“I’m just here for moral support,” I say. I try to imitate a person in a movie. I play with the train of the dress Karissa has on, holding it up and dropping it down. Smoothing it out with the palm of my hand.
“No. That’s not how it’s done. Get her something crazy expensive and crazy beautiful,” Karissa says. She slips back into the dressing room, and I try to signal to the clerks that I am seventeen and not in the market for a wedding dress, but they don’t listen, and the gown they put in my arms is spectacular. Something a bohemian princess would wear.
“Holy crap,” I say. “Are you sure I can put this on?” The clerks nod and smile, but I’m pretty sure it’s forced. They do not actually want me trying on gowns. My armpits smell like men’s deodorant because I bought the wrong kind, and the rest of me smells like smoke because we split a cig on the walk here.
“Oh my God, did you find the one? Let me see!” Karissa says. She comes out in her underwear. I think the clerks want to shove her back in the room, but they’re enchanted by something in her too. Something I used to call magnetism but now I am searching for a new word for.
Danger.
“Clothing!” I say. I don’t want to see her in her underwear. But I especially don’t want the East Village to see her in her underwear.
Before I have a chance to object, Karissa grabs my hand and drags me into her dressing room with her. It’s cramped and absolutely brimming with fancy white fabrics. Karissa is so close she’s almost touching, and there’s nowhere to look but at her body or the dress.
“Okay, okay, step out and I’ll try it on,” I say. I take a mini-step backward to get some space, but there’s no room, so I collide with all the hanging dresses, tulle and silk and satin and lace coming at me from all sides. It’s like we are in the center of a cloud. The puffy kind. Cumulous or whatever.
She squeezes into a stretchy, short dress, the kind of thing a Playboy model would wear to her wedding. I don’t make a move to take off my own clothes and try on my own gown. Karissa nods, getting it. Doesn’t check herself out in the mirror before stepping out of the dressing room, which I sort of love.
She pulls the curtain closed behind her so that I can change alone. It doesn’t feel any less cramped. If anything, the dresses seem to have expanded, ballooned. I am trapped in tulle. It’s not easy getting into the dress. There are so many folds in the fabric I can’t be sure where my arms or legs go, and it droops on top where my boobs aren’t and hugs my hips too tightly. I’m worried little beads are going to fall off from the pressure of my not-rightness, but I step out so that Karissa can see and have her perfect, gown-shopping, best friend moment.
She has her phone out and trained on me, snapping pictures the instant I pull aside the curtain.
“Look at you!” she says, turning the screen to me so that I am face-to-face with myself. I look shocked and pale. The hints of scribbles make my arms looks unwashed. My dirty-blond roots are even more obvious in the ugly overhead lighting. The pink in my hair even sadder, more depleted against the white of the dress. But there’s something pretty in the contrast between me and the flounce of the dress.
Maybe not pretty, but interesting.
Karissa wraps her arm around my waist and holds the phone up so she can get us both in the picture. The clerks rush to help, and we have an impromptu photo shoot. It’s awkward at first. The dress itches and keeps sliding around on top, the straps falling down every time Karissa moves my body this way or that. But with the clerks egging us on and telling us how beautiful we look, and Karissa’s frenetic energy pulsing against my body, it’s hard not to get caught up in the fun.
We try on a few more dresses, until each of us ends up in princess-y things. Skirts like bells. Bodices that cling and sparkle, ribbons crisscrossing up the back. Karissa gets behind me and twists my hair on top of my head, so I can see what I would look like if I were a whole different person.
“Gorgeous,” she says.
“You too,” I say, and it’s the truth. We both look kind of incredible as princess brides.
“This is exactly how I always thought this moment would be,” Karissa whispers, and it sounds like truth. “We’ll take them!”
“You’re getting the dress?” I say. I pitch the question up, so it sounds excited, and I wonder how well I’m pulling off this whole maid-of-honor situation.
“We’re getting both dresses.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. I’m not getting married.”
“But for someday! Or for pretend! Or prom or a tea party or dancing in a fountain or going to a football game, because why not!” she says, and she giggles that loose, bubbly giggle followed by her patented unexpected snort, and I don’t want to be a girl who says no, so I don’t say anything.
Karissa has my dad’s credit card and a mythical mania and this strong, strong, planetary kind of pull.
Besides, I looked good and strange and dreamy, and that’s what my dad gets for marrying a twenty-three-year-old.
thirty-one