See You at Harry's(48)

Whenever my parents’ friends met Charlie for the first time, they would study his face, then look at each of us. “He looks just like his mother,” they’d say. Or, “Looks like Holden at that age.” People were always looking for traces of us in Charlie. But now I wonder if it will be the other way around. Will they stare at us, searching for traces of him?

When I go inside, Ran and Cassie are sitting at Charlie’s table sharing a sundae. “Finally!” Cassie says. “Where’ve you been?”

I walk over to them and sit next to Cassie.

“What are you guys doing here?” I ask.

“It’s our new thing,” Ran says. “Remember?”

I just say, “Oh.”

“And we also have an important announcement to make,” Cassie says. She looks too happy. Did she finally get Ran to go out with her? Why is my heart starting to ache?

“You do?” I say quietly.

“Yup! We’re all going to Homecoming together. You, me, and Ran.”

“As friends,” Ran adds. “We think it will be good for you.”

“It’s all decided,” Cassie adds. “And I even have something for you to wear. So you can’t say no because you don’t have a single excuse.”

“Wow,” I say. “You thought of everything.”

“We really did!” Cassie says.

I think she is going to explode with excitement.

“This is going to be great!” Holden says later that night when I tell him the news. He’s standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a palm of hair gel. There’s a magazine cutout of a guy’s head taped to the bathroom mirror. His hair is shaggy, but in a perfectly sculpted sort of way.

“I’m going to wear my hair like this for the dance. What do you think?”

I inspect his head from all sides. “Kind of shiny,” I say.

“The gel will dry.”

“I guess I like it, then,” I say. “It looks . . . different.”

“Boy, Fern, way to lay on the charm. What’ll you do with your hair? I think you should wear it up.”

I shrug. I’m starting to dread the whole thing. Cassie and Ran will look beautiful. I know this. Because they just naturally are. And then there I will be looking frumpy in some hand-me-down dress with my mousy hair, and it will be obvious that the only reason I am there is because they feel sorry for me.

“So how are you getting to the dance?” Holden asks. “Because I think Gray and I will want to go alone in his car. Nothing personal but . . .”

“Cassie’s parents will take us,” I say. “And Sara will pick us up after.”

He nods and turns his head this way and that, making sure he looks great from every angle. He doesn’t even seem to notice when I leave him there and go to my room. I’m not his Phoebe anymore. Maybe I never really was.

I shut my door and pull out the answering machine from under my bed. I plug it in, sit on the floor, and hold it to my ear as Charlie quietly comes alive to promise me a lie.





ALL THAT WEEK, school buzzes with Homecoming preparations. There’s a pep rally and a million announcements about how the dance will be alcohol free and that the dress code will be strictly enforced. And that because this is a schoolwide event, the high schoolers are expected to be the perfect role models for the middle schoolers. And there will be plenty of chaperones to make sure they are.

Every time I see Cassie in the hall, she gushes about some detail of our plans that she forgot. Ran just smiles quietly.

On Friday afternoon, the three of us are standing at our lockers before our final study hall. Cassie tells me how we all have to go to her house after school so I can try on my dress. I don’t explain that it seems very late to be trying on my dress. What if it doesn’t fit?

“We’re the same size, and it fits me perfectly,” she says.

I don’t point out that we are not the same size. Cassie has these two things coming out of her chest — way out — that I do not yet have. I look there automatically and then quickly turn away, but my eyes catch Ran’s and we both blush like crazy.

Luckily, the bell rings and I rush away from both of them to study hall before Cassie can make me promise I’ll go. I sit in the crowded room with my elbows on my desk, my hands over my ears, trying to shut out the sound of happy chatter about the stupid dance. I watch Mrs. Dribble — who doesn’t even seem to mind the noise for the first time in history — sip her secret potion, until our eyes meet and she gives me this horrible look of sympathy, like she knows how I must feel right now. Like she is so sorry for me. So I close my eyes and try to shut her out, too.

At Cassie’s house, Cassie tells me to go into the upstairs bathroom and that everything I need will be hanging on the shower-curtain rod. I walk down the hall and pause in the doorway, almost afraid to look. But hanging over the bathtub is not the frumpy, hot-pink bridesmaid-style dress that I imagined, but a simple silver dress. It has pretty little sleeves, and the skirt part is covered with a second layer of something sheer, so that when the dress moves, the fabric looks alive.

I shut the door and quickly undress and slip the gown over my head. When I turn to look at myself in the full-length mirror behind the door, I have to peer closer at my face to make sure it’s really me.