“Mom, come quick! Something’s happened to Ada!” Abby yells after she and Mom come into our room later.
I’m standing in front of the mirror, wearing a new dress. This afternoon, just as I was ascending the stairs from the spa, buffed and polished and primed and filled to the brim with the cucumber-infused water they serve there, something in a store window caught my eye: a dress, floor length and black, with three red, pink, and orange tropical flowers printed on the front.
It’s strapless, held up by elastic stitching all around the bodice. I’ve never worn a strapless dress before. I’ve been too self-conscious of my cavewoman shoulders. But this is pretty. Simple. Elegant. It’s formal, but not too formal. The tag says one size fits all, and it does. It fits like it was made for me. I finger the light cotton fabric. It feels like wearing a cloud.
I already had a dress for the awards ceremony. Ruthie picked it out for me: navy blue, short sleeved and knee-length, with a V-neck. It would have been fine for the stupid dinner and schmoozing.
But this dress—this flower dress—is special.
So I bought it. The ridiculous one hundred and fifty dollars of it. And, like with the spa treatments, I charged it to the room.
Now I’m standing in front of the mirror, assessing the new dress, loving how it clings and flows in all the right places. I’ve got a new pair of fancy black flip-flops on my feet, my toes painted a saucy red, a new shell bracelet around my right wrist, French-manicured nails, and earrings of tiny white hibiscus flowers.
But Abby’s talking about my hair. It’s glorious, shiny and smooth, cut to just below my shoulders and blown straight, then curled again into soft, beachy waves. It’s easily the best my hair has ever looked. Ever.
I’m wearing makeup, too. Eye shadow and blush and lip liner.
“Ada, you’re a princess!” Abby exclaims.
I do kind of feel like one. Part of me feels silly, like I’m trying to act out the make-over scene in a romantic comedy and now I expect everyone to find me suddenly, irresistibly gorgeous, and I know I’m not. A nice dress and good hair and makeup can only get me so far.
But I do look good. I feel good, too. Like I am taking charge of my life.
Mom comes into my room to see what all the fuss is about. “Well,” she says softly. “Don’t you look grown up?”
“That’s what I was going for.”
She clears her throat and turns and bustles back into her own room, crossing quickly to the closet to retrieve her own long black dress. I entertain Abby as Mom pulls her straight blond hair into a simple chignon, briskly applies a minimal layer of makeup, spritzes her wrists with perfume, and, finally, steps into her dress.
She looks beautiful and classic and fierce. But that’s how she always looks. Whenever I picture her in the operating room, it’s the same.
She’s flawless.
Except, I think, for this one glaring flaw that almost nobody knows about.
“Zip me?” she asks.
I hurry around behind her to zip the dress.
“Is it all right?” she asks.
“It’s great. Ruthie picked a good one.”
Abby appears at Mom’s hip and gazes up at her adoringly. “I wish Poppy were here. His eyes would go boing, seeing you so pretty, Mom.”
She spins away, twirling in her own sky-blue gauzy sundress, her curls long and loose around her heart-shaped face.
“Yeah, Mom,” I echo. “Don’t you wish Pop was here?” I wonder if she actually called him today, like I told her to. And if she called him, what did she say?
“Of course I do,” Mom says.
I hate the way she smiles just then. A secret smile. It makes me want to tell her that I know.
That smile isn’t for Pop.
But I’m learning to stuff the secret down inside me. I can manage it. I can pretend.
Mom puts on pearl earrings and a delicate gold chain with a single pearl that sits in that hollow spot of her throat. She steps into her simple black heels.
“I’m going to break my ankle in these things tonight. If I weren’t presenting I’d go for flip-flops, too.” She glances at herself in the mirror, dabs at her lipstick with a tissue, and sighs. “All right. Let’s go.”
“Where’s Afton?” Abby asks.
“She texted me that she’s going to meet us there,” Mom says.
Abby frowns. “Did you make up yet from your fight?”
“Not yet,” Mom says. “But we will.”
“She’s tough, though. She’ll get through,” Abby says.
I hold the door open, and Abby runs out. My mother stops in the doorway to look at me.
“I think I understand what your plans were this afternoon,” she says, taking my wrist and holding it out as she looks me over.
“I charged it all to the room,” I say, my chin lifting without me being able to stop it.
A little line appears between her eyes, but only for an instant. “All right. Like you said, you deserve to be pampered sometimes. But next time you should ask me first. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She lets my wrist drop and takes a step back. “There’s something different about you this week. More than the hair and the dress.”
I smile and shrug my bare shoulders. There’s no way to explain to her that what’s changed about me this week is everything.
It seems that all 2,300 members of the STS conference are milling around on the lawn of the Palace Tower like a swarm of formally dressed ants. There’s a large stage set up at the far edge, where a live band is performing the song “Beyond the Sea.” The lawn is a huge square, the stage serving as one side, with three long buffet tables making up the other sides, the dining tables and chairs all boxed inside.
I pick at the food. If I never see another buffet table in my life, I’ll be fine with that.
“Eat your dinner,” Abby scolds me. “You’re a growing girl.”
I take three more bites.
Mom demolishes her dinner with that speedy-eating efficiency she says she picked up in med school. Then she abandons us to go backstage with the other presenters and prepare. I push my plate away and survey the scene for signs of Nick.
“You look very nice tonight, dearie,” Marjorie says from across the table.
“Thank you. You’re beautiful, too.” She’s wearing a long-sleeved, floor-length lavender gown with chiffon butterflies at the neckline. “Not everybody could pull off that dress, but you do.”
“Don’t I know it,” she replies. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it, I always say.”
“If you’ve got what?” Abby asks, tilting her head to one side.
“Pizzazz.” Marjorie finishes her glass of red wine and gazes around us almost sadly. “You should be somewhere more lively, my dear, dressed like that. Not stuck with all of us old farts.”
Abby giggles. “Farts.” That’s a new word. Pop will be thrilled.
Marjorie’s sharp brown eyes widen slightly. She’s looking at something over my shoulder. “Here comes trouble in a red dress.”
I turn. Marjorie gives a low whistle as Afton materializes from amid the crowd. She’s wearing a dress I’ve never seen before, scarlet to match her lipstick, the front cut almost down to her belly button.
Holy shit.
For the first time since we arrived, I am sincerely glad Pop isn’t with us. He would have a stroke if he saw Afton in that dress, at one of Mom’s work functions, no less.
“Look at you, girl,” crows Marjorie as Afton approaches. “Aha! That Wong boy is going to rue the day he let you slip away from him when he sees you gussied up like that.”
“I think that’s the point,” I mutter.
“What’s gussied up?” Abby asks.
Afton shoots me a cool glare and sits down in the seat next to me, which we saved for her. When she crosses her legs, she reveals another titillating feature of the dress: a slit that runs up the side to the middle of her thigh.
I can feel the attention of the people around us shifting toward Afton.
My phone buzzes.
Nick.
Your dress is really pretty.
I scan the tables around me until I find him sitting with his dad, closer to the back. He waves at me and then pantomimes being shot in the heart. Like my good looks are killing him.
He’s wearing a dark gray suit and a tie, as well dressed as I’ve ever seen him. He’s also gotten a haircut—not short, exactly, but neater, no longer in his eyes.
For me. He gussied up for me.
Suddenly the primping and pain from earlier feels worth it.
You’re pretty, too, I text. I want to write something sexier, something clever and bold and fun, but I can’t think of anything. I search the emojis for the tea one, which is some green steaming liquid in a white mug, but I end up going with a GIF of Morticia Addams drinking tea instead.
I watch the smile bloom on his face. We spend the next several minutes sending tea GIFs to one another, and then the band abruptly stops playing and the awards ceremony officially starts up.
Dr. Asaju gives a speech about how informative and productive the conference has been. He makes the team who had organized the trip come up in front of everyone, and we all clap. That’s what awards night is really about: clapping for how great the conference has been, and then clapping for the people who organized it, and clapping for every person who wins an award, and the people who present the awards, and for the entertainment, and for the food and the people who serve the food, and the fine hotel that hosted us, and finally clapping because we are so happy that the awards are over so we can rest our weary hands.
My mom and her black dress sweep onto the stage. We all clap for her.
“I’m now going to present the Earl Bakken Scientific Achievement Award,” she says. Her voice is slightly sharper than usual—the only indication I can see that she might be nervous up there with thousands of eyes on her. “This award was established in 1999 to honor individuals who have made outstanding scientific contributions that have enhanced the practice of cardiothoracic surgery and patients’ quality of life.”
Clap clap clap.
Your mom is so boss, texts Nick.
I can’t explain that I would rather have a mother than a boss, and it seems that Aster Bloom, for all her great badassery, is not capable of being both.
“The award is named after Mr. Earl Bakken, who, among his many great accomplishments, developed the first wearable artificial pacemaker,” Mom continues smoothly.
Clap clap.
“This year the award will go to Dr. Max Ahmed,” Mom says with a smile, because she considers Max to be a friend. Max, who’s been waiting off to one side, joins her on the stage. Mom tells us about his work on a new device that help patients awaiting heart transplants, which sounds complicated, but important and cool. She lists off where Max went to college and medical school, where he did his residency, all the different hospitals where he practiced, and the research he did and papers he contributed to. She closes with talking about how, in his spare time (which I can’t imagine he has much of, considering what I know about heart surgeons and everything my mother has listed so far) he plays bass violin in an orchestra in Seattle, how much he loves hockey and sailing, and what a loving and dedicated husband and father and grandfather he is.
We all clap again.
Mom hands Max a plaque and an envelope that almost certainly contains a large check.
Clap.
The official event photographer stands up and takes their picture, and then Mom takes Max’s arm, the two of them walk off the stage, and we’re on to the next award.
Abby looks bored, so I give her a pencil and a paper napkin to doodle on. Afton uncrosses her legs and recrosses them the other way. Michael Wong is openly staring at her from the next table over. She doesn’t look at him.
After the next award there’s a break for hula. It’s less formal than the other night’s hula dancing had been, this time done by girls about my age instead of the seasoned performers who hula five nights a week for the hotel. I find myself captivated by the dancing in a way I wasn’t at the more polished luau. This is more powerful—more heartfelt, even though it’s just a drum played by one man and their teacher calling out the words in Hawaiian while the girls move gracefully in the center of the stage. Each dance a story, every move representing an image.
Dare to dance, I think, and leave shame behind.
“I can do that,” Abby says matter-of-factly. “I can do it just like that.”
“That’s awesome, bug.” I smirk at Afton. “You can do that, too, I guess. Since you also did the hula class.”
“No, she can’t,” Abby says. “Only I can. And Josie. And Josie’s mom is pretty good at it, too, since she has nice big hips.”
“It’s not nice to talk about people’s big hips,” I say.
“Why? Mrs. Wong’s hips are really good ones.”
“I’m going to get a soda.” Afton stands up. “I’ll be right back.”
She breezes past Michael like a model on a catwalk, head high, spine straight, hips swaying.
“Afton has good ones, too,” Abby observes. “It’s too bad she doesn’t know how to hula.”
This surprises me. Afton is a dancer, after all. She’s done ballet since she was Abby’s age, practicing her plies while she’s washing dishes at the kitchen sink, jeté-ing across our yard. I’ve been to countless performances of Afton playing Clara in The Nutcracker, and Odile in Swan Lake, and so many other things. She’s a swan, my sister. A scarlet swan in a wicked dress who’ll slap you silly with her powerful wings if you tick her off. And she’ll be graceful doing it.
“Afton wasn’t good at hula?” I ask Abby, but then we’re all clapping again, because the hula is over.
My phone chimes with an alarm I set.
Eight o’clock.
From a few tables behind me, I see Nick stand up. He leans and says something to his father, who claps him on the back. Then he looks over at me, a question in his eyes.
I give him a nervous smile.
He nods and starts walking toward the Ocean Tower, his strides quick. Then he’s gone.
My heart thunders. This is it. Time to make my move.
I wait about ten minutes before I follow Nick. As is the plan. But then I can’t just leave Abby for like an hour with no explanation, and I can’t locate Afton, so first I go looking for her.
I find her in the restroom.
She’s standing in front of the mirror, pressing some powder to the space under eyes. Her smeared mascara and swollen eyelids tell me that she’s been crying—my fierce and tough older sister, crying, and over a stupid boy, no less.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She blows her nose on a paper towel. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll help you beat him up.”
Her red-rimmed blue eyes meet mine in the mirror, startled. “No, it’s fine. It’s not his fault. Or maybe it is a little, but . . . I screwed up.”
“That’s okay. You’ll fix it.”
“Maybe I can’t.”
“Well, look on the bright side. Whatever you did wrong, it can’t be as bad as Mom’s situation.”
She sucks in a breath. “Ada, I need to talk to you. About what you saw that day—”
“What about what you saw?” I remind her.
“What I saw?”
“My sketchbook?”
“Oh.” Her eyes lower to the floor. “I shouldn’t have looked at that. I’m sorry. I was losing my mind a little.”
“And what did you . . . learn, by reading what is essentially my diary?” I say.
“You’re really talented. I don’t know how you capture people like you do.”
“Afton, be serious.”
“I am. That was the biggest thing I learned.”
“And?”
“And you’re a good sister, Ada,” Afton says softly. “I know you’re trying to hold all of us together, for Abby. Which is why I need to say—”
My phone chimes with a text.
All clear.
I have to go. “Speaking of being a good sister, would you be in charge of Abby for a while?” I ask Afton. “Like maybe for the rest of the awards?”
“Sure.” Afton’s eyes narrow on my face. She probably saw the page of my sketchbook with the words THE SEX PLAN in big letters across the top. And all my humiliating questions.
“I’m going to hang out with Nick Kelly,” I say. “Could you cover for me?” After all, I’ve covered for her, so many times.
She thinks about it for a minute. “You’re going to hang out in his room?”
“Yes.” This time, unlike a week ago (god, was it only a week ago, with Leo?) I don’t offer up the details of the plan, even though she probably already knows. I don’t ask her advice. I don’t insist that I’m ready.
Her forehead rumples, but she says, “Okay.”
“Okay, you’ll watch Abby?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.” I give myself a final once-over. Fluff my hair. Reapply the lipstick.
“You look really nice, by the way,” Afton says. “I hope you have a good time.”
“That’s the plan,” I say. To have a good time. To feel good. To feel better.
We leave the restroom, and my sister returns to our table and Abby, and I make my way toward the Ocean Tower again.
And find my way to room 407.