Shuffle, Repeat(76)

“I wrote the note so you wouldn’t recognize your mom’s handwriting.”

He’s better than that. I need him to be better than that.

This time, I’m 100 percent sure the wetness on my face is not sweat.

“Come here, honey.” Marley pulls me into her arms. I let her rock me and stroke my hair before she pushes me back so she can stare into my face. “What can I do?”

“I want to go to the prom,” I tell her.

? ? ?

Marley and I are sitting awkwardly on the art gallery bench when Mom and Cash emerge from her office. The buttons on Mom’s blouse are fastened wrong, and Cash’s hair is a little wonky, which makes sense, because the door was locked when Marley tried the knob.

Cash gives me an apologetic look. “June—”

“It’s better for me if we don’t talk about it,” I tell him.

“It’s better for me, too,” he says.

“Well, I think we should have a healthy discussion,” my mom chimes in.

“Hannah,” says Marley, but my mom doesn’t notice.

“When two adults are in a relationship, it’s natural to—”

“Hannah!” Marley says again, and this time my mother shuts up and listens. “We have a more pressing matter than your sex life. June wants to go to her prom, which starts in an hour and a half. She needs a dress, accessories, hair, and makeup. I told her we could make that happen.” My mother opens her mouth, but Marley raises a finger. “In other news, June knows about the flowers and how her dad’s kind of a lovable loser—”

“Marley!”

I touch my mom’s arm. “It’s okay.”

“Put it on your maternal to-do list for future discussion,” Marley tells my mother. “Right now, we have one priority: to get June ready for her senior prom.”

I see my mother consider, weigh, decide.

“We should call Quinny.”

“On it,” says Marley. “She’s bringing options. Next issue: transportation. Is it too late to rent a limo?”

“I can take her,” says Cash. “Nothing says ‘prom’ like a pickup truck.”

“Actually,” says Marley, “Oliver is flying solo—”

“No!” It explodes out of my mouth like a bomb, and everyone stares at me. I collect myself. “I mean…that would be weird. You said he already has plans with his friends. Besides, I have an idea. Where’s my phone?”

? ? ?

I am a frothy lavender milk shake standing atop a chair in the center of the gallery. Mom and Marley and Quinny whirl around me, plucking at and tweaking the tulle foaming from my waist. Fortunately (for him), Cash was sent out for burgers. “Enough!” I throw my hands in the air. “I don’t think this is the one.”

“Next!” says Quinny, heading to the garment bags slung across the bench. Mom unzips the back of the milk shake dress and Marley starts tugging it down. Over the last hour, since Quinny arrived with the dresses, I’ve lost all sense of modesty. The lavender is the eighth one I’ve tried on. Or maybe the ninth. One was okay, but the rest were either too poofy or too big in the chest or something. Quinny is a costume designer for the university theater and has all kinds of interesting stuff. I’m just worried she doesn’t have something that will both fit me and look like what a reasonable person might wear to a prom.

“This one,” says Mom. She’s pulling a dress out of a bag. “Try it.”

Four minutes later, I’m in a strapless steel-blue circle dress straight out of the fifties.

The sexy part of the fifties, that is.

The dress dips low in the back, gathering at my waist before blooming out all around me in a ballerina skirt that stops right above my knees. The fabric is textured but not too shiny. “Bengaline,” Quinny tells me when I run a finger over it.

Best of all, she and Marley and Mom have somehow managed to rig an undergarment that hoists and maneuvers in such a manner that I actually appear to have boobs. It’s perfect….

Except the dress doesn’t quite fit me.

Quinny hands my mother a tiny green-handled instrument. “You rip. I’ll sew.”

Next thing I know, my feet are back on the ground. Quinny pins the dress just as fast as Mom can rip stitches out of it. Marley brushes my hair and shushes Quinny, who keeps saying things like “Quit moving her” and “Hold still, Marls.”

When Mom and Quinny are done with the ripping and pinning, they help me wiggle out of the dress. I end up sitting on the bench in a crinoline and my T-shirt while Marley plays with my hair and, nearby, Mom hot-glues rhinestones to earring backs. “It’s convenient having an entire art studio at our disposal,” she says.

I don’t say anything.

I am mute with gratitude.

? ? ?

I stare at my own image looking back at me from my cell phone screen. I’m wearing the blue dress and peep-toe pumps on tall, slender heels. Sparkly earrings dangle from my lobes, which are visible because my hair has been swept into a glamorous updo. My eyes are lined and my lips are red. I’m a sleek, pinup version of myself.

A cluster of tiny roses appears between me and the phone screen, and I get a whiff of their delicate aroma. Cash is holding them with a bashful smile. “I got the wrist kind so you won’t have to put a pin through Quinny’s dress.”