“Okay?” But I can’t hide the apprehension in my voice.
“Debbie and I hit up a few thrift stores on our lunch break, and I knew you hadn’t gotten a dress yet. And well, you have to get the dress approved in a few weeks, so you don’t have much time. You may not realize it, but you can’t just buy a dress off the rack. That’s not how it works.”
I know I need a dress, and I know I’m dragging here. But there is no recipe for disaster so guaranteed as my mother clothes shopping for me. We’ve been there. We’ve done that. We still have the bruises.
“It’s a little on the simple side, but that means we can add our own touches. Like it was custom made.”
I promise myself that I’ll at least try it on. I will give her the benefit of the doubt.
Mom lets me get dressed in her room so I can use the big mirror. The door clicks shut behind her, and I realize how odd it is that she doesn’t stay. She roams the house all the time in various states of undress, searching for a stray sock or ironing her scrubs. It’s not as if she ever instilled modesty in me. But there came a point, maybe around the time I was eleven or twelve, when my mom stopped sitting in fitting rooms with me or brushing her teeth while I was in the shower. I guess it could be that she was trying to be intuitive to whatever privacy needs she figured I might need. But the thought tickling in the back of my mind says that she’s not interested in being reminded of this body I wear.
Whether or not it’s true, it still hurts.
I have to give it to her: the dress isn’t horrible. It’s red—the perfect shade of red that’s reserved for sexy nail polish and fast cars—with a sweeping neckline and straps that hang off my shoulders on purpose. My shoulders don’t create the sharp lines I’ve seen on actresses and models. Instead they slope at the edges, but still I like the dress.
Until I zip it.
It zips.
But that doesn’t mean it fits.
Christ. The fact that I’m able to get the zipper over my hips is a lesson in inertia or just willpower. The fabric pulls against the seams, threatening to tear if I even look at a chair the wrong way. And the top is pretty huge. I can actually tuck my arms in. (In case I get cold or something.)
“All right,” I call to my mom. “Come on in!”
My mom stands behind me, and I can see both our reflections there in the mirror. I watch as her gaze travels over me, and her lips dip down at the corners when she sees the way the fabric stresses against my hips.
Our eyes meet, and she catches herself. Her mouth presses into a smile. “Surely we can let it out a few inches,” she says. “And tuck it in up top.” Her voice is too high and her smile too big, but I don’t care. I can ignore those things. Because she’s making an effort to meet me where I am. “What do you think?” She pulls the top of the dress back, bunching the spare fabric in her fists.
I can almost imagine what it might look and . . . I like what I see. “It’s good. I’m only going to wear it for twenty minutes, right? We can make it work.”
I sit in the third row of the school auditorium. Millie sits beside me, reading a paperback romance, and beside her sits Amanda, her feet bouncing as she drums her fingers on her thigh.
Today is the day we all have to have our talents approved for the pageant. All I’ve got is the one magic trick I learned from the book Mitch gave me. The rules state that a contestant should prepare a sample, so I’m hoping this is enough.
Hannah squeezes down our aisle past Amanda and Millie. “I’m out of here as soon as they give me the okay.”
“Don’t you think it would be polite to stay for everyone else’s talents?” asks Millie.
Hannah plops down in the seat beside me, but doesn’t bother to answer.