Brynna was making an angry beeline for the stairs when her cell phone chirped loudly. Her father snatched up Brynna’s purse from the kitchen table where it had been searched and held it out to her.
Brynna skulked back and answered her phone, once again turning her back on her parents. “’Lo?”
“We’re ten minutes away.”
Evan.
“Ten minutes away from what?”
“From your house, dork.”
Brynna rested a foot on the bottom stair. “Why are you coming to my house?”
“Homecoming shopping. Hello? We talked about it, like, five minutes ago.”
Brynna did a mental head slap. “Oh, right. Homecoming shopping. Look, Ev, I’m just not feeling very—”
Brynna felt her mother come up behind her and lay a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Go,” she mouthed, pressing a credit card into Brynna’s palm.
“Hold on.” She pulled the phone from her ear and glared at her mother. She was spitting mad, but the look of apology and desperation in her mother’s eyes shut her up directly. Brynna sighed and pushed the phone to her ear. “Okay, just honk when you get here.”
She hung up the phone to see that her mother had disappeared back into the kitchen. Both her parents were seated at the dining table, silent, a strange picture waiting to begin.
•••
Evan pulled up in Brynna’s driveway and gave a short honk. Brynna, still not entirely sure—still not entirely thrilled—hiked up her shoulder bag.
“Just get yourself something fun, hon. You deserve it.” The apology still hung heavy in her mother’s eyes, and Brynna ached for her, but the wisp of anger was still there.
“Sure, Mom.”
She ran out the front door and slipped into the front seat of Evan’s car, poking her nose into the backseat. “Just the two of us? I thought this was a gang homecoming takedown?”
Evan shrugged his shoulders as he backed out the sloped drive. “Lauren and Darcy are taking their own car because Lauren has swim team practice or something.”
“They do night practices at Hawthorne?”
“We’ve got the indoor pool.”
Brynna didn’t want to swim. She didn’t want to think of the pool, but somewhere, way back in her head, she felt a little dig of jealousy that Lauren could jump in the pool so easily, could cut through the lanes without turning into a spastic mess. More than the drinking or the drugs, the fact that Brynna couldn’t handle water made her feel crazy.
They spent the rest of the drive chatting about nothing, and by the time Evan guided the car into the mall parking lot, Brynna was actually feeling excited about the prospect of bad food-court food and homecoming shopping.
They found Lauren and Darcy snarfing down tacos at a corner booth, Lauren with a stack in front of her, Darcy moving much more daintily.
“Sit,” Lauren said, mouth full of taco. She mumbled something else unintelligible and Darcy translated.
“She said that she is wearing green, so that’s off the table. I’m going pink, so Bryn, you’ve got the rest of the color wheel to choose from.”
Brynna laughed. “Really? None of us can wear the same color dress? Since when did we turn into a posse of mean girls?”
“It’s not about being mean,” Darcy said a little coldly. “It’s about being polite.”
Brynna’s eyebrows went up, but she knew better than to challenge a girl about prom wear. “No green, no pink. Noted.”
Once the girls finished their tacos, they made a beeline for Formal Invite, Brynna and Evan taking up the rear.
“I really don’t want to do this,” Brynna moaned.
Evan stopped to stare at her full in the face. “Wait. Sixteen-year-old girl, credit card, no stated spending limit.” He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. “You must be sick.”
“Hey.” Brynna ducked away from him. “Stereotypes. I’ve just never been the homecoming type. And you—aren’t guys supposed to hate this kind of thing?”
Evan mimicked Brynna’s expression and stance. “Hey! Stereotypes!”
The pair couldn’t have been more than two minutes behind Lauren and Darcy, but by the time Evan and Brynna walked into the door, each girl was already loaded down with an armful of selections.
“They don’t waste any time, do they?” Brynna asked.
“That’s only round one.”
Brynna and Evan started pawing through a rack of rainbow dresses, each more tulle-y or lacy than the next.
“What do you think about this?” Brynna asked, holding a slightly less foofy garment in front of her.
Evan wrinkled his nose. “One shoulder dresses make everyone look like Tarzan. Besides, I don’t think that pink is your color.” He turned around to a second rack, pawing through a sea of blues that bled into wild turquoise.
“This!” He yanked out a dress and held it out to her, imminently proud. The deep blue dress had thin spaghetti straps and a ruched bodice. It flared out gently, unlike the masses of cupcake dresses they had previously seen. The delicate fabric was scattered with tiny beads that sparkled each time the dress moved. It was gorgeous, but it horrified Brynna.
“Shouldn’t we wait to buy dresses until we actually have a date for the Winter Formal?”
“Of course not,” Erica said with a frown. “I read this article about this woman who was single but she wanted to get married super bad. She bought a wedding dress and voila! The universe kicked out a man and she was married within a year. It’s all in the power of positive thinking, you know? Put it out to the universe.”
“That sounds really pathetic,” Brynna scoffed.
“Stop being so negative,” Erica said through the dressing room door.
“Ugh.” Brynna turned back to her reflection in the mirror. “I hate the way my shoulders look in spaghetti straps. I look like a linebacker.”
“Negative, negative,” Erica sang. “Okay. One, two, three, open the door!”
Both girls threw open their dressing room doors and appraised each other. Erica was hiding her ridiculous grin behind her hand, but Brynna’s mouth dropped wide open.
Erica looked amazing.
The delicate straps on the dress she was wearing showed off her tanned, strong shoulders. The ruching along the side accentuated her hourglass figure, and the deep blue fabric with its multitude of sparkles made Erica’s brown eyes look that much darker, that much more mysterious.
“This is my dress,” she breathed.
“No.” Brynna took a step backward. “No,” she said again. “I hate that dress.”
Her heart was beating, and she tried to suck in those slow, Dr. Rother-assigned deep breaths, but her mind was tumbling.
Get a hold of yourself, Brynna. It’s a different dress. Lots of stores probably had that dress.
“Okay,” Evan said, shoving the offending dress back into the rack. “You can just say you hate my taste. You don’t have to go catatonic.”
“I’m sorry. I just—that’s just not my style.” She grabbed the closest dress she could find. “This. This is more my style.”
“Oh, Bryn, that’s going to look awesome on you.” Lauren stepped out of the racks with a dress slung over one arm. She fingered the edge of the dress Brynna was holding, and Brynna looked down at it herself. It was white with a single strap and a gauzy bust line. A row of delicate rhinestones lined the bodice, catching the light just enough to reflect back a tasteful sparkle. There was ruching at the waist, and then the dress flared out with a full skirt. She blinked, surprised at how simple and lovely it was.
“You have to try it on!”
Erica’s dress was forgotten as Lauren and Darcy rushed Brynna to the dressing room. They holed up in the adjoining two, commentating through each step of their trying-on process.
“This thing makes me look like a Vegas show girl—in the worst possible way,” Darcy moaned.
“Is my butt really that big, or is that just sequin distortion? Please say it’s sequin distortion,” Lauren responded.
“I don’t know,” Evan called from his spot outside of the rooms, “but I’d vote for giant ass over fabric failure.”
Brynna removed her clothes hastily, slipping the cool fabric of the dress over her head. Immediately, she felt the satin slide down over her chest, felt the way the bodice hugged her curves as the filmy skirt flittered just above her knees.
“Oh, Bryn, that’s amazing on you!”
Lauren hung over the side of Brynna’s dressing room, eyes wide. Darcy popped up on the other side, her shoulders engulfed by an obscene ruffle of pink.
“That’s amazing! If I didn’t already have my dress, I’d buy that one.” Darcy made a motion for Brynna to spin and she obliged. “It’s really gorgeous!”
Brynna slunk out of the dress, hurriedly slipped into her own clothes, and met Evan at the counter. Darcy and Lauren had already discarded their failure frocks and were poking at a display of sparkly jewelry.
“I think I’m going to get this one.”
“Lauren.” Darcy pointed to her watch. “If you want me to drive you to practice…”
Lauren swung her head to Evan. “You’re going to pick me up at eight, right?”
“Duh.”
“Great.” She shoved the dress she was holding into Evan’s arms. “Tell Mom I said thanks. And find me some shoes!”
Brynna and Evan could hear Darcy and Lauren giggling until they were out of the store and had blended into the throngs of mall people outside.
“Do you not want to go to homecoming with Teddy?” Evan asked, stepping closer.
“Why would you say that? I like Teddy. I want to go with him.”
“Well, and I’m no expert, but I thought girls were supposed to be all excited and flittery about their homecoming dresses. Not grab the first one off the rack and be done with it.”
Brynna tried to remember the words to the song playing on the store’s sound system—anything to take her mind off Erica and that stupid dress, anything to cover up the thundering sound of blood rushing through her ears.
“I’m not most girls,” Brynna said with a smile she hoped would look convincing. “And this wasn’t the first dress I pulled off the rack. It was the third.”
By the time Brynna returned home, she was almost excited. She had spent an afternoon just like a real teenage girl—a real teenager who wasn’t crazy, wasn’t likely to go on drugs at any given moment, and who was not responsible for something heinous. She was jumpy still, but the idea of spinning with Teddy in the filmy white dress was enough to bolster her spirit and make her excited.
“You got a dress!” Brynna’s mother clasped her hands in front of her chest as Brynna entered the living room, the long garment bag trailing behind her.
“Actually, I decided to go with a tasteful pantsuit.”
“What?” Her mother’s mouth dropped open, panic in her eyes.
“I’m kidding, Mom. I got a dress. It’s girly and everything.”
“Well, come on, I want to see it!”
Brynna was contracting some of her mom’s giddiness, and she worked to untie the knotted plastic at the bottom of the bag, eager to see what her mother would think.
“No, no, not like that! Go in the bathroom and make an appearance.” Her mother pointed to the bathroom door, and Brynna offered her the expected teenage groan face.
“Oh, come on!” her mother went on. “Give me this. Your dad is on his way to the airport and you’re my little girl. Indulge your mama.”
Brynna rolled her eyes but was secretly happy to sweep out into the living room in the gown.
“Okay.” She trudged into the bathroom and hung the dress on the back of the door, feeling a tiny, unexpected flutter of butterfly wings in her stomach. She finished undoing the bottom knot and pushed the plastic up over the gown.
A thousand pinpricks jabbed at her skin. Her breath caught in her throat. Brynna went for the doorknob, desperately trying to turn it, desperately trying to get out of the bathroom.
She looked at the dress, the blue spaghetti strap, ruched dress that Erica was going to wear, hung up on the bathroom door, and fingers of terror grabbed at her, pulsed for her.
“No, no!” Brynna pounded against the door. “No!”
“Brynna, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”
It’s just a dress, Bryn, just a dress. It was at the store; it could have been a mistake.
Even as she tried to talk herself through the fist of panic that tightened in her gut, Brynna knew it was wrong. She saw the woman at the counter. She saw her slip the white dress into Brynna’s bag. She watched as the woman tied the bottom—“extra tight, because if it opens up, this thing is going to get dirty fast.”
Brynna pulled open the door and her mother stood there, flushed.
“What’s going—” She turned toward the dress, her eyes immediately lighting up. “Oh, Bryn, that’s beautiful!” She snatched the dress from the back of the door and attempted to press it up against Brynna, but she snaked back as if the dress were solid poison.
“That’s not the dress I bought,” she mumbled. “That’s the wrong dress.”
Her mother held it at arm’s length. “It’s a pretty beautiful wrong dress.”
“That’s not mine,” Brynna snapped. “It’s not for me.”
“Well, we can’t get back to the mall tonight—it’s already closed.” She pressed the dress toward her daughter. “Try it on—just once. For me?”
Brynna shook her head, the lap of water reverberating in her head. Her mind showed a constant slideshow of Erica, first in the dress, then in the pool, and then in the ocean until she was gone.
Brynna started to tremble. She wanted to tell her mother that this was Erica’s dress—not Brynna’s, not the one Brynna picked out—but she knew how it sounded: crazy. If she told her mother that she even saw the saleslady put a different dress in her bag and that Erica must have switched them, she would sound like she had lost it.
She bit her lip. She couldn’t let her mother think she was going crazy, especially since Brynna herself wasn’t sure that she wasn’t.
“Okay, okay, no dress.” Her mother tossed it aside and gathered Brynna in her arms. “It’s not that big of a deal, okay? We’ll take it back tomorrow,” she said too brightly. “Or I could take it back and I’ll just get the one that you wanted. What color did you say it was?”
Brynna swallowed, her stomach turning over and over on itself. She tried to process the words her mother was saying, tried to remember the color of the dress she had actually picked. She saw white in her mind’s eye, but when she tried to recall the image, the white turned into foam on the waves as they broke over her legs, and Erica was already gone.