“Who knows? I am Ophelia, after all,” I reply, smiling despite my wet cheeks. I’ll really need to rush to touch up my makeup now.
Maybe it’s not about whether my crushes work out in the end. Maybe it never was. Maybe it’s about letting myself have them. Letting myself feel love and lust and heartbreak, my own version of magnificent misery in the process, and never changing my heart for anyone’s benefit but my own. I don’t mind being the lover, the one who waits, but I won’t hesitate to love myself with all I’ve got in the meantime.
“I suppose your dating pool is a bit bigger now, no?” she says, and I feel my smile grow wider.
“The perks of being queer,” I reply, a sense of freedom blooming in my chest. My puddle-heart solidifies just a nudge.
“The perks of being queer,” she repeats, looking freer and more solid herself.
Talia leaves me to touch up my makeup and goes to help arrange snacks for the parents in the backyard. Slipping my feet into my silver sandals and tossing my phone and portable charger into my pearlescent clutch, I head downstairs.
But I freeze, because at the bottom of the stairs is a scattered pile of pink rose petals in a shade I don’t recognize.
I pick one up and turn it over in my hands. They aren’t even real flower petals.
My eyes follow them down the foyer and toward the living room, feet following soon after. When I walk in, I spot Sammie dumping a bowl of the fake petals onto the carpet while Agatha kicks them around, spreading them across the room.
“What are you guys doing?”
They both spin around at the same time, looking dazed and beautiful all at once. Agatha’s hair looks longer and fuller, floating magnificently around her head. Her eyelashes must be lined with tiny rhinestones because they scatter light as she blinks; a slit in her white glittered dress rides up her thigh as she straightens. Sammie is completely still beside her, his sleek, entirely black suit glistening like his greased-back hair.
“Shit,” Agatha says, eyes flitting to Sammie. “I told you that we should’ve asked Talia to distract her when she went up there.”
“Well, I thought their definitely unrelated problems would occupy her for more than five minutes,” Sammie says, putting down the empty bowl. “Sue me.”
Confused, I watch Ags grab an envelope as well as our corsages off the coffee table as Sammie reaches behind the sofa.
“You weren’t supposed to get those yet,” I whine as I take a step forward.
Agatha swats my hand away with the envelope. “We paid for them; they’re ours to take.”
“You what?” I take and open the envelope. It’s full of cash. “What is this?”
“We all pooled our money to pay you for your hard work, although I hear Wesley deserves a cut. And I gave myself a discount for providing the ribbons.”
“I—thank you. I don’t know what to say.”
“Hold that silence,” Sammie says as he finally frees whatever he crammed between the sofa and the wall. He sways a basket of fake flowers in one hand, flipping a poster around in the other. “Ta-da!”
Agatha sighs. “Samuel, it’s upside down.”
“Oh.” Sammie looks down and awkwardly adjusts the poster one-handed. “There. Ta-da!”
Written in block letters filled with the same glitter covering Agatha’s dress is a message that takes me three tries to read. And even then, my spinning thoughts don’t fully grasp it: HAMLET MAY HAVE BEEN A TRAGEDY, BUT OPHELIA DESERVED A COMEDY.
Sammie clears his throat and hums a high note. “White his shroud as the mountain snow … mhm … with sweet flowers which be—something? Uh, to the grave did not … mmm … true-love showers!” he sings horribly, with absolutely no rhythm, in a high-pitched voice. He turns to Agatha and shimmies. “Take it away, Ags.”
She sighs, then sings, “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day, all in the morning bedtime, and I a maid at your … window?” She grimaces. “We didn’t exactly have time to memorize the words.”
“Do either of you want to tell me what’s going on? And why you’re quoting Ophelia’s mad scene at me … badly.”
“We’re asking you to prom,” Agatha says.
“Yay!” Sammie adds, shaking the poster. I watch glitter trickle onto the carpet.
Warmth spreads across my body. “Both of you?”
“Both of us,” Sammie says, setting the poster down. He and Agatha slide my pale purple corsage onto my wrist, the ribbon sparkling like Agatha’s dress.
“You like boys,” Ags says, and hands me her corsage.
“And you like girls,” Sammie says, waving a hand at Agatha. “Er—I guess one girl. So far. But she wasn’t exactly available, as you know.”
“Please shut up,” Ags groans. She twirls her hand around, and it takes me a second to realize she’s waiting for me to put it on her. Still stunned, I slide the vibrant rose onto her wrist.
“I know we don’t have all the genders covered,” Sammie says. “Or I guess I should say ‘any’ gender. It’s a spectrum, so there isn’t, like, a limit, right?”
“The point is,” Agatha starts, as she moves to pin Sammie’s boutonniere to his lapel, “we know that maybe this isn’t how you dreamed your promposal going. But if we could give you more sexuality-accommodating options, it’s the least we thought we could do.”
“I mean, we’re no Talia and Lucas, but I think we clean up pretty nicely, don’t you, Ags?”
“I concur. So, what do you say, Ophelia?”
“Would you like to go to prom with us?” Sammie finishes.
I look at the ground, covered in fraying pink petals, and then to the poster leaning against the table. Sammie and Ags watch my face, earnestly smiling as they give me a moment to process, and it’s then that I understand what Wesley meant when he said his life would be complete even if Lindsay didn’t love him.
One day I’ll be loved the way Mom loves Dad and Wes loves Linds and Talia probably loves Zaq. But I’m loved already, right here, right now. Loved even if I change, even if I’m not the same Ophelia I’ve always been. Loved by people who are willing to try memorizing a song from a Shakespearean play the night before their senior prom in the simple hope that it’ll make me smile, make my not-so-foolish dreams come true. It’s more than enough, and here, right in front of my watering eyes, is undeniable evidence that I am too.
I press my glossed lips tightly together and nod jerkily, tears blurring my vision.
“No, no, no,” Ags says, immediately engulfing me in a hug. “No ruining your pretty makeup.”
Sammie comes up behind her and pulls both of us in with his long arms. “Ophelia, I swear if you make me start crying I will take these Dollar Mart flowers back to the store immediately.”
I choke on laughter as we pull apart, careful not to smear my fresh layer of foundation onto their outfits. “Thank you. Thank you for this.”
They both shrug, but they know what they’ve done, and so do I.
“Oh, look at you,” Mom says, stepping into the room with Talia and Zaq behind her. Her eyes well and spill over with tears just as mine dry, hands clutched in front of her heart. “You look beautiful, mija.”