On Prom
Today is my little Sophie's sixteenth birthday. She is also a Clay fangirl. Not Dr. Forrester exactly, but the teenage version I crafted of him. It's amusing.
Anyways, a random diddy of a story I wrote. It's left with a lovely "to be continued" at the end, and hopefully I can fulfill that promise.
There were many things Clayton Forrester hated - Joel Robinson being one, bunnies being another (have you ever seen Night of the Lepus?) - but standing pretty high up there were social events, particularly ones that involved other teenagers. Ughhhh.
Despite being one, Clay could easily pick out the faults that came from having the syllable “teen” added on to one’s age. There was the issue of raging hormones, the newly discovered obsession with sex and drugs, the idea of rebellion, and just that whole sense of “discovering one’s self”. What a load of crap. The teenage years were just an excuse for this mindset, nothing more. It was all about self-control, and his age group enjoyed blaming their parents or their hormones for their lack of it.
Whatever.
Clay opened his eyes at the first decibel of his cell phone alarm ringing. It was a repeated noise of fake wind chimes, which became rather grating on the nerves after about five seconds of listening. Automatically, his arm drooped off the side of the bed and fumbled around for the cell phone before his thumb expertly piloted through the menu to turn off the alarm. But by this point in time, his brain was awake, so Clay didn’t find it difficult to pull himself out of bed.
It was the middle of April, but being in central Minnesota meant there was still snow on the ground. Although the temperature was batting around in the upper 30s, that didn’t mean the frozen water was going to relinquish its grasp on the earth. Clay glanced out the window before taking a look at himself in the mirror attached to the somewhat-antique dresser. He was always shoddy-looking in the morning, his hair flying every which way, particularly because he chose to keep it out of a ponytail when he slept.
Tacked to the frame of the mirror was a calendar of birds (a freebie from something or another), which he was using to count down the remaining days of high school. April 14th, huh? That date stuck out in his mind for some reason. What was special about it…? There wasn’t a test or anything going on so -
Ohhhh, that’s right, it was the first day to buy prom tickets.
Whoop-de-frickin’-doo.
“So what is your deal, huh Forrester?”
Clay was jolted into first hour when he heard those words. He looked down at the notebook he had been sleeping on, which had a stream of drool carving a path around his notes. No big loss - this was family living, a required class for seniors. Lovely. Contrived, boring, useless and - well, just plain lifeless. There was really no need to go on from there.
There was a dull prod in his shoulder, which, upon craning his neck, was coming from the eraser of Mike Nelson. The blonde appeared highly disinterested in the teacher’s conversation about past proms, so he turned to bothering the scientist instead.
“You goin’ to prom?”
“What kind of moronic question is that? Of course not.”
Mike stuck out his upper lip. “Why not? It’s your se -”
“Oh, don’t pull that ‘senior year’ crap on me. I’ve never gone to any half-assed event organized at this school and I sure as hell don’t plan on starting now.”
“Yikes, someone’s a little bitter.” Mike drew back his pencil, tapping it lightly against the desk. “But…I dunno. Go. Do…do something.” He paused. “It’ll help your image?”
Clay had to digest those words before a smirk cracked onto his face. “My image? Nelson, do you think I’m really concerned about that?”
Mike shrugged. “No, but it was really all I had left.”
“…Besides.”
“…Besides…?”
Fumbling with his glasses to occupy his hands, Clay continued. “Say I…say I wanted to go. It’s pointless in going unless you have a date, especially when you’re a guy. Guys just don’t go to prom without a date.”
“Hur hurr…”
“Shut up Nelson.”
“Bite me. So uh…yeah, continue?”
“Well…okay fine. The only way I’d be even remotely interested in going is if I had a date.” He paused. “Wait, Nelson, you’re going. With who?”
Mike’s cheeks suddenly became flush. “W-well, I’m…with...Kat…”
“Hur hurr...”
“Shut up Forrester. But uh…we said we’d go together platonically, but I dunno…”
“Going to try to seduce her? Good luck, she might run away screaming.”
“Shit up Forrester…A-and anyway! You and your…situation. It might be hard to find a date for you of all people. You know, being a social misfit and all.”
“You know Nelson, I can make it so you don’t have children, you know.” The way the light the lens of the glasses made his remark just feel all the more genuine. Mike raised an eyebrow, shifting his legs slightly.
“My lineage…” he mumbled quietly before drumming his notebook. “Well uh…I dunno, just listen around. Listen around the people we hang out with. We’re all a bunch of losers without mates, I’m sure…one of…them…eh, you might be screwed buddy.”
Clay scoffed. “I never said I wanted to go in the first place! Christ! I merely said it as a theory, not an actual hypothesis.”
“Blah blah science blah. Whatever, I’m just saying…you know. If you have to. Want to. Uh…need to?”
Oh joy of joys. Clay sighed and attempted to clean up the drool left on his notebook, doing his best to avoid smudging the notes. The hell was Nelson getting at? Did he want him to go to prom? What was the point? The juniors ran it and, given the overall quality of the current junior class, chances were the event would crumble into a big ball of suck anyway.
Why was he even thinking about? He hated social events, with dances being right at the top. The sheer awkwardness of it all, not to mention the massive amount of prep-work that went into it before hand. Grant it, being a guy meant not having to worry too much about appearances - lots of girls went to tanning salons to give themselves a healthy orange tone, for instance - though for him, there was the issue of hair. (There were two wears to wear it: in a ponytail or having it set down, the latter of which would prove to be problematic and - yeah, ponytail it was.)
What would he wear? He had received a tuxedo about a year ago, wearing it here and there for whatever event of his parents he was dragged to (most often some ceremony for his father). He had luckily ceased growing around sophomore year, standing complete in his height at 6’1”. The tux was a standard black, though it did have pinstripes. The one component missing, however, was the waistcoat.
He began to ponder. What if - and this was strictly what if - What if he did, in fact, get a date for prom, if he decided to go. Well, if he did, it would be an excuse to finally obtain a waistcoat. Since it seemed to be a sin to not match one’s date, he’d just get the color of his counterpart’s dress (unless it was pink - Clay didn’t do pink). The bowtie could match too…maybe even the handkerchief in the breast pocket…
“Uh…Dr. F?”
For the second time, Clay was bolted into reality, except he had completely zoned out while applying cream cheese to his bagel. He looked to see his knife attempting to apply the spread to the lunch trey, but as there was none on it, the task was failing. The scientist looked up to see who had called him by his nickname (which was annoying, but it was what he got for being the notorious science geek).
“Ah good, he’s back.”
Clay was sitting at an eclectic table for lunch, with grades spanning all four years of high school. A couple freshman, a handful of sophomores, one junior, and three seniors comprised the group. The table was still a bit sparse, with the remaining kids still in the lunch line.
“You were grating plastic on plastic there,” one of the sophomore boys commented. The hell was his name? He seemed to have a different one every - Alex. That was it. The problem was, he tended to go by another name that Clay could never remember.
“Zoned out,” he responded quietly, placing the knife down and sinking a hearty bite into the bagel. “Thinking…”
“About…?” one of the sophomore girls asked curiously. She was lithely built with swishy shoulder-length blonde hair. Before her sat a grocery bag that held her lunch, a squished sandwich in her hand.
“About…eh…prom…”
“You going?” she asked skeptically. Alex let out a laugh.
“Oh c’mon Soap. This is Forrester we’re talking about. He can barely sit here and eat lunch with people in public.”
“In fact, I actually might be going, you lactose intolerant feline,” Clay couldn’t help but jab. Odd to think that he had never been able to use the phrase “lactose intolerant” as part of an insult until now.
“With who?”
“Um…”
“Uh-oh, plothole, ship’s sinking!”
“Ugh, shut up…”
“Do you want to go?” Soap (it was a nickname) asked curiously. Clay looked at her, raising an eyebrow, before setting his bagel down and then slamming his forehead onto a en empty spot on the lunch try.
“Who knows,” he mumbled before feeling his ponytail levitate off his back. He sighed as he felt the elastic band slide off and a set of fingers randomly comb his hair. Why on earth did he let her do this? …Because she was kinda cute and a sophomore and a girl…
“Good job on the brushing,” Cara said as she retied the ponytail together. “Seeee? A bit of personal care and you can have lovely flowing locks like -”
“I don’t need lovely flowing locks, thank you,” Clay spat, lifting his head off the tray and shaking his hair. “Stop touching me while you’re at it.”
“So prom,” Alex cut in, rotating the sandwich in his hands. “You going or not? They’re selling tickets now and who knows…you procrastinate once you continue it…” He paused. “This I know well.”
“I dunno…No…it’s…it’s stupid.”
“You don’t want to go? Soap asked, a genuine look of concern in her eyes. “Your senior year? Just once?”
“What, you want to go?”
“…I wouldn’t mind.”
Clay sat upright, his finger rubbing his thin mustache. “…Fine then. You’ll be my date for prom.”
It wasn’t until twenty minutes later, when he was swapping out textbooks at his locker, did he realize what he had said.
Anyways, a random diddy of a story I wrote. It's left with a lovely "to be continued" at the end, and hopefully I can fulfill that promise.
There were many things Clayton Forrester hated - Joel Robinson being one, bunnies being another (have you ever seen Night of the Lepus?) - but standing pretty high up there were social events, particularly ones that involved other teenagers. Ughhhh.
Despite being one, Clay could easily pick out the faults that came from having the syllable “teen” added on to one’s age. There was the issue of raging hormones, the newly discovered obsession with sex and drugs, the idea of rebellion, and just that whole sense of “discovering one’s self”. What a load of crap. The teenage years were just an excuse for this mindset, nothing more. It was all about self-control, and his age group enjoyed blaming their parents or their hormones for their lack of it.
Whatever.
Clay opened his eyes at the first decibel of his cell phone alarm ringing. It was a repeated noise of fake wind chimes, which became rather grating on the nerves after about five seconds of listening. Automatically, his arm drooped off the side of the bed and fumbled around for the cell phone before his thumb expertly piloted through the menu to turn off the alarm. But by this point in time, his brain was awake, so Clay didn’t find it difficult to pull himself out of bed.
It was the middle of April, but being in central Minnesota meant there was still snow on the ground. Although the temperature was batting around in the upper 30s, that didn’t mean the frozen water was going to relinquish its grasp on the earth. Clay glanced out the window before taking a look at himself in the mirror attached to the somewhat-antique dresser. He was always shoddy-looking in the morning, his hair flying every which way, particularly because he chose to keep it out of a ponytail when he slept.
Tacked to the frame of the mirror was a calendar of birds (a freebie from something or another), which he was using to count down the remaining days of high school. April 14th, huh? That date stuck out in his mind for some reason. What was special about it…? There wasn’t a test or anything going on so -
Ohhhh, that’s right, it was the first day to buy prom tickets.
Whoop-de-frickin’-doo.
“So what is your deal, huh Forrester?”
Clay was jolted into first hour when he heard those words. He looked down at the notebook he had been sleeping on, which had a stream of drool carving a path around his notes. No big loss - this was family living, a required class for seniors. Lovely. Contrived, boring, useless and - well, just plain lifeless. There was really no need to go on from there.
There was a dull prod in his shoulder, which, upon craning his neck, was coming from the eraser of Mike Nelson. The blonde appeared highly disinterested in the teacher’s conversation about past proms, so he turned to bothering the scientist instead.
“You goin’ to prom?”
“What kind of moronic question is that? Of course not.”
Mike stuck out his upper lip. “Why not? It’s your se -”
“Oh, don’t pull that ‘senior year’ crap on me. I’ve never gone to any half-assed event organized at this school and I sure as hell don’t plan on starting now.”
“Yikes, someone’s a little bitter.” Mike drew back his pencil, tapping it lightly against the desk. “But…I dunno. Go. Do…do something.” He paused. “It’ll help your image?”
Clay had to digest those words before a smirk cracked onto his face. “My image? Nelson, do you think I’m really concerned about that?”
Mike shrugged. “No, but it was really all I had left.”
“…Besides.”
“…Besides…?”
Fumbling with his glasses to occupy his hands, Clay continued. “Say I…say I wanted to go. It’s pointless in going unless you have a date, especially when you’re a guy. Guys just don’t go to prom without a date.”
“Hur hurr…”
“Shut up Nelson.”
“Bite me. So uh…yeah, continue?”
“Well…okay fine. The only way I’d be even remotely interested in going is if I had a date.” He paused. “Wait, Nelson, you’re going. With who?”
Mike’s cheeks suddenly became flush. “W-well, I’m…with...Kat…”
“Hur hurr...”
“Shut up Forrester. But uh…we said we’d go together platonically, but I dunno…”
“Going to try to seduce her? Good luck, she might run away screaming.”
“Shit up Forrester…A-and anyway! You and your…situation. It might be hard to find a date for you of all people. You know, being a social misfit and all.”
“You know Nelson, I can make it so you don’t have children, you know.” The way the light the lens of the glasses made his remark just feel all the more genuine. Mike raised an eyebrow, shifting his legs slightly.
“My lineage…” he mumbled quietly before drumming his notebook. “Well uh…I dunno, just listen around. Listen around the people we hang out with. We’re all a bunch of losers without mates, I’m sure…one of…them…eh, you might be screwed buddy.”
Clay scoffed. “I never said I wanted to go in the first place! Christ! I merely said it as a theory, not an actual hypothesis.”
“Blah blah science blah. Whatever, I’m just saying…you know. If you have to. Want to. Uh…need to?”
Oh joy of joys. Clay sighed and attempted to clean up the drool left on his notebook, doing his best to avoid smudging the notes. The hell was Nelson getting at? Did he want him to go to prom? What was the point? The juniors ran it and, given the overall quality of the current junior class, chances were the event would crumble into a big ball of suck anyway.
Why was he even thinking about? He hated social events, with dances being right at the top. The sheer awkwardness of it all, not to mention the massive amount of prep-work that went into it before hand. Grant it, being a guy meant not having to worry too much about appearances - lots of girls went to tanning salons to give themselves a healthy orange tone, for instance - though for him, there was the issue of hair. (There were two wears to wear it: in a ponytail or having it set down, the latter of which would prove to be problematic and - yeah, ponytail it was.)
What would he wear? He had received a tuxedo about a year ago, wearing it here and there for whatever event of his parents he was dragged to (most often some ceremony for his father). He had luckily ceased growing around sophomore year, standing complete in his height at 6’1”. The tux was a standard black, though it did have pinstripes. The one component missing, however, was the waistcoat.
He began to ponder. What if - and this was strictly what if - What if he did, in fact, get a date for prom, if he decided to go. Well, if he did, it would be an excuse to finally obtain a waistcoat. Since it seemed to be a sin to not match one’s date, he’d just get the color of his counterpart’s dress (unless it was pink - Clay didn’t do pink). The bowtie could match too…maybe even the handkerchief in the breast pocket…
“Uh…Dr. F?”
For the second time, Clay was bolted into reality, except he had completely zoned out while applying cream cheese to his bagel. He looked to see his knife attempting to apply the spread to the lunch trey, but as there was none on it, the task was failing. The scientist looked up to see who had called him by his nickname (which was annoying, but it was what he got for being the notorious science geek).
“Ah good, he’s back.”
Clay was sitting at an eclectic table for lunch, with grades spanning all four years of high school. A couple freshman, a handful of sophomores, one junior, and three seniors comprised the group. The table was still a bit sparse, with the remaining kids still in the lunch line.
“You were grating plastic on plastic there,” one of the sophomore boys commented. The hell was his name? He seemed to have a different one every - Alex. That was it. The problem was, he tended to go by another name that Clay could never remember.
“Zoned out,” he responded quietly, placing the knife down and sinking a hearty bite into the bagel. “Thinking…”
“About…?” one of the sophomore girls asked curiously. She was lithely built with swishy shoulder-length blonde hair. Before her sat a grocery bag that held her lunch, a squished sandwich in her hand.
“About…eh…prom…”
“You going?” she asked skeptically. Alex let out a laugh.
“Oh c’mon Soap. This is Forrester we’re talking about. He can barely sit here and eat lunch with people in public.”
“In fact, I actually might be going, you lactose intolerant feline,” Clay couldn’t help but jab. Odd to think that he had never been able to use the phrase “lactose intolerant” as part of an insult until now.
“With who?”
“Um…”
“Uh-oh, plothole, ship’s sinking!”
“Ugh, shut up…”
“Do you want to go?” Soap (it was a nickname) asked curiously. Clay looked at her, raising an eyebrow, before setting his bagel down and then slamming his forehead onto a en empty spot on the lunch try.
“Who knows,” he mumbled before feeling his ponytail levitate off his back. He sighed as he felt the elastic band slide off and a set of fingers randomly comb his hair. Why on earth did he let her do this? …Because she was kinda cute and a sophomore and a girl…
“Good job on the brushing,” Cara said as she retied the ponytail together. “Seeee? A bit of personal care and you can have lovely flowing locks like -”
“I don’t need lovely flowing locks, thank you,” Clay spat, lifting his head off the tray and shaking his hair. “Stop touching me while you’re at it.”
“So prom,” Alex cut in, rotating the sandwich in his hands. “You going or not? They’re selling tickets now and who knows…you procrastinate once you continue it…” He paused. “This I know well.”
“I dunno…No…it’s…it’s stupid.”
“You don’t want to go? Soap asked, a genuine look of concern in her eyes. “Your senior year? Just once?”
“What, you want to go?”
“…I wouldn’t mind.”
Clay sat upright, his finger rubbing his thin mustache. “…Fine then. You’ll be my date for prom.”
It wasn’t until twenty minutes later, when he was swapping out textbooks at his locker, did he realize what he had said.