The Weight of the Stars - K. Ancrum Page 0,41

were responsible for arranging the gym space and handling music and speaker setup.

This year’s theme was the eighties, if the posters were anything to go by.

Ryann and Alexandria were helping Shannon tape those posters up in exchange for being let out of class to do it.

The dean had narrowed her eyes at the three of them when they went in to get the forms signed to excuse them from classes. She looked between Shannon, standing there beaming in her pom-squad top and hip-hugger jeans with her blond curls in a bright orange scrunchie, to Alexandria, dour in monochromatic gray, and finally to Ryann hulking next to them in her leather jacket, sweatshirt with thumb holes, and T-shirt that had clearly seen cleaner days.

“I didn’t know you were friends,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “Are you sure no one else in the pom-squad wanted to help with this?”

Shannon frowned. “I eat lunch with Ryann every day? I’m dating her best friend? Alexandria is new. Is she not allowed to help with dance activities? Aren’t we supposed to be welcoming to new students?”

The dean pursed her lips at that, then signed their paperwork and handed it over. “Thought there might be a bullying situation going on. Carry on. Don’t vandalize any of the posters.”

“I’m not a vandal,” Ryann snapped.

The dean hmmed in disbelief, and Ryann almost stepped forward threateningly, but Shannon grabbed Ryann’s arm and pulled her out of the office.

16 MINUTES

“What a bitch,” Shannon seethed. She slapped the first poster up in the hallway outside the office. “They tell us not to judge a book by its cover, but then, like, they say mean things like that.”

“You have to learn to not care, you know?” Alexandria replied, cutting the tape with her teeth.

“Or at least be able to defend yourself well,” Ryann mumbled.

Shannon frowned deeper. “You can’t always hit people into respecting you, Ryann. It’s working for now, but when you turn eighteen it’s called battery and assault.”

Ryann laughed at that. Not because it was wrong, but more because it was Shannon saying it.

“It’s not funny!” she griped. “I don’t want to have to visit you in jail.”

“You’d visit me in jail?” Ryann teased. She finished taping the poster up and hopped off the chair she was standing on.

Shannon huffed, irritated. “Of course, I’d visit you in jail. Maybe only for the first couple of years, but I’d definitely try.”

They continued down the hall, putting up posters every couple feet. Ryann carried the ladder and Alexandria held the posters while Shannon did most of the taping.

“So … do you know who you’re going with and what you’re wearing?” Shannon asked nonchalantly.

Ryann shrugged. “I used to go with Ahmed, but I’m assuming he’s taking you this year. I might ask Tomas. At least he’s taller than me.”

“What are you going to wear?” Shannon asked. “Are you going to wear a costume?”

“Probably not.” Ryann laughed. “Maybe Tomas could wear a dress while I wear a suit or something. I still have one of my dad’s old ones.”

Shannon stopped taping and put her hands on her hips. “You’re not wearing an old suit designed for a forty-year-old man to your senior year winter formal. You can come over to my house and borrow something of mine.”

“Shannon. You’re like … half of me. And you wear pastels,” Ryann said bluntly.

“I’ve never been to a school dance,” Alexandria admitted quietly.

Shannon gasped. “Let’s change that. Just tell James you’ll be late for dinner, Ryann. We’re all going to my house after school,” she said firmly. “Nonnegotiable.”

AFTER SCHOOL

Shannon’s house was almost as big as Tomas’s. Ryann had only been here a few times because Shannon’s parents didn’t like her. They had come home a couple years back and walked in on her and Shannon studying and thought Shannon had snuck a guy in through her window, and they kicked Ryann out.

When they learned Ryann wasn’t her boyfriend and they couldn’t bar her from being around for that reason, they settled on calling her a bad influence as many times as possible. Which was hysterical because Shannon drank and smoked way more than Ryann did. Ryann also suspected they didn’t know about Ahmed, but she didn’t want to poke at that in case it was a sore spot. She didn’t know evangelical policy on dating Sikhs, but it probably wasn’t great.

Shannon led them upstairs and past her bedroom to a room Ryann had never been in, down the hall.

“My brother, Simon, left all his stuff here when