Ed woke up on that Friday morning to the sound of his iPhone buzzing. He rubbed his eyes, rolled onto his stomach, and scooped his phone off his bedroom floor. He ignored the various unopened notifications from his Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat (though there seemed to be quite a bit more than on a normal #EnchiladaEd day). He opened his text messages. He had four from Emily. He scrolled down to read the first one she sent, the night before, not long after Ed had crashed:

I thought you said the video was going to be unlisted.

whatever, I emailed it anyway.

The next two were sent that morning, while Ed had still been asleep:

Welp, now everybody in the world (and first period) knows you're in love with Audra.

You're trending on Twitter AGAIN.

Ed quickly opened up YouTube. Topping the trending section was his video to Audra's dad. Oh great. Ed pressed his hand to his forehead. He opened back up his text messages and responded to Emily:

I had no idea it uploaded. I think I fell asleep. I must not have checked the unlisted option after it crashed the first couple times.

Emily quickly texted back:

Way to make prom day all about you.

Prom? Ed thought. He pulled up his calendar. May 27th , the last Friday of the month. Of course it was prom. Ed cringed so hard he thought he'd crack his teeth.

***

Ed sat downstairs on the living room couch, trying to ignore his notifications. He didn't turn on the television, in the off chance that it might be set to the local news station, and he might see a story about himself. The home phone rang a couple of times. The caller ID showed a local number, which Ed discovered was WBNZ's after a quick Google search. Ed didn't pick up.

Instead he attempted to draft a text message to Audra. Aside from a couple memes they had exchanged over Snapchat the past few days, they hadn't spoken since the Willie concert exactly a week earlier. This morning- and now into the afternoon- she had been unusually quiet. He wrote:

The video was supposed to be unlisted but I messed it up. That's probably not believable, but trust me, I didn't want to turn this into a spectacle. If you hate me now, I wouldn't blame you.

He deleted and retyped it. And then added:

I'm sorry, baby.

He didn't want to send it, but then he did.

Oh God, he thought, baby? Why the hell did I call her baby? Am I a middle-aged British man, or what?

Ed turned off his phone and tried to out-sleep the awkwardness.

***

"A MEME IN LOVE!" Noah hollered.

Ed stirred on the couch.

"Don't harass your brother," Yessica said.

"You're not the boss of me!" Noah ran into the living room. "I'm the uncle of your unborn child!"

"Your mom's on a date and Dad's at work, so she is the boss of you, uncle of our unborn child or not." Mike called from the hallway. "Don't harass your brother."

"I'm not," Noah lifted up Ed's legs and plopped on the couch cushion next to him. "I'm just reporting what I saw on the news. Buzzfeed has an article about him and the headline was 'A Meme in Love.' It was on the front page."

"What?" Ed jolted awake. "Buzzfeed? Did they write about Audra? What did they say?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Noah grabbed the remote and turned on the television, "I didn't care enough to actually read the article."

"You know you're not supposed to watch TV until you finish your homework. Every day, Friday's included," Yessica reclined into the loveseat, "and if you want a fruit roll-up, you're going to have to follow your dad's rules."

"Meh," Noah rose to his feet. "Stupid Ed doesn't even have to go to school."

Ed fought back the impulse to turn on his iPhone and open up Buzzfeed.

As Noah trudged up the stairs to his bedroom, Yessica fished through her purse, found a fruit roll up and tossed it at Ed. "Think fast!"

"Gah!" The fruit roll-up bounced off of Ed's head.

"Oh sorry, kid," Yessica winced, "I've got terrible aim."

"It's fine," Ed picked the roll-up off the living room floor and tore open its wrapper.

"So I take it you're not going to prom tonight?" Yessica asked.

"I haven't talked to Audra about it, at all," Ed stared into space, "I don't think she'd want to go with me now, after all this."

"After you made that beautiful, heart-felt video?" Yessica squinted. "I think she'd want to go anywhere with you."

"It's a circus and our relationship wasn't like that, you know?" Ed peeled the fruit roll-up from its paper lining.

"You're using the past tense."

"It's probably over," Ed mashed the fruit roll-up into a ball and stuffed it in his mouth

"You're being pessimistic."

"I'm being realistic," Ed swallowed his fruit roll-up. "For one, we were at a delicate point in the relationship, and now it probably looks like I'm trying to get attention, or making myself out to be some kind of nice guy-"

"You are a nice guy," Yessica lowered her brows, "a genuinely nice guy."

Ed pursed his lips.

"Have you heard anything from her?" Yessica asked.

"I haven't turned on my phone in a couple of hours."

"Maybe you should?" Yessica suggested.

Before Ed could form any response, the doorbell rang.

"Do you want to see who that is, or should I?"

***

"Janey Mac," Gina crossed the threshold of Ed's house, "Are you going Amish, now, Ed? Never to answer your phone again?"

"What the hell are you wearing?" Ed's eyes widened. Gina actually appeared to have put some effort into her appearance: her hair was permed and fishtail braided into a huge faux hawk, her normally kohl-rimmed eyes were bare, except for maybe a light coat of mascara, and her lips were stained a dark, almost black burgundy. But what she was actually wearing- well-

"Green checkered pajamas and Doc Martins," Gina held up the sign of the horns, "Ready for the anti-prom."

A tall, dark-haired boy, wearing black sweats, eyeliner, and a queasy expression, followed Gina into Ed's house.

"Ed, this is Pax, Pax, this is Ed," Gina nodded.

"You're the one throwing the anti-prom?" Ed asked.

Pax grunted.

"He got a C on his last history test, so his mom put the brakes on that," Gina explained, "We're trying to figure out a new venue."

"Oh," Ed said. His eyes fell onto a head of curly black hair, still outside his front step, "Audra-" he mumbled.

"Right. Frenchy's here too. Yo, Frenchy!" Gina called out the door. "Get your derrière inside, before Ed goes full Amish."

Audra climbed across the threshold and into the foyer. Ed felt air escaping his lungs.

"Hey baby," Audra said, with an infectious smile. There was that fizzy enthusiasm. Even though she was dressed in a pair of over-sized pajamas, Ed thought she looked gorgeous. Like a soda fountain or root beer float.

"I don't know why I wrote-" Ed began.

Audra planted a kiss on his mouth. Ed worried that he might fall over backwards like a cut-down tree.

"Ay dios mio," Yessica exclaimed from down the hallway, her eyes flicking from Audra to Ed to Gina's permed fauxhawk to Pax's queasy face.

Audra dropped her hands to her side and slipped out of the kiss. Ed blinked.

"Do you have any lemonade or something?" Gina headed to the kitchen. "Pax and I are downright parched."

Yessica shot Ed an "I'm watching you look" before she ran after Gina and Pax.

"You're not mad at me?" Ed asked Audra, baffled.

"Why would I be mad at you," Audra giggled. "You're my hero. The marshal of my cowboy movie. You really did have your phone off, all this afternoon?" she reached into Ed's pocket, pulled out his iPhone, and turned it on.

"You've trended once, you've trended a thousand times," Ed shrugged.

"That video you accidentally posted publically?" Audra opened Safari on Ed's phone, "Some of your most dedicated stalkers found it, tweeted about it, and one person to another, it went viral."

"I figured that part out," Ed watched Audra's fingers bounce across his phone screen.

"I suspect some of our school mates posted about me online- that I was the Audra the video was about," Audra explained, "and that caught the attention of the Internet. They found my Twitter, where I had posted the link to the GoFundMe Emily had made for us."

"Oh, I forgot about that," Ed said.

"And then people started donating. And there it was, we met our goal an hour ago," Audra handed Ed the iPhone, "look!"

Audra had pulled up the GoFundMe page Emily made. Ed's eyes fell on the page's central photograph: the café and its blue doors and yellow overhang. He felt a ping of familiarity, before he realized he had never even been there before. He then noticed the completed bright green funding bar, and the met $5,000 goal.

"Emily closed the campaign," Audra said, "People might have kept donating if we didn't end it."

"Woah," Ed couldn't peel his eyes from his iPhone screen, "I really ought to thank my followers." What's the best medium for that? A tweet? An Instagram selfie? He'd need a damn good tweet or an even better selfie. Oh the absolute pressure. Ed slipped his phone back into his pocket, and tried to think.

"I really ought to thank you," Audra took Ed's hands, "I just got off the phone with my dad. He now has enough money to come to America, as we had planned."

Audra leaned toward Ed's lips as if to kiss him. Ed sharply tilted his head backward.

"What about Dollywood?" he asked, "Did you get your money back? Will you be able to take him to Dollywood?"

"It's as if the fire never happened," Audra smiled.

Ed placed his arms around Audra's waist and drew her close to him. Just as he was about to kiss her, he heard Yessica's voice in his ear.

"Leave room for Jesus," Yessica had returned from the kitchen and now set either hand on one of Audra and Ed's shoulders and gently pulled them apart. "So, you going to prom now, you crazy kids?"

"Prom-" Ed's eyes bugged, "do you want to go to prom with me?"

Audra covered her mouth with her hand.

"Do I have to kneel?" Ed asked, "You don't kneel for promposals, right?"

"But, I don't have a dress," Audra shook her head, "I didn't think I'd have the money to buy one-"

"What about the one Ellen gave you?" Yessica asked.

***