A pop song, one that was always on the radio, was finishing up when we got in line. It was the kind of song a boy would pretend not to know or would say was stupid girl music. But Jesse shamelessly lip-synched along to the words, and he even knew the choreography from the video.
Morgan leaned in. “Elise, is Jesse on Dance Committee?”
“Umm, I don’t think so. If he is, he hasn’t come to a single meeting all year.”
“Then what the heck is he doing?”
Even if I’d had an answer for that, I couldn’t have said it. I was laughing too hard.
The pop song ended and a heavy metal song started up, chugging bass guitar and throaty screams. Jesse dramatically swatted the disco ball out of Zito’s hands, and it rolled down the hall. Then he alternated between moshing and thrashing and bouncing like a pogo stick. There also may have been a jump kick and an air guitar solo, but I was trying not to stare.
When we reached the front of the line, his eyes went wide and he lunged at me. “Keeley!” I barely had a chance to hand over my ten dollars before he pulled me toward him.
“Is this your jam, Keeley?” He kept the whole dancing routine up, not missing a beat.
“Not exactly.”
“Oh? Okay. No worries.” He tapped his phone and skipped to a hip-hop song. “Well, how are you at break dancing?” he asked, threading his fingers through mine and snapping our arms to make a wave.
“I’m terrible. Terrible at break dancing,” I said, shaking free. Everyone was looking at us, but it wasn’t embarrassing so much as exciting. It was like our texts were becoming public.
“Okay then, how about the robot?” He switched up his movements to make them jerky and stiff. “I’ve been programmed to cut rugs,” he said, this time in a metallic computer voice.
“You’re crazy,” I told him, backing up before he could grab me again, which he tried to do. I hustled over to the table, grabbed my ticket for the dance, and pulled Morgan and Elise in front of me as human shields. I was so aware of where Jesse had touched me moments before, how that hand was ever so slightly hotter than the rest of my body.
“There’s no way I’m letting you off that easy at Spring Formal!” he called out over the crowd. “You can’t hide from me all night!”
We ran off and ducked into the nearest bathroom.
“See!” Morgan said. “He clearly likes you, Keeley!”
“Seconded,” said Elise. “You guys are totally, totally hooking up at the dance.”
I pulled my hair up into a ponytail and fanned the back of my neck. Instead of talking myself down with some Debbie Downer version of Keeley, this isn’t happening, stop being crazy, the words “Maybe I should buy a new dress” blurted out. My plan had been to wear something I already owned to save money, but now that seemed like a terrible idea.
Elise and Morgan shared a pleased look.
“We’ll go shopping tonight!” Elise said. “I’ll drive.”
Except it started raining hard around dinner, and Elise’s mom didn’t want her driving in the dark to the big mall over in Ridgewood—a wealthy town exactly between Aberdeen and Waterford City—especially since she only had her learner’s permit. They ended up getting into a big fight about it and then she couldn’t go at all.
Morgan’s mom needed their car, but Mrs. Dorsey called my mom and must have given her a serious guilt trip, because to my surprise, Mom put aside her paperwork for the night—something she hardly ever did—and offered to take Morgan and me shopping.
If she hadn’t been with us, I would have never gotten that beautiful, beautiful dress. Though I’m still not sure if that would have been a good thing or not.
• • •
My mom ultimately decided to splurge on my dress because Spring Formal would be my very first dance (Aberdeen High only had two—Spring Formal for juniors and seniors, and senior prom, to which, surprise, surprise, I had never been invited), and also because I was supposed to pick something special for my sixteenth birthday, like maybe a locket or whatever, but I hadn’t found anything I liked and two months had already gone by.
This was after we’d both blinked at the price tag. I didn’t think to check how much the dress was before falling in love with it. I still feel crappy about that.
But she must have known what we were in for. Mom was the one to wander into Pearson’s because she recognized the song being played on the shiny black piano by a real live pianist. I’d never been inside before. Morgan, either, even though we’d heard that the bathrooms there were so much nicer than the ones at Macy’s. But Pearson’s was the kind of department store where you felt the salespeople looking at you when you walked past them. They’d smile friendly, but you knew they were quietly judging whether you had the money to shop there. We definitely didn’t.
When the song ended, Mom nudged Morgan and me onto the escalator with a hand on each of our backs, suggesting we check out what dresses they had here, since I hadn’t had much luck in the other stores. Morgan and I gave each other a look like Umm, okay, sure.
Pearson’s carried about half the clothes of Macy’s. The racks looked almost empty. So it didn’t take me long to spot it. A short shift, practically a minidress. It had an exposed silk lining that was the same shade as how my mom took her tea—with the cup almost half full of cream—or as tan as I got after the first solid summer day of lying out by the river. Over it was a shell of ivory lace, a pattern made up of daisies with their petal edges knit together. The sleeves were also lace, but bare underneath, no lining, and three-quarter length. A thin gold zipper ran up the back.
I never imagined myself wearing something so sophisticated to Spring Formal. I was thinking maybe a dress with a fun pouffy skirt that would lift up when I twirled on the dance floor. Or maybe one with hidden pockets for my lipstick and my phone so I wouldn’t need a purse. I’d tried on a few of those dresses already, and while they looked okay, none of them made me feel particularly pretty. I didn’t wear fancy dresses often, but that seemed like an essential criterion.
“Oh yes, please!” Morgan begged when she saw me pausing over it. “Please try that one on, Keeley!”
I wanted to before she said it. Though if Elise had been with us, I’m not sure I would have. Or if I did, it would have been more for the joke, a not-fancy girl clowning her way into a fancy dress. Since it was just Morgan with me, I didn’t have to hide my wanting that dress inside a laugh. I carefully lifted the hanger from the rack and carried it in front of me like a waiter delivering a hot plate.
I came out of the dressing room and Mom’s eyes went big. She said it looked like the kind of dress girls in California wore in the 1960s. Though I don’t know how she could have known that, since my mom had lived in Aberdeen her whole life. Morgan said, “Keeley,” then covered her mouth with her hand. She did that a couple of times. “You look like . . . a woman.”
“And you sound like a tampon commercial,” I said. But as I turned and twisted in front of the three-way mirror, I understood what she meant.
There’d already been a few times that year when I was out with Morgan and Elise and the people we were with thought I was younger than them by a year, sometimes two.
I’d been wearing my hair the same way since I was twelve—all the same length, cut straight across, though thankfully I had given up on bright-colored plastic barrettes. My hair was superfine, practically baby hair, and it never seemed to grow any longer than my shoulders. Morgan was always trying to get me to cut in some layers or maybe try a bob or bangs, but I didn’t dare, sure that having a cooler, more daring haircut would make the rest of me look even more babyish.
The dress was snug in the right places and it fit me perfectly. It was the sort of dress where you didn’t want to have boobs, which was lucky for me. Boobs would’ve made it look weird. It was more about clean lines and showing off your legs. Morgan always said I was the skinniest nonathletic person she knew, and I never wore short-shorts because I worried that my legs looked too spindly a
nd sticklike. They didn’t in that dress. Everything about it was working.
I’d been hoping to feel pretty. In that dress, I was beautiful. I didn’t know before that moment that there was such a huge difference between the two. It was so lovely that I actually felt ashamed as I changed back into my jeans and baggy cardigan and my galoshes in front of it.
When we reached the register, the three of us couldn’t stop touching the fabric. It looked delicate, but the lace had weight and stiffness and the tiniest bit of shimmer to it. Morgan pointed out how the zipper had a little gold heart charm attached to the pull.
That’s when I first noticed the price.
I glanced up at Mom, not sure what to do, but she immediately waved me off like it was no big deal. Which . . . okay. I could maybe play along with that. But instead of opening her wallet, I saw her pay the salesman at the register with wrinkled twenties and fives and ones she tried to discreetly pull from an old greeting card envelope inside her purse. A secret place where she’d been saving up. I shouldn’t have been embarrassed, because money is money, but I was. I pretended not to see the old envelope and instead chatted with the salesman and with Morgan about the rain, hoping they wouldn’t notice it either.
But as Mom handed over that thick stack of bills, I did freak for a second. There’s no way a dress can be as special and forever as a sweet-sixteen locket, but this one was just as expensive. Mom had clearly been squirreling away money for a while. Things were tight at home. Since Dad was no longer working, Mom took on the lion’s share of duties, financial and otherwise. She worked all the time. I mean that literally. If she wasn’t seeing patients, then she was cleaning the house, cooking for us, grocery shopping. I barely ever saw her sitting down.
She picked up any extra hours she could, and after bills were paid, anything left over went into my college fund. Affording college was Mom’s number one priority. She wouldn’t have taken any money from there. She would have sacrificed something herself. A lunch skipped, a coffee, maybe a new sweater. Probably all of those things, multiplied several times over.
I bet the salesman saw the second-guessing on my face, because he smiled and cooed, “Your boyfriend is going to die when he sees you in this.”
The word boyfriend echoed inside me so loud, I was afraid everyone might hear the emptiness.
Morgan gave me a hopeful squeeze, which was, thankfully, discreet. My mom knocked into me and teasingly said, “I remember when you used to be so disgusted whenever I kissed your dad, even just a quick peck on the cheek. Ahh, how times have changed.”
I made a gag face. “Hate to break it to you, Mom, but those times have not changed. They will never, ever, ever change.” Mom pulled out the elastic of my ponytail, like she was affronted, even though we both knew the truth, that my parents never kissed anymore.
I stayed quiet as the salesman zipped the dress up in a white garment bag with PEARSON’S embroidered on it in gold script, instead of a normal paper shopping bag. I couldn’t remember the eye color of the first boy I ever kissed. Or if the second was an Erik or an Eric. But for the possibility that Jesse Ford might be the third, the dress was worth the money. That memory would last way longer than any locket.
• • •
When we dropped Morgan off, her mom ran out in her bathrobe and with an umbrella. It was raining hard, but she wanted me to unzip the garment bag so she could see the dress. Even though Morgan and I were the ones who’d spotted it, she said, “Oh, Jill! It’s absolutely gorgeous. It must have cost a fortune.”
Mom bit her lip. “It wasn’t that much.”
Mrs. Dorsey smirked. “Everything at Pearson’s is expensive.” And then she reached across the car and swatted my mom. “But you know what I think. Every girl should have one expensive dress.”
“When can I get one?” Morgan said.
“When you bring me home a report card without Cs on it, we can talk.” Back to my mother, she said, “Remember how I begged my mom to let me spend my confirmation money on this . . . ?”
Mrs. Dorsey opened her robe. She was in a clingy red lace dress.
“Annie! I can’t believe you can fit into that!” After her divorce, Mrs. Dorsey lost about forty pounds, and she and Morgan sometimes wore the same clothes. Mom sighed. “I wish I had the time to exercise.”
I turned to her. “Mom, what are you talking about? You look great.”
“It’s not about weight loss. It’s about health. Physical and mental,” Mrs. Dorsey said. “And you won’t find time unless you make time,” she told Mom.
Morgan groaned. “Mom, please quit quoting your self-help books.”
On our way home, Mom opened my garment bag up again, carefully removed the price tags, and threw them into a trash can, along with our receipt, when we stopped at the blinking red light along Main Street. On the rest of the drive, we came up with a hundred and one future events where I might wear the dress again to help justify the expense and also decided on a reduced price we would tell Dad if he asked.
Mom was not someone who lied, but in this case, she made an exception. First off, men don’t understand how expensive clothes can be, especially not a guy like Dad. But also, for Dad’s protection. “He wants the best for you, Keeley,” she assured me. “He hates that he can’t contribute. You know how proud the Hewitts are. I think it’s in their DNA. I don’t want him to feel bad for something out of his control.”
I nodded.
It was a little more than two years ago that Dad fell through the floor of a rotten hayloft while repairing someone’s barn. Dropped twenty feet onto a cement floor, shattered his hip, and snapped his left femur in half. He had multiple surgeries and steel rods and plates screwed in. He could still walk, but not without a limp, because his leg could no longer bend. That was the last carpenter job he’d taken.
Anyway, none of our conspiring even mattered. When we walked in, Dad was on his computer, and he barely looked up from the screen as he asked, “Dress success?”
“Dress success,” I confirmed, already halfway up the stairs.
5
* * *
Saturday, May 14
Heavy rainfall, possible flood conditions, high of 43°F
* * *
On the morning of Spring Formal, I woke up early at Morgan’s house, as if we had school. Except I wasn’t groggy or begging for another five minutes of sleep, like on a school day. As soon as I opened my eyes, possible texts that I might send to Jesse Ford burst inside my brain like popcorn, hundreds of different funny-yet-flirty ways to say good morning.
I settled on taking a “before” picture with my hair extra mussed up and wild, my eyes half open and heavy-lidded, mouth open in a lion-size pretend yawn. Right as I took it, Morgan lifted her head off the pillow and squinted away from the glow of my phone screen. It was still dark out because of the storm. Actually, I don’t think the sun ever came out that day.
She sleepily said, “Let him text you first, Keeley.”
I laughed dryly, like Morgan had it wrong. “I’m just sending him a stupid joke. No declarations of love or anything like that.” Even though, in my own weird language, that was exactly what every text I sent to Jesse was.
Morgan tried to take my phone away, but her arms were heavy and floppy and I easily outmaneuvered her. She eventually rolled back over to the wall. “Okay, but remember,” she said through a yawn, “you don’t want to make Jesse laugh tonight. You want him to kiss you.”
She was right, of course.
I looked at the picture again. I didn’t look cute. I looked crazy.
I quickly deleted it. Then I lay in Morgan’s bed and watched the plastic blinds get sucked in and out of her half-open window, watched her ceiling fan spin from the wind outside. I listened to the rain. I went over the instructions I’d found in a beauty magazine on how I should do my eyes. I dreamed about kissing Jesse Ford on my tiptoes, hopefully with his blazer draped over my shoulders to stave off the chill from the rain they were predicting, because in m
y mind there was no more romantic gesture than when a boy does that for a girl. I silently willed Jesse to text me. To give me a sign that he was thinking about me, too. Or even that he was awake. I would have gladly settled for that.
My phone finally buzzed in the afternoon, while I was sitting in the Dorseys’ dining room–turned–salon, Morgan’s mom loading my hair up with bobby pins.
Mrs. Dorsey used to have her own salon on Main Street, but after Mr. Dorsey left, she broke the lease to save money and started working from home. She put a hair-washing sink next to the washer and dryer in the mudroom. And she transformed her dining room into a beauty parlor, selling her dining set at a big garage sale and replacing it with a salon chair and mirror.
Morgan pulled up a chair close to me. One hand held a sleeve of Chips Ahoy! for us to share, the other a photo I’d printed off the computer of how I wanted my hair to look so her mom could reference it. I’d figured Morgan would do my hair herself, but she didn’t want to take the chance that she’d mess up. The stakes were too high.
Morgan’s hair was already finished. Her curls had looked more pageant-y when her mom first unwrapped them from the big barrel curling iron, ribbons of dark chocolate, but they’d already begun to fall out the way Mrs. Dorsey had told us they would, turning looser and beachier by the minute.
Mrs. Dorsey sprayed me with hairspray and turned me around to face the mirror. Mrs. Dorsey mostly did old people’s hair around town, and I wasn’t sure she’d be able to pull this look off for me, but it came out perfect. She’d parted my hair off to the side, then braided a few pieces and pinned everything into a bun set low and off-center. It was pretty and special, but hopefully not so much so that Jesse would realize how less pretty and un-special my hair normally looked.