“If I’m doing it, you can do it,” Ash says.
“You know,” says Pam, “you would look amazing in one of those, what do you call them? Crown things?”
“Tiaras,” I say.
“You have tiaras here?” says Joelle.
“You’ll have to get something lacy,” says Ash. “Maybe a straight skirt.”
“Sleeveless, to show off your arms,” I say.
Cindy nods. “You have such great arms.”
Joelle thinks about this. “Do you think I should do a veil? And maybe those white opera gloves that go all the way up past the elbows?”
I smile. “Whatever you want.”
I have my friends on board, but now I need to ask my dad.
He looks up from the pile of paperwork. “You want to do what?”
“Renting the gowns will cost less than buying a prom dress. You only wear this stuff once anyway, right? Isn’t that why you started the rental business? Because women didn’t feel like wasting their money?”
“But they’re wedding gowns, Audrey. Not prom gowns. Your dates will be terrified.”
“We’re not going with dates. We’re going together. The five of us.”
He frowns. “But why?”
Because, I think. We’ve made mistakes and ruined things, but that doesn’t make us any more horrible or slutty or sinful than anyone else, it makes us human. Because we want to make an entrance. Because we want to be beautiful, but not for a guy—for ourselves.
I don’t say any of this, though. “Because it will be cool.”
“They are very expensive gowns, Audrey,” he says.
“I know, Dad. We’ll be careful with them. We can’t afford to rent the designer ones. We’ll do the cheaper ones.”
He taps the desk with his pen. “I don’t know if I understand this.”
There is so much he doesn’t understand, and I’m tired of all that he doesn’t understand. I wonder if this is on purpose, like he’s mentally sticking his fingers in his ears and saying La la la, Audrey, I can’t HEAR you, or if we’ve reached some sort of crossroads and there’s no going back. “Do you have to understand it?” I say, tired now. “I mean, can you not understand it and let us do it anyway?”
He sighs. “I suppose I can. Are you sure this is what you want to do? Won’t it spoil things for you when you go to shop for your real wedding dress?”
I snort. “I’m not going to get married for a thousand years, Dad. By then, people will be wearing tinfoil bikinis when they get married, for all we know. And anyway, we’re not going as brides. We’re like the opposite of brides. We’re the anti-brides. Like nuns, only fancier. Well, not really like nuns at all, but—”
“Okay, okay,” he says. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I suppose it’s fine. But please, nothing with a price tag of over $750. That will keep the rental fee down to $175, which I’ll give to your friends for $125 each.”
I pump my fists.
“Don’t get too excited yet. Make sure your friends don’t try to squeeze into any size zeros. I don’t want any ripped seams. No trains; nothing too long that could drag on the ground. And I don’t want these gowns coming back streaked with Gatorade or Pepsi or whatever it is you girls drink.” His lips twitch and he almost smiles. “Actually, it’s best if you don’t eat or drink anything. Most brides don’t. I mean, anti-brides.”
“We’ll be careful, I promise!” I say. I lean down and kiss his cheek, something I haven’t done in months. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Well?” the girls say, when I run back out of the office.
“He said yes!”
“Woo-hoo!” Joelle hoots, and dives for the gowns.
“Look at this,” Pam says, pulling out a fluffy tulle ballerina-style dress.
“Well,” says Joelle. “That could be…interesting.”
“I want to do something totally traditional,” says Ash, “and then I’ll wear all this trashy makeup with it. Maybe put my hair in little knots all over my head. And a big honking eyebrow ring.”
Joelle scowls at her. “I think you’re missing the point.”
“There’s a point?” Pam says.
“I like this one,” Cindy says. “The satin is so shiny!”
“I’m looking for something with a corset,” says Joelle, whipping through the dresses on the rack. “Preferably with a skirt cut on the bias so that it hugs the body.”
Ash rolls her eyes.
“I really want to try this on,” Pam says, holding up the nasty tulle dress.
“You can try it on,” I tell Pam, “but why don’t you try these, too?” I give her a halter dress with a thin line of rhinestones on the neckline, another with pink satin trim, and another plain one.
“Okay, she says. “But these are pretty boring.”
I grab the shiny dress out of Cindy’s hands and hang it back up on the rack. “What was wrong with that one?” she said.
“It had a rip in the back,” I lie. “Here, try these. I pull some non-shiny gowns for her, some more body-hugging gowns for Joelle, and finally, some for myself. “Okay. Follow me.”
We march to the fitting rooms and start trying on the gowns. Pam’s first, with the tulle disaster. She flounces out of her dressing room and steps up on the carpeted block in front of the three-way mirror. Ash eyes her critically. “Cinderella on crack,” she says.
Then Joelle, with one of the corset dresses she’d picked for herself.
“Mermaid on crack,” says Ash.
I look at Ash, smoky-eyed and brooding in a pouffy, lacy-sleeved number. “Black bile on crack.”
We all switch gowns and try them on, then switch again. Cindy swims in the tulle dress, and I look like a dead fish in the mermaid dress. Then Pam comes out of her dressing room wearing one of the halter dresses.
Joelle says, “Oh!”
“What?” Pam says. She steps on the block. The dress is a rich, creamy white, with a plunging neckline and a full skirt.
“Wow,” I say.
Pam blinks. “Wow?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ash says. “That’s it.”
“But it’s so…”
“Sophisticated?” I say.
“Classy?” Ash says.
“Perfect,” Joelle says.
Pam doesn’t say anything, but she keeps the dress on while we work on something for Ash. I run out to the rack and find the sweetest dress—white lace, Empire waist with tiny pastel flowers on it. When Ash sees it, she sneers. “Forget it,” she says.
“Just put it on.”
Ash strips right there, without bothering to go back into her dressing room. “This is the ugliest dress,” she says, hauling it over her head.
I zip it up for her, and Joelle says, “Omigod! Ash! You’re pretty!”
“Shut up,” says Ash. She turns to the mirror and frowns.
Pam laughs. “Admit it, Ash. You look great.”
“It’s like a sixties dress, but like, not,” says Cindy. “I love it!”
“You do?” says Ash.
“You could wear your hair all curly, but up like this.” I stand behind her and scrunch her hair in my hand, letting some curls fall down into her face.
Ash inspects the little pastel flowers. “I hate flowers.”
“But they love you,” I say. We do Cindy next, finding her a scoop-necked, cap-sleeved gown with an A-line skirt. And then Joelle—tighter than skin, spaghetti-strapped, beaded and seed-pearled (and yeah, cut on the bias so that it skims the body). She tries on a tiara, but decides it’s a little much.
“Now that we’re all gorgeous,” says Joelle, “it’s your turn, Audrey. You wait here.”
“Uh-oh,” Pam says. She’s still sneaking looks at her sophisticated self in the mirror.
Joelle comes back, carrying a white strapless dress with off-white embroidery on the bodice and on the narrow skirt.
“Joelle, I don’t want to do strapless. I don’t have the boobs for it. I don’t have the body for it.”
&n
bsp; “Shut up and try it on,” Joelle says.
“Do what she says or she won’t leave you alone,” Ash tells me, blowing a curl out of her eyes.
I disappear into my dressing room, pull off the dress I’m wearing, and pull on the strapless one. It’s so tight that I can’t zip it up by myself. I come out of the room. “It’s too tight.”
Joelle moves behind me. “It has to be tight so that it won’t fall down. Hold your breath.” I suck myself in and feel the zipper go up. “There.” She takes me by my shoulders and pushes me toward the mirror. “Look at that!”
I look. I’ve never had anything on that fit me like this, that hugged me like this. I look like a different person: Audrey Hepburn in an old black-and-white movie.
“You know,” says Ash. “That’s pretty awesome.”
Pam nods. “Yup. That’s it.”
Joelle gathers my dark hair, twists it gently in her hands, and pulls it up. “You wear it smooth, like this. See?”
Cindy lifts her A-line skirt and dances a little jig. “We are so hot!”
In the mirror, I see the tag on the dress hanging down. “Joelle, this dress is a thousand dollars. It’s too expensive. I can’t rent this one, my dad won’t let me.”
“Of course he’ll let you,” says Joelle. She snaps an elastic around my bun to keep it in place. “You’re his daughter. You have to get some perks for that.” She drops the tiara on my head and then helps me stuff my hands into long white gloves.
“I’ll have to find something else,” I say, touching the tiara.
“Just go ask him, dummy,” Ash says. “You look great.”
“I’ll ask him,” I say, “but he’ll just say no. He didn’t want me to do this in the first place.”
Joelle waves her hands in a Ms. Godwin, you’re-boring-me, off-with-your-head way, and I get the hint. I walk out of the dressing room and across the store to the office, where my dad sits at his desk, hunched over his paperwork. “Dad?” I say.
“Yeah?” He turns. And stares.
“I know you said that I could only rent a dress that costs under $750, but Joelle picked this one out for me and it really fits me the best. I swear I’ll be careful if you let me wear it. I won’t eat or drink anything. Not even water.” He’s still staring, and I think he’s going to yell at me for messing with the designer gowns. “Dad? Can I wear it? Dad? What’s wrong?”
He puts his pencil down. “Nothing,” he says. He clears his throat. “You’re beautiful.”
“Oh.” I smooth the front of my dress. “You think so?”
“Yes,” he says. He stands up and leans against his desk. “Very.”
I see his eyes well up and shine, and I don’t know what to do with myself.
“It’s so strange to see you grown-up,” he says. “I remember when you used to build forts out of the couch cushions. Do you remember that? You always got so mad when we wanted you to clean them up. You could never understand why we couldn’t all sit in the forts with you. You couldn’t understand why we needed a ceiling. You wanted to build those forts right into the sky.”
I haven’t cried once—not when the picture was mailed around everywhere, not at the doctor’s office, not when I fought with Luke and realized how badly I’d messed up. But with my dad’s eyes shining like that, my dad crying like that, something inside me cracks.
“Daddy,” I say.
“I hope,” he says. “I hope I haven’t made things harder for you lately, but I think that I did. I know that I did. I was so worried for you. I didn’t know how to protect you. It made me crazy.”
I can’t stand it. I can’t stand to imagine what he thinks of me. Tears gush, streaming down my cheeks and dripping off my nose. “I screwed up, Daddy. I tried so hard to be smart, to be good, but I screwed up everything anyway.”
“That’s not true, Audrey.”
I put my hands over my face, then pull them away because I don’t want to mess up the gloves. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “Please don’t be mad at me. Please don’t hate me.”
He walks over to me and cups my chin, not seeming to care that I’m all slobbery. “No, Audrey, I’m sorry,” he says. “Don’t you know how much I love you?”
I shake my head, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
He pulls me into his arms. “You’re my baby. No matter what you do, you will always be my baby.”
Wearing a thousand-dollar wedding gown, opera gloves, and a rhinestone tiara, I sob myself to hiccups against my father’s chest.
Here Comes the Bride(s)
My dad insists on the full photo shoot—individual pictures of each of us, plus several thousand group shots. Even the other parents are getting impatient.
“A little camera-happy, isn’t he?” Pam’s mother says. She’s on her second glass of wine.
My mother sighs. “I’ve learned not to fight it.”
“Come on, Dad,” I say. “We’re sick of smiling. Our cheeks hurt.”
“Just one more,” he says. “All of you line up against the wall. Huddle together. That’s it, very nice. Say ‘Muenster!’”
We grin, he takes the picture, and finally we’re done. Limo’s already at the house, waiting to whisk us off to the prom. Five brides, no grooms. Who needs grooms? Our parents bought our corsages, roses for each of us.
We hang around my house a few minutes, getting more compliments and kisses from our parents (even though you can tell they think the wedding dress idea is less than brilliant, and quite possibly something we’ll regret forever). My mom pulls me aside. “I hope maybe one day you’ll want to wear this kind of thing for real.” She hugs me tightly. “And I hope you have a wonderful time.”
We totter from the house to the limo in our heels, whooping like loons when we catch my neighbors staring. We haven’t had a thing to drink, but it’s like we’re all drunk.
“I can’t wait to see people’s faces,” Pam says.
“No one is going to believe it,” says Cindy. She’s beaming like she never has before. She has a brand-new haircut: a bob, short and sleek. She got the idea from a book that Ash slipped her, The Blue Castle, by L. M. Montgomery. She says it’s the most romantic thing she ever read in her life.
Joelle inspects each one of us: dresses, gloves, hair, makeup. “We’re the hottest brides anyone has ever seen.”
“I can’t believe I’m wearing a dress with little flowers all over it,” Ash says.
“And with a daisy in your hair,” I say. When I say the word “daisy,” I remember Luke’s tiny cotton-ball dog. I figure that we’ll be seeing him tonight, probably with some gorgeous girl clinging to him.
Serves me right.
Twenty minutes later, we’re at the hotel. One by one, we get out of the car. We link arms and walk into the party together. As we enter the ballroom, people gape, laugh, point, grin, frown—it’s exactly the reaction we wanted. I hear someone say, “I don’t get it,” and I elbow Ash. She and Pam snicker.
Chilly, that slimeball, grins when we pass him and his (very young) date. “Didn’t think any of you ladies could wear white,” he says, smirking his Chilly smirk.
Before I can think of some way to kill him without getting thrown out of the prom, Pam grins and says, “Well, well, well! If it isn’t Chilly the Clown and his sidekick, Jailbait!”
We parade around the entire place, to be sure everyone gets a look at us. Then we march to find a table. We sit with two very confused couples, but we don’t bother with them. We’re having too much fun already.
“When does the music start?” Joelle demands. “This bride wants to shake her thang.”
Pam stands up and walks around to the other side of the table. “Everyone squash together. I want to get a picture of you guys.”
“Haven’t we had enough pictures?” I say.
“Not here,” Pam says. “Now shut up and squash.”
We squash and she shoots. One of the girls at our table, who is wearing a dress with peacock feathers all over it, stares at
Pam as she sits down. “What are you looking at?” Pam snaps.
“Oh!” the girl says. “I was wondering if you were in the school play? Grease?”
“Yeah,” says Pam warily. “What about it?”
“I just wanted to tell you that I thought you were really good.”
“Thanks,” Pam says. She pauses a minute. “I forgot some lines in the first act. And in the second.”
“I didn’t notice anything like that,” says the girl.
“I’m going to Juilliard,” Joelle informs the table.
“We know,” says Ash.
“They don’t know,” Joelle says, waving at Peacock Girl and company.
Just then, the DJ booms, “MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE!! WELCOME TO THE WILLOW PARK HIGH SCHOOL SEEEEENIOR PROOOOOM!”
A cheer goes up, and Ash sneers.
“I WANT TO CALL ALL YOU LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OUT TO THE DANCE FLOOR TO SHOW ALL YOUR CLASSMATES WHAT YOU’VE GOT!!!”
A drum starts thumping as a bunch of people rush toward the dance floor.
“Heh!” says Ash. “You can already tell who’s smashed.”
“I think everyone’s smashed,” I say. “Or maybe they’re having a group seizure.”
We watched the dancing for a while.
“Don’t see Luke anywhere,” Ash says.
“No,” I say. “Neither do I.”
“If this was a movie, he’d come walking in the door without a date,” she says. “Looking incredible, of course.”
“Or he’d bring a date, but it would be his sister,” Joelle says. “And she’d be a sad, nerdy girl we’d have to befriend. We’d have to go get her a wedding dress, too.”
“Except he doesn’t have sisters,” I say. “He has a dog named Daisy.”
“Maybe he’ll bring his dog,” Cindy says. “But I guess that would be weird, huh?”
“Or,” says Ash, “he’d bring a date, but she’d be a big horrible bitch and end up making out with one of the football players, getting wasted, and then falling on her face in a conveniently located cake.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But this isn’t a movie.”
“Oh, Scheisse,” says Ash.
“Yeah,” I say.