twenty-nine

MAY 3

Barbra and Booker came with me when I took the dress and accessories over for a fitting the day before the show. It was probably unprofessional to bring even one friend, never mind two, but I was feeling kind of cracked down the middle.

We rode our bikes because Barbra couldn’t get her mom’s car.

There wasn’t a lot of conversation on the way, and I was grateful for that. But when we dismounted in Esther’s driveway and Booker started chaining his bike to the fence, Barbra grabbed my bike by the handlebars.

“How are you?” she whispered.

I could barely meet her eyes.

“I’ve been really busy.”

“I’m excited to see this dress.”

“My grandma’s friend helped.”

“Did she make the whole thing?” asked Barbra, who really does have a confrontational edge to her sometimes.

“No, she just showed me what to do.”

“She must be an amazing sewer.”

“Seamstress,” I corrected. “Or dressmaker.”

Barbra made a wry face. “Well, pardon me.”

“No, I was just . . . never mind.” I was just being the kind of excellent guy who corrects other people even though his whole life is a giant lie.

The front door opened, and Esther came running out of the house. With her dandelion head of curls, skinny legs, and big white shoes she looked like a cartoon.

She skidded to a stop about five feet from us.

Sheryl stood in the doorway, smiling.

“Is it ready?” Esther breathed. “My fashion outfit?”

I nodded and forgot all about the guilt and the sense of impending doom.

Barbra and I locked our bikes to Booker’s and followed Esther and Sheryl into the house.

Esther’s foster father waited in the kitchen, a white guy, early middle-aged, in a plaid shirt. He was trim and balding and had an honest face, like a game warden.

“I’m Edward,” he said. “Nice to meet you, John and Barbra and . . . ?”

Booker stuck out his hand. “Booker. Moral supporter!”

Edward shook the outstretched hand.

“We’re all really excited about this. We think Esther looks amazing all the time, but it’s cool that she inspired an actual designer.”

He shook my hand, and for a second, I felt like I really was a proper designer and a decent boyfriend and righteous friend.

“So, Esther,” I said, putting the backpack on the kitchen table and taking out the dress, which I’d wrapped in brown paper, “you go put this on. We’ll make sure it fits like it’s supposed to. I made some other stuff for you. To go with the outfit.”

Esther twined one leg around the other, as though to stop herself from racing off in all directions.

When I glanced at her, Barbra smiled.

“Okay,” said Esther, her eyes huge.

Sheryl took the brown-paper package from the table and grabbed Esther’s hand.

“Let’s do this,” she said.

Not even a minute later a piercing squeal came from whatever room they’d disappeared into.

“It’s sooooo coooool!” cried Esther.

Barbra grabbed my hand. She was with me now. Booker gently punched my shoulder. Edward grinned, big relieved smile on his open face.

A minute later Esther bounded into the room, and the dress was, if I do say so myself, perfect. Sporty and fierce and cute as hell on her.

“That looks awesome,” said Edward, who had the dad-type comments down cold.

“I love it!” said Esther, turning in a circle.

“It’s perfect on her,” said Barbra seriously. “The fit. The material, all of it.” That made me feel like King Turd of Septic Mountain and also like Thor.

She was right. The dress fit Esther perfectly. It made her look every inch the oddball gorgeous kid, every inch funny, completely different, and completely herself. She could skateboard in it, go to a museum, graduate, kill it at a fifth-grade dance. She didn’t look like a kid trying to be a twenty-year-old swimsuit model. She looked exactly like herself and no one else, which is what good clothes can do for a person.

“So you like it?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s like my brother’s jersey. But it fits me, and it looks so cool. I love how it smells like grass.”

“Grass?” said Barbra.

“Like a lawn right after it gets cut,” said Esther, lifting an arm and taking a deep sniff at the inside of the elbow of the three-quarter-length sleeve.

To avoid meeting anyone’s eye, I dug around in the backpack.

“Let’s talk accessories,” I said. “And discuss how things will work on Saturday.”

While Sheryl and Edward and Esther stood watching, I pulled out the various packages containing the things I’d welded and woven and soldered. I was more excited about them than the dress, since I actually made them. But before I could show them off, Booker said he had to go.

“How can you stand to miss this?” said Barbra.

“I can’t stand it,” he said shortly.

He said good-bye and left without looking at me.

x x x

AFTER THE FITTING, B AND I WENT BACK TO HER HOUSE. WE had an hour before her parents were due back, and while we lay in her bed I thought about how comfortably and neatly we fit. This was my girl. I made a mistake with Tesla. It didn’t even feel real, what I’d done. That was another life. Another version of me.

“You are the bomb, B,” I said. “The dynamite, the plastique. You are whatever nukes are made of.”

“Do I have to be a bomb?” she said. “Can’t I be a firework?”

“A firework is just a decorator bomb,” I said. “I’m the luckiest of all the basically unlucky guys.”

“Well, you’re the luckiest guy in this house,” she said.

“Luckiest guy on this street?”

“I’ll give you that. I’ve met the neighbors. They are not a lucky people. Especially that guy who lives on the corner. He has a face like a wanted poster. It would suck so bad to go through life with that face. But all that luck will run out if my dad comes home and finds you in my room.”

B’s folks probably know we’re sleeping together, but they would prefer not to know know, which I get.

Maybe what people don’t know know won’t hurt them. I rolled over to the side of the bed, and felt around for my underwear and jeans.

Barbra leaned on one elbow, watching me.

“I have a fear,” she said.

I turned to look at her.

“You’re going to win this competition and then you’re going to start wearing your hair all trendy. Or you’ll get one of those square-faced watches and red suspenders and a surfboard that you never ride, and I won’t know you anymore.”

“I promise no man buns and only round-faced watches. And anyway, who do you know who’s like that? Have you met someone new while I was so busy?”

She rolled onto her back. “I looked up street style. Read some street-style fashion blogs. You mentioned that was the look you were going for in the competition. A lot of the street-style guys have ridiculous hair. And square watches. Especially in LA. Do you think we’re going to end up in LA when you’re a famous designer? I’m never getting plastic surgery.”

“B, I am very unlikely to win this competition. Even if I do, I’m not going to be a designer. The best-case scenario for me is probably a job at the mill. Or maybe I’ll get my very own Salad Stop franchise someday.”

She turned onto her side and stared at me. “I think you’re better at fashion than you or anyone else realized. You seem to be able to create a whole different reality with clothes. It’s kind of freaky.”

Her long legs poked out of the sheets. Her feet were thin and pretty and she never wore nail polish on her toes, just like she never wore makeup or curled her hair. She didn’t approve of vanity. I wondered if she knew how lucky she was to be basically satisfied with herself. I wasn’t satisfied with one thing about myself or anyone else. Except maybe my grandparents.

I jumped to my feet and bent over to give her a kiss. Then I left, feeling more chipper than I had any right to.

x x x

BOOKER WAS WAITING ON THE FRONT STEPS OF MY GRANDPARENTS’ house. He had a Mountain Dew sitting between his big skate shoes, made clownish by the orange laces. He took a big drink when I walked up.

“Want to come in?” I asked him when I reached the stairs.

“You want to tell me what you’re doing?” he asked. “Who sewed that dress?”

“My gram’s friend. The one who sews. I told you.”

“If I go inside and ask your gram about her friend who sews and I call that friend, your story’s going to check out?”

I felt nothing at his threat.

“Do whatever you want.”

“So this friend of your grandma’s has fancy perfume that smells like grass?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t know. I never noticed her perfume. She’s in her sixties.”

“Come on, man. You’ve been hooking up with that girl, haven’t you? The one from Green Pastures. B deserves so much better. If I could find a girl a tenth as amazing as B, I would count myself the luckiest bastard alive.”

There had been too much talk about luckiness today.

“Maybe ease up on the neediness and the snacks, and you’ll find a nice girlfriend who’ll stick around.”

“Screw you, man. This isn’t about me. I don’t get you. This contest has turned you into the kind of asshole you’ve been complaining about for years. Look at your jeans. Since when do you wear skinny jeans?”

A few days after I started seeing Tesla I’d gotten myself a pair of skinny jeans out of the donation bin. I told myself it didn’t matter because they were basically stolen.

“That’s your problem? You don’t like my clothes? B’s worried I’m going to get a man bun and a square-faced watch. How much time do you guys spend talking about all the things that might go wrong with me? Or things that are already wrong with me?”

Booker wasn’t going to let me distract him. And he was right. I was wearing skinny jeans because I thought Tesla would like them and because they seemed like the kind of thing someone who went to Green Pastures would wear. They hung down my ass and weren’t even that comfortable.

“You need to tell B. She deserves the truth. It makes me sick to think about her being so supportive, and you pay her back by screwing around with some little piece from a private school.”

Don’t call Tesla a piece, I wanted to say but didn’t. And B hadn’t been supportive. Not really, with her cracks about the school and what a joke it was for me to apply. Sometimes I thought Barbra and Booker didn’t want anything to change. Didn’t want anything to ever get better. Barbra didn’t want me to succeed.

Booker stared, red faced.

“You’re ripping my guts out, man. I hope this thing is worth it. A fashion show. For a fashion show you did this.”

“For art school,” I corrected. And silently added, and because I want a future. But that wasn’t right either. I didn’t sleep with Tesla and lie to my girlfriend and my best friend because I wanted a future. I did it because I wanted what I wanted.

“Look, nothing—”

“Don’t,” he said. “Just don’t. If you are too much of a coward to tell B, I’ll do it.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” I said lamely. “It’s the chance you’ve been waiting for all this time.”

He didn’t dignify that with a response. He got up and pushed past me, tall and wide and unstoppable.

He was nearly running when he grabbed his bike, jumped on it, and started pedaling.

“You,” he yelled when he was halfway down the block, “are breaking my heart, man.”

Too tired to troll my own journal.

—JOHN THOMAS-SMITH