How to Train a Boy for Prom

By Nikki Chartier

Eden Payne wants nothing to do with prom decorations, the popular girls, or the school's resident outcast Harvey Burke. Too bad her next semester is going to be consumed by the three.

After bad luck lands her on the prom committee, alongside the cheerleaders and pageant queens, she's assigned the most impossible task on the list: booking a deejay. It wouldn't be so bad if the popular girls weren't hellbent on having retired local radio legend, Burke Berserk.

Eden enlists help from Harvey, hoping he can convince his dad to come out of retirement for one night. Harvey agrees... for a price. If Eden trains him to be the perfect prom date so he can ask his longtime crush to the dance, he'll prevent her from a senior year of social hell. He sweetens the deal by throwing in tickets to an upcoming, sold out music festival where Eden's favorite band just filled a last minute slot.

Eden is more than willing to transform Harvey from school misfit to prom dream date. But between their shared love for lyrics and practice dinner dates, her desire shifts from concert tickets to turning her trainee into the perfect prom date... for herself.

**Note: This book can be read as a stand alone novel.**

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sapphire Hollow Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463203149

Nikki Chartier

Nikki Chartier is a dream chaser, caffeine addict, and young adult/new adult contemporary author. Her books are often about surfers, musicians, and relationships. She is an avid surf fan who always wants Gabriel Medina to win and prefers cold weather although most of her books are set in beach towns. She lives in the southern USA with her awesome husband and adorable pup.

Book preview

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It wasn’t a fireworks moment. The jittery feelings didn’t invade the pit of my stomach nor did any nervous thuds pound in my chest. There wasn’t even a realization that my heart no longer belonged to me. I didn’t feel it when it happened, but I know the moment it did.

I was curled up in the fuzzy blue chair in the corner of my bedroom with my laptop perched on the edge of the nightstand like a raven watching for the earth to succumb to its death. The interviews and music videos live streaming on the screen were nothing more than background noise as I waited for the premiere of Wild Wolf Heart’s new song, Trembling Stars.

Sometime during the application of a third layer of cheap black nail polish, the voice that would drench my life in a moonlit glow of music poured through the crappy laptop speakers. Sutton Rain was everything my then-thirteen-year-old heart could ever desire. He sang words that spoke my innermost emotions. He dressed in skinny jeans that no boy in my school would dare squeeze into. He wasn’t afraid to rock the black eyeliner that my best friend Jocelyn still refers to as guyliner four years later.

I’d gawked at the screen like I was in a small town supermarket watching the juiciest drama unfold in the middle of aisle three, unable to look away and completely enamored with every word that fell through his lips. I envied the girls in the audience who were older and could attend the premiere and stand in the presence of his then-seventeen-year-old greatness.

As they talked about the inspiration behind their new song, they announced that all proceeds from the single would…

Eden! Jocelyn snaps her fingers at my face. I don’t know what world you’re living in, but we have to get to class in five minutes.

I blink the steering wheel back into focus. The school parking lot stretches before us, a watercolor mosaic of trees and buildings forming behind it. A chill rushes over me as I’m jolted back to present day, away from the barely-teenaged girl I was when I fell in love with my favorite band.

You know, I was about seventy-five percent into reminiscing about the best moment of my life, and just as I was getting to the good part, you snapped me back, I tell her.

I reach over to turn the blazing heater down a notch and glance toward the dashboard clock. Oh God, I say. I jerk the auxiliary cord out of my phone and switch the car radio to FM. I can’t believe I almost missed it.

"Eden! Class! Three minutes, Jocelyn emphasizes again. I’m not being late on the first day of the semester because you weren’t smart enough to buy tickets before the festival sold out."

I don’t have time to listen to her complain about this again. I pull up my phone contacts, scroll to the listing saved as KZ103 WIN TICKETS, and wait for them to announce the lucky number for today’s caller to be.

Jocelyn slams my car door and hurries through the bitter afternoon toward the language arts building. We have a newspaper staff meeting today, but Ms. Middleton always starts class late, and she’ll buy whatever excuse I give her for my tardiness. I stay after school too many days helping with backlogged yearbook pages and newspaper article edits. A few minutes won’t hurt anyone.

Alright, we’re opening up the phone lines, lunchtime deejay Joe Fedora says through the speakers. Let’s take caller number thirteen. We’ll head to a short break and be back with our lucky winner!

I tap the phone icon to dial, but I’m immediately met with a busy signal. I try again and again to no avail, throughout the commercial break and tardy bell, until Joe’s voice welcomes a lady named Sandra onto the air. I slump in the driver’s seat, enveloping myself in the warmth of my car before I have to step out into the cold.

Sandra laughs through my driver’s side door about how excited her thirteen-year-old daughter will be that she won tickets. I exhale my frustration and particles of my broken heart before I silence my phone and reach for my bag.

Stupid thirteen-year-old kids, I mumble to myself.

That blue fuzzy chair flickers through my mind again, but I shake it away. So what if I was thirteen when Wild Wolf Heart was new and exciting and hot? They’ve been my band for four years now. Every video premiere, I was there. Every midnight release party on Twitter, I was there. Every song, every lyric, every announcement, every success, and every failure – I was there. I’ve paid my dues. This kid was nine when I was painting my nails black and Googling wolf-eye contacts like the ones Sutton Rain wore in the music video for Trembling Stars.

The harsh wind breathes against me when I step into the empty parking lot. I pull my coat over my sweater, but it doesn’t do anything for the cold air pounding me in the face. I try to swallow my anger, but losing tickets to a soccer mom with a minivan and having my best friend accuse me of missing my opportunity doesn’t sit well.

If Wild Wolf Heart had been on the original lineup, I’d have bought tickets the day they went on sale. Scratch that, the moment they went on sale. It’s not my fault that October Dragonflies cancelled and Wild Wolf Heart just happened to have an available slot in their schedule. Jocelyn can lecture me and bark snide remarks all freaking day if she wants. It doesn’t change anything. Sounds of Summer is sold out at max capacity, and the only way I can get in is to win tickets, steal tickets, or crawl under the barrier and hope I don’t get caught.

I wish I could say I’m above two of those three options, but these are desperate times. That day of the Trembling Stars premiere, the band announced all proceeds from the single would go to the United Blood Services, and they encouraged their fans to give blood regularly. Sutton spoke about his battle with anemia, but what he said after that was the defining moment.

It’s not like I could give blood anyway. Stick a needle in me, and all you’ll get from my veins are lyrics.

God, that hit me like a silver bullet through my heart. It was as vivid a scene as this stupid high school hallway around me. I imagined that needle piercing into his vein, and word after word squeezing through that tube, structuring the lines that would drift through my headphones night after night.

I take a deep breath before turning the doorknob to the classroom, hoping Ms. Middleton won’t have a sudden change of attitude this semester. She glances up from her desk and looks back at her computer screen, casually ignoring my tardiness. I slide into the desk next to Jocelyn and our friend Lacey.

Jocelyn dips her head and gives me a stern expression. Were you the lucky number caller?

She knows better than to ask, but she clearly wants to piss me off today. If I won, trust me, she would know. Everyone would know because I’d be buzzing like an intoxicated bumblebee right now.

Oh yeah, sure I was, if my name is Sandra and I work at Specialty Orthopedic and I have a thirteen-year-old daughter named Emma-Kate who is going to be ‘so super excited’ tonight when I tell her the great news, I snap.

That probably would’ve been more dramatic had I not said it all in one long breath where my voice raised an octave every time I spit out another fact about Sandra. She’s probably sitting at a desk in dress pants, smiling as her co-workers congratulate her and tell her she’s Mom of the Year. Her boss probably laughs and says to hold the tickets hostage as an incentive to teach her daughter how to watch her smart mouth.

With my luck, Emma-Kate will be grounded during the music festival and those tickets will sit on their kitchen counter, unused and wasted, as a symbolic reminder that ‘I’m the mom and you’re the child.’

Lacey looks up from her hidden cell phone. Maybe next week? she suggests. Trevor said KZ103 is going to be giving them away from now until the festival pretty much. Every Monday and Friday, I think he said. You’ve still got time to win them.

Jocelyn huffs, and just like that, a thick tension smothers us like a stack of blankets on the hottest day of summer. You’d think we’d be used to it by now, but any time Lacey mentions her boyfriend, Jocelyn gets butthurt over it. Lacey’s been dating Trevor for a year now, and his cousin was dating Jocelyn last summer, but he dumped her when school started back. It’s been a routine drama fest ever since.

We don’t have a chance to address the jealous elephant in the room because Ms. Middleton turns away from her computer, does roll call, and hands out a syllabus of what we’ll be going over this year in journalism class. It’s only one page, and it’s information we already know, but the school required an actual course to coincide with the school newspaper, so this is her attempt to make it look like a class.

After reading the semester’s curriculum aloud, she assigns us our section for the semester, which is the same as last semester because no one ever wants to write about new things. Lacey has been covering dating and romance, Jocelyn is the fashion columnist, and yours truly tag-teams the entertainment section with some guy named Kyle who I’ve never actually had a conversation with. He writes about movies. I write about music. Our articles are on the same page under the Entertainment section, but I honestly wouldn’t know his name was Kyle if I didn’t see it in the byline each month.

Everyone expects me to write about Sounds of Summer since it’s the biggest festival to happen in our state this year, but my next write-up will be about Benji Baccarini’s solo single since he’s the first guy from mega boy band Spaceships Around Saturn to release anything since the band took a hiatus. I don’t want the music festival on anyone’s radar while I’m still trying to win tickets. So boy band hiatus, it is!

I scribble the name Baccarini in my notes so I’ll remember my topic later when my brain is consumed with festival tickets and Wild Wolf Heart. The bell rings for next period, which is my study hall, and I grab my bag to leave with Lacey and Jocelyn.

Eden, may I have a word? Ms. Middleton asks before I’m even out of my seat.

I wave to my friends as they head out, feeling a nervous jolt in my stomach. I’m not one to get in trouble, and I’m sure my tardiness is why she’s halting me, but being stopped by a teacher is always anxiety-inducing.

She closes the door after everyone else exits and sits in the seat that Jocelyn just abandoned. We have a problem, she says.

I’m sorry I was late, but it– I begin.

She shakes her head and waves the words away. I’m not worried about that, she says. You always stay late and help out with the yearbook. I’ll get those three minutes back from you and then some. But Principal Herrington spoke to me earlier about your extracurricular credits.

I stop her there. I should have plenty with yearbook and newspaper staff, I say.

She nods. That’s the problem. Yearbook staff can be used for five credits, and I had to fight to get you approved for credit as a freshman. Since you used a yearbook credit then, it won’t count for a semester of either junior or senior year, she explains. You can still be on yearbook staff, but it can’t count toward an extracurricular.

So I have to take another extracurricular next year to graduate? I ask.

I rack my brain to think of what I can possibly squeeze into my schedule next year, but I’ve taken all of the basic courses, and I’m not exactly sports material.

Well, I have a possible solution, Ms. Middleton says. I don’t know if you know this, but I got stuck as the class sponsor for prom committee, and we’ll be meeting every day during your study hall period. You can actually get an extracurricular credit for it.

Prom committee? I’m pretty sure that equals a room full of cheerleaders and pageant queens arguing about taffeta dresses and twinkle lights and whether the deejay should play Bruno Mars or Justin Timberlake more during the night.

I don’t have a choice, do I? I state it more than ask because I already know the answer.

She shrugs. You could run track?

I guess I’ll see you tomorrow for prom planning, I tell her. Looks like I’ll be spending study hall in the office getting my schedule changed.

She smiles. It won’t be so bad, she assures me. Those girls will run the show. It’s an easy credit, and you don’t have to sit in study hall. Win-win, right?

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It’s not exactly how I wanted to start the semester, I tell Lacey as she draws hearts around the word ‘dating’ on her notebook paper.

I know it’s better to get it over with now than to wait until senior year and be backed into a miserable corner doing something worse than planning a prom. I’ve always been more of a behind-the-scenes girl, so sports and theatre are two things I really want to avoid.

Maybe it won’t be too bad, Lacey says, always the optimist of our group. You may actually get a say about something. Like prom theme. I bet they’ll want something super romantic with pink roses and sheer drapery wrapped in twinkle lights. I may be a hopeless romantic, but that’s the kind of thing you do for a wedding reception, not a high school prom.

Jocelyn sighs next to us. Wedding reception? Seriously? Who even thinks of weddings?

And just like that, I’m not sure which is worse – sitting here with the awkwardness or sitting at a prom committee meeting with even more awkwardness. The elite girls of the school may be terrifying, but at least they’ll ignore me. It’s not like you can actually fail prom committee either. I only have to show up, raise my hand with the majority on a vote, and keep my head down while they dominate prom planning.

Lacey leans back in her seat. Prom should be for everyone, not geared toward couples, she states. "Prom is supposed to be fun."

Oh, okay, so you’re saying the promiverse should throw single people a bone? Got it, Jocelyn says.

Lacey