How I Found the Perfect Dress

by Maryrose Wood

  This Tux fellow was hardly dressed for harvesting fruit, but once I helped him take off his tiny cufflinks and roll up his crisp white sleeves, he got to work without complaint. After Glendryn’s comment about treating gnome girls like ladies, I figured I should try to introduce him to the cranky, apple-faced girl before I left them alone together in the berry bush. She seemed terribly shy and could barely say her name.

  “Tammy,” was what I thought she said.

  “Small world. My sister’s name is Tammy too,” I offered, in an attempt to bond.

  “Taffy!” she yelped. “Like the stuff that breaks your teeth! And don’t brag about your ‘sister’ to me. That’s so mean!” Then she started to cry.

  Yikes, I must’ve said the wrong thing, I thought. I turned to Tux and Drenwyn for help. Tux gestured for me to bend down so he could whisper in my ear.

  “She doesn’t have a sister,” he said.

  “But I thought all gnomes were twins—”

  “Practically all,” he said. “Except for Taffy. She’s an OE.”

  “A what?”

  “Occasional Exception,” he explained. “She’s very sensitive about it too. Don’t worry, I’ll cheer her up. Hey, Taffy!” he said jovially. “Have you seen my Frodo impersonation? ‘No, Samwise, go back to the Shire! I must bear . . . this burden . . . alone!’”

  It wasn’t a great impression, but he was definitely the right height for it. And it succeeded in distracting Taffy, though not in a good way.

  “That’s so stupid,” I heard her wail between sobs, as I carried Drenwyn back to the azalea bush to be with her sister. “Everybody knows that hobbits . . . aren’t . . . real. . . .”

  fifteen

  With onlЧ ten daЧs left before the junior prom, this is how things stood: I had a guy I was crazy about who couldn’t take me to prom because he was leaving the country (if he didn’t end up in the hospital first), another guy who wanted to take me but I wouldn’t let him, a pair of stinky sneakers to steal, a fabulous dress on layaway, and a crabby leprechaun who had to be convinced to escort a pair of excitable plastic gnome sisters to the Spring Faery Ball.

  I can so totally make this work, I thought, as I rode up the mall escalators to Strohman’s. It was Monday, after school, and I was going use all my powers of persuasion to get Jolly Dan Dabby to say yes to not one, but two dates for the Faery Ball.

  Or, if that didn’t work, who knows? Maybe he had a friend.

  “i don’t have ‘a friend,’ Чou nitwit! i’m a leprechaun! We’re known to be solitary! We hate to mingle! We’re seen in public so rarely that half the Faery Folk don’t even believe we exist!”

  Jolly Dan was not reacting positively to the twin concept.

  “Listen.” I took a deep breath, which made me notice how strongly Jolly Dan’s shop smelled of feet. “First of all, it was your idea to go to the Faery Ball, so don’t give me that solitary leprechaun routine. You’re not solitary. You’re lonely.”

  “Humph,” he said.

  “Second of all, these sisters are perfectly nice girls and they want to go with you. I’ve done my part. Go or don’t go, I don’t care, but you still have to make the magic shoes for Colin.” I stood up too fast and bumped my head on the ceiling. “A deal’s a deal.”

  “Don’t try to bamboozle me, you double-height half-goddess!” he retorted. “I said find me a date. You found me two dates. No deal!”

  I stared at him.

  He stared at me.

  I stared at him harder. I had never, ever lost a staring contest in my life, and believe me, Tammy had given me tons of practice.

  “You know,” he finally said, looking away in discomfort, “I do have a customer who came in to get his shoes resoled for the ball.” Jolly Dan grabbed his hammers and a pair of Manolo Blahniks from the shelf. “He was complaining about not knowing who to ask.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “A double date. You’ll win extra points for customer service, the sisters will be happy and I’ll get my shoes for Colin.”

  “Not so fast,” he warned. “This guy’s an elf. He’s very—” Jolly Dan held his hand in the air, as high as he could reach.

  “Tall?”

  “Grotesquely so.” Jolly Dan cringed. “Even bigger than you.” He turned away from me and started drumming with his hammers. “The ladies might find him repulsive.”

  Would they? The word elf just made me think of Orlando Bloom. Sarah was still secretly obsessed with him; she used to keep his picture taped to the inside of her locker before she started dating Dylan. Surely no one could object to being set up with a hottie like that?

  “It’s what’s on the inside of a person that counts,” I said to Jolly Dan. “That’s what one of the ‘ladies’ told me.” I didn’t bother to mention that she’d also inquired about his finances.

  “Come back tomorrow,” Jolly Dan muttered, as he began tap-tap-tapping away on the Manolos. “I’ll tell you what the elf says then.”

  glendrЧn and drenwЧn loved the idea of double-dating, “as long as we stay together the whole time,” they said. And the elf concept prompted fits of giggles.

  Meanwhile, matchmaker me was feeling pretty wiped out from my middle-of-the-night gnome visits, and this got me even more worried about how long Colin would be able to last with only fitful half-sleep and catnaps to keep him going. During my first free period at school on Tuesday, I went to the library and looked up “Sleep Deprivation”:

  Sleep Deprivation has been used as a means of torture in numerous military conflicts and also as an aid to interrogation. . . . In experiments, rats forced to endure prolonged sleep deprivation exhibited disoriented behavior, weight loss and eventually death. . . .

  Death? This double date will happen, I thought. There’s a lot more at stake here than Jolly Dan’s love life. Or mine, for that matter. Now that I was trying to avoid having any fleeting urges of lust for my male classmates, boys were pretty much all I could think about. I tried to imagine them the way they were in middle school, when they were a head shorter than me with braces and zits and squeaky voices, but the more I tried to downplay their cuteness the yummier they seemed. Changing classes was the worst, with all those boy bodies rushing by, smelling of soap and aftershave—it was like I was trapped in the Hotties of East Norwich High School pinup calendar.

  To keep me on track, and also because I was really freaked out about the sleep-deprived rats, I ran into the girl’s bathroom between classes, snuck out my cell phone and called Colin to see how he was feeling. He didn’t pick up.

  Probably busy in the lab, I thought, trying not to panic. I’ll call him again later.

  After school I took the bus straight to the mall to see Jolly Dan. The sales staff at Strohman’s were starting to recognize me. I didn’t want them to think I was a total klepto or they’d never let me back in the store, so I visited the beige dress at the layaway counter for a while before heading into the dressing room.

  “Why don’t you just buy it?” the clerk said, taking it down off the rack for me to look at. “It’s the nicest dress in the store, but for some weird reason it didn’t fit anyone until you tried it on.”

  “That is weird,” I said, forcing myself to sound surprised. “I probably will. I’m, uh, just not sure I can afford it.”

  She shoved the price tag in front of my face. It read:

  Suggested retail price $875

  Now only $4.93!

  You save—oops, the math is too hard but you

  rilly save a hole lot!

  “This has to be a mistake,” I said.

  The clerk waved the tag though the barcode scanner and looked at the display on her cash register.

  “It has to be, but it isn’t,” she said, amazed. “Miss, you are taking this dress today if I have to pay for it myself. I never heard of this designer either. ‘Goddesswear by the Fabulous Finnbar’?”

  With mЧ stunning five-dollar prom dress purchased and neatly folded in a Strohman’s bag, I ducked into the dressing room
and mirror-hopped my way to Jolly Dan’s. I was careful to avoid being seen by the Wee Folk woman as I made my way down the hall. I didn’t have the time or the patience to admire that gag-inducing, yet feminine pink dress one more time.

  “The elf is game,” Jolly Dan told me, sounding wary. “But he wants to meet both sisters first.”

  “Fine.” I was determined. “The sooner the better. I’ll bring them tomorrow.”

  “N-not tomorrow,” Jolly Dan stammered. “Tomorrow’s bad. Tomorrow’s busy, a very busy day. Thursday too, it’s awful, I’m completely booked.”

  “When, then?” I demanded. “I need those shoes for my friend, as soon as possible.” I fixed him with my semi-goddess stare again. “Surely you don’t mean to go back on your word?”

  “Hush, you demanding beanpole! It’s just that . . . well, I want to spruce myself up first.” All of a sudden he looked bashful—or, considering his size, make that Bashful, as in Bashful, Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, Doc, and the other two Disney dwarfs whose names I could never remember when Tammy quizzed me. “Nothing major,” Jolly Dan mumbled, staring at the floor. “Beard trim, haircut, a new apron, lose a few pounds. You only get to make a first impression once.”

  What? Colin’s health and maybe even his life were in danger and I had to deal with Jolly Dan’s insecurity attack? “Relax! You’re perfectly fine the way you are,” I told him, trying not to sound impatient.

  “Then why do they sell all that beauty stuff in the mall?” he asked.

  It was a valid question, but I didn’t have a good answer for it, so I reassured him as best I could and left. And, speaking of the mall, since I was already there I decided to buy a pair of shoes. Not for myself—for Colin. Knowing him, he almost certainly hadn’t packed any extra footwear for his trip to the States. Before I could steal his old Nikes I’d have to replace them with something else, or he’d be traveling back to Ireland in his soccer cleats.

  That meant I needed his shoe size, so I called him again as I rode the escalator up one more level to where the SportShoe store was. The phone rang a bunch of times before he picked up.

  “Sorry, Mor, I almost missed ye there.” He sounded out of breath.

  “Why? Are you okay?” I thought of the dead rats and started to freak out. “Are you disoriented? Have you been losing weight?”

  “Perhaps, I dunno. At the moment I’m up to me elbows in this papier-mâché gunk. Yer gnome chum is looking rather mummylike at the moment. But don’t worry, I didn’t cover his nose.”

  “That’s good.” I was on level three now, not far from the shoe store. “Quick question: What size shoes do you wear?”

  “Same size as me feet,” he quipped. “Why d’ye ask?”

  “It’s for a math project.” Sadly, the continual making up of lame excuses was turning out to be my main semi-goddess superpower. “We’re collecting the shoe sizes of people we know, and compiling statistical data and calculating the, uh, probability that two people chosen at random could, you know, share shoes and stuff.” My cheeks were turning pink from lying, and I was glad he couldn’t see me. “Just—what is it?”

  “Ten and a half Irish, forty-five Euro, no clue what that is in American,” Colin said. “A maths project, eh? That’s impressive. By the time ye graduate ye’ll be able to calculate the odds on the football betting pools. A useful life skill if ever there was one.”

  “I’ll figure it out, great.” Now I was standing directly outside SportShoe, with all those huge guy-sized sneakers displayed in the window, each one practically big enough to drive. “Thanks. Okay, I’ll see you—”

  “Hey,” he said. “If ye have a sec, Mor, I wanted to talk to ye about this school dance thing yer mother mentioned—”

  “Not right now, Colin. I really have to get this math assignment done.” Why why why did my mother have to blab personal things about me to everyone she met? Especially Colin? A person with whom she should not be having conversations at all, in my opinion, and especially not about me?

  “I just had one thing to say about it—”

  “Oops,” I said, cutting him off. “Can’t hear you, sorry! I’m going through a tunnel—”

  “A tunnel? Are ye in a train?”

  “Right, I’m getting in an elevator! Later!”

  I hung up on him.

  Fek. Why did Colin want to talk to me about the junior prom?

  He wasn’t going to ask me to go with him, because he was flying back to Ireland on Sunday. Prom wasn’t until Thursday. The twentieth. My birthday.

  And he wasn’t going to tell me not to go—to wait until I was older and we were both on the same continent and could attend such important and romantic life events together, the way we were obviously meant to.

  Nope. I knew Colin well enough to predict exactly what he was going to say.

  He was going to tell me—

  Never mind. I put the whole prom thing out of my mind and went into the shoe store. The important thing was not whether or not I got to go to a stupid dance.

  The important thing was that Colin got to stop going.

  sarah had arranged for WednesdaЧ’s final prom committee meeting to be held at Dylan’s house, at the exact same time Ass Your Kiss Goodbye was not-so-coincidentally rehearsing in the garage. Sarah had also arranged for many of their friends to be randomly passing by the house. In a series of Oscar-worthy performances, each of them acted completely surprised when they saw the guys setting up, and then stuck around to listen.

  Soon the rehearsal had sneakily turned into an impromptu performance, with about thirty people preparing to get their groove on in the driveway. Clem and Deirdre were giving out glow sticks, just to add to the concert atmosphere.

  “Sorry about the noise,” Sarah said cheerily to Mrs. Blainsvoort. All the living room windows were open, and the sounds of electric guitars being tuned and Dylan warming up on his drum kit were flooding into the house.

  “Perhaps we should reschedule.” Mrs. Blainsvoort looked miffed. “Or meet at your house, as we usually do?”

  “No time, the prom is next week,” Sarah said. “And who knew my parents were going to have our whole house painted today? Wish they’d told me earlier!” She smiled sweetly at Mrs. Blainsvoort.

  “It just seems rather odd,” Mrs. Blainsvoort said with suspicion, “since our only remaining agenda item is—”

  “The music!” Sarah grinned. “I know!”

  As the band launched into its first number, Mrs. Blainsvoort’s hands flew halfway up to her ears. But instead of their usual hardcore covers of classic Kiss, today the band was trying out some mellower song stylings.

  The crowd reacted with coached enthusiasm to the band’s new sound. More importantly, Mrs. Blainsvoort was sucked right in.

  “Oh! I love Abba!” she exclaimed.

  “Cool! We do too!” said Sarah. The three of us—Sarah, me and Mrs. Blainsvoort—looked out the window. Under the leadership of Clem and Deirdre, the crowd in the driveway was singing along happily and waving their glow sticks in the air. It was like a light beer commercial, only more fake.

  “I must say, when you first mentioned your boyfriend’s band, I was expecting something—edgier,” Mrs. Blainsvoort said, her hips swaying to the music. “Do they know ‘Dancing Queen’?”

  “If you let them play at the junior prom next week, I promise you, they will learn it,” Sarah declared.

  “I had no idea this was the type of music you kids are into. Perhaps I should reconsider.” Mrs. Blainsvoort was snapping her fingers, only slightly off the beat. “I’ll think about it.”

  The band formerly known as Ass Your Kiss Goodbye (Sarah told Mrs. Blainsvoort that they were called The School-boys) kept up the easy listening act until Mrs. Blainsvoort left. Then everyone came inside and a victory-is-nearly-ours toast of Red Bull was poured for all. I did my best to avoid being alone with Mike Fitch, but he snuck up on me while I was in the kitchen getting ice from the dispenser.

  “So,” he said, while my b
ack was to him. “I hear you have a boyfriend who lives in Europe.”

  I was so startled I spun around without letting go of the switch on the refrigerator door.

  “What?” A stream of ice chunks clunked and slid all over the kitchen floor. “Who? I mean, who told you that?”

  He smiled and bent down to gather up the slippery wet shards.

  “Sorry to startle you,” he said. “It’s just getting to be kind of dumb, the way I talk to Dylan and Dylan talks to Sarah and Sarah talks to you. I thought it would be better if we talked to each other. Radical, right?”

  “Very,” I said, holding a rapidly melting ice cube in my hand. “What do you want to talk about?” I instantly regretted asking, since I already had a good idea of what Mike wanted to talk about. “Hey, the band sounded totally convincing,” I babbled, to keep him from speaking. “Even playing Muzak, you guys rock.”

  “Maybe we should change our name to the Ironicks,” he joked. “Morgan, listen—”

  “Ha ha ha.” I forced myself to laugh. “Ironicks, that’s pretty funny. That’s really—”

  “I was going to ask you to prom.” He held up his hands, as if to show me he wasn’t carrying a weapon. “Not as a date. If your heart belongs to someone, I totally respect that. But if the lucky Euro-dude is not here, why don’t you let me, you know—escort you?”

  “Mike.” I was totally flustered. “That’s dumb. You should ask someone who could be a real date. Half the girls in the junior class would kill to go with you.”

  “I doubt that,” he said, looking embarrassed.

  “Okay, three quarters.” That made him laugh. Shut up Morgan, I scolded myself, why are you flirting with him?