Laura Ruby - Good Girls (17 page)

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!"

233 "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, let- ting 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, find- ing 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 nar- row 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."

"Shut up and try it on," Joelle says.

"Do what she says or she won't leave you alone,"

234 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

235 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

236 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 every- thing 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

237 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 mat- ter 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.

238

the Bride(s)

M y 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."

239 "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 for- ever). 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 star- ing. 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.

240 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 every- one 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.

241 "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 pic- ture 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!"

242 A cheer goes up, and Ash sneers.

"I WANT TO CALL ALL YOU LADIES AND GEN- TLEMEN 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."

243 "Yeah," I say. "But this isn't a movie."

"Oh, Scheisse," says Ash.

"Yeah," I say.

"No, I mean, Oh, Scheisse, there's Jimmy."

I whip my head around and see Jimmy and Cherry on the dance floor--not dancing, but yelling. "The first fight," I say. "The prom has officially begun."

"I hate that guy," Ash says. "I mean, wow. I hate him so much. And I know how to hate people, believe me. He never even said he was sorry."

"Yeah," says Joelle. "Sorry for being alive."

"And Chilly! Who is that girl?" Ash says. "Who would come to the prom with him? Who'd go anywhere with him? Do you think she's out of the sixth grade yet?"

Ash says, "Do you want me to go break his legs?"

I seriously consider this. The guy humiliated me, almost ruined my life, right? But then, my life doesn't really feel ruined right now. And the biggest mistakes I made all by myself. "Nah," I say. "Not worth the effort. Besides, I already decked him once."

Ash grins. "And tell me that didn't feel awesome. Think I should go smack the Dreck out of Jimmy?"

"Now, now," says Joelle. "Save something for later."

"You know," I say, "I thought this was a good idea until I realized that everyone else would be here, too."

"Everyone except for Luke," Ash says.

244 Pam swings her eyes back to me. "Have you talked to him?"

"Not since the fight we had," I say.

"But you said you were sorry." Ash says. "I mean, you did apologize for thinking he was screwing the planet."

"He might not have screwed the planet, but he did flirt with the planet. I had reason to be worried."

"Since when are flirting and fornication the same thing?" Pam says.

"Okay," says Ash. "He's a flirt. It's true. And that would piss me off. Still, you dumped him pretty hard. Maybe you could say something to fix things?"

"Like what?"

Ash drops her head all the way back so that she's fac- ing the ceiling. "Please help her, God," she says, lifting her hands, "because she is so very stupid."

"Forget it," I say. "It's too late. He doesn't want to talk to me."

Cindy looks up at the ceiling. "Who? God?" she says.

"Ooh!" says Joelle. "Listen! I love this song!"

"This is a song?" says Ash.

"Shut up and dance with me!" Joelle says.

The five of us go to the dance floor and make a lit- tle circle. Joelle starts doing this thing with her hips, something that she learned in belly-dancing lessons. It mesmerizes every male within sight. Recognizing

245 genius, Pam immediately copies it, getting it down pretty well. The two of them wiggle around in the cen- ter of our circle, and then all around the outside. Cindy is a cyclone, kicking and flailing her arms like she's in a mosh pit. Ash does her praying-mantis-shuffle-bug dance, where she pulls her elbows in tightly toward her body and jerks, keeping her feet in the same place. Of course, I don't know what I look like, but I love to dance, love it when the music is so loud you feel it rather than hear it. Like kissing Luke, it turns my brain off and lets my body take over. We wiggle and kick and shuffle for five, six, seven songs until we're all looking a little bit droopy around the edges. Then it's time for a bathroom break, where we blot and fix and adjust and admire. We hang around the ladies' lounge and make fun of everyone else's really boring, unimagina- tive gowns.

Joelle looks down at her sparkly, beaded, skim-the- body dress. "This was the best idea, Audrey. I mean it."

"And you didn't want to do it," I say.

"Well," she says. "I had all these birthday plans with O/Joe. But that's okay. I figured something out." She smiles wickedly.

"What do you mean?" Ash says.

"Oh, no!" says Cindy. "I'm not the only real virgin here, am I? Please tell me I'm not the only virgin."

"Don't worry," Joelle says. "I'm still a virgin. We just

246 did, uh, other things."

Pam leans in close. "Oh?"

"`O,' is right." Joelle adjusts her spaghetti straps. "`O' for Orgasm."

"No!" I say.

"Or. Gas. Um," Joelle says, with the emphasis on the "um." "Last night."

"How?" Ash says. "Details. Now."

"You are so touchy, Ash!" says Joelle. "Speaking of touching, . . ."

"So he fingered you?" Pam says.

Joelle frowns. "You make it sound so gross!"

"Did he or didn't he?"

"If we're being technical, yes, but it wasn't like that. We were messing around and he, you know, was trying to do something down there, God knows what. I took his finger and said, `Rub. But not so hard. You're not trying to erase it, you know.'"

"Jesus!" says Ash.

Pam is smiling so wide that her face looks split in two. "How'd it go?"

"Pretty well. I mean, he did keep drifting off to the left for some reason, but after a while it worked!"

"How long's `a while?'" I ask.

"I don't know. A half hour?"

"A half hour!" Ash yells. "Didn't his hand cramp up? Is he in a cast?"

247 "Hey," says Joelle, stomp-stomp-stomping. "It was my birthday!"

Back at the table, they're serving the entrees. We were so busy with Joelle's first orgasm, we've already missed the salad.

"What is this?" Joelle says.

I inspect my plate. "Chicken, I think."

"An animal was murdered to end up like this," Ash says. "It's so wrong."

"I'm not much for eating," Pam says. "I'd rather smoke."

Joelle pushes the plate away. "I don't want to spill any food on this dress."

Cindy, who was wolfing her mashed potatoes, puts her fork down.

We sit at the table until the DJ decides to play some- thing decent and we get up to dance again. This time, a premature and idiotic conga line charges through our circle; Jo gets carried away and drags Ash with her. Pam, Cindy and me dance and dance and dance until we hear some commotion on the other end of the dance floor. Pam uses her elbows to get us through the crowd, though we still can't see what's happening.

"What is it?" I ask the guy next to me.

"Fight!" he shouts, and holds up a fist.

"Who?"

248 "Who cares?"

Then we hear someone scream: "Will you stop it, Jimmy!?"

We look at each other. "Ash!"

Now we're really shoving. We push our way to the front of the crowd to see Jimmy and some other guy-- Nardo?--rolling around on the dance floor, pounding on each other. In a cherry-red dress, Cherry stands on the sidelines, having such a fit that her boobs threaten to bounce right out of her dress. I scan the scene for Ash. She and Joelle are a few feet away from the wildly brawling Jimmy and Nardo, and Ash is . . . smiling?

I poke Pam and Cindy and point. Ash sees us and waves like she's never had so much fun in her life, so we run around the fight to get to her.

"What's going on?"

"First," says Joelle, "Cherry and Jimmy have a spat. Cherry marches off to find herself a new dance partner. Jimmy comes over and tries to give Ash all this you're- the-only-one-for-me-huge-puppy-dog-eyes crap. She tells him to screw himself, he gets all pushy."

"Jerk tried to hug me," Ash says. "That's when Nardo stepped in." Her grin outdoes the Cheshire Cat's. "Jimmy got up in Nardo's face and Nardo knocked him on his butt."

Two chaperones leap into the fray and pull Nardo and Jimmy apart. Jimmy's nose is bleeding, and he's

249 already got a shiner cooking.

"Wow," I say. "Our little Jimmy doesn't look so good."

"No, he doesn't, does he?" Ash claps gleefully, like a five-year-old at a birthday party.

As the chaperones drag Jimmy and Nardo off the dance floor, Cherry following, Ash grabs Nardo's arm. "Hey," she says.

"Hey," Nardo says.

"My hero." Ash's lashes flutter, and her voice is tiny. Ash never flutters, and her voice is never tiny. "Um, maybe you can call me? If you still want to?"

Nardo's about to faint with joy. "Yeah, okay," he says. "Tonight." The chaperones haul him away.

"Here's where Ash would say something auf Deutsch,'" I say. "Except Ash has been replaced by an alien imposter and we're going to have to destroy her with our ray guns."

"This calls for a cigarette," Pam says. She grabs my arm. "You come, too."

"We still have more dancing to do!" Joelle says. Ash's already bugging out to the next song, and Cindy's flail- ing away.

"When we get back, we'll dance the rest of the night," Pam tells her. "I swear."

I follow Pam as she crashes right through the crowd on the dance floor, ignoring the dirty looks. She cuffs

250 Chilly upside the head and grins when he turns to glare at her.

"That one," she says to me, "was for you."

"Thanks."

Outside, the sky is deep purple streaked with a blind- ing orangey pink, like flavored lip gloss. Pam lights up. "Walk with me," she says, strolling into the parking lot.