For weeks, Samantha Cormode’s friends at Fairfax High School had been racking up invitations to the prom, but she hadn’t been asked.
Sam, a senior who is headed to Virginia Tech with hopes of earning a spot on the women’s soccer team, had been busy studying for finals, preparing for AP exams and making sure she stayed on top of everything she needed to do for college.
She’d been without a steady boyfriend since September, when she and last year’s boyfriend/prom date had gone their separate ways. She had opted not to go to this year’s event with a group of her friends because last year’s boyfriend/prom date would be among the revelers with his new girlfriend.
That would be too weird.
So, as the precious days of her senior year’s second semester passed at the Fairfax City high school and her classmates started buying their dresses and renting their tuxes, she began to contemplate which movie she’d be at home watching as her friends attended the biggest social event of senior year.
“I thought it wasn’t going to happen,” Sam, 17, said in an interview. “I hadn’t dated a lot this year, just a few casual dates, so I didn’t really have anybody who would have automatically asked me.”
But in this world of social media, Web sites and YouTube, asking a girl to prom has become a complicated affair. The online experts counsel high theatrics for the perfect “prom-posal.” In various how-to Web sites, the message is: the more public and original the invitation, the better.
Herein lies the tale.
Secretly, Sam had been hoping to go with David Robertson, 18, a friend she’d known since second grade who is headed to Duke in the fall. “Smart, cute and funny,” as she described him, David was a “triple threat,” the kind of guy any girl would love to hit the door with on prom night.
But day after day, David passed her in the halls with little more than a smile and hello. He seemed to have no idea that she hoped he’d pop the big question.
Little did she know, David had something big up his sleeve.
Sam had, unwittingly, set the whole thing in motion several weeks earlier when she confided to a friend that she wished David would ask her to the June 4 prom. The friend told Sam’s soccer teammate, Allison Garris, 15. Allison told David’s little brother, who passed the word on to David.
Flattered, David hatched a plan, along with best friend, Andy Lopez, 17, another senior, who had been considering asking Allison, a sophomore.
David and Andy enlisted the help of guidance counselor Erik Beall, who agreed to play his part.
Beall sent passes calling both girls out of class just before the end of fifth period one recent afternoon.
“It was pretty scary. It said, ‘COME TO GUIDANCE IMMEDIATELY.’ It was written in capital letters,” Allison recalled. “It’s never good to get called to guidance, but when it says ‘IMMEDIATELY’ in capital letters, you pretty much know you’re done.”
Allison was waiting in Beall’s office when Sam arrived.
“I was really freaking out,” Sam said. “I was like, ‘What did I do? I didn’t do anything!’ ”
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