The drive to Tiffani’s house is nothing but a journey full of anxiety. I can think about one thing and one thing only: I haven’t shaved my legs. This fact torments me for the entire ten minutes that I’m stuck in the sporty vehicle, crammed into the tiny backseat with my knees shoved into my chest because Tyler selfishly decides to push his chair as far back as it can go. Neither of them includes me in the conversation. Not that I care, anyway. They’re only talking about the latest drama and gossip in their high school. Apparently Evan Myers and Nicole Martinez broke up, whoever they are.
Tiffani’s house is on the edge of the neighborhood on a large piece of land, and it’s made of the kind of marble that suggests she probably has a butler to wait on her. But when we pull up and get inside, there are no butlers and no servants. It’s just a regular house made of very expensive material.
“Your mom’s still out, right?” Tyler asks. His previous intentions are even clearer now.
“Yeah,” Tiffani says. “There’s beer in the kitchen. Kick back down here while we get ready, but take it easy.” She shoots him a warning glare. There’s music echoing loudly from upstairs. She grasps my hand and begins pulling me in the direction of it. We ascend the staircase—marble, of course. “We won’t be long!” Tiffani calls over the banister.
“Tiff?” Rachael’s disembodied voice calls from the room at the end of the long hallway. The music dies at the same time. “Tiffani?”
“I’m back!” Tiffani pushes open the closed door and waltzes in. I trail behind.
“Eden!” Rachael immediately gets to her feet, despite being in the process of doing Meghan’s hair, waving the curling iron around in midair and grinning at me. “You came!”
I didn’t really get the chance not to, I think. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to come?” I ask no one in particular.
“I guess so,” Tiffani answers. It’s not very convincing. She heads over to her closet—which is merely an archway leading into a section of the room overflowing with clothing—and glances over her shoulder at me. “Rachael says you’re only here for the summer, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Right, so you’ve got to make the best of it, I suppose.”
“She’s right,” Meghan says from her position on the floor, draped in a silk dressing gown with her hair only three-quarters curled. “We’ll make sure your summer doesn’t suck.”
Too late, I think. It already does.
“Come pick a dress!” Tiffani squeals, but the enthusiasm sounds fake. “I say go for black. Black or red. You’d suit that. And tight. Yeah. Wait, Meghan, you’re wearing red, aren’t you? Okay, tight and black. Let’s go for that.” Despite just asking me to come pick a dress, she hands me one before I even get the chance to look at it, but then she immediately draws it back. “Actually, this one might be too tight on you,” she murmurs as her eyes run up and down my body, and I can feel myself shrinking beneath her scrutiny. Did she just imply I’m chubby?
I’d like to believe it wasn’t intentional, that she didn’t mean it in such a way, but it still hurts. I try my hardest to let it bypass my mind, but it’s already too late. It repeats itself over and over again, endlessly and agonizingly, even while Tiffani is piling new dresses into my arms and bubbling with more of that same forced enthusiasm. I try to breathe in. I try to deceive myself into believing that she’s wrong.
With a stack of outfit options in my hands, all black dresses, she leaves me to get ready, and I start by letting my hair down and borrowing her hot iron to straighten it. Meghan offers to do my makeup for me. Tiffani finds a pair of platform heels that match the dress she’s given me, because fortunately we share the same shoe size. And when the time comes for me to actually put the dress on, I confide in Rachael about my unshaven leg hair. After a brief moment of laughter, she sends me into Tiffani’s grand and glorious bathroom to fix myself up, giving me clear instructions on where to find the disposable razors.
I’m just finishing up and slipping into the dress—the very, very tight dress, which only makes me feel worse—when I hear Tyler enter Tiffani’s room. I step back into the room to find that all of us are now dressed and ready to leave. But even though Tiffani, Rachael, and Meghan’s dresses all look as tight as mine, I still feel awfully inappropriate. I can feel it clinging to every inch of my body.
“Alright, can we head over there now?” Tyler asks, quite blatantly bored. He’s been waiting around for two hours with beer as his only companion, and this is evident in his unsteady balance. “Dean and Jake are already there.”
“Do I look good?” Tiffani asks, twirling around in a slow circle to ensure he gets a good look at her body. Her dress is white, and despite its tightness and shortness, it creates an aura of elegance.