Brynna was making an angry beeline for the stairs when her cell phone chirped loudly. Her father snatched up Brynna’s purse from the kitchen table where it had been searched and held it out to her.
Brynna skulked back and answered her phone, once again turning her back on her parents. “’Lo?”
“We’re ten minutes away.”
Evan.
“Ten minutes away from what?”
“From your house, dork.”
Brynna rested a foot on the bottom stair. “Why are you coming to my house?”
“Homecoming shopping. Hello? We talked about it, like, five minutes ago.”
Brynna did a mental head slap. “Oh, right. Homecoming shopping. Look, Ev, I’m just not feeling very—”
Brynna felt her mother come up behind her and lay a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Go,” she mouthed, pressing a credit card into Brynna’s palm.
“Hold on.” She pulled the phone from her ear and glared at her mother. She was spitting mad, but the look of apology and desperation in her mother’s eyes shut her up directly. Brynna sighed and pushed the phone to her ear. “Okay, just honk when you get here.”
She hung up the phone to see that her mother had disappeared back into the kitchen. Both her parents were seated at the dining table, silent, a strange picture waiting to begin.
???
Evan pulled up in Brynna’s driveway and gave a short honk. Brynna, still not entirely sure—still not entirely thrilled—hiked up her shoulder bag.
“Just get yourself something fun, hon. You deserve it.” The apology still hung heavy in her mother’s eyes, and Brynna ached for her, but the wisp of anger was still there.
“Sure, Mom.”
She ran out the front door and slipped into the front seat of Evan’s car, poking her nose into the backseat. “Just the two of us? I thought this was a gang homecoming takedown?”
Evan shrugged his shoulders as he backed out the sloped drive. “Lauren and Darcy are taking their own car because Lauren has swim team practice or something.”
“They do night practices at Hawthorne?”
“We’ve got the indoor pool.”
Brynna didn’t want to swim. She didn’t want to think of the pool, but somewhere, way back in her head, she felt a little dig of jealousy that Lauren could jump in the pool so easily, could cut through the lanes without turning into a spastic mess. More than the drinking or the drugs, the fact that Brynna couldn’t handle water made her feel crazy.
They spent the rest of the drive chatting about nothing, and by the time Evan guided the car into the mall parking lot, Brynna was actually feeling excited about the prospect of bad food-court food and homecoming shopping.
They found Lauren and Darcy snarfing down tacos at a corner booth, Lauren with a stack in front of her, Darcy moving much more daintily.
“Sit,” Lauren said, mouth full of taco. She mumbled something else unintelligible and Darcy translated.
“She said that she is wearing green, so that’s off the table. I’m going pink, so Bryn, you’ve got the rest of the color wheel to choose from.”
Brynna laughed. “Really? None of us can wear the same color dress? Since when did we turn into a posse of mean girls?”
“It’s not about being mean,” Darcy said a little coldly. “It’s about being polite.”
Brynna’s eyebrows went up, but she knew better than to challenge a girl about prom wear. “No green, no pink. Noted.”
Once the girls finished their tacos, they made a beeline for Formal Invite, Brynna and Evan taking up the rear.
“I really don’t want to do this,” Brynna moaned.
Evan stopped to stare at her full in the face. “Wait. Sixteen-year-old girl, credit card, no stated spending limit.” He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. “You must be sick.”
“Hey.” Brynna ducked away from him. “Stereotypes. I’ve just never been the homecoming type. And you—aren’t guys supposed to hate this kind of thing?”
Evan mimicked Brynna’s expression and stance. “Hey! Stereotypes!”
The pair couldn’t have been more than two minutes behind Lauren and Darcy, but by the time Evan and Brynna walked into the door, each girl was already loaded down with an armful of selections.
“They don’t waste any time, do they?” Brynna asked.
“That’s only round one.”
Brynna and Evan started pawing through a rack of rainbow dresses, each more tulle-y or lacy than the next.
“What do you think about this?” Brynna asked, holding a slightly less foofy garment in front of her.