THE LONG CON

OMAR WAS A JOCK and Leda was a fuck-up, but for some reason he always wanted to talk to her during geology class.

“You wanna get stoned?” he would say, picking up a chunk of shale from the counter and pretending to throw it at her head.

“Oh my god,” Leda would answer, smiling in spite of herself. “That is so stupid.”

It was weird that someone like Omar would even talk to her. He was on the football team. He wore his shirts tucked in. He was short and stocky with a crew cut bleached the same color as his caramel skin, all boxy and gold like a middle eastern version of Spongebob Squarepants. He was the goofy sidekick to Trevor Hagopian, who had been an asshole since elementary school and now thought he was some kind of hot shit because he was quarterback. 

Leda wore baggy flannels with holes in the elbows and skinny black jeans with holes in the knees, and flip-flops that she usually stuck in her backpack instead of wearing them. Her hair was a scraggly mess. She took honors classes, hung out with the nerds or the fuck-ups or basically anybody but the rich kids and the jocks. Leda’s friends called them trendies although it was unclear which trends they were adhering to exactly.

“You’re so cool,” Omar told her one day while they were measuring the hardness of a piece of basalt. “None of my friends smoke weed.” 

“I don’t really smoke it either,” Leda said. She mostly did acid or mushrooms, and if she did use marijuana it was edibles. 

He punched her lightly in the arm. “You know what I mean,” he said. 


“So, like, I’m going to prom with Omar Kabir,” Leda told Maddie. 

They were sitting on the fuck-up lawn having lunch. Maddie looked like a peacock in her thrift-store dress, a gaudy whirlwind of teal and seafoam taffeta. She frowned and bit into a snow pea, which was what she ate for lunch, snow peas or baby carrots, like she was a phantasm who didn’t need actual calories to survive. Leda sometimes tried to eat lunches like that, but she missed crackers too much. 

“He asked you?” Maddie said. 

“Yeah. Well, I mean.” Leda dipped a wheat thin into her single-pack hummus. “He just made this sad face and kept telling me that he had no one to go to the prom with. So I asked him if he wanted to go together. Of course as just friends.” 

“He’s a snob,” Maddie said. “Trendies and fuck-ups shouldn’t hang out.”

“Omar’s okay,” Leda said. “He’s kind of stupid and all he wants to do is make jokes about weed, but it’s funny.”

Maddie’s green-tipped bun bounced as she shook her head. “Those trendy kids are serious about prom. He’s probably going to want to go in a limo with the whole football team.”

“You’re making too much of a deal about it,” Leda said, but a quick sting of panic flashed in her chest. It had seemed easy when she asked him, a silly event with a silly dude, silly all around. Maybe she hadn’t thought this through. 

The next time Leda saw Trevor Hagopian in the hall, he smiled at her. A big, friendly smile. It looked weird on his face, which Leda had only ever seen scowling or sneering or smirking. 

“Hi, Leee-da,” Trevor said as he walked past. 

He stretched her name a little sing-song, like there was something funny about it. He was wearing his football uniform even though they were both supposed to be in pre-calculus class in ten minutes so he definitely wasn’t on his way to practice.

Leda nodded a hello, but she didn’t smile or say his name. 

“Oh, shit,” Maddie said, when Leda told her about Trevor. “They’re setting you up.” 

“For what?” 

“Something bad,” Maddie said. “Like, have you ever seen Carrie?” 

Maddie pantomimed dumping a bucket of blood on Leda’s head.

“Omar’s my buddy,” Leda said. It wasn’t a word she’d ever used before, but it exactly summed up how she felt about him. “He just doesn’t have anyone he can talk to about weed. It’s kind of sad, if you think about it.” She thought of how his face lit up every time he made that same stupid joke about getting stoned. It made her feel kind of flattered, in spite of herself, to be treated like some kind of counterculture guru.

“Long con,” Maddie said. “First step is to establish trust on the part of the victim.” 

“No,” Leda said. “Trendies aren’t that clever.”

“But they’re bored,” Maddie said. “And they have a lot of time on their hands.” 

“We’re not going in a limo, right?” Leda asked during geology. 

It was the last class before prom, and Leda was pretty much regretting the whole thing. She didn’t exactly believe Maddie, but then part of her mind kind of did, and it wouldn’t shut up. She kept catching Omar staring at her during class, smiling and looking away fast when she caught him. She tried to focus on the geology lesson, but her mind kept spinning: what humiliation could the trendy kids possibly have planned for her?

“Oh, shit,” Omar said. “I mean, I was just gonna drive us, but if you want a limo—”

“No!” Leda said. “No, driving is great.” 

He breathed through his lips in an audible sigh of relief. “That’s good. I don’t really have that kind of money.” 

“Yeah, me neither.” 

She wondered how much money a limo cost and whose parents would be willing to rent one to fulfill some idealized version of what it meant to go to prom. Her mom had given her thirty dollars for a dress. The one she found was only nineteen at Goodwill, a purple shiny concoction from the eighties that fit surprisingly well. With the leftover money, she bought some purple shoes.

“This is gonna be so fun,” Omar said. “I’m kind of nervous.” 

He looked a little giddy. Leda’s stomach lurched as she thought of Trevor Hagopian grinning in the hall.

“Don’t be nervous,” Leda said, more to herself than to Omar. “I’m sure everything will go fine.” 

On the night of prom, Omar picked Leda up in a teal Ford Taurus. In a tuxedo, he looked even more like Spongebob Squarepants than usual, fresh-faced and barrel-chested. He gave her a red corsage that clashed with her dress, but she pinned it on anyway. 

“It’s still a little messy.” He walked her to the passenger’s side, which had a giant dent all along it, and opened the door for her. “I vacuumed it and stuff.” 

Actually it was spotless. No garbage or anything, no dust or leaves on the floor. An air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror that smelled like a sour apple Jolly Rancher. Dashboard scratched and dented, but freshly wiped down. 

“Do you mind if I do a little weed,” he asked. “I’m kind of nervous.” 

Again the nervous thing. It was freaking Leda out. 

“Not here,” she said. Their apartment didn’t have windows facing the front, but one of the neighbors might walk by. “Maybe down the street a ways.” 

She watched him drive, studying his profile. The full cheeks, the round stubby nose. The fresh haircut so short that she could see his scalp peeking through. 

He’s a nice guy, she decided. No way he’d be setting me up for some kind of prank or whatever. Maybe she could try to find a nice trendy girl at the prom for him to date for real. 

He parked on a shady street a few blocks away from the hotel where prom was. When he pulled out the vape pen again, his hands were shaking. He took a long drag, then passed it to her. 

“I guess I imagined your mom wouldn’t even care,” he said. “Like, my family is so uptight. They’re so much about—is conformity the right word?” 

Leda nodded. 

“Yeah, like, if I dressed a little weird or like, I don’t know, if I wore nail polish or something—” 

“What?” Leda choked out a mouthful of vapor. “You would never wear nail polish.” 

It was kind of hilarious, Omar in nail polish. She could see it in her head, mind-blowingly absurd: a colorized photo, glittering red streaks superimposed over Omar’s fingertips as he glided his hands through the air like a magician.

The weed was really strong, Leda realized.

“You’re just so normal,” she said. “You’re like, so trendy and normal. I’ve never hung out with someone just so—” She tried to think of a better word, but couldn’t find one. “Normal.”

“I’m not normal,” Omar said.

He sounded insulted. It occurred to her that he had no idea how normal he was. She got caught up in the idea for a minute: did the trendy kids not realize they were the trendy kids? Did they think they were, like, interesting?

“It would just be fun to be more weird sometimes, more crazy,” Omar said. “Like your dress.” 

He stopped as soon as the word was finished, stared at her, his mouth gaping open like he’d forgotten to close it. 

“No, I mean—”

Leda felt her eyes narrow. “What’s wrong with my dress?”

“Oh my god.” He put his hand on her thigh. “No, I didn’t mean it like that.” 

Leda pulled her knee up to her chest so hard it sent his hand flying. 

“Fuck,” he said. “No seriously, don’t be pissed. I love, I love the way—”  He paused, considering his words. “I love your dress.” 

“I’m not pissed.” Leda scrunched further over to her side of the car. “I don’t care if you like it or not.” 

“Fuck,” he said again, grabbing the steering wheel with both hands like he wanted to bang his forehead against it. 

Leda mostly danced with Maddie. She had decided last minute to come with her boyfriend Casey, who was way too old to be at a high school prom. Instead of a tuxedo he had a tan corduroy suit jacket, the kind with leather elbow patches that made him look like a professor. Maddie was in a gothy black slip dress that hung low on the sides, showing her pale, skinny ribs.

“You need someone to look out for you,” Maddie had said when she bought the tickets. 

It was lucky she had come, because Omar didn’t hang out with Leda at all. A couple times she invited him to dance with Maddie and Casey, but he didn’t want to.

“Can we dance just us?” he asked. “Like, not with your friends?”

Leda shook her head, nervous to be alone with him, even in the crowds on the dance floor.

“You mean a slow dance?” she asked, joking around so he wouldn’t know she was a crazy person who suspected her prom date of plotting a mass trendy conspiracy against her. She was ninety percent sure it was crazy. “I thought we were going to prom as just friends.” 

“Okay, yeah.” He looked right in her eyes, something he’d almost never done. Searched her face like he was trying to read something there. “We’re just friends.”

 After that, she kept seeing him skulking around the corners of the dance floor, staring at the floor, or sitting on a chair near the bathrooms. She went to check in on him once more, but he just mumbled that he was fine, fine, staring at his shoes instead of looking at her. When he finally did look up, his eyes were red-rimmed like he’d been crying. 

“He’s stoned out of his mind,” she thought. 

She couldn’t quite place what he was so upset about. She’d already forgiven him for calling her dress weird and crazy. It was an awesome dress, and she’d gotten a bunch of compliments on it, plus she knew it wasn’t exactly normal.

For a while, Leda and Maddie danced to crappy music while Casey sat on the side looking bored. Then all three of them went to the patio and did a tiny bit of coke Casey had brought, which freaked Leda out every time Maddie wanted her to do it, but just a little was probably okay, and then all three of them danced. A few more kids from the from the fuck-up lawn showed up late and they all danced in a big, silly crew, pretending like that song about blurred lines was actually cool.

Occasionally Leda remembered that she had come with Omar, and then she remembered that maybe she should go look for him, and then she remembered that there was supposed to be some kind of prank. And then she got caught up in the dancing, which really was a lot more fun after the coke, and decided not to think about stressful things.

On the way out of the hotel, after the lights had come up and the DJ had announced You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here, just kidding kids, go home, they passed Trevor Hagopian. He had his arm around the shoulders of one of the other football players, like they were both drunk and enjoying a good joke about sports or boobs or whatever football players joked about. 

“Hey Leda,” he called out to her. “What the fuck did you do to Omar?” 

He looked more his normal way, angry and sneering. It was strangely comforting, so much less creepy than the smiling.

“Nothing,” she said, defiant, still a little keyed up from the dancing and the coke. “I did nothing.”

“Sure you didn’t,” he said, stretching the first word like a schoolyard taunt.

As they climbed into Casey’s car, Maddie said, “They were definitely planning something.”

“Not with me there,” Casey said. “Little fuckers.”

Leda unpinned the red corsage and tossed it next to her on the back seat. She had the strong feeling that she was missing something—that there was, in fact, some logic to this night, the odd-couple buddies going to prom together, Trevor’s smirk, Omar’s sullen marijuana spiral.

For the three final weeks of the semester, Omar sat across the room from Leda in geology, not speaking to her, not pretending to throw rocks at her head. Basically acting like she didn’t exist. Except a few times he did make eye contact, nodded at her all serious and dejected, a sad Spongebob Squarepants. It was the strangest thing, and she never did figure out what he was so depressed about. She missed the way things had been, the stoner jock and the nerdy fuckup passing the class time with some meaningless marijuana puns. Whatever he was moping about, it just showed that Maddie was probably right—some people just weren’t meant to get along.

Trendies, she thought.

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