Proms and Balls: A Kick Ass Girls of Fire & Ice Collection

Contents

Preface

by Christina Hoag

Truth

by Caroline Andrus

Kiss Me Goodbye

by Nancy Pennick

A Night in Paris

B. D. Messick

A Dance in the Shadows

by Alice J. Black

Chasing Shadows

by Caroline Akervik & Ruth Rankin

The Pirate Promenade

Truth ~ Copyright © 2018 by Christina Hoag

Kiss Me Goodbye ~ Copyright © 2018 by Caroline Andrus

A Night in Paris ~ Copyright © 2018 by Nancy Pennick

A Dance in the Shadows ~ Copyright © 2018 by B. D. Messick

Chasing Shadows ~ Copyright © 2018 by Alice J. Black

The Pirate Promenade ~ Copyright © 2018 by Caroline Akervik & Ruth Rankin

Fire & Ice Young Adult Books

An Imprint of Melange Books, LLC

White Bear Lake, MN 55110

www.fireandiceya.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Published in the United States of America.

Cover Design by Caroline Andrus

No matter the day, the age, the realm… even a kick ass girl loves an excuse to get dressed up and dance her heart out.

Truth

A Girl on the Brink Story

by Christina Hoag

When Jade tells the truth about a crime she witnessed, her actions come under the judgmental scrutiny of her friends. Then she befriends Justin, who knows what it’s like to be judged for being different.

Truth

"Wait. Did you just say you don’t want to go to prom with me? You’re taking back your invitation?" A hole opens in my stomach, a giant, gaping abyss.

Malcolm’s eyes cannot meet my shocked stare. All I see are the hoods of his lids as he searches the ground, as if the excuse is lying there, waiting to be picked up and hurled like a stone. He finds it.

It’s really my mom, he mumbles. She says it’s for the best, you know, with everything happening and... His voice trails off into the air, leaving the sword of the unsaid hanging over me.

The prom is in two weeks. I’ve already bought my dress, my shoes. How could you do this to me? My voice quavers.

I’m sorry, Jade. He turns and flees as if he can’t wait to get away from me. Which, of course, he can’t.

The backs of my eyes smart. I don’t want to cry but I’m going to. I look around to see who has witnessed this small scene of my great humiliation. A couple girls nearby toss their hair and wheel their backs to me in a clucking circle of shields.

The co-captain of the hockey team refusing to go to prom with me will be all over the senior class by lunchtime. Malcolm and me aren’t going together or anything, but when he asked me to go to prom with him, it was a big deal. Plus, I figured it might even lead to the proverbial summer romance that everybody seems to have—except me.

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes to erase the evidence of escaping tears. I press them so hard colored spots swirl in the blackness. When I open them, people are gawping at me. Their stares are Arctic ice. It can’t be about Malcolm—yet. I know what it has to be about. There’s only one difference between two days ago and today. It’s that I told the truth.

My truth. My ugly truth.

The bell rings. The students mingling in the courtyard roll like a tide into the building. My feet are immovable concrete slabs. Kids shove past me, knocking my backpack, chattering over me, around me. I can’t do it. I can’t face the day now. I’m about to turn and run away when I hear my name bellowed.

Jade Morano! I’m ready with the tardies. Mr. Rittenhouse, my hardass chemistry teacher from junior year, stands on the steps in front of the double-door entrance. He wags his pad at me.

I join the stoners, who have emerged from the fringe of woods surrounding the school and straggle in, already reeking of pot and cigarettes. Justin Chiu zooms by in his motorized wheelchair, cutting me off as he hangs a right up the disabled ramp. Sorry! he yells over his shoulder.

I don’t have time to make a pitstop at my locker. I shuffle straight to homeroom where fifty-six eyes laser me as I enter. Fifty-eight, counting Ms. Alvarez. I hand her Mom’s letter stating that I was absent the previous two days because Jade had to give testimony at a criminal trial. I feel heat ballooning inside me as Ms. Alvarez scans it. Criminal. Couldn’t Mom have just written at a trial? Ms. Alvarez scribbles her initials on it, records it on the roll and hands it back without a word.

My seat is in the second to last row. I walk down the aisle, keeping my gaze directed at the red dot of Berlin on the map of Europe that covers the back wall bulletin board, ignoring the creaking chairs and murmurs behind me. We stand for the pledge of allegiance, sit and the PA squawks with the daily string of announcements.

Bethany Frankel twists in her seat to face me. How could you have left that girl? That was so cruel, she whispers.

Her words feel like slaps on my face. My cheeks actually burn. Brian Stavros leans over and delivers the gut punch. "You left her to be raped. What kind of person are you?"

I say nothing. I have no answers to these questions. I realize they’re just voicing everyone’s thoughts about me. Including my own. Anything I say will sound like a lame excuse, which it is. All I know is that I just went through the worse two days of my life on a witness stand in a courtroom, and everyone—the assistant prosecutor, my mom and dad, the therapist they sent me to—promised it would now be all behind me, but they were obviously and completely wrong.

It’s just starting.

The bell rings for first period. I have U.S. History. I hang back until everyone files out ahead of me then beeline it to my locker for my textbook. I slow when I turn into the bank of lockers. Something is on my door. Big, red, spray-painted capital letters. F O R. What? But there’s more. I inch closer, wary of what I’m about to read. In smaller letters under capitals, it spells out what they stand for: Friend of Rapist.

All air is sucked out of me. I gulp, trying to breathe but the air has solidified in my throat. I can’t seem to get it down.

Ignore it, Jade. It’s Chloe, one of my best friends. It’s just stupid stuff.

As I look at her, it hits me that the newspaper Chloe works for after school, the Indian Valley Weekly News, is actually responsible for this. The editor of the paper, who Chloe had introduced me to one time when I went by the office, was sitting in the courtroom writing down everything I said, and writing down everything the defense attorney said. How I walked off and left Caitlin in the woods, that if I was so convinced Caitlin was being raped by the cries I allegedly heard, why didn’t I go back to help her, why didn’t I call nine-one-one when I got to the road, why did it take me almost a week to report the incident to police? And why did I desert my friends at the carnival opening night to go off drinking with two older guys and a girl, who I never met before, to the Rock? Of all places, the Rock, Indian Valley’s known party spot, a massive boulder that slopes down to a lake on a mountainside reserve, which is closed, and dark and deserted, at night.

Everyone knows what I did because it was on the Weekly News website.

What do you want, Chloe? An exclusive interview or something? I fling open my locker and rummage for the book.

She recoils. No, of course not. I just wanted to help.

I find History of the Americans and slam the door. Yeah, you’ve already been such a help. I launch into a sprint down the emptying hall to beat the bell.

I can’t concentrate on Mr. Belsky’s lecture on taxation in the colonies. Several kids throw me sidelong glances as if they’re seeing me for the first time. One of the frou-frou cheerleaders whispers to another, who turns and looks at me. I slump in my chair and throw my hoodie over my head.

The Weekly News website. Of course. Like a brick crashing upside my skull, I realize that’s why Mom was absorbed in her phone two nights ago instead of playing along with Wheel of Fortune, why Dad slammed his laptop shut when I came into the kitchen to raid the Mint Milanos late last night. Everybody read the stories except me, and I was the freaking story. Mom and Dad probably didn’t tell me because they wanted to protect me. Instead, they left me wide open to be rammed with a tractor-trailer of rage and blame.

I sneak my phone into my lap and call up the website, so I can see what was written about me, but the page won’t load. The circle just goes round and round in a maddening wheel.

As Mr. Belsky drones on, my anger bubbles to a boil, at my parents, at the prosecutor who said I was doing the right thing. The right thing for who? I should never have listened to them. I should never have said