CHAPTER TWELVE
Twenty minutes later, I’m shivering outside the November Always diner with Darth Vader. When I see Sam’s car turn the corner, I face Darth and ask him if he needs a ride. I’m surprised no one has come to pick him up yet, since he has been texting ever since we escaped the party.
“No, I’m going to walk,” he says. I still can’t get over his voice distorter, but I keep from laughing.
“It’s freezing outside,” I say, still hugging myself.
“It’s not too bad,” he says. I can hear laughter in his voice, and I can see the smile shimmering in his eyes. “I just wanted to make sure you got home okay.”
It’s hard not to blush, but when Sam shouts behind me, the warm feeling goes away.
“What about your friend?” she asks when I close the passenger door.
I wave to him through the window. “He’s all good.”
“He?” Sam asks, checking her rearview mirror before pulling away from the curb. She glances at me before saying, “I thought you only hung out with girls.”
“I have other friends,” I say weakly.
“Right, and where are your best ones?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who was that friend?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, watching her expression out of the corner of my eye.
I can tell by the way she contorts her face that she wants to parent me right now.
“Then why the heck were you standing outside a diner in the cold in the middle of the night with a boy you don’t know? Mia, like, seriously?”
“Seriously, what?”
“I don’t get it. You’re at your yearly Halloween dinner-sleepover at Sloane’s house, and suddenly you’re alone at a diner with a boy? A boy dressed like Darth Vader—dressed like evil, I might add. Darth Vader was the bad guy.”
I want to tell her to cut the crap, but I know I’m not in a position to do so.
“We went to a Halloween party, okay?”
“And did Mom—”
“No, Mom and Dad didn’t know about it. They don’t know that I went to a party, and quite frankly I would like to keep it that way,” I say, trying not to think of how embarrassing it would be for them to find out. I can’t even remember the last time I got in trouble for something, and even though they were fine with the idea of me going to the party freshman year, I know that they wouldn’t be able to get over the fact that I lied.
While I try to rack my mind for my last punishment, Sam asks, “So, last year when you went to the Halloween dinner?”
“I feel like I don’t have to answer that,” I mumble, admiring the blow-up Halloween decorations on someone’s front lawn.
“Okay, not going to lie, that’s a little badass. Not something I would’ve expected from you.”
I stare at her in her slightly raised driver’s seat, her gaze focused on the road in front of her. Not the reaction I was expecting.
“Nevertheless, I think you owe me one.” Her voice is too cheery.
“Naturally,” I sigh, trying to fold myself into the seat and make myself as small as possible. This is more typical of her.
Sam scratches her scalp and then runs her fingers through her hair. I can tell she straightened it earlier tonight, and I get a waft of the oils. Under usual circumstances the smell would relax me. But right now I’m annoyed at her. She probably washed her hair and did her nails and put on a facemask for one of her self-care nights and lost track of time staying up reading Michelle Obama’s autobiography or diving deep into the parenting blogosphere. And here she is, clean and shiny, validated as the Rescuer, my stand-in guardian.
“I’ll have to think about what I want to use my one wish for,” she muses. “In the meantime, we’ll start with you coming to my dress fitting tomorrow. I still have your dress in my closet, so we can bring that, too. You haven’t seen the tailor once since buying it.”
“The dress fit fine,” I huff. “I don’t know why I have to put it on over and over to see that it still fits.”
“Because you might have gained weight or lost weight, and it has to be perfect. Also, because now you owe me and I said this is what we’re doing.”
“Whatever,” I mumble.
She rolls her eyes, hard, and then stares at me for a second before pulling ahead when the light turns green. Whenever she rolls her eyes like that, it’s usually because she’s close to her edge. I stay silent, knowing that if I even breathe too loud, she’ll just talk more to make me feel worse about tonight.
Then again, no matter how bad she makes me feel, it doesn’t change the fact that I met someone. On my own! I look out the window to hide my smile, and I try to hold on to this feeling for the next few days.
As obsessive as Sam has been throughout her entire wedding planning process, the one thing that hasn’t gone wrong and hasn’t caused any stress or doubts is the dress. Naturally, she has a Pinterest account specifically dedicated to weddings, wedding planning, wedding budgets, and anything else that you could put after the word “wedding.” When we went into the wedding dress boutique back in the middle of August, Mom, Brooke, and I sat down. They were given glasses of champagne and I was handed a glass of sparkling grape juice. Sam was away for a while, reviewing her vision board with the clerks, talking to a stylist, and looking at dresses in her fitting room without showing us anything.
I started reading an article on my phone about Jeffrey Dahmer while Mom and Brooke whispered to each other about the lighting in the room and the floral detailing in the wallpaper. I think I was on the section about his third murder when a woman dressed in all black came out from the fitting rooms with a huge smile on her face, tears brimming in her eyes, and her hands clasped as if she were afraid she’d go crazy if she didn’t keep them together.
“Are you guys ready?” she asked.
“Yes, out with it,” Brooke huffed, before swallowing the last of her third glass of champagne in one gulp.
As if that were her cue, Sam appeared. Even though Sam isn’t very tall and is pretty tiny, in this dress she filled the entire doorway. Not like the dress was so big that it couldn’t fit through the opening, more like her presence was elevated. It’s an off the shoulder long-sleeve dress that has a slight A-line circle type skirt. There’s silver beading along the neckline, and it trails down the front of the dress and spirals all over the skirt like a firework. As she moved into the room, it was like the air we were breathing was pure elegance. It was like our minds were cleared out and filled with a calming white space, that space being the creamy white of a wedding dress.
All of her planning. All of her online searching. All of her frustrations and color coding and highlighting and hair pulling—everything she had been doing came together in this moment. We were in a world that consisted solely of a three-way mirror that captured every angle of the Dress.
“My gosh,” Mom gasped, clutching her chest. She too fell into tears. She stood up, went to Sam, and held her face in her hands and said, “My Samantha, when did you become so grown-up? It’s like yesterday you wouldn’t let go of my hand when I was dropping you off at preschool, and now… Oh my.”
Brooke said she didn’t get how Sam could walk into a store and the first dress she puts on is the One. Maybe, even though Brooke is Sam’s best friend, she doesn’t know Sam that well. Because I know everything that built up to this moment. I know that Sam picked this store because she did the research. I know she picked this dress because she figured out the best fit for her body type, what kind of detailing would complement her curves if she wanted something more fitted versus loose. I know that because of who she is, she was able to nail this one on the first try.
And yes, that first moment when we saw her in the Dress was magical and beautiful and blah, blah, blah. But now, after however many times she’s come to the tailor to try it on, the scene is old. I’ve been to two of her fittings since she started alterations. At the last one, when she stood, admiring herself in the mirror, her trying Veil? No veil? Veil? is what did me in.
So, my lack of enthusiasm should be understandable as Sam pulls up to the stoplight with a huge unnecessary grin on her face.
“This is exciting,” she says, leaning up to peek at herself in her rearview mirror. She rubs her lips together to try to spread out some of the tinted lip balm she just put on, before settling back down. When the light turns green, we pull out of the parking garage under Sam’s apartment building downtown. Even though her apartment has a view of Lake Michigan, once we’re on the ground, all we can see are buildings, pedestrians, and more buildings.
“What’s exciting about waking up at seven a.m. on a Sunday when we didn’t even get to sleep until one in the morning? What, exactly, is exciting about that?” I grumble. At first I had my arms crossed over my chest because of the cold, but now I have them crossed to make myself smaller, to try to pull myself into a tiny ball that can disappear and not have to try on this dress.
“Us spending some quality time together, doing girl things.”
“Girl things?” I ask, glancing down at the untouched caramel macchiato Sam got me from the Starbucks in the lobby of her building.
“Yes. I feel like we haven’t had sister time in forever. And now we can drink our coffee, put on our dresses, and maybe get a manicure after.”
“What if I have things to do today?” I ask, looking at her.
“Do you?”
“That wasn’t my question,” I tell her, annoyed that she would just up and decide that we are spending a day together without asking. Without even fathoming that with school, swim team, math team, and my wild goose chase to find a date to her own freaking wedding, I might have more important things to do than go put on a dress because she wants to play dress-up.
“Why do you have to be like that?” she asks.
“Like what?”
“Negative? Like, always trying to start something.”
“I’m not trying to start anything,” I say defensively. “I was asking a question.”
“A rude question. You and I both know you don’t have anything to do that’s going to take up your entire Sunday. You do homework, swim, stare at the wall and be a boring little twerp, eat, sleep, and repeat.”
“Sometimes I can’t stand you,” I mumble, wishing I hadn’t called her last night.
“Sometimes I can’t believe we’re related.”
“That’s dramatic,” I scoff, turning to look out the window.
“Oh, is it?” Sam asks, whipping her car into a parking space. It happens so fast that I nearly smack my head against the window.
Before she even shifts the car into park, I throw my door open and get out. “Let’s just get this over with,” I say before slamming the door shut and leaving her.
When I step into the store, I feel weird. A wedding dress boutique isn’t usually a place where angry people go. It’s supposed to be a happy place where you can dream.
So when I sit down on the cushiony bench outside the fitting room we’re directed to, I feel more out of place than usual. Sam is chic and sparkly, glossy heels and intricate updos. I’m dark colors and matte finish, hair either in a bun or out and wild. The tailor’s assistant is in the back, ready to help Sam zip up when she gives the say-so. I notice the tailor looking down, and I follow his gaze to realize he’s scrunching up his brow at my old pair of moss-green Vans. I look at his loafers, so shiny that they reflect the white lights around the three-way mirror. He’s very Sex and the City, and I’m Love Jones.
“Why are you sitting?” Sam asks when she emerges in her gown. She carries the front of the dress so that she can step up onto the platform without tripping over her hem. When she lets it go, the skirt nearly falls to the floor, hanging on her frame—predictably—like it did the last time she tried it on. Without waiting for my answer, she instructs the tailor that he should measure for the hemline to be just above her toes because she doesn’t want to trip during the ceremony. She says the sleeves have to be taken in because since she’s been working on wedding planning more than working out, her arms have shrunk ever so slightly in a way that she notices more than any of us do.
When she finishes running down her list, she realizes I’m still sitting.
“Go try on your dress.”
“I don’t even know where you put it.” I purposefully stormed out of the car without it, figuring if it was out of sight, it might fall out of mind as well.
“In your fitting room.”
“I have a fitting room?” I ask, standing up and stretching. It’s still earlier than I would wake up on a Sunday after being out past midnight, so my body comes out of the stretch and begs me to curl back into the fetal position.
“Yes,” she hisses, gathering her dress right out of the tailor’s hands. “Through there.” She points toward where she came from. “Across from mine.” She’s standing in front of me, gritting her teeth, and staring into my eyes the way Mom would look at her when she’d do something wrong, like accidentally put a metal mug in the microwave or forget her keys. It was a look that made her clip her keys to her backpack and shove all the metal travel mugs into their own cabinet.
I stare back for a moment, wondering if she really is that fed up with me or if she thinks this is the only way she can get me into that stupid room. By talking to me like I’m her child or one of her employees. Not her sister. I step around her and the assistant standing off to the side with that awkward I probably wasn’t supposed to see that look on her face.
Sam, true to form, decided to be traditional. Some of her friends from college had weddings where all the bridesmaids could pick their own dress, regardless of style or color. Another friend just said all the dresses had to be the same color. Sam, however, wants all the dresses exactly the same. She likes the uniformity, the consistency. It’s one of those preferences that reminds us we are in fact related.
So, all seven of the bridesmaids, including myself, are wearing deep green dresses. It was Stamica’s idea. Stamica and Sam were in a web design class, and she even helped Sam design the ArchiTech website. So, naturally, she’s been working with Sam on “designing” her wedding. The winter wonderland theme was her idea, along with the dark green dresses that represent evergreens.
The bridesmaids’ dresses are floor length, A-line circle-skirt princess dresses. They’re off the shoulder, with ruffled bands that hang around our upper arms; the body of the dress starts off tight around the waist, then flows out. Even though the dress flows and cups our shoulders, it’s still very plain. There’s no intricate stitching or beading. The fabric does all the work, with a million tides and ripples dangling by our ankles.
When I step out of my dressing room, I can hear Sam wrestling around in hers. Instead of waiting, I just head out to the three-panel mirror. I step up onto the platform and look at myself. I turn my hips and watch as the rest of the dress follows, delayed like a ripple. The neckline dips in the middle, but modestly.
“Wow.”
I startle. I didn’t even hear the tailor come up behind me.
“Sorry.” He blushes. I turn back to the mirror, and we meet each other’s eyes.
“Like I told her, it still fits perfectly fine,” I mumble, ready to step off the platform.
But Sam comes out of her dressing room and stares at me from the doorway in silence. I think of the way Mom looked at her when Sam tried on her dress. I think of how Stamica and Brooke strutted around the fitting room like models at their fittings because they were so pleased with their dresses, how Sam gushed over them and directed the tailor on what touch-ups had to be done. I just stood off to the side and watched.
“It still fits,” I say again, my voice quiet.
She nods in agreement, looking me up and down. “It’s beautiful.” She says it like she’s admitting defeat. I was right, that I haven’t changed. Somehow I feel like this disappoints her. I take her reaction as my cue to go put my clothes back on, and I squeeze past her into the fitting room.