Chapter Four
‘Because limos are like carriages for douchebags,’ Elliott insists. ‘Think how rad we’d look showing up to prom on the Metro.’
‘You’re acting like anyone will see us on the Metro,’ Sam says. ‘The Waterfront stop is still, like, two blocks from the pier.’
Julian leans around the rack of dresses, ignoring his best friend.
‘Thank you, Sam,’ he says, sounding triumphant.
‘That is an excellent point.’ He turns back to Elliott, who’s rolling his eyes underneath the shag of his thick black hair.
‘Limos are a prom rite of passage. Of course they’re douchebag carriages – but when else will we have an excuse to be those douchebags?
Haven’t you ever wanted to stand through a sunroof like a complete and total loser? ’
‘Do limos even have those any more?’ Elliott asks.
‘Health and safety,’ I mutter, not even sure when I started paying attention to this conversation.
Elliott smirks at me over the clothing rack.
His and Julian’s voices echo over the concrete floors of Seconds as their argument continues, mingling with the Spanish radio station that streams softly from the overhead speakers.
A small woman with a long dark ponytail watches them both wearily from behind a cash register as they cross the large room back towards the box of old PlayStation games and ancient DVD players.
Seconds’ dress collection is surprisingly big, comprised of one huge circular rack. Trailing behind Sam while she circles it, shark-like, I try not to look bored as she peels apart each dated dress and chews her bottom lip.
‘What about purple?’ she says, pulling out what was definitely once someone’s debutante ballgown in the seventies, all puffy sleeves and a periwinkle skirt that’s twenty-five per cent polyester, seventy-five per cent rhinestone. ‘But like, not ugly.’
I retrieve a tangerine-orange dress striped with black lace. ‘Or orange, but very ugly.’
Sam snorts.
I hook the heinous orange dress back on the railing and continue flicking through the rack until I reach a flash of blue. It’s a jewel colour, almost aquamarine, a slip dress with razor-thin straps in a smooth, slinky silk.
‘What about this one?’ I say, holding it up. It’s way too long for Sam and the zipper at the back looks broken, but Sam’s mom is good with that kind of stuff.
‘Hmmm,’ Sam says, reaching out to touch the fabric.
‘It’s cute, but my boobs would look crazy.
’ Our eyes immediately level on her chest. Since about age fourteen, Sam’s boobs have been in the C/D territory, something she’s always tried to keep covered with high-necked tees and sweatshirts.
It seemed necessary when having a younger brother meant there were almost always prepubescent boys at her house.
‘You know who it would look really good on, though …’ She narrows her eyes at my non-existent boobs, likened once to mosquito bites by some moron at the McDonalds by her house.
‘Yeah, no thanks.’ I slot the dress back on the rack.
‘I don’t get why you’re being like this about prom,’ she says. ‘We’ve literally been imagining this moment since we were thirteen.’
‘Exactly!’ I exclaim, following her around the rack. ‘We were thirteen. Now, I see it for what it is – just bad music and bad food, and all this hype for something that always ends up being really lame.’
‘But I’ll be there,’ she says. ‘We can make fun of Avery’s prom queen speech and judge everyone’s outfits together.’
‘We’ll do that anyway,’ I say, ignoring the way my fingertips prickle at the mention of Avery. ‘It’ll be no different than any other time we hang out.’
‘It’ll be different if we have dates.’
Her words come out so coolly, Sam’s eyes never leaving the pink taffeta ballgown currently within her grip, as though what she’s just said isn’t completely unhinged.
‘Dates?’ I say incredulously. ‘And who, exactly, am I supposed to go with?’
‘Well, maybe if you weren’t such a weirdo last night, you could’ve finally made progress with Tyler and asked him.’
A laugh explodes out of me.
‘Oh my God, you’re right,’ I say, smacking my forehead. ‘If I hadn’t left, me and the hot twenty-one-year-old I’ve barely spoken to before would’ve slow-danced to “Pictures of You” while a bunch of old dudes moshed around us.’ And monster-Tyler slobbered all over my shoes. ‘Peak romance.’
Sam fixes me with a glare, her cheeks pink.
‘For the record, I have no idea what song that is, but the scene still sounds magical.’ Her eyes flick surreptitiously towards Julian and Elliott, who are trying on different wigs from a cardboard box marked HALLOWEAN 30% OFF.
‘You know who would go with you, though …’
Heat sweeps up my neck. ‘Don’t. Finish. That. Sentence,’ I growl.
Sam’s voice drops to a whisper. ‘You know Elliott would die to go with you,’ she says. ‘Think about how perfect it would be if we all went together.’
My eyes roll without even needing instructions from my brain.
Ever since Sam started liking Julian at the start of senior year, she’s had it in her head that Elliott and I are also destined to be together, making us the world’s dreamiest (AKA most nauseating) foursome.
It doesn’t help that Elliott has been my neighbour since I was born, and our moms are best friends who used to plan our wedding.
‘In what world does Elliott like me?’ I say, glancing back across the room.
‘I’ve been telling you for years, he’s always watching you. You’ve been hanging out with him since you were babies,’ Sam says. ‘I mean, you’ve seen him naked!’
The heat on my neck only intensifies. ‘When we were three,’ I hiss. ‘And in a blow-up pool.’
It’s Sam’s turn to roll her eyes. ‘Same thing.’
‘Yeah, except it isn’t. Like, at all.’ Elliott, who has sat at my dinner table with his mom for every birthday celebration of my life, who blushed almost harder than I did when he watched me unwrap the training bra his mom bought me when I was ten.
‘He’s like a brother to me,’ I say. ‘Or like, a really close first cousin.’
‘But think about how cute we’d all be hanging out this summer,’ Sam says, her face going dreamy at the thought.
‘John Green has officially rotted your brain,’ I say. ‘Plus, Elliott always goes to Seattle to see his dad for the summer. He’s not even gonna be here.’
Sam huffs, frustrated that I’ve finally gotten her. She and I have rounded the entire dress rack, landing back at the beginning. I turn away from Elliott and Julian, who have moved on to debating the merits of buying a VCR ‘for the lolz’.
‘What about something brown?’ I ask, pulling out a beige-coloured halter dress. Somehow the tables have turned enough that I’d rather talk about prom dresses than Sam’s matchmaking. ‘Or like, not actually brown. More like tan. Or even, like, a sandy colour.’
Sam takes the dress from me and holds it at arm’s length. ‘You’re talking about champagne,’ she says, tilting her head as though she’s trying to make sense of a weird painting. ‘And I can’t wear champagne. It’s what everyone in Avery’s prom group is wearing.’
I frown. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because it was all over her Snapchat Stories last night.’
‘You follow Avery on Snapchat?’
Sam shrugs. ‘I don’t want to, it’s just what people do.’
Within seconds, Sam’s phone is out of her hoodie and opened to Snapchat.
She taps Avery’s name, then her avatar. Pictures of Avery, Cassidy and the rest of their group overtake the screen, all of them crowded around a dressing-room mirror, each wearing a slightly different shade of goldy-brown.
The caption on the picture says, when yr #squad look ?? in champagne.
Sam taps her phone screen so the pictures fly by at lightning speed.
Seeing Avery’s face now, the image of her expression before she walked away from me in the library flashes in my head.
The smirk she wore when calling out my ‘predictable’ nonchalance towards school-sponsored activities.
But was it actually smugness in her eyes, or hurt?
I blink the thought away. ‘She can’t claim an entire colour, can she?’
Sam slips her phone back in her pocket. ‘I mean, not officially,’ she says, putting the dress back too. ‘But do I wanna roll up looking like I’m trying to match Avery? It’d be like wearing white to a wedding.’
Nestled between two skirt-suits is a familiar sliver of vibrant blue.
I leave the hanger on the rack but pull out the body of the turquoise slip dress, thumbs absently stroking the fabric.
There was a time I might’ve wanted to wear a dress like this, wanted to go to prom.
Maybe, if I’m being really, really honest with myself, there’s a part of me that still does.
But I have to shut that part of my brain off – the part that still melts a little when Cameron Diaz runs back to the cottage at the end of The Holiday, or Natasha Lyonne surprises Clea DuVall with her cheer routine in But I’m A Cheerleader.
The fabric whispers out of my fingers as Sam tears the hanger off the rack. ‘That’s it,’ she says briskly. ‘I’m buying it for you.’
‘What?’ I say as she turns away. She’s already gone too far for me to snatch the dress back. ‘No, I – there’s no point.’
‘You say that, but I’m an optimist, Indie.
It would be a crime against baby us to give up on you and prom.
Plus, it’ll look very, very hot on you.’ She fans the fabric out and grimaces at the folds of extra silk.
It’s way too big. ‘When my mom can fix it. But – this blue, with your colouring?’ Sam lifts her fingers to her mouth and gives a chef’s kiss. ‘Perfection.’
I purse my own lips. ‘I’m still not going.’
Sam hugs the dress to her chest. ‘Then you can wear it to my funeral,’ she says. ‘When I die an old, lonely nun. Thanks to you.’
She turns towards the cash register without waiting for my response. And as she hands the dress over and starts chatting happily to the lady behind the counter, I hate that I’m smiling.