Sydney Simpson wanted only one boy to escort her to Seven Lakes High School's senior dance: Jake Shabet.
Simpson and Shabet both have Down syndrome. The pair met near the beginning of the school year last year, and the 17-year-old decided early on that Shabet was her boyfriend, says her mother, Brenda Simpson.
"At lunchtime, Jake gets everything out of Sydney's lunchbox and then packs it all back up for her," Brenda Simpson says. "They're comfortable just being together and don't have to talk. He's teaching her some of his sign language."
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The Simpson family moved to Katy from Calgary nearly five years ago. Shabet, also 17, was born in Houston and has lived in the Sugar Land/Katy area for most of his life. Because the two teens communicate nonverbally - Shabet's vocabulary mainly consists of "no" "yes" "mommy" and "daddy" - Simpson concocted an elaborate scheme to invite her crush to prom.
"One of Sydney's classmates helped her make a poster that they hung in a campus hallway. She also built a Lego picture frame from a kit and gave that to Jake asking him to be her date," says Shabet's mom, Christina Shabet. He accepted, and then the real planning began.
Shabet wanted to look especially handsome and rented a Michael Kors tuxedo. Simpson was inspired by Princess Elsa from Disney's "Frozen" and wore an icy turquoise dress; she even had snowflakes painted on her fingers and toes at a nail salon.
On the big night, Seven Lakes' Life Skills teacher Shannon Womack chaperoned Simpson and Shabet, along with a few of their peers. An entourage of family and friends gathered for the special send-off, including photographer Nikki Guest. Guest had previously shot the Shabets' family portraits.
"Christina was impressed with how I'd captured Jake," she says. "She asked me to help make his prom super special and act like they had paparazzi on prom day."
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The teens danced the night away and fell asleep during the ride home. Simpson's mom says the duo looked like they'd been through the ringer.
A few days later Guest added pictures from the pre-prom photo shoot to her Facebook page. Lindsey Shabet, Jake's older sister, was immediately struck by one particularly candid image.
"We were waiting on the kids' limo driver when I happened to catch Sydney and Jake sitting on a ledge, totally having a moment," Guest says. "I just started snapping away, and got the shot."
Lindsey posted it on Twitter with the caption "#CutestPromPicEver" - it was retweeted 40,000 times.
"From a professional standpoint, it wasn't necessarily the best light, but the emotion far outweighed anything that would've made it perfect in terms of lighting and positioning," Guest says. "I fell in love with that shot from the get go."
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So did the National Down Syndrome Society. Out of 2,000 entries, her photograph was selected as one of 220 images to appear in a Times Square video presentation to kick off October's Down Syndrome Awareness Month.
The Simpson, Shabet and Guest families got together in the heart of New York City for the video campaign's reveal. Afterward, they took a bus ride to Central Park for the society's 20th Annual Flagship Buddy Walk. Brenda Simpson estimates that they paraded through Manhattan for eight straight hours.
"That was my first real interaction with kids with Down syndrome," Guest says. "Now I have a whole new appreciation and love for them."
These days, life is it's back to normal for the teens. Simpson has technically graduated but is enrolled at Seven Lakes as a "super senior" to participate in a work-based learning program. Shabet is a junior and one of the football team's athletic trainers.
Although the high school sweethearts don't share any classes this year, they still see each other every day. After all, Shabet's prom is coming up.
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