"Sal. Salem. SALEM!" I jolted up right and flung my arms out.

"I'm awake! What's the emergency?"

Slowly but surely, Hope's face swam into focus. She had this mile wide grin on her face and I could hear Lena somewhere laughing like crazy.

"See Lena! I told you she went into attack mode when you try and wake her up!"

"Dammit Hope! You do this every time I spend the night!" I grumbled, whacking her with my
pillow.

"That's because it's hilarious! And also because we need you up. We have things to discuss, ladies."

I rubbed the last bit of sleep from my eyes with a groan. Hope slid my notebook out from its place in my bag an handed it to me, instructing me to take notes. The entire purpose of the three of us spending the night at Hope's house was to get to know each other a little better. Hope and I were close and Lena was a brand new addition to our little group. "The band sluts," as Hope loved to call us.

I always had a lot of fun when we all hung out, but a shadow seemed to loom over it all. The guilt of knowing I had lost this with Blythe. We were the best of friends and I thought we would stay that way for a long time. The only thing I had gotten out of the deal was extreme paranoia of anyone I ever hung out with. Did they actually care? Are they asking because they are interested or because they want something to hold against me? Is this all a trap or are they truly there for me? I sighed inwardly and tried to shake it away, I was here to have fun, not bring on an existential crisis.

"Okay so, we have dresses?"

"Check." I said.

"Makeup and hair?" Lena asked.

"I can do makeup pretty well." I offered.

They both looked at me like I had sprouted two heads.

"What? Just because I don't wear it around all the time doesn’t mean I can't do it."

"Oh, I have got to see this in action. Salem's on makeup duty for prom" Hope grinned.

"And you can do the hair?" Lena suggested.

"Of course! I love doing hair." Hope looked both of us over. "In fact, I already have something in mind for the two of you."

"Then, I'll take care of the ride. I already ran it by Jack." A devilish grin lit up Lena's features.

"What are you up to?" Hope raised an eyebrow.

"Don't you worry about it. Just know, we are riding to prom in style."

That's right, we were discussing prom. It started out as a ridiculous dance I could never have seen myself going to in a million years. But things chance I guess, all my friends were going. Zack had asked me, Alex had asked Hope, and Jack had asked Lena. No one was sure who Rian was taking, he hadn't exactly spilled it yet.

"Ten bucks says he's bringing a guy." Hope said with a smirk.

I giggled and threw a pillow at her. We went over all the details for next Friday. We were going to meet here, at Hope's place because her bedroom was ginormous and her parents wouldn't really care. We hadn't seen each others dresses yet, wanting to surprise each other. Of course, I wasn't just in it to surprise them, I wanted to surprise a certain bassist as well. Zack had never seen me dressed up, well neither had anyone else for that matter, but I really wanted to catch everyone off guard. Prove to people I could be just as pretty as Len a and Hope. I say prove to people, but I probably should say prove to myself. It seemed Hope and Lena were just naturally really pretty, they didn't have to work at it.

It was the same way with Blythe, but I was in the background all the time. People didn't notice me, they noticed Blythe. I just followed her around, my head stuck in my notebook. No one notice me when I was around her, and they definitely didn't notice when I stopped playing her shadow. Alex probably never would have noticed me that day if it hadn't been for the Blythe meeting some guy in the library.

I was just standing by my locker, tugging one textbook after the other out. One textbook decided to try and make an escape, landing right on my foot. I cursed before bending to pick it up. Another hand reaching down stopped me.

"Here, I got it."

I straightened up to see a guy, just a little taller than me with these gorgeous big brown eyes. He had a weird haircut, similar to those of the all the different scene kids running around lately.

Except his wasn’t a million different colors, it was just a light brown. Okay, so I guess you could say I sort of had a crush on him when we first met. He was holding my textbook out to me and I caught a glimpse of his t-shirt under his hoodie. A familiar band logo greeted me. I smiled and retrieved my book. "Y-you like B-blink-182." I could have hit myself right then and there. My stutter was quite a bit worse back then, much more prominent. I could have hit myself for even opening my mouth around him. He probably thought I was a babbling fool. I went to turn away and find Blythe when a voice stopped me.

"Yeah, do you?"

"Y-yup. T-they kind of kick ass." I said with a smile. "I like your t-shirt b-by the way."

He shot a grin my way before looking over me, up and down. "I like your jeans."

I had broke out my favorite pair of jeans that morning. They were an old pair, faded from being washed so many times. A few week-ends ago I had taken them out in the backyard and splattered them with pink, blue, green, and purple. The result was better than I had expected and I loved to wear them out with a black t-shirt.

"Thanks. I'm Salem by the way."

He nodded his head. "Alex." He said with a smile.

We talked for a few more minutes about other bands we liked before his friends called to him and he took off down the hallway. I turned back to my locker and felt a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. So, I wasn't invisible. People could still see me even if I wasn't attached to Blythe.

"Hey Sal?"

I snapped out of my memory to Hope's hand on my arm.

"Yeah?"

"Look it's just a question okay, you don't have to answer if you don't want to. I get because I'm related to him it might be weird and all but…"

I held up my hand to stop her. "What are you going on about?"

She blew a chunk of hair out of her eyes and looked at me. "Zack. Do you, well, like him?"

I rolled my eyes. "Well duh, I like all the guys. If I didn't I would have never volunteered to be their manager."

Hope and Lena exchanged a look before turning back to me.

"Hope means do you really like him? You know, like how I like Jack."

"Oh." I said, caught off guard.

In all honesty, I guess I didn't actually like Zack like that. It wasn't like we knew each other really well, hell I'm shocked he asked me to prom. Thinking back we hadn't spent much alone time together. We had short conversations sometimes, and that time in the library. It didn't really help that I was still shy around him and he didn't talk much. Had the guy even hugged me yet?

"Oh god!" I moaned throwing my head into my lap.

"Is that a yes?" Lena asked, scooting closer.

"More like a I-haven't-actually-spent-time-with-him-alone. Prom is going to suck! I don't know that much about him...I won't be able to hold a conversation….Oh my god, he's going to think I'm a boring freak… I'll ruin prom night for him. Oh god!" I mumbled.

"Shh, shh, it's okay. Don't worry about a thing. Mama is here." Hope cooed, running her fingers through my hair.

Hope had taken to calling herself mama. I don't know what that was about, but it sort of helped in certain situations. Sort of.

"What do you mean?" I looked up at her tapping away on her phone.

"Here hold this for me." She handed it to me before grabbing Lena by the arm. She promised to be back in a few minutes with some more snackage. She slammed the door behind her and I was left in the room alone. Well not entirely alone, Hope's cat Gizmo was staring at me from his spot on the window seat. He mewed softly before climbing down and joining me in front of the nightstand. He nuzzled the Jack Skellington face on my t-shirt before settling in my lap, expecting to be loved. I scratched behind his ears and murmured sweet nothings into his fur.

"Aw, what a handsome boy you are! Yes, you are! Such a pretty boy!"

"Oh gee, thanks Salem. Didn't realize you felt that way about me."

I froze and looked down at the cat in my lap. His nose pressed into my knee, belly fully exposed, gently rising and falling with his breaths. Unless he suddenly took up English, I highly doubt Gizmo had just talked. I realized I was still holding the phone in my hand and laughed at my own silliness.

"Hello?" I said, bringing it to my ear.

"I didn't know you thought I was pretty. I'm so flattered."

"Zack Merrick, you are the prettiest princess in the world. Especially with that long flowing black hair."

That sneaky little turd, Hope must of dialed Zack and tossed me the phone bomb right before it went off.

"So other than to compliment me, is there a specific reason you decided to call me in the middle of the night?"

"Um, well…" I struggled, trying to think up a good reason. I couldn't tell him Hope had dialed and dived, he would think it's weird. "I wanted to make sure we were still on for prom." Oh, no Salem, that totally didn't sound weird at all.

I was met by silence for a few seconds.

"You wanted to make sure we were still on for prom? Did you think I changed my mind about asking you?"

"I don't know, you tell me."

"You're kind of insane, you know that right? Salem, I asked you for a reason. You're a cool chick, I know we're going to have fun."

Yes, but why am I a cool chick, Mr. Merrick? Please enlighten me as to why you picked me to go to prom with you! What did I do or say that made you sit there and say, "this is the chick I want to take to prom?!"

"Oh, okay." I murmured.

"Is there something wrong?"

"No! Of course not! I'm just really looking forward to it."

"You're not nervous are you?"

Yes. "No! Anything but!"

He chuckled. "Well, I have to go. Good night, Salem."

"Night Zack."

I hung up the phone and uttered some very lady like language. Well that helped so much, we really had a breakthrough there. I was still at the starting point of the game board that was Zack Merrick. I needed to roll the dice and move forward a few paces before next Friday. I knew what I had to do, I had to get Zack alone.