by Katia Rose
“We just got here! Come on. We have to at least go through the whole place.”
DeeDee pulls out a few options, but I shake my head at all of them. She holds some navy blue thing with lace all over it up to me and squints.
“This could work, but you’d need small boobs. How big are your boobs, anyway? I can’t even tell.”
That’s kind of the point.
“I’m, uh, a C.”
She puts the blue lace back on the shelf. “Then it’s a nope for this.”
After another ten minutes of searching, we do find one black jumpsuit I don’t hate, but I put it back on the rack as soon as I see the price.
“Nope, nope, nope,” I chant in response to DeeDee’s protests as I lead the way out of the store. “I am not paying two hundred dollars for something I won’t wear more than once.”
Ingrid nods in agreement while DeeDee sighs.
“I need something to work with. What kind of clothes do you like?”
“The kind that don’t cost two hundred dollars.”
She huffs and throws her hands up. “The style, Paige! Give me a style! Is there anything you have ever wanted to wear, besides sweatshirts?”
I open my mouth to answer and realize I don’t know what to say. The truth is I don’t know if I even want to wear sweatshirts all the time. I just do it. It doesn’t always work, but for the most part, it keeps people from staring at me.
That’s been my goal for so long it’s like an instinct I don’t even think about. I know what attention results in, and I do everything I can to avoid that. It’s the same reason I don’t wear makeup in public; I just decided that wasn’t an option, and I haven’t questioned it since.
DeeDee grips my good shoulder and spreads her other hand out in front of us in a ‘picture this’ gesture. “If you could wear anything in the world, ma belle, what would it be? If nothing else mattered, what would you wear?”
I think about it. I really do. I stare at the mural on the side of the building across the street. It’s a huge fish bowl done with spray paint. There are a few red and orange goldfish swimming around inside.
If I could wear anything, what would I wear?
“I think...um...”
I scan the rest of the block. There’s an Ethiopian restaurant, an Irish pub, and another clothing boutique with old records strung from the ceiling as decorations in the window display. The mannequin’s dresses aren’t sparkly.
“Let’s go in there,” I say before I have some kind of existential fashion crisis right here on the sidewalk.
We get inside the shop, and I feel like way less of a bumbling idiot than I did at the place across the street. They’re playing an Alt-J song on the speakers. The clothing racks are all made out of industrial piping, and I don’t see any bows. The storekeeper smiles and calls out hello before going back to folding shirts at the back of the room.
“This is much better,” Ingrid says as she heads over to look at some denim jackets.
They don’t have much for formalwear, but DeeDee manages to find a section with dresses fancy enough for a wedding. It’s an eclectic store, with only a few of each item. I flip through a bunch of dresses in different styles before stopping on a dark green one edged with black.
“Oooh, pretty!” DeeDee says over my shoulder.
I pull it out, and she takes it from me to hold it up to my body. The tight silhouette looks like it would fit. It’s sleeveless with a high neck, and there’s some sort of twisty thing going on with the fabric at the front that knots at the waist.
“Do you like it?” DeeDee asks.
I find myself nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.”
She grins. “I think your friend will like it too.”
Heat creeps up my neck. That’s exactly what I’ve been picturing since my fingers first landed on the fabric: stepping out of a hotel room and feeling Youssef’s eyes trace the lines of my body.
I can admit I want to look good for him, but it’s more than that. I want to look like me. I want to feel like me. I’ve spent so much of my life playing defence, reacting and adjusting to block every threat. I’ve spent so long thinking even the memory of Youssef was one of those threats.
But what if he wasn’t?
What would I do? Who could I be?
DeeDee pulls the dress away and lays it over her arm.
“Come on.” She steers me over to the cash register. “I think we found your dress.”
Seventeen
Paige
BEATMATCH: A technique used by DJs to adjust the tempo of two songs and ensure a seamless transition between them
Since Ottawa is only two hours away, Youssef decided to rent a car and drive us both there on the day of the wedding. By the time the big day rolls around, I’m finally out of my sling, but with my hand splint still on, I’m not mobile enough to get myself wedding-ready. I’m standing in front of the bathroom mirror a few hours before I’m due to leave, trying to decide if there’s anything I can do to my hair with one hand, when DeeDee shows up at the apartment and offers to give me some help.
“I was just popping by,” she explains after sending Zach off to his bedroom and dropping down onto our couch.
The bulging shoulder bag she brought makes it clear this wasn’t a coincidence.
“Buuuuut,” she chimes as she unzips the bag, “we do still have time to give you some highlights.”
I shake my head. “Nuh-uh. Youssef is picking me up in like, two hours. What if something goes horribly wrong?”
She puts her hands on her hips. “Vraiment, chérie? You think I’m going to let something go wrong? They don’t call me the master for nothing. Come on. Just some little chocolate brown highlights. Oh, and I’ll cut some layers! It will give you that oomph.”
She does a hip thrust to emphasize the last word.
I reach up and smooth a piece of hair behind my ear. I really don’t have much of a haircut. I just let it grow and get the ends chopped off whenever it’s long enough to be annoying.
DeeDee’s staring at my hair like a kid in front of a candy shop window.
I sigh. “You’re not gonna let me out of this house without doing my hair, are you?”
She beams. “Nope!”
An hour later, I have to admit she deserves to be called ‘the master.’ She didn’t even do much to my hair, but I look like I could have just dropped several hundred bucks at an overpriced salon. The highlights are subtle, but they make my black colour look so much richer, and the layers frame my face perfectly. I raise a hand to my cheek as I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror.
I’m not totally sure who I’m looking at, but the corners of my mouth lift up when I realize I like her.
“Perfect!” DeeDee shouts as she fluffs my hair up a little from behind me. She’s just finished blow drying. “Now go put your dress on so I can do the final touches. Do you need any help?”
She nods at my splint, and I shake my head. Things are easier now that my sling is gone. My shoulder is still a long way away from complete recovery, but the new freedom is a huge relief.
In my bedroom, I carefully take off my baggy t-shirt and then peel my leggings down before changing into a black bra and underwear set. I’m going to have to sit around the hotel for a few hours all dressed up while Youssef helps his family with pre-wedding stuff, but I’d rather have DeeDee’s assistance getting myself presentable now than risk a disaster trying to do it all with my broken hand later.
My dress is already hanging on the back of my closet door, along with a leather jacket I rarely wear. A pair of black heels my mom bought me in high school that have lived in obscurity ever since are sitting underneath. I shimmy my way into the dress and leave the shoes for later. I’ve only tried it on once since bringing it home from the store, and just like it did the first time, the fabric hugs my body like it was tailor made for me. It’s tight but not so tight I can’t breathe, and the hem hits me just a bit lower than mid-thigh.
I’ve never wor
n anything like this.
“Okay, Paige,” I mutter when I catch sight of my slightly terrified reflection in the mirror. “No backing out now.”
I get the zipper most of the way up, but my busted shoulder starts protesting when I twist my good arm around to do the last few inches.
After trying to swear my way through the pain, I give up and take a deep breath before throwing my bedroom door open. DeeDee pokes her head out of the bathroom.
“Hey, could you—”
“Câlice, Paige!” DeeDee comes all the way out into the living room, and her hands fly to her mouth. “You look...You look...”
She runs her eyes up and down the dress, and I brace for one of those words I hate.
Pretty. Hot. Stunning. Gorgeous.
“You look like a badass bitch!”
I do a double-take. “Huh?”
“Yeah! You look, um...how would I say it?” DeeDee sweeps her hands around as she searches for the right words. “You look powerful.”
“Powerful?”
“Yes! You look so beautiful, of course, but you also look like you’re ready to take somebody down, and you don’t even have shoes on yet!”
I start grinning as heat creeps up my neck. “Really?”
“Yes, girl! Now come here so I can finish that hair.”
She guides me back into the bathroom and sits me down on the lid of the toilet so she can come at me with a hair curler and brush. I suffer through the experience as she adds a few waves and some sort of smoothing cream before spritzing on hairspray and declaring me finished.
“Now for makeup! I brought—”
“I have makeup,” I blurt.
Mierda.
I did not mean to say that out loud.
Now it’s DeeDee doing a double-take. “You do?”
I don’t want to make an even bigger deal out of it, so I just nod and try to will my face to stop burning. “Yeah, it’s, um, in my room. I’ll go get it.”
I spare a glance at myself in the mirror over the sink as I squeeze past DeeDee. Somehow, she’s made my hair look even better than it did after the dye. It’s shiny enough that people can probably check their reflection in it, and the waves are mermaid-level perfect.
I didn’t know hair could look like this in real life—never mind my hair.
I come back with the old shoebox I keep all my makeup in and set it on the counter. DeeDee sifts through it for a moment, her eyes getting wider and wider.
“Paige, this is really nice stuff.”
I’m not even offended at her being so shocked. I wouldn’t expect myself to know what nice makeup is either.
I shrug and do my best to play it cool. “I just like messing around with it sometimes. You know, for fun.”
She holds up a tube of liquid eyeliner. “Kat Von Dee is not for fun! Kat Von Dee means business.”
We both chuckle as she keeps going through the shoebox.
“I think that Charlotte Tillbury one there will go well with the dress,” I mumble, “and if you don’t mind, there’s a brown smokey eye tutorial that I really like. I’d do it myself; it’s just with my hand...”
I trail off when she looks up at me with a more serious expression than I’ve ever seen her wear before. Usually she’s like a blinding ray of human sunshine; now, for the first time, I see the start of a storm.
“Paige,” she says softly, “what happened to you?”
My pulse kicks up. I can hear the blood rushing in my ears. “What do you mean? Nothing happened.”
Her expression doesn’t change. “Chérie, I know what it’s like to lose yourself because of what some guy did to you. I know what that looks like on a girl.”
“Huh?” It’s harder to fake casual now that my voice has gone up an octave.
The tiny bathroom is suddenly suffocating, like the walls are inching their way toward me and there’s nowhere to run. Anxious knots are twisting in my stomach, and I cross my arms on top of it.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” DeeDee says. “I just want you to know that you can.”
I stare at a patch of the shower curtain just over her shoulder. I can’t look her in the eye. I try to force one of the things I want to say out of my mouth.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Thanks but no thanks.
I’m fine.
Instead, I start telling her the truth.
“It wasn’t one guy.” My voice is low and hollow. “It was a lot of guys, over a lot of years. I...When I was growing up, my mom used to take me and my sister to all these music auditions, even some acting ones too. We did a couple TV episodes, played at a lot of events, but nothing major. There were...I mean...My sister and I have always been really pretty.”
I don’t worry about sounding vain. To me, being pretty has always been much closer to a curse than a compliment.
“My mom is very good-looking too. I guess since her whole big star, beauty queen dream didn’t pan out, she wanted us to have it instead. Or something. All I know is that show business put us close to way too many men who had some fucked up ideas about the way to treat pretty young girls.”
“Paige...”
DeeDee lowers herself until she’s sitting in front of me, her back against the side of the bathtub and her knees tucked up under her chin. She reaches for my hand, but I shake my head. If I move, I’ll stop, and I need to keep going.
“Nothing really bad ever happened, but it was just one guy after the next, always staring at us, hugging us a little too long, telling us we’d grow up to drive guys crazy. You know, the usual gross stuff. One day when I was thirteen, my vocal coach gave me a...shoulder massage, as he called it, when we were alone together.”
“That fucker,” DeeDee says under her breath.
“Yeah,” I agree. “I told my mom about it, and she went off on the guy. She actually got him to shut his whole business down, but when I told her I didn’t want to do auditions anymore, it was out of the question. We couldn’t let them win, apparently. My mom was all about beating guys at their own game using whatever she had, and I guess her daughters were just another tool.”
I pause, grinding my teeth together.
“What about your dad?” DeeDee asks.
I let out a dry laugh. “My dad...My dad’s kind of oblivious. I think that’s why she married him. He stays out of the way.”
“So you had to keep auditioning?”
I nod and steel myself with a breath.
“When I was sixteen, my sister and I had a small part playing sisters on some teen show. I didn’t even have any lines, which made sense, because I can’t act for shit. They mostly just wanted two girls who could play piano. Anyway, one of the stars of the show was...interested in Isabella. He was kind of famous, at least to people under the age of seventeen, and my mom thought it would be great for publicity if the teen magazine paparazzi interviewed them while they were on a date.”
I grind my teeth so hard my jaw clicks, but I force myself to continue.
“She was way too young for him. She was way too young for any of that shit. I went along with a lot of stuff my mom wanted, but I was not putting up with that. I was so upset about it I was, like, threatening to call child services on her, so on the day of she was finally like, ‘Well, why don’t you go instead?’ So I did. I went, and he...he put something in the juice I was drinking.”
DeeDee lets out a sound between a gasp and horrified groan.
“I called my mom as soon as I started feeling weird. By the time I blacked out, she was there.”
I still remember how it felt. I can remember losing control of my body. I can remember the sluggish confusion and dull panic of trying to move and not being able to.
I still have nightmares from time to time.
“Thank god she got there.”
“You would think.” I chuckle, but again, there’s no humor in the sound. “You would think that after all that, she’d finally be done, but no. She wanted to press charges so
we could use the news coverage for exposure for our careers.”
DeeDee stays quiet. You know it’s bad when not even DeeDee has something to say about it.
“I was sixteen. I didn’t want to go in front of a court who probably would have sided with him anyway. I just wanted it all to go away. So I tried to run away from home. I had been friends with Youssef for a while by then, and I asked him to skip school with me and take the train to Toronto for the day. I wasn’t planning on coming back, but then...”
I can still remember it, that perfect day after one of my darkest. I can remember his lips on mine for the very first time, the way it made my knees shake. I remember the warmth of his arms around me and the way his promises lit me up and made me believe that if I just made it to the end of high school, things would get better.
Things would get better, and he’d be there.
“What happened to you guys?” DeeDee asks. “You and Youssef? Why did it end?”
“It just...It turned out to be a big misunderstanding.” The word tastes sour; misunderstanding is too polite a term for what my mom did. “He went away to university after that, and we never talked again.”
“Wow.” DeeDee stays quiet for a second. “And your mom? What happened with her? Did you keep going to auditions?”
I shake my head. “I stopped after Youssef left. I just told her I wasn’t doing it anymore and there was nothing she could do about it. I just felt so...so empty, and so pissed, because it was like she was right, you know? She always told me men would use me and let me down no matter how much they seemed to care about me. I hated her for being right. I hated her so much I didn’t care about what would happen if I refused to do what she wanted.”
Everything changed after that. My whole life was built around this idea of ‘just get through high school,’ but when Youssef left, I realized I’d never thought all that much about what I actually wanted from life after high school—other than freedom.
And him.
So I patched up all the holes left in my life plan with music. I wove it like a thread through everything I am. I stretched it out in front of me as one giant piece of fabric and stitched a map that led to everything I wanted to become.
