Put your arm around me,” she whispered.
I hesitated.
“Another test?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Brent. It’s a picture.”
“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”
I put my arm around her shoulders. She leaned against me.
“Smile!” the photographer said.
I smiled.
My phone buzzed in my pocket a few seconds later.
I pulled it out. It was a text from Sheldon.
Everything going smoothly?
I showed Georgia.
She grinned. “Tell him I’m being difficult.”
I thought about it. Then I typed:
Georgia has requested a chair facing northwest. Negotiations are ongoing.
Sheldon replied immediately. He must have been sitting there staring at his phone.
Interesting. How are you handling it?
I stared at the response.
Georgia peeked over my shoulder and started laughing.
I typed:
I’ve offered her a north-facing chair and a complimentary napkin.
Three dots appeared. Then disappeared. Then appeared again.
Then:
Good thinking.
I shook my head.
“Your father needs a vacation,” I said.
Georgia grabbed my phone out of my hand.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said.
She typed something quickly and handed it back to me. I looked at the screen. She’d already sent it.
Georgia has also requested that I obtain the moon. Please advise.
My boss didn’t answer for two minutes.
Georgia and I stood under the balloon arch, staring at my phone, waiting. The photographer was trying to take our picture again. He kept saying, “Look up, please! Look at the camera!”
Then:
Um, well, use your judgment.
I laughed so hard I bent over. Georgia was laughing so hard she had to hold onto the balloon arch, and one of the balloons popped.
The photographer sighed and took our picture again. Then again. In the end, I think he gave up and just used one where we were both laughing with our eyes closed.
By the end of prom, Georgia and I were actually having a great time.
We danced badly. Really badly. I’m not a dancer. Georgia isn’t either, it turns out, but at least she’s confident about it.
We ate too many cupcakes. The culinary club had made about four hundred of them, chocolate with silver sprinkles, and they were stacked on a tiered tray by the drink table. Georgia ate three. I ate four. Madison ate so many we stopped counting.
We watched Madison convince the DJ to play an old disco song. It took her twenty minutes and a lot of pleading. When “September” finally came on, the whole gym groaned, and then everybody started dancing anyway.
Georgia taught me a dance move during that song.
“You put your arms like this,” she said, demonstrating. She bent her elbows and swung them back and forth in a sort of chopping motion. “And then you kind of bounce. And then you spin.”
I tried it.
Georgia stopped dancing and just stared at me.
“What?” I said, still swinging my arms.
“You look like you’re fighting invisible bees,” she said.
“That’s the move!”
“That is not the move!”
Madison was crying from laughing. Theo filmed the whole thing on his phone.
I didn’t stop doing it for the rest of the night.
The dance ended at eleven-thirty. The lights came up, the DJ played one last slow song, and the chaperones started herding everyone toward the doors.
When we finally walked out to the parking lot, Georgia was still laughing about the invisible bees.
“Okay,” I said as we reached Uncle Frank’s Buick. “I survived prom. Can you tell me what’s happening now?”
Georgia stopped smiling.
“There’s something Dad hasn’t announced at work yet,” she said.
My stomach tightened again.
“Please don’t keep me in suspense, Georgia. I have a weak heart.”
“You’re twenty.”
“I have a weak twenty-year-old heart.”
She took a breath.
“He’s opening another location,” she said.
I blinked.
“Another warehouse?”
She nodded.
“In Westfield. He signed the lease in March. It’s going to open in the fall.” She paused. “And he needs someone to manage it.”
I stared at her.
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“He’s been watching a few different employees,” Georgia said. “Seeing who might be ready. But you’re the one he’s most interested in.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
The parking lot was emptying out around us. Limousines were pulling away. Somebody honked. A group of girls ran past barefoot, carrying their high heels.
Then I managed to squeak out, “Me?”
“Yes.”
“But I’m practically new!”
“You’ve been there more than a year.”
“I still call my mom when I don’t know how long to cook chicken!”
Georgia laughed.
“That doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job,” she said.
I shook my head. I leaned back against the car.
“Why didn’t he just tell me?” I said. “Why didn’t he just call me into his office and say, ‘Hey, Brent, want to apply for this job?’”
Georgia was quiet for a moment.
“Because he’s convinced you’re too young to recognize your own potential,” she said. “He thought if he asked you straight out, you’d say no. You’d say you weren’t ready. You’d say somebody else deserved it more. Kyle, or somebody older.”
I didn’t say anything. Because that’s exactly what I would have said.
I thought about the questions Sheldon had asked me over the past year.
The customer who refused to pay. The two employees who wanted the same day off. The supplier who delivered the wrong order.
Mr. Castellano and his takeout containers.
Why didn’t you get Kyle to do it?
“Those questions he kept asking me,” I said slowly. “Those were all tests?”
“Some of them,” Georgia said. “He wanted to know how you think. How you solve problems. Whether you blame people or fix things.”
“And tonight?”
Georgia sighed.
“He thought an awkward social situation would show whether you could stay calm when someone was being unreasonable,” she said. “Like a difficult customer. Or a difficult employee. He said, and I quote, ‘If he can handle a cranky teenager for four hours without losing his temper, he can handle anybody.’”
I stared at her.
“Your father turned prom into a management interview?!”
“That was his plan,” Georgia said.
“That’s ridiculous!”
“I told him!” Georgia threw up her hands. “I told him it was ridiculous! I told him it was weird and unfair! He said it was ‘an unconventional assessment environment.’”
Then I remembered something.
“Wait,” I said. “What happened to your original date? Your dad said he backed out at the last minute.”
Georgia smiled, a little guiltily.
“Oliver’s my friend,” she said. “We were supposed to go together. Just as friends. But then Dad started talking about this whole plan two weeks ago. And he asked if Oliver would mind going with his other friends instead.”
“So Oliver didn’t exactly back out?”
“No,” Georgia said. “He’s here tonight. He was the guy in the blue tux who did the worm during ‘Uptown Funk.’”
I remembered him. He’d knocked over a chair.
“Dad just preferred the ‘backed out’ explanation,” Georgia said. “It sounded more urgent.”
I rubbed my face with both hands.
“Everyone knew,” I said. “Everyone. Madison. Your aunt. Oliver. Except me.”
“Pretty much,” Georgia said.
Then Georgia pulled out her phone.
“And I already told Dad what I think,” she said.
She turned the screen toward me. She’d sent the message twenty minutes earlier, during the last slow song.
Brent failed your test. He let me eat three cupcakes, couldn’t obtain the moon, and danced like a washing machine with a loose wheel. We had a great time. Stop treating people like experiments.
I burst out laughing.
Then I saw Sheldon’s reply underneath.
Understood. We need to talk.
Suddenly, I was nervous again.
That was when the car wouldn’t start.
I got in, put the key in, and turned it.
Nothing happened. There was a click and a faint whine, and then silence. The dashboard lights flickered once and went out.
I turned the key again.
Click.
I sat there with my hands on the steering wheel.
It was eleven forty-two. Georgia’s curfew was midnight. Sheldon’s house was twenty minutes away. The parking lot was almost empty now, just a few cars left and a janitor rolling a trash can toward the dumpster.
Georgia looked at me from the passenger seat.
“Is this the unexpected thing?” she said slowly. “Did my dad do this?”
“I don’t think your dad sabotaged my uncle’s Buick,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
I tried the key one more time. Click.
And then I remembered.
If it won’t start, jiggle the battery cable. The left one. It gets loose.
“Hang on,” I said.
I pulled the hood release. I got out of the car. I propped the hood open with the little metal rod and leaned in under it in my grandfather’s funeral suit. I used my phone flashlight.
There it was. The left battery cable, the black one, was sitting loose on the terminal. It had wiggled off just enough to lose contact.
I took off my jacket and handed it to Georgia, who’d gotten out and was standing beside me holding up her own phone flashlight.
“Hold this,” I said.
She took it.
“Is this the test?” she said.
I laughed.
I pushed the cable back down onto the terminal as hard as I could. I wiggled it. I pushed it again. It felt tight.
“Okay,” I said. “Try it now.”
Georgia got into the driver’s seat, holding up her long green dress with one hand. She turned the key.
