How I Found the Perfect Dress

by Maryrose Wood

  “Yeah,” I said casually. “I didn’t give him an answer yet, though.”

  “Leaning yes or leaning no?”

  Leaning yes, I was about to say. Now that I knew I had to go to prom, there was really no way to avoid the Mike situation. But before I could answer, Sarah held up a hand.

  “On second thought, don’t tell me. Tell Mike first, and then tell me. But you can’t tell him right now. He’s home sick.”

  “Sick?” I repeated, dumbly. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Dunno, sounds like he’s coming down with the flu or something. He called Dylan this morning and said he could barely get out of bed, he was just feeling super tired.”

  “Oh no!” I sounded more tragic than I meant to. “That’s terrible!”

  “Why? You two didn’t make out, did you?” Sarah smiled mischievously. “Are you worried you might have caught something from him?”

  “No,” I said, knowing that the truth was exactly the opposite. “I’m just sorry he’s sick.” I shoved the locker door with my shoulder and it shut, barely.

  “He’ll be fine by prom, I’m sure. He told Dylan that even his feet hurt. Funny, huh?”

  Oh, yeah. The bell rang, and I thought of the rats again. Hilarious.

  the bus didn’t stop at the ministorage place, but it let me off close enough to walk, and I found room 1114 without any trouble. Dad must have been really flustered when he’d loaded all the gnomes in before dawn. They were heaped in piles and jammed in every which way.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “Drenwyn? Glendryn? Are you in there?”

  “Mmmmmmph!” I heard from near the top of the pile. And then an answering “Mmmmmph!” from down below.

  “Pardon me,” I said, as I rummaged through the gnomes.

  “Sure.” I heard a crabby voice from the bottom of the pile. “Take them out! Take out the sisters! Leave the rest of us here to suffocate!”

  “Taffy Smoothcheek, if you don’t shut up, we will implore the half-goddess to remove you permanently from our company. And then see how you like being all alone!” That was from a pair of matching bearded gnomes who, despite their silly pointy hats, apple-cheeked expressions and the comical ability to speak in perfect unison, seemed pretty ticked off.

  I ignored the squabbling and looked for the girls. Finally I spotted Glendryn’s crumpled pink party dress, all the way in the back.

  “Ouch!” she squealed, as I grabbed her by the leg and pulled her out of the pile. “Don’t forget my sister; she’s in here too!”

  “‘Don’t forget my sister! Don’t forget my sister!’ ” Taffy mocked.

  I found Drenwyn a moment later. Her berry basket was lost. She was trying not to cry about it, but she looked pretty shaken up.

  “It’s all right,” Glendryn said soothingly. “We’ll get you a new basket. We’ll get matching baskets! How about that?”

  “Sorry about the ministorage thing, guys,” I said. “I don’t have time to explain right now. I hope it’s only temporary.”

  “I hope, she says!” Taffy whimpered. “What, do you mean you intend for us to live in this prison cell forever? What kind of goddess are you?”

  “A half-goddess,” I corrected impatiently, “who has to get to the mall.” I shoved the sisters in my backpack and relocked the door to the storage room. That Taffy was starting to get on my nerves.

  mЧ plastic Cargo and i Were riding the escalators to the second floor of the mall when I got a text message:ddnt hve tme to cln shop

  mt me & elf @ mnglf 5

  jly dn the lprchn

  Most of it was clear, but what did mnglf mean? Mango loofah? Mongolian food? And did 5 mean five o’clock? If so, what was I supposed to do for an hour with the two gnomes in my backpack? Not only was it dark and crowded and hot in there, but Colin’s sneakers were jammed in the bottom, which had to be creating a noticeable funk factor. I opened the zipper a couple of inches, just for circulation.

  I stopped in front of the mall directory to skim the list of store names. There was a Gap, an Old Navy, an Abercrombie & Fitch, a multiplex cinema, a Macy’s, a Saks, a Barnes & Noble, a Borders, a Japanese import shop that Sarah and I always called the Hello Kitty store though they had way more stuff than that, a Hot Topic and some other faux-punk boutiques that carried edgy logo tees and stuff to streak your hair blue, Strohman’s Designer Discounts, a CVS, a Body Shop, a Circuit City, an Office Max . . .

  I felt some squirming in my backpack and shifted my weight until the girls settled down. Then, just as I was about to go order a Starbucks mocha latte in defeat, I saw what I was looking for, all the way at the top of the directory map, by itself, with a shiny sticker next to it that read GRAND OPENING.

  Level five. Minigolf.

  I had to laugh. Minigolf? Was that the perfect setting for a first date between a leprechaun and a garden gnome, or what?

  forget cutesЧ landscapes of Windmills and ginger-bread houses. This was Lunar Minigolf, an outer-space themed, black-light funhouse that you played in the pitch dark, with Pink Floyd music piped in from invisible speakers. There were a lot of kids my age going in there, and I kept my head down in case I ran into someone from school.

  I paid to play a single game of eighteen holes, grabbed a putter and went in. I didn’t dare put the backpack down because the place was so dark I was afraid I’d never find it again.

  “Mmph! Dark in here,” I heard at one point from inside the bag.

  “It’s dark out here too,” I muttered, taking a swing and almost landing the ball in the Lake of Perseverance.

  “Try the Sea of Tranquility, it’s a lot easier.” I knew that mocking voice. What a perfectly gross place to run into my perfectly gross ex-boyfriend.

  “Golfing alone?” Raph’s white T-shirt glowed in the black light, but his face came in and out of view. “Why don’t you join us?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m just working on my swing.”

  “Is that him?” my backpack squealed.

  “No!” I answered sharply.

  “Okay, I heard you the first time!” Raph backed off. “Yikes. You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”

  For a second I felt bad for being rude, but then I heard Raph’s voice receding as he walked across the moonscape with his friends: “Nah, she’s on the rag or something. . . . Hasn’t changed, same old Morgan, doesn’t know how to have fun . . .”

  I wondered what the odds were of me whacking a golf ball in the pitch dark with enough speed and accuracy to clock Raphael firmly on the back of his arrogant head, but I forgot all about that when I saw the next hole.

  It was marked Hole 19, which would tend to indicate something unusual, right? And all the other holes had these poetic moonscape names, like the Sea of Dreams and the Ocean of Storms.

  This one was called the Tunnel of Love.

  “Freshen your lip gloss, girls,” I said to my backpack. “I think we’ve arrived at your date.”

  inside hole 19 Was a Whole other World.

  We were still on the moon, but it was a different sort of moon. It was bathed in a cool, bluish—you’d have to call it moonlight, I guess. This was a moon made of green cheese, with an animatronic cow jumping over it. Beneath our feet, the ground was smiling.

  “Man in the Moon, I presume?” I asked, looking down. He nodded, which made the whole place rock gently.

  “Whee!” cried Glendryn and Drenwyn, so glad to be out of the backpack and scampering about. The gravitational field was accurately moonlike, and the sisters held hands and bounded and leaped through the air like they were on a trampoline.

  “Ahem!”

  I turned and stifled a cry of alarm.

  “It’s me,” Jolly Dan said sheepishly. “It’s Jolly Dan.” He shrugged. “I thought perhaps you might not recognize me because of all the . . . improvements.”

  Jolly Dan’s appearance had definitely changed, but whether you’d consider the changes “improvements” would depend on whether or not you had any taste. W
hat I saw was a two-foot tall leprechaun with a George Hamilton tan, blindingly white teeth, gel-spiked hair and a beard that was braided and ribboned like the tail of a show pony. He was wearing a pair of skinny trousers, a vintage suit jacket over a loose collared shirt and black square-rimmed glasses. It was like, pint-sized cruise ship lothario meets indie rock hipster, and it was making my head hurt.

  “This is my friend,” Jolly Dan said, indicating a very tall, very gorgeous, very Orlando Bloomish-looking guy dressed in simple white robes. Then he said something that sounded like “Q’nessir mith’ela rahdili taurgoth,” except played backward.

  I stared at the tall gorgeous guy. We are talking serious, serious eye candy here.

  “You will not be able to pronounce my true Elven name,” the elf said. “But you can call me Elvis.”

  I shook off his hypnotic stare, called the gnome sisters over, and introduced them to Jolly Dan and Elvis, amidst many giggles and “isn’t the moon great?” pleasantries. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when the sisters asked me to leave.

  “We may be little to you, but we’re not children,” Drenwyn pointed out. “We don’t require a chaperone.”

  “After all, we have each other,” Glendryn added.

  So I left, but I told them I would swing by in an hour to pick them up.

  “Best to keep the first date short,” I said. “No offense.”

  “Later, crater!” called Elvis, as I half-walked, half-bounced away. Behind me, Glendryn and Drenwyn were laughing a little too hard at the elf’s green-cheesy pun.

  eighteen

  the double date Was out of mЧ hands, so i Wandered the mall, with Colin’s shoes still fermenting in my backpack. I stopped at Starbucks and got my latte and then browsed through some CDs at the Virgin Megastore. For laughs, I bought myself a “Best of Kiss” collection.

  I checked my phone frequently, to keep track of the time, I told myself, but that was bogus because I was wearing a watch. Really it was to see if Colin had called to say hi, or make a joke, or give some indication that he might still be speaking to me.

  But there was nothing: no calls, no messages, no texts. I almost called him just to make sure he was okay, but I was planning to go to UConn the next day to see how his project did in the robot competition, and if I talked to him now, while he was probably still furious at me, he might tell me not to come. Overall it was better if we didn’t speak.

  Luckily malls suck up time as easily as they suck up money, and the hour passed quickly. Back on level five I flashed the Lunar Minigolf inkstamp on my hand, reentered and found my way to Hole 19.

  The moon was deserted. The man in the moon had closed his eyes. Even the cow was gone. I bounded and bounced around for quite a while before I found him.

  Yes, him. Jolly Dan was alone, lying facedown in the Sea of Despondency.

  “Hey,” I said. “Where is everybody?”

  “They left.” He didn’t move.

  “Left?” I tried not to jump to any horrible conclusions. “Where did they go?”

  “How am I supposed to know?” Jolly Dan rolled onto his back and started yelling. “Ask Elvis! Your plastic friends couldn’t tear their eyes off his freakishly elongated figure, and before you can say ‘Kiss off, Jolly Dan,’ the three of them ditched me! End. Of. Story.”

  Ouch. I’d heard bad date stories before, but being left stranded on the moon kind of topped them all. “Did you guys get a chance to talk about the Faery Ball?” I asked, as delicately as I could.

  “Morganne, apparently you are only a half-listening sort of half-goddess,” Jolly Dan roared. “Yes, those cheaply manufactured bookends talked about the Faery Ball! They are absolutely determined to go to the Faery Ball! With Elvis.” He sniffed. “They were just using me to get to the elf.”

  “That’s awful,” I said, while thinking, I may have seriously underestimated those two.

  “They prefer to ‘stick together,’ they told me.” Jolly Dan flipped over again in the crater and kicked and pounded his fists on the lunar landscape, raising sad, silvery clouds of moondust everywhere. “I thought minigolf would make me seem taller,” he moaned. “But it just made Elvis look like a giant.”

  I started coughing because of the dust, and my eyes watered. I reached inside my backpack looking for tissues, but all I found were Colin’s sneakers. At the sight—or should I say, aroma—of the shoes, Jolly Dan got even more upset. Slowly he climbed to his feet.

  “I told you, I’m not making any magic shoes for your friend unless you find me a date.” His fancy new clothes were covered with dust, and there was a little leprechaun-shaped crater where he’d been laying. “And you didn’t. In fact, you messed up big time!”

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. “Meeting the right person isn’t easy. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but that doesn’t mean you stop looking—”

  “Go!” he roared. “And take that smelly footwear with you!”

  the leprechaun’s right. this was all my fault, i thought, on the long, pathetic bus ride home from the mall.

  If I were honest, I had to admit that I’d known the gnome girls were not quite right for Jolly Dan. They were the perfect size on the outside, sure, but not a good match on the inside. And the double-dating with twins idea was way too much to handle for a guy’s first attempt at a coed outing.

  I’d been so eager to get Colin’s magic shoes that I pushed for something to happen that I knew in my heart was doomed to fail. Now, because of me, Jolly Dan had been through the worst date of his life, and not just because it was the only date of this life. The Spring Faery Ball was only days away, and Colin was no closer to getting unenchanted than he was before.

  Maybe I’d left my magic mojo behind in Ireland after all.

  Or, I thought, maybe the goddess part of me was the part that had known the gnome sisters were a bad idea, and I’d been too selfish and stubborn to listen.

  When I got home, Tammy was ransacking the house looking for any empty shoebox for a school project, so I gave her the one Colin’s shoes had been in. Then I stashed his now very unlucky trainers in a plastic Lucky Lou’s bag, to contain the biohazard fumes.

  I stowed the bag under my bed. Colin’s life might be ruined by a faery enchantment that I was too much of a loser to undo, I thought miserably, but at least he’d gotten a new pair of Cons out of it.

  And Tammy got a shoebox. From the way she jumped around with joy, you’d think I’d given her a diamond tiara.

  on saturdaЧ, mЧ parents’ fragile peace treatЧ Was trashed like origami in a paper shredder when we were fined five hundred bucks by the Lawn Police. The notice was left in the mailbox quite early in the morning, in a nasty-looking envelope with the word Violation written on it in fat red marker.

  Five hundred dollars? Great, I thought, amidst all the yelling. Now I’ll never learn to drive.

  And why would we get fined now? Now, after my dad had finally packed up all his precious gnomes and hauled them away, even if he’d been less than perfectly honest with my mom about their ultimate destination?

  Because Glendryn and Drenwyn were joyously pirouetting dead center on the front lawn, that’s why. Maybe Elvis had given them a lift home—whatever had happened, the threesome date had definitely left a fresh coat of twinkle on their eyes. I was glad to see they were all right, but their display of morning-after euphoria had several not-so-euphoric consequences:

  Consequence number one: the five hundred dollar fine. I figured Dad could just take it out of the money he would now not be spending on my college tuition.

  Consequence number two: Mom stopped speaking to Dad. He swore up and down that he hadn’t put the gnomes there, but in Mom’s pissed-off universe, gnomes on the lawn were my dad’s doing. End. Of. Story. As Jolly Dan would say.

  Consequence number three: Not surprisingly, Dad was way angry at me. I’d known where the gnomes were, I’d briefly had possession of the key—I was guilty until proven innocent in his eyes. The o
nly good thing was that he couldn’t tell my mom about his suspicions, because then his whole deceitful scheme about putting the gnomes in ministorage would come to blinding, marriage-ending light.

  “Betrayed! By my own daughter! On the Ides of March!” he hissed, as he drove me to UConn for the robotics contest. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that I was in big trouble, even if the exact terms of my punishment wouldn’t be revealed until a later date.

  I hope Colin and Alice win, I thought wearily, as Dad’s furious rant droned on and on. It would be such a relief if at least one not-sucky thing happened today.

  theЧ lost.

  Correction: They came in last. Dead last, out of twelve teams. Colin had been telling the truth about lacking talent in the arts-and-crafts department. The papier mâché body he’d built using the gnome mould looked kind of dented and mutant, like a zombie toddler from an especially sick horror film. Whatever advantage he’d hoped to gain from the “anthropomorphic” presentation of their robot was instantly wiped out by the WTF expression on people’s faces when they saw it.

  As for technical performance, luck was not on their side, or maybe Colin’s mental fog had messed up his work on the programming more than he and Alice had realized. Their task was to build a robot that could maneuver around obstacles, retrieve small objects and place them in a slowly moving container with ninety percent accuracy or better. To my horror, Colin had named the robot Nike, after the “lucky trainers” he thought I’d destroyed.

  Nike did fine in the precompetition demonstration, but when the judges were watching the robot seemed to get stage fright. There were power supply failures, frozen hard drives and software malfunctions. Alice looked ready to kill, and the judges scowled and wrote copious notes on their clipboards.