The car screeched to a stop two blocks from school.

“Seriously?” I hissed, glaring at Leah over the center console. “This is your master plan?”

“My master plan,” Leah said serenely, reapplying her lip gloss in the rearview mirror, “involves not getting you physically tackled by campus security, so yes.”

Beside her, Jamie twirled a bobby pin between his fingers like it was a sword and he was about to knight me into Bad Decision Royalty.

“You’re technically banned,” Jamie said, in the same tone someone might use to say you technically have an arrest warrant. “You want in, we go rogue.”

I sighed dramatically, kicking off my heels for the third time that night and wondering why civilization hadn’t yet invented formal sneakers.

We made our way through the back lot, where the staff usually smoked illicit cigarettes and gossiped about the administration. Jamie found the gym’s staff entrance and — with a little too much enthusiasm — picked the lock using a bobby pin, a chewing gum wrapper, and what I could only assume was his lifelong dream of committing a misdemeanor.

It clicked open in thirty seconds flat.

“I am both impressed and concerned,” I muttered.

Macy, ever the queen of battlefield triage, pulled me to a stop behind the dumpsters and yanked out her emergency clutch.

Five minutes later, she’d reapplied my lipstick, smoothed my mascara, and somehow fixed my hair using only her rearview mirror, her pinkie finger, and what could only be described as black magic.

We ducked into the gym just as the lights dimmed for the start of the “slow dance block.”

And when I say “Pinterest exploded,” I mean it literally.

Gold stars hung from the ceiling. String lights crisscrossed like a badly wired constellation. Glitter confetti already clung to the gym floor like a sparkly oil spill. Someone was already crying into the cupcake tower at the far corner.

It was… perfect. In that chaotic, prom-is-already-falling-apart way.

And then people started to notice us.

Heads turned. Whispers hissed through the crowd like smoke.

One particularly loud voice shrieked, “Wait, is she even allowed to be here?!”

I wanted to die. I wanted to melt into a puddle of red satin and shame.

Instead, I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin.

I was wearing red, a dress so bold and sharp it might as well have been armor. Dangerous. Loud. Unapologetic.

I had never felt more like myself.

My friends flanked me like bodyguards, Leah in her silver heels, Jamie looking like a black-suited menace, Macy smoothing her hair like she hadn’t just helped commit prom-related crimes.

“Just keep walking,” Jamie muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

So I did.

One step. Then another.

And then someone started clapping.

It was hesitant at first — one person, maybe two. But it caught like wildfire. Hands smacking together. Shoes thudding on the gym floor. A sound building and building until the room was full of it.

Applause.

I blinked, frozen in the middle of the gym like someone had paused the whole movie and forgot to hit play again.

They were clapping for me.

Me. The girl who got banned. The girl who kissed the wrong boy. The girl who broke her own crown and wore the wreckage anyway.

I turned toward my friends, throat tight, ready to thank them for being, somehow, still mine after everything.

But they weren’t looking at me with surprise.

They were smiling.

Soft. Knowing. Suspiciously smug.

“What?” I asked, squinting at them like maybe I’d missed a memo.

Macy smirked, crossing her arms. “You really think we came up with this dramatic rescue mission all on our own?”

Leah shrugged, eyes glittering. “Jaxon talked to us. Begged, actually. Said he’d do anything. Except wear pink sequins.”

Jamie, deadpan as ever, added, “Which is a shame. He’d absolutely slay in a glitter tux.”

I gaped at them, heart tripping over itself. “Wait. What?”

And then the crowd shifted.

Like the universe itself was pulling back the curtain for the final act.

I turned, and there he was–Jaxon. Standing at the edge of the dance floor. Hair messy. Suit jacket rumpled. Tie loose. And in his hands?

An actual, real-life, honest-to-God boombox.