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Monday rolled by pretty quickly, since there was no dance practice on Friday and I was still banned from doing anything during the weekend.
Dad sat in on practice again, which was now focused on coordinating our show in the auditorium, but we had to cut it short since we needed to go to the city to get our costumes for the dance. He almost wasn’t going to let me go, but the whole club ended up contributing a few dozen excuses as to why I needed to perform and why it was important I choose my costume. He wasn’t happy about it, but he finally relented. He made Dane promise that I be home by seven, and left.
After the club had chosen out the outfits for the main performances, I had to spend some extra time to pick out a dress for myself for my solo and also choose coordinating outfits with the other four girls in my second number for the finale. I had free reign over what I wanted to wear for my solo. I chose a strapless, nude-colored dress that had red ribbons woven into the bodice, but that dropped down unsecured over the skirt. The costume coordinator said that there was a matching choker and slippers to go with the dress. I declined, telling her I was to dance barefoot, but that seemed to delight her only more and insisted that she come up with accessories for me to wear around my ankles any way.
For the finale, on the other hand, I had almost no say whatsoever. The four girls had a vision for what our outfits were to look like, apparently, because they had already chosen their dresses while I was picking out my solo outfit and were choosing my dress out by the time I had met up with them.
“You guys do know that you’re dancing in the same routine, right?” I said half-jokingly when I saw what they had chosen. Their outfits were a complete mess and in no way coordinated. Cassie had a bright red dress with tattered-looking sleeves and skirt, Leah had a strappy pale yellow dress with a long, flowing skirt, Lindsay had a plain, clean-cut spring green dress, and Katie had a blue dress with billowy sleeves. They were looking at plain white dresses for me.
Lindsay patted my head and cooed, “We’ve done loads of these shows. Trust us, these outfits are going to go great together.” Was she patronizing me? Worse, when I found a white dress that had a bunch of colored sequins sewn in a sweeping pattern onto it, Cassie snapped at me and told me I was getting it all wrong. They ended up choosing the most boring dress for me. It had a plain cut to it, with the skirt ending modestly at the knees, a round neckline and long, tight-fitting sleeves. There were no embellishments, no interesting hemlines. It looked like a nightgown for a five year old ballerina.
When I complained about this to Dane on the way home, all he did was give me a kiss on the cheek and say, “You’re cute. I’m sure you make it look great. A lot of what goes into consideration is how the hair and makeup will look with it, too. Don’t worry about it.”
I got angry at this and carried this anger with me all the way to bed that night. At about midnight I was still wide awake and starting to see red whenever I closed my eyes. I had to get up and do something, anything to take the edge off. Origami was out of the question since I had been doing so much over the last week and the thought of having to do more just made me angrier. Dancing was out of the question because I needed more room than I had to help soothe my mind. I decided to take the dumb romance novel I had bought with Nobuko all those months ago and reread that.
It ended up being a good thing I was angry that night. If I had fallen asleep I would have died.
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