Homecoming Courtship

[Buko]

There was a lotta ways he could play this.

Dicky could ask out the girl who would look best on his arm. Maybe Chloé or Dani or another one of the cheerleaders. Turn up the charm, flash some change and buy some flowers. Unleash the power of the grand gesture. The problem with that? There came pressure in asking out the hottest hotties in the school. There needed to be some forethought. Some planning. Big Dick had a lot to keep his attention on. His last appearance in a historic (if one-sided) basketball rivalry for example. Planning and putting on the Homecoming dance itself for another. Why not get some pictures with a cutie in a nice dress he could show off to his future fraternity brothers? Just as a reward for all the hard work.

Because high status meant high maintenance. One look at Richard would tell you that his plate was always full. Dicky didn’t need to go on supersizing his senior year even more.

Big Dick could ask out a girl he actually had romantic interest in. He could put himself out there and allow himself to be vulnerable as a young man. This was senior year. He wouldn’t see any of these people much after graduation. Most would just remember him as the fat kid who wore a suit every day. Who cared if he embarrassed himself any more than he had on the basketball court? Nobody would. Dicky knew that. Or he told himself that. He didn’t believe it though and he couldn’t imagine opening up his heart and allowing himself to be a romantic like that. Seemed mad corny. Maybe that’s why he really couldn’t ask out a girl he was actually interested in. Richard wasn’t open to giving any girl the power of his committed interest.

Big Dick wasn’t interested in dating anybody at JEM or so he said.

He also wasn’t interested in being dateless for Homecoming. This he knew.

[ Big Dick Buster Homecoming Start ]

There was a third option. A safe option. Miss Sure-Thing. She sat in front of him in math. She had sat in front of him in math for going on six consecutive years. You know, discounting pandemics. In middle school when he was obsessed with AAU basketball and copying Celtics stats as opposed to doing algebra—she was there to give him her answers. And they weren’t always right...but they always made it work just the same. They had dated in the eighth grade—where a date mostly meant walking together holding hands from class to class and stealing kisses at lunch.

They broke up when the school year ended. Dick told her that he wanted to stay friends. She had kept up her part of the deal better than he had.

There was a small moment before class started. If there was a moment to make his move…he wouldn’t find one better than this…

“Pssst,” he poked her on the shoulder with the eraser end of his pencil and hissed a playful, boyish whisper, “Hey Iris!”

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Iris Waite Homecoming Start

Iris was usually careful with notebooks at school. Lots of baggage there, lots of things she'd rather not remember because they still made her chest feel uncomfortably tight even though five years was forever, and still being hung up on something that had happened in middle school was childish. She only took notes about class now, because that's what school notebooks were for, but sometimes she still got sidetracked.

The piece of paper in front of her was mostly algebra notation, but the margins were full of swirling flowers and cat faces, and a name buried in there enough that it wouldn't be noticed at a glance. She used to dot her i's with hearts, until a teacher told her off for it back in freshman year when handing papers back in front of the whole class, and that became another thing that would follow her around for a week, but which she would remember forever. She still thought about doing it sometimes. It was cute and harmless, and Iris had good handwriting aside from that, so nobody should have cared whether she dotted her i's with hearts, at least when writing the name of a boy that she admired. She never went through with that petty, pointless act of defiance against someone who probably stopped thinking about her forever as soon as she'd moved on to the next year, though.

Iris liked to think of herself as a real go-getter, but the truth was that she failed to follow through with a lot of things that mattered to her, even if they didn't matter to anyone else. That morning, while people were milling about in the cafeteria before the first bell rang, munching on their cardboard-like breakfast pizza or just chatting with friends, she had stood on the margins and watched. Watched him, specifically.

She had wanted to approach. He usually wasn't surrounded by people. He only approached those he thought were important enough to approach, and he radiated such a force of personality that it pushed away those who he wouldn't have deemed important anyway. Iris had always really liked that about him. She aspired to be like that sometimes. More than that, she aspired to be important enough for him.

That morning, she'd almost done it. She'd taken a few steps towards his table, but then she'd realized how much her palms were sweating, and being aware of that made her certain that her voice would squeak if she tried to talk to him, and the thought of him looking at her the way he sometimes looked at people who bothered him, like he was questioning the very purpose of their existence, made her turn tail and run. She'd been playing those ninety seconds or so on loop in her head over and over for the rest of the day, doodling his name in her notebook and mourning her spinelessness.

When Richard tapped her on the shoulder, she jumped. She whipped around to face him so fast that her glasses nearly flew off her face, and she had to grab the earpiece with one hand. The other hand slapped down on the open page of her notebook, concealing the doodles and any instances of the name Vladimir that might have been visible to a wandering eye, now that she was no longer hunched over it.

"We didn't have homework right?" Iris blurted out in the same stage whisper that Richard had called her in, suddenly worried that he was going to ask if he could copy her answers really quickly before class started. She didn't have any answers, about anything.

[Buko]

“Nah, nothing like that,” Big Dick used his black, brand new and freshly sharpened pencil as a pointer dancing between himself and Iris, “Homecoming…”

Richard let the word sit there for a moment. The pregnant pause. The urge to fill silence can make one seem insecure. People talk themselves outta situations way more than they talk themselves into them. Dicky wanted to appear confident and he knew Iris well enough to know she'd believe appearance alone. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Now! Shoot the J! Shoot it! Before she had a chance to think of reasons to say no!

“Sound good?”

[backslash]

Iris blinked owlishly at Richard for several seconds. He could probably hear the computer fan in her brain whirring as she realigned her understanding of the conversation. Then, she nearly jolted as everything clicked back into place and she regained the ability to resume normal human communication.

"Oh- oh! Right. I forgot that was happening." It was a lie that slipped out so easily and thoughtlessly that it barely even felt like a lie. She grinned at him, a sheepish expression that always seemed to pull one side of her mouth up higher than the other when she saw it in photographs. It made her self-conscious when she thought too hard about how she looked when she smiled.

"You wanna go together?"

[Buko]

“I wanna go with you.”

Dicky returned her sheepish smile with a confident campaign poster worthy one. Iris' eyes blinked and Richard's maintained. It was easy to be confident around Iris. Big Dick wanted to be a leader and she always seemed ready to follow. He liked that about her, as shallow as that felt to think. She was cute in that simple way and thinking about her reminded him of simpler days. Soft spoken and with soft lips. Iris wouldn’t expect much and she’d be happy with a little. What more could a boy ask for in a homecoming date?

“No pressure,” his salesman smile turned a bit mischievous and more genuine, “But please say yes.”

[backslash]

Iris thought about it.

Richard probably wasn't expecting her to have to think about it. Or maybe he was, maybe that was the correct response no matter what else she'd been thinking about in the minutes before. Things like this were a big deal, one of the deals where you took pictures and kept them at least through college to look back on and reminisce about when things were easy.

Thing was, a lot of this stuff never felt easy for Iris even if it was supposed to be.

The day wasn't over yet. She could still spend the rest of class steeling her nerves, and then she could walk right up to him and just blurt out the words. Sometimes force was a good enough substitute for confidence that people would think they were one and the same. It wouldn't even be that bad if he said no. At least she'd have the satisfaction of knowing she tried.

Assuming he even bothered to say no, and didn't just look right through her, didn't just walk past as though the question she'd agonized over was as substantial as the breeze blowing outside.

Slowly, her fingers curled in, crumpling the notebook paper beneath them and crushing Vladimir's name into unintelligible crinkles and scribbles.

She smiled again, nailing the corners of her mouth into place to look less sheepish, more sure.

"Yeah, that'd be fun!"

Richard was safe. He was her friend, and nobody else would say so confidently that they wanted to go with her, specifically.

[Buko]

“Of course it’s gonna be fun,” Richard said with that boyish grin still plastered on his fuzzy, chubby face, “It’s our party. We’ve worked too hard not to play a bit harder.”

Iris said yes! Because of course she was gonna say yes! She did take her sweet time though. But c'mon! Be real! This was Big Dick Buster! The Ginger Mamba! The Salem Scrapper! The Terror for The Terriers! What? You thought he’d be some fat, nerd loser who showed up dateless to Homecoming? Nah. Never that. Richard was The Man with the plan. The Big Man on Campus. The HDIC (Head Dick In Charge). Iris said yes! Dicky had a date! Richard no longer had to worry or stress or sweat about looking lame. Iris said yes!

Of course she said yes. Dick wasn’t gonna ask any girl out that might say no. Not to Homecoming. Not when he was gonna be Homecoming King.

“Thanks Iris,” he felt a bit of tenderness in his tone, “You always have a way of makin me look good.”

He might just let her wear the crown for a bit as thanks. Maybe.
((Big Dick Buster Continued in Homecoming))

[backslash]

Iris laughed a little, and it was mostly genuine. She felt like she ought to say that it was the other way around, but that wasn't true, and it would have sounded mean besides. Like she was saying that any girl would have looked good next to a short, chubby guy. Richard was a short, chubby guy, and always had been, but his personality was twice as big. People liked confidence, which was why they liked him.

Iris's smile wavered at the edges just a little, and she crumpled the paper in her hand more tightly. "It's gonna be great," she agreed, aiming to meet the confidence that he projected at least halfway. "And we're probably going to be the only 20's-themed dance out there, so nobody can complain." She recalled some heartily complaining phone conversation that her babysitter had several years back, about how every high school in the area was having a Great Gatsby-themed prom right after the movie had come out. Enough time had passed that they could say that JEM's 2021 Homecoming was bringing back a trend rather than following it.

She couldn't complain either, really. She had a date when she hadn't reasonably expected to get one, which meant she could actually go to the dance instead of pretending that she had conveniently been exposed to Covid right at the last minute. "Thanks," she said, her tone and smile both softening at Richard. "For asking me, I mean. You're sweet, Richie."

Mrs. Donahue finally assumed her position at the front of the classroom, which meant that any and all side conversations were over, so Iris turned back to sit properly in her seat. The notebook paper stayed clutched in her fist, keeping her from taking notes; she didn't want to uncurl her fingers from around it, feeling like it would risk someone seeing what had been written there. When she finally had a chance to throw it away later, the faint layer of sweat on her palm had warped and faded the writing further, turning it into an illegible smear that nonetheless left a lingering mark on her skin.

((Iris Waite continued in The "Peak"))