The Worst Class Trip Ever (19 page)

As for me, I have to say it was pretty great, being one of The Kids Who Saved The President. Suzana, Matt, Cameron, Victor, and I got a ton of attention—people wanting to have us on their
television shows, interview us for newspapers and magazines, stuff like that. We got all these offers of free stuff, including trips to Disney World. People wanted our autographs. Our faces were
everywhere. In a couple of hours I went from two Twitter followers (Matt and Cameron) to 4.7 million followers, even though in my entire Twitter career I had tweeted a total of three things, one of
which was actually a retweet of a fart joke from Cameron. It didn’t matter. Everybody
loved
us.

So that was all pretty exciting. But sometimes it was also kind of awkward for me, because I was the one who flew the dragon, so I got more attention than anybody else. I got called
“hero” a lot, which really bothered me, because I knew it wasn’t true. Heroes are brave people who do dangerous things on purpose. Everything I did was a result of being either
completely terrified or unbelievably lucky. I always told the interviewers this, and I always stressed how most of the credit belonged to Woltar and Lemi and the other kids, especially Suzana. But
I think it bothered Suzana, me being singled out. She never said anything, but I think deep down inside she wished it had been her flying the dragon.

Anyway, after a couple of weeks of complete craziness we started settling back into the normal routine at Culver Middle. That’s where I am now, getting near the end of eighth grade. The
kids at Culver aren’t talking about what happened in Washington much anymore. Everybody’s more interested in stuff like who’s going to what high school. Also we talk a lot about
the eighth-grade prom. Its official name is the Eighth Grade Banquet, I think because the school administrators think we’re too young to have a prom. But everybody calls it the prom.

You don’t have to have a date for the prom. Everybody goes, and a lot of kids go solo. Pretty much all the nerds do. So I figured I would. I’d hang around with Matt and Cameron and
the other nerds, and it would be fine.

Except the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t want to go solo.

I wanted to go with Suzana.

The problem was that if I asked her to the prom, I figured there was an excellent chance she’d say no, because even though she acted friendly to me in school—a lot friendlier than
she was before we went to Washington—she was back to spending most of her time inside the Hot/Popular clot, which included J.P. Dumas, who was still tall, and still Suzana’s boyfriend,
as far as I could tell.

But I didn’t know for sure.

And the only way to find out was to ask her.

It took me five days to work up enough courage to do it. I knew exactly where Suzana would be between classes, and when the bell rang I would sprint to a spot by the cafeteria and sort of hover
around trying to look casual until Suzana walked past, usually in the middle of a pack of hot girls, and instead of walking up and saying, “Suzana, will you go to the prom with me?”
I’d wave a stupid little wave and say, “Hey.” That was what came out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday: “Hey.”

So it came down to Friday. The bell rang; I sprinted to my cafeteria hover spot and tried to look casual. The hot-girl pack came drifting my way, Suzana in the middle.
This is it
, I told
myself.
Now or never
.

I opened my mouth.

And I said, quote, “Hey.”

Idiot.

Suzana waved and kept walking.

I stood there, feeling like the world’s biggest loser, watching the hot girls walk away.

Then Suzana stopped.

She turned around and walked back to me.

“Wyatt,” she said. “Do you have something you want to say to me?”

“No,” I said, adding, “Yes.”

You are SUCH an idiot.

“Okay,” she said. “What is it?”

“Um,” I said, getting off to a solid start. “I was thinking. I mean wondering. I mean I was thinking about if maybe you…I mean, I realize probably not. You and J.P. are
still dating, right? I mean each other?”

“Wyatt,” she said. “Are you trying to ask me to go to the prom?”

“Um,” I said. “Can I ask you if you would
like
me to ask you to the prom? I mean, how do you think you’d feel about it? If I asked you?”

She stared at me for several seconds.

“Wyatt,” she said. “If you
don’t
ask me to the prom, I will kick your butt. I will hong fo you right through the cafeteria wall, here and now. And you know I
can.”

I knew she could.

“Okay,” I said. “Will you go to the prom with me?”

“I would love to,” she said.

And then she kissed me right on the mouth.

She had to lean down a little to do it.

But not too much.

I’m definitely catching up.

DAVE BARRY
is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author of more than two dozen books. Along with Ridley Pearson, he is the co-author of the Peter and the Starcatchers series
and
Science Fair
. Dave, his wife Michelle, and their family live in Miami, Florida.