Prom Theory - Softcover

LaBar, Ann

 
9781534463097: Prom Theory
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1534463097 ISBN 13: 9781534463097
Verlag: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

In this heartwarming and whip-smart YA spin on The Rosie Project, a teen girl is determined to prove that love, like all things, should be scientifically quantified…right?

Iris Oxtabee has managed to navigate the tricky world of unspoken social interactions by reading everything from neuroscience journals to Wikipedia articles. Science has helped her fit the puzzle pieces into an understandable whole, and she’s sure there’s nothing it can’t explain. Love, for example, is just chemistry.

Her best friend Seth, however, believes love is one of life’s beautiful and chaotic mysteries, without need for explanation. Iris isn’t one to back down from a challenge; she’s determined to prove love is really nothing more than hormones and external stimuli. After all, science has allowed humanity to understand more complex mysteries than that, and Iris excels at science.

The perfect way to test her theory? Get the popular and newly single Theo Grant, who doesn’t even know Iris exists, to ask her to prom. With prom just two weeks away, Iris doesn’t have any time to waste, so she turns her keen empirical talents and laser-focus attention to testing her theory.

But will proving herself correct cause her friendship with Seth—and the tantalizing possibility for something more—to become the failed experiment?

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ann LaBar is a poet, writer, actor, and educator. She lives in the wilds of Pennsylvania with two dogs, a leopard gecko, a ferret, ten hens, and a ridiculously adventurous husband. When not writing, Ann desperately tries to match wits with her husband and two intellectually gifted, grown children.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One

Chapter One
Monday

The fact that my mother and I were going to be only fifteen minutes early to school rather than my preferred twenty-five minutes had me noisily chewing gum. There was a standard rule against gum in school, but my mother, tired of my nervous habit of chewing my shirt sleeve cuffs and collars, had made a brilliant argument for granting me dispensation from that hard and fast rule. I no longer needed it every day for the anxiety relief it provided, but this morning had me reaching for the Juicy Fruit. It was going to be at least a three-pack day.

“We’re going to be late,” I said. It was imperative that I had some quiet time to get my books lined up in my locker in the order of my classes. My mother sighed and shook her head. Curls pulled free from her hasty attempt at a ponytail.

“Sorry, it’s just I have an exam and—well, you know…,” I said.

Her frown quickly softened. “I forgot, I’m sorry. Trig, right? You work so hard in that class, I’m sure you’ll do fine. Do you have everything you need? Calculator and, um, what’s it called?”

“Protractor. You’re an artist, you should know what they’re called,” I said as I crossed my arms and tried to keep my toes from tapping. If we were lucky, we’d make all the lights and save a few minutes of the lost time.

“I know what they are. I just never address them by name.” She glanced at me with a grin.

“Please don’t. You talk to the Roomba as it is. That’s more than enough anthropomorphism to justify you considering the appliances family members.”

“Your father travels for work, you’re in school all day—who else am I supposed to talk to?”

I ignored that. She was trying to distract me from my worries. I would have none of it. I needed to stay on track. “Yes, I have everything.”

“Be sure to request to take the test in the library. Oh, and remember your IEP gives you time and a half to take tests. Be sure you use all of it.”

“I will, but the time and a half will cut into my lit class. I’ll have to go in late… and everyone stares at me.”

Talking about this was not making things better. My heart rate was approaching tachycardiac levels. Fight-or-flight instinct? My sympathetic nervous system was clearly preparing me to run as fast and as far as I could from the threat of awkward social situations that are broadly known as high school.

“Hey, we made great time! I don’t think many of the buses are here yet,” my mother said as we pulled up to the entrance of Hillcrest High.

She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “You’re going to have a wonderful day.” I could hear the hope in her voice. She knew better.

“Yes. Well. Love you. Bye.” I got out of the baby-blue vintage Volkswagen Beetle and closed the door before she could kiss me again. I sprinted up the steps and into school, not slowing down until my locker and Esther were in sight.

Esther Oplinger had been the resident of the locker to the right of mine since middle school. You could say she was one of my best friends. The truth of it was, I had only two friends. One lived next door to me, and the other had the locker next to mine. So as far as I was concerned, I had two best friends. That was enough for me, and some days it was too many.

Proximity and repeated meetings throughout the day, over many years, apparently made friendships not just easier, but possible. I wasn’t comfortable with people, loud noise, wool socks, or much of anything, really. I certainly failed trying to engage in hallway exchanges that offered little more than gossip about people I didn’t know or understand.

If people were talking about, for example, some new documentary series, I would enthusiastically step up and join in. The self-proclaimed cannibalistic Korowai tribe of Indonesian New Guinea? Absolutely. Sex, vaping, and decimating the football team one district over? Not so much.

Esther was frantically spinning her combination lock and then tugging on the latch. When it failed to open, she began quietly, but impressively, cursing. Not an unusual pattern of behavior for her. However, on the morning of the third-quarter cumulative trig exam, it was not conducive to my successfully preparing to conquer the Pythagorean theorem or Ptolemy’s identities. Therefore, I needed to end her struggle or my morning was shot.

I elbowed her away from her much-abused locker. After spinning the dial two times and then to 24-6-17, I lifted the latch and pulled the door open.

“Gods, Iris Oxtabee, you are my very bestest Bee. I swear I’d be late for homeroom every freaking day if it wasn’t for you.”

“Yes, you would,” I said. Moving past her, I reached for my combination dial and stopped. Sloppily taped to my locker, at eye level, was a hot-pink sheet of letter-size paper.

BAE OR NAY

Only 19 days until Junior/Senior Prom!!

Tickets for sale during all lunch periods from any Student Council representative.

$75 per ticket

I’d been vandalized. But in looking down the hallway for a perpetrator, I saw this was not a crime against my locker specifically, but instead the fallout of a propaganda campaign geared to force the student body into participating in clichéd adolescent activities. The postings were everywhere—on every other locker, littering the floor, and one even sailed through the air, as someone had folded it into an airplane.

Esther nudged me. “Hey! Have you heard any updates from Squeak about where he’s going in the fall? He mentioned some little college in Oregon—do you think he’d really go that far away? I mean…”

Esther kept talking but I stopped listening. Not only was I surrounded with neon chaos, on edge and irritated from the now discernable tittering of nearly every female walking past or hovering in groups of three or four, not to mention a looming math test, Esther had to bring up the topic of my other best friend, Seth Fynne—otherwise known as Squeak—graduating and leaving. Something I was not going to address this early in the morning, or ever, if I could avoid it.

“Why is this on my locker?” I asked instead of acknowledging her question about Squeak. My stomach knotted. Squeak talking about Oregon, trig test, and now this. Before I could deal with the rest of my life, I had to deal with the flyer stuck to my locker. I couldn’t leave it there, but if I took it down, the tape might leave a mark. And then I’d have to spend homeroom cleaning it off instead of reviewing my trig study guide.

“Same reason it was on mine. Because we’re juniors, and time’s running out to get prom tickets. You know, prom? That student dance you called—let me see if I remember—that’s right, ‘a barbaric mating ritual.’?” Esther leaned toward me. “I can’t wait!”

I looked away from the flyer. “For what?”

Esther rolled her eyes. As was often the case, I was missing what she thought was, as indicated by her eye roll, obvious.

“Prom!”

I looked back at the sign....

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1534463097
ISBN 13 
9781534463097
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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