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put her at ease.
    “Great. Then you’ll go with me?”
    An intense heat flowed from Jerusa’s scalp down into her feet, and she wondered if her toes were blushed as red as her face surely was. She had had this dream more times than she could count. Each time, she had answered by rushing into the young man’s arms, kissing him and whispering, “Yes.” But now, faced with reality, Jerusa felt a spasm of nausea roll through her as she answered: “No. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
    “No?” His brows furrowed, his lower lip fixed in a tiny pout. His eyes held a hint of hurt with a dash of hope, as if he suspected he was the butt of a joke he did not understand. “Why not?”
    “I can’t go to prom with you.”
    “You can’t or you won’t?”
    Alicia appeared behind Thad still dressed for her own prom.
    “I can’t,” Jerusa said, trying her best not to stammer. “You saw how my mom was. And that was just a short ride home. You can image how she’d be about something like the prom. She’d lock me in my room.”
    Thad cocked his mouth to the side, clearly unimpressed by her excuse. “You know she can’t do that, right? You’re a legal adult, even if you are living under her roof. You’re going to have to stand up to her someday. Why not now?”
    She didn’t have time to explain the sensitivity of her relationship with her mother, so she moved on to her next excuse.
    “Do you know how close prom is? I don’t have a dress.” She tried her best to seem indignant. “There’s no way I can find a dress in time.”
    “I’ll give you that, this is short notice,” Thad said, relinquishing none of his charming smirk. “But you’re smart and resourceful. I’m sure you can find a dress.”
    Jerusa laughed at his persistence. He wasn’t going to let this go.
    “I’m not going to prom with you,” she said, but the broad smile on her face weakened the resolve of her words.
    “Give me one good reason.”
    “You just broke up with Kristen. And you and I have never really even spoken to each other until yesterday. Do you not see how weird this is?”
    Thad stepped closer to her so that Jerusa had to crane her neck back to look in his eyes. “It doesn’t have to be a date,” he said. “Let’s just go as friends. It’s never too late to start a friendship, is it? I’ve already paid for my tux and the tickets. I’ve already made the dinner reservations. Don’t make me go alone. Besides, we can piss off Kristen and your mom, all in one shot. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
    Jerusa nodded her head.
    “Is that a ‘yes’ that it would be fun, or a ‘yes’ you’ll go to the prom with me?”
    Her borrowed heart raced and a thick liquid heat coursed through her veins. “Yes to both.”
    Alicia danced and spun around Jerusa and Thad, clapping and laughing in silence. A liberating exhilaration washed over Jerusa, and she longed to join her dead friend’s celebration.
    They exchanged phone numbers. He offered to drive her home again, but this time, she turned him down. She was going to have to do copious amounts of brown-nosing to prepare her mother for the bombshell announcement of a prom date.
    They said an awkward goodbye, then parted ways; Thad to his Jeep, Jerusa to the familiar path leading home.
    She walked past the Tardy Lot feeling much like gravity had lost some of its authority. Had Thad really asked her to prom? She was sure he had, but it still didn’t seem possible. Somewhere between yesterday and today, the fabric of reality had ripped and she had stepped through to a parallel dimension.
    “What was I thinking?” Jerusa asked Alicia as they turned from the sidewalk onto a gravel path dissecting the forest. “I’ve never been on a date before. I don’t know how to dance. Why didn’t I just tell him no?”
    Alicia rolled her eyes and swatted at Jerusa’s shoulder. Her hand passed through Jerusa with no more effect than a cold chill and some goose-bumps, but the ghost’s message was clear: