by M. F. Lorson
“The arm holes are so small,” was all we could make out between the sobbing and heavy breathing Reagan was doing when we entered her bedroom. My eyes scanned the room for the offending article of clothing.
“Oh my,” I said when I spotted the beige wrinkled fabric hanging from her closet door. “It’s very…skin colored,”
Reagan pointed at her computer screen with a trembling finger. “That is what it was supposed to look like.”
Harper narrowed her eyes at the screen then looked back toward the closet for comparison. The dress that Reagan had ordered and the dress that Reagan had received looked nothing alike.
“That dress looks like what would happen if a kindergartener tried to draw a picture of the dress you ordered,” said Harper.
“You can probably return it,” I offered, stepping closer to the computer. “There has to be a refund link on here somewhere,”
Reagan looked sheepish, “I doubt I’m going to be able to return it,”
“Why not?” asked Harper.
Reagan plopped on the end of her queen size bed, “Because it cost $10.99, and it’s from Taiwan,”
I could tell that Harper was practicing enormous self control by not berating Reagan for thinking a ten dollar dress from Taiwan was going to be Homecoming caliber. I on the other hand was unable to access my filter—not with that beige monstrosity hanging three feet to the left of me.
“Imma need to see that on you,”
Reagan sniffled. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny,” said Harper.
“It’s like, internet fail videos funny,” I laughed, imagining Reagan in one of those side by side photos of the advertisement and the actual product.
Reagan shook her head. “I’m glad you two are able to find humor in my misfortune.”
Harper threw an arm around Reagan’s shoulder and gave her a tight squeeze, “You know we’re gonna help you find a dress to wear tomorrow night, but first you have to do this for us.”
Reagan shook her head harder, “No, absolutely not.”
I pursed my lips together in my best impression of Reagan’s mother. “Reagan Lee Wilcox, you will put that dress on or so help me, I’ll put it on you myself.”
Reagan rolled her eyes, “Remind me why we are still friends? What do we have in common?”
“Middle school nerdism and Molly Ringwald,” I said with a laugh, then pulled the dress down from it’s hanger. “And don’t you ever forget it?”
Great joy was experienced by Harper and I as we watched Reagan roll the skin colored material from her armpits down to her knees where it butterflied out in a “mermaid fit.” Sucking in—because without sucking in she was destined to burst the back zipper—Reagan took tiny quick steps toward the mirror.
“You look like..”
“A worm,” finished Reagan. “A worm that has been dissected at the bottom,”
Harper and I both laughed. She was right, and we knew it, given we had all been middle school lab partners on ‘dissect a worm day.’
“Come on,” I said wrapping one arm around Reagan and extending my phone out in front of us with the other. “Let’s get at least one nice selfie before you burn that thing and we go closet hopping for a replacement.”
Harper and I smiled big toothy grins as Reagan fake scowled into the camera.
“We are still going together, right?” asked Reagan, a worried look filled her eyes.
“Why wouldn’t we be?” I laughed. “We always go together.”
“Yeah,” said Reagan. “It’s just, you haven’t been hanging out with us that much lately. And when you brought up the party at Gabe’s...” Reagan looked down at her hands. “I thought you might want to go with them instead. Like as part of Becca’s party bus thing,”
I was very curious how Reagan knew that Becca had organized a party bus, and also a little insulted that I had not been invited on it.
“I am not going on the party bus. In fact, I didn’t know there was a party bus,” I said, trying to sound more surprised than annoyed.
“Kinda seems like if Gabe was your good friend and all you would have been invited.” said Harper. She was sifting through the dresses in Reagan’s closet with her back to us, but I knew her well enough to recognize that the tone in her voice was accompanied by a stern expression.
“Maybe it’s a couples only thing,” I said with a shrug. I didn’t want Reagan and Harper to know that the idea of Gabe and Becca on a romantic date made me feel like binge watching Fatal Attraction. But the fact that I didn’t want them to know was just as disconcerting. Since when did I hide things from my best friends?
Later that night, while feeling sufficiently guilty, I texted Gabe that maybe we could interview Reagan and Harper at the party, if the party was still happening. I knew it was unlikely, but I was hoping his response would be that he had finally talked to Landon and the party was off. Then maybe we could all just go down to the dugouts, or head to the Burger Barn. Teen’s in movies were always going somewhere for late night shakes after a dance.
Instead he texted back, “I think they make more sense interviewed in their element.” No mention of cancelling the party, certainly no encouragement to bring Harper and Reagan.
Gabe
“Do we really need all of this?” I asked, staring at the balloons and confetti loaded on the ceiling of our living room, ready to be released at tomorrow night’s party.
Landon stared at me with his brow furrowed in disbelief. “You’ve been gone too long, Gabe.”
“I get it if you want to have a party, but we don’t need to be so excessive right now.” I glanced around the wall in the living room to see my dad cleaning out the pool himself, since we had to let the pool guy go. He’d been working all week to get the house ready. “We can’t exactly afford this kind of stuff right now.”
“Geez, Gabe,” Landon scowled. “Why are you always such a downer?”
By downer, my brother meant I was realistic. I got the same response whenever I wanted to talk about mom or imply for a moment that he might be grieving.
“I’m being serious, Landon.”
“There was plenty of room on the credit card. Dad has it taken care of. Besides,” he said, stopping his stocking of the fridge to glare at me. “If we were to scale back the party, everyone would know something was up.”
“Why’s that such a bad thing?”
“I’m not even going to answer that.”
When the downstairs fridge was full, he took the rest of the drinks to the garage fridge.
“You bringing that girlfriend of yours?” Landon asked, his voice carrying through the kitchen to where I stood in the living room, trying to find a way to talk my dad and brother out of this excessive show of status.
“Becca’s coming,” I answered.
A moment later, he passed by with the empty boxes and laughed. “I wasn’t talking about Becca.”
I shook my head in confusion. “Becca is—”
“I’m talking about the carrot-top you’ve been spending so much time with,” he teased.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Sloane and I are just working on the morning show segment. It’s not like that.”
“Sure,” he droned. My brother had a way of commenting on everyone else’s personal life but never seemed to let anyone into his. He and his short-term girlfriend just broke up, and I’d be lying if I didn’t suspect that he broke up with her, so he’d be single by HoCo. That’s just how Landon was.
“I’m serious. I don’t see her like that,” I lied. He didn’t need to know how badly I wanted to spend my post-Homecoming evening with Sloane, but I made a promise to Becca, and there was no way I was backing out. “I would never do that to Becca.”
It was Landon’s turn to roll his eyes. “Whatever,” he mumbled. “Well, I hope your friend comes to the party.”
“I don’t really think this is her scene,” I said. She already told me she was coming and bringing her friends, but I didn’t ha
ve the heart to tell her how uncomfortable that made me to see her here among Landon’s friends. I immediately felt protective just thinking about it.
“Well, I clearly remember she promised to bring her little friends.”
“Why do you care so much?” I said, my voice carrying a teasing tone. I suspected Landon had a thing for Sloane’s sweet and quiet friend, but I hoped he understood there was absolutely no chance Sloane or I would let him get near her.
“I just want you to have some losers to hang out with,” he snapped back. I grit my teeth as I watched him walk away. He was just trying to get a rise out of me, and I wouldn’t respond. I was the older brother, the only mature one in the house, and I couldn’t get riled up by my little brother.
But he insulted Sloane, and that grated my nerves in a whole new way.
“Why do you insist on being such a jerk all the time?” I pressed, my hands clenched at my sides.
“I’m joking. Lighten up, Gabe.”
My blood boiled, and I could sense the change in the room. Sometimes, I just wanted to punch my brother, hoping it would knock some sense into him, knowing it wouldn’t.
“Everything is a joke to you. Me. Dad. School. Friends.”
He held his hands up and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s better than taking everything so seriously, like you.”
A moment of silence filled the space as we both huffed and puffed, each of us growing more and more angry with each other with every word. If we were still kids, this would have ended with me slugging his arm and him trying to scratch my face off. We’d be rolling around the living room, both in tears and red-faced with anger. Mom would have had us both by the ears, scolding us together before she comforted us both separately.
But we weren’t kids anymore. And a slugging match would end a lot differently.
“Well, spending money we don’t have to impress people who don’t care about you is serious, Landon,” I said, feeling good about myself for not using the colorful language rolling through my mind.
“I wish you could go back to Europe,” he replied, avoiding my eye contact.
I stared at him as he walked out of the kitchen. “I wish I could too.”
Sloane wanted me to talk to him, but she didn’t get it. This was how things ended with my brother everytime we tried to talk. There was no mediation. No middle ground. My dad would side with him because he was the baby. Mom’s baby. And I needed to toughen up. Why did I always feel like the coward when it was Dad and Landon hiding from reality?
Sloane
In the end, Reagan didn’t wear a dress from her closet or ours. None of us did. Harper suggested we go into the attic and see what Mom had hanging in the old armoire. We’d been known to nose around in there in middle school, back when we first discovered Molly and couldn’t get enough of Bangles and hoop earrings. It felt like a real throwback revisiting it now. Digging through Mom’s clothes from the '80s didn’t make me sad the way spotting a sweater she always wore in the back of Dad’s closet did. These dresses had only ever been worn on a version of Mom I had never met.
Fortunately for us, '80s Mom wore a wide variety of styles. We were each able to find something that spoke to us, without all looking like the cover of a Madonna album. Well, some of us. Harper definitely had a Like a Virgin thing going on. I wasn’t entirely sure they were going to let her into the dance if they knew that underneath her pleather jacket, was a white boned corset that looked a lot like a bra.
Reagan’s choice took me by surprise. Of the half dozen sensible dresses and skirt-combos tucked away in the attic, Reagan picked something bright, something with cleavage! Not in an over-the-top way, but anything form-fitting on Reagan made you look twice. I didn’t know if she was trying to fit in at the afterparty or if she was just sick of blending in, but whatever it was, Reagan was going to be seen tonight.
I was deciding between a strapless dress with black polka dots and an enormous red belt and a more subtle shift with shoulder pads when I saw it. In a plastic see through garment bag, the tag still hanging from the zipper was the most perfect size six dress I had ever laid eyes on. I barely had it out of the bag before Reagan and Harper were nodding yes.
The black velvet hugged every curve from its sweetheart neckline to it’s cut off just below my knees. My father had laughed when I asked him to fasten the blue taffeta bow that cinched the waist in even tighter.
“Your mom would be terribly jealous if she knew you were wearing that dress tonight.”
“Why?” I asked.
The memory lit a fire behind his eyes, and I could tell that it was one of those rare occasions where thinking about Mom brought a smile to his face and not a tear.
“She was going to wear that to her class reunion. Class of 1989, twenty years later. It was all she could talk about.”
“You guys didn’t go that year,” I said, vaguely remembering a trip to Wisconsin abruptly cancelled without explanation.
“Because of that dress,” said Dad. with a grin. I knew without any clarification that this dress had been the result of one of mom’s “goal setting” shopping trips.
She was a serial dieter. One year she would be down twenty pounds, the next year they would be back, maybe with five more to keep them company. There were a lot of things they didn’t go to because Mom was too depressed to return a dress for a bigger size. She used to joke that chemo was the new low carb, but we were in no mood to laugh then.
“You look like a million bucks,” said Dad, handing me the keys to his Audi before leaning over to whisper in my ear. “But Harper looks like a baby prostitute.”
“Dad!” I cried, not sure exactly how to refute his claim, considering I had been thinking the same thing. Turns out I didn’t have to because a honk from the driveway let me know that Reagan and Harper were tired of waiting for my father-daughter moment to come to a close. I rose to my tiptoes in black velvet flats and planted a kiss on Dad’s cheek.
“Don’t forget we’re going to Harper’s after the dance,” I called as I pulled the door shut behind me.
Technically that wasn’t a lie. I just left out the part where we were going to a notoriously scandalous party first. According to Becca’s Instagram post from last year, there had been bikini chicken fights in the pool and enough tipsy smiles to make you wonder if anyone remembered anything that happened within an hour of arriving.
I had to force myself to stop thinking about the party or I was going to be a nervous wreck by the time they played the last song. I wasn’t worried about me. I had spent plenty of time with Becca and her crew over the last few weeks. That night at the dugouts especially had proven to me that they were just people. I didn’t need to be afraid of them, or feel like less. I was nervous about Reagan and Harper though. Reagan was so clearly already trying too hard, and Harper was always one match away from being a lit fuse. What if somebody said the wrong thing to her?
I let the music from the DJ wash away any thoughts of the afterparty. He was actually pretty great, for someone who probably made his bread and butter doing weddings. He even played Walk Like an Egyptian which had Reagan busting out a fully choreographed routine that left Harper and I in stitches.
The two of them were having fun, like we had every other year, but I kept watching the door for Gabe and Becca, and then once they were there, I couldn’t keep my eyes off their intertwined hands. That part was bad enough but the slow songs, the slow songs were pure torture. They swayed in the center of the dancefloor, his cheek resting in her hair and her arms circling his neck.
I had been trying to convince myself that the way I felt about Gabe was insignificant. That those feelings weren’t real because He was Jake Ryan, unattainable High School God. But tonight, watching him with her, I knew that I couldn’t pretend he was just a celebrity crush anymore. I either had to have him or give him up. The problem was, I didn’t know how to do either.
Gabe
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t hate myself when I was aroun
d Becca. In fact, we were having a really nice night. First stop on the party bus was dinner with our friends, and it made me feel a little sad that I hadn’t been there the last two years to do this. I missed a lot when I was gone, and maybe that’s why Becca and I couldn’t work things out.
In fact, I had myself totally convinced that the fizzling out of our relationship was solely because of my absence when I saw Sloane standing across the dance floor laughing with her friends. Then I remembered what it was like to have chemistry, real chemistry. And I could have been here everyday of high school with Becca, taken her to a hundred Homecomings, and we would never have what I thought—hoped—I had with Sloane.
When Becca and I finished our last slow dance, she gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek and ran off to the bathroom with two of her friends. I took the opportunity to walk over to where Sloane was talking to Harper and Reagan.
The two girls stiffened and stopped laughing as soon as I approached their group.
“Hey,” I stammered, feeling suddenly very awkward. “You all look great.”
“Thanks,” Reagan answered with a tight smile. The other one didn’t even move.
After a quick moment of awkward silence, the two girls made an excuse about getting something to drink and took off, leaving me alone with Sloane.
“Having fun?” I asked, not knowing what to say. I wanted to say something about her dress, how she had hips that I somehow hadn’t noticed before, but that would have been very inappropriate.
“Sure,” she answered. Something was off. She wasn’t the same smiling girl in the video on my phone—not that I had watched it a dozen or more times already. “You?”
“Yeah.”
“The party will probably be even better,” she said without looking in my eye.
