“You wear another shirt underneath it, silly. Plus, I’d get leggings. It’s cute though, right?” She took one off the rack and held it against her to check the size. “Do you think Patrick would like it?”
I hesitated. All through lunch hour that day, I’d been trying to work up the nerve to tell Dina about Patrick’s heart-shaped cookie confession. I’d even tried to broach the subject once by bringing up the fake Lyme disease and my forged signature on the card . . . both of which I’d hoped would take me up to the cookie part, but I never quite got there.
“Oh my God. I meant to tell you I signed your name,” Dina had apologized instead. “I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s just . . .” She’d paused, biting her lip nervously. “I don’t want to seem desperate when I’m flirting with him. Damien always said I was too clingy, you know?” I made a face like I thought that was the most outrageous thing I’d ever heard, but she didn’t buy it. “I know I come on strong sometimes, and that I get attached too easily. I just think Patrick is someone I could totally see myself with. Long-term, you know, even five years from now. I so don’t want to mess this up. Whatever you do, Elyse, you can’t let him know I have a crush on him, okay? I want to take it really slow so I don’t freak him out.”
I’d gulped, then nodded. Five years from now? She’d barely known Patrick a week, and already she was practically planning to marry the guy. This was way more serious than your average crush. Plus, getting her to like him had been all my idea in the first place. If I broke her heart now—and with Valentine’s Day right around the corner—she’d go back to semi-stalking Damien, and I’d officially be the crappiest friend in the whole world.
I’d eaten my cafeteria Jell-O and silently revised my plan. The best way to deal with this would be to talk to Patrick, and to be honest. Well, partly honest, anyway. I’d tell him flat-out that I wasn’t interested in him that way—that I just wanted to be neighbors; and driving instructor and student; and friends, and then I’d hope like hell that I could convince him how wonderful Dina was without actually revealing to him that she had a superbad crush on him. Simple, right? Totally.
“If I try the black, will you try the white?” Dina asked, holding a micro-mesh mini out to me, a hopeful look on her face. “Here.” She grabbed some camisoles and leggings off another rack before I could say no. “Please. I’m too chicken to try it on alone.”
Five minutes later, against my better judgment, I was wriggling out of my jeans in a cramped changing room while I listened to Dina chatter excitedly about party plans on the other side of the wall. “Mr. Goodman is donating black and white helium balloons and panda-themed paper plates. I know they’re not the most environmentally responsible choice, but they’re just so cute. And I figure we can limit it to one plate per person to minimize waste.”
“Dina,” I said anxiously. “I think we have a problem.”
“You’re right,” she sighed. “It’s still wasteful. I should probably tell him thanks, but no, right?”
“No. It’s not about the paper plates.” I stared at myself in the full-length mirror. The leggings Dina had picked out for me had to be a size double-zero—if such a thing existed. They were so short that they barely covered my knees, and so tight that my stomach bulged over the top. The camisole was even tinier. I was a reasonably thin, flattish-chested person, but even I couldn’t pull it down over my boobs properly. “The camisole is way too small. The pants are tiny, too.”
“Okay. Just gimme a sec to finish changing. I’ll go get you different ones.” I waited, shivering slightly. “What about the dress? Does it fit? Try it on over your bra, okay? That way I can get you another micromini, too, if it’s the wrong size.” I pulled the dress over my head. It fit, but that didn’t mean it looked good. For one thing, I was still wearing the tummy-bulge leggings, but that wasn’t the worst of my problems.
That morning, the laundry situation had been verging on desperate, and I’d ended up wearing my grossest-ever underwear—a super comfortable, but extra-embarrassing Christmas-themed bra and panties set covered in candy canes and little reindeer. My mom had given it to me the year before, and I’d worn it so often there were holes where the underwire had rubbed through the bra. I’d also accidentally put it in the wash a time or two or three with red towels, so the fabric was a sickish pink color. All that, plus the tiny red noses of the Rudolphs were shining brightly through the sheer white micro mesh, making it look like I had some strange boob rash.
“Do you have it on? Does it fit?” Dina asked again.
“Yeah. The dress part fits,” I said miserably.
“Just a sec, ’kay? I’ll grab you a new camisole and leggings.” While she was gone, I tried not to make direct eye contact with myself in the mirror. It was too horrifying. “That’s the only size of white camisole they’ve got,” Dina said from outside the changing room door a minute later. “And for leggings, they’ve got that, or extra large.”
“Oh darn,” I said happily. “Guess I’ll have to pass on the dress then.”
“No, wait,” Dina urged. “I want to see what it looks like on you, at least. And you have to see the black on me so I can get your honest opinion.”
“No way. Nuh-uh. Not coming out. Not ever,” I said. “Not until I change into my regular clothes. Sorry.”
“Please? Just open the door a crack. I swear, there’s nobody out here.”
“Okay, fine,” I sighed. “I’m opening the door for one second, and one second only. You aren’t allowed to laugh, and then I’m closing it again. Ready?” I pushed the changing room door open about half an inch, then half an inch more. “Oh my God, Dina,” I exclaimed, peeking through the crack. She was standing out in the open near the full-length mirror, twirling around. “That looks incredible on you.”
Her soft curves pushed the sheer black fabric out in all the right places, and the camisole and leggings made the look sexy, but not indecent.
“Do you think?”
“Definitely.” If Patrick saw her in that, convincing him to have a crush on her instead of on me would be a cinch.
“I think the zipper might be broken, though,” she said, reaching over her shoulder with one hand and fiddling with it. “It gets stuck at the top.”
“Let me see.” And that was my fatal mistake. Without even thinking, I stepped out of the changing room and walked toward her, reindeer bra on full display for the world to see.
“Come and tell me if these are too tight,” I heard someone say from the other end of the hallway. A girl was opening her changing room door. I should have recognized her voice, but I didn’t. Not right away. His voice, though, sent shivers down my spine instantly.
“Nah. Nothing’s too tight on you, according to me.”
I turned. Why? I don’t know. Probably out of shock, or stupidity. Or both.
“Elyse?” Matt Love, my ex-boyfriend, was staring directly at me. No, correction: Matt Love, my ex-boyfriend, was staring directly at my Rudolphs. I froze, blinking at him like a reindeer in the headlights. Then I came to my senses and crossed my arms awkwardly over my chest.
I hadn’t seen Matt in nearly eight months, since last June, when tenth grade finished for the summer. After that, I’d begged my mom to let me enroll early at Sir Walter Scott High in the neighborhood we were planning to move to. But even though it had been a long time, besides the fact that his hair was a bit longer at the sides and he was wearing a T-shirt I didn’t recognize, he didn’t look all that different. Matt Love smiled at me—that same slow, slightly crooked smile I remembered—and my heart started hammering with a mixture of panic and fury, the same way it used to when I’d pass him in the halls at my old school after that fateful February 14. “How’s it going?”
Before I had time to answer, my former best friend Tabby stepped out of her changing room in a pair of white, skintight jeans. All of her attention was focused on Matt Love as she pranced in front of him, shaking her butt. “What do you think?” She took both his hands in hers and wrapp
ed his arms around her waist from behind, pressing her body against his and leaning back. She tipped her head to look into his eyes, and that was when she noticed the distracted look on his face. She followed his gaze. “Elyse?!” she exclaimed, hugging Matt’s arms even more tightly around her. Her voice had a fake-friendly tone that made my stomach lurch. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here,” I said numbly.
“At American Apparel? Seriously?”
I didn’t answer. Just because I’d moved to another school, and just because nearly a year had passed, it didn’t change the way I felt about her. I had nothing to say.
“Hey, do you get discounts?” she asked.
Tabby, while once fun to hang out with, had never been the brightest person on earth. Did she honestly think I’d be wearing a see-through dress over supertight leggings and a reindeer bra if I was working a shift there? And even if I did work there, did she truly believe I’d be buying her skanky jeans with my employee discount after she stole my boyfriend and stabbed me in the back?
“Yeah,” I said, looking at her squarely. “I get an awesome employee discount. Forty percent.” Then I turned, marched into the changing room, and slammed the door so hard the mirrors shook. I hugged my arms around myself and pressed my back into the corner, closing my eyes tightly against the tears that were threatening to start flowing.
Outside in the hallway, I could hear Tabby and Matt talking.
“God! Hold a grudge much?” Tabby was saying. “If I had a forty percent employee discount, I’d totally offer to buy her stuff. I mean, we used to be friends. I used to do everything for her.”
“Let it go.” Matt tried to soothe her. “She really liked me, okay? She’s just still pissed about what happened.”
“That was ages ago. It’s been, like, almost an entire year.” They were close enough that I could hear the sound of Tabby’s gum squishing between her teeth. “But I guess some people never get over stuff.” She sighed, then seemed to brighten. “Oh my God, though. That just made me realize. Can you even believe it, Matty? We’ve been together almost an entire year. I’m getting these. They look hot, right? I’m totally going to wear them on our anniversary.” I bit hard on my bottom lip to keep a sob from escaping. A few seconds later, I heard the sound of her changing room door closing.
“Elyse?” Dina whispered from the hallway. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t risk opening my mouth. I was determined that Matt Love was not going to hear my voice crack. Tabby was not going to know she’d made me cry. Another door closed. “Elyse?” I heard the whisper again, this time near my feet. I jumped. There was Dina’s face, sticking through the gap underneath the partition between our two changing rooms. “Are you okay?”
The tears started running down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop them. “Elyse,” she whispered again. “I’m coming over.” If I hadn’t been so totally destroyed, I might even have laughed. Instead of standing up and coming through the door, like a normal person might have, Dina pushed her head all the way through the gap, then wriggled her shoulders frantically until they somehow slid through. The rest of her body followed more easily, but it still wasn’t pretty—especially considering how small both changing rooms were, and the fact that she was wearing a see-through minidress.
Finally, she pushed herself to her feet and put her arms around me. She didn’t ask a single question while I cried, soaking the barely existent fabric covering her shoulder.
We stood there, huddled in the corner, until we heard the changing room door opening and closing again, and Matt’s and Tabby’s voices receding down the hallway toward the cash.
Dina stepped back and brushed a strand of tear-soaked hair off my cheek.
“Sorry. Those people were—” I started to explain, but the words got choked off by my sobs.
“Matt Love, right? And Tabby? Your ex and your former best friend.” I nodded. “Yeah. I figured. Assholes,” she muttered under her breath.
Hearing sweet, sensitive Dina use a swear word caught me so off guard that I actually stopped crying for a second.
“What?” she said, looking at me indignantly. “They are! I’m sorry, but you don’t treat a friend that way. And you definitely, definitely don’t do that to someone you claim to love. Come on,” she said, moving another chunk of tear-soaked hair off my face. “Get changed. I’ll go out first to make sure the coast is clear.” I nodded and she lay down on the floor, starting to rewriggle into her own changing room, feet first.
“Dina?” I said. She stopped and looked up. There were so many things I wanted to say to her right then. “Thank you” was near the top of the list. And “I promise I’ll never do something like that to you” was a close second. But she looked so worried, and going all schmoopy on her wasn’t going to help matters—which probably explains why my first instinct was to make a joke. Something to let her know I was going to be all right. “Please don’t make me buy this dress, okay?” She smiled, clearly relieved.
“Yeah,” she admitted, looking up from the floor. “That’s maybe not the best look for you.”
“You think?” I said, sniffing. I stuck out my reindeer boobs and looked in the mirror. “It’s festive.”
She laughed. Then her head disappeared underneath the partition again. I looked in the mirror and wiped at my cheeks with the back of my hand. Strangely enough, I was feeling better now. A lot better. I mean, yeah, I was still sad about what had happened with Matt Love last year. I still had no intention of opening up my heart to that kind of hurt again, but when it came to Tabby, I suddenly didn’t care anymore. So what if we weren’t friends? She’d been kind of crazy and fun to hang out with—always up on the latest gossip about who liked who and which teachers secretly smoked behind the football field—but the truth was, she was mean. She’d always been mean. In a lot of ways, she’d never really been much of a friend to begin with.
“I’m not getting this dress either,” Dina said from the other side of the wall. “It looks awful.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “It makes me look like a sausage link. But on you, it looks amazing. You should get it.”
“It so doesn’t make you look like a sausage link,” she said, but she hesitated a second too long before saying it. “Okay. So it does look a little bit terrible on you,” she admitted, “but it’s still better than Miss Thing’s tight jeans. Did you see her butt in those?” Dina whispered. “It was so flat you couldn’t tell if she was walking backward or forward.”
“Dina!” I whispered back. My jaw dropped.
“I’m serious though.” She changed the subject. “I’m not getting this dress.” I heard her changing room door open. “It’s got bad associations now. If I wear this to the party, all you’re going to think about is Matt Love and Pancake Butt. I’ll find something else.” I heard the clink of the metal hanger against the rejects rack as she hung it up.
“Dina, honestly,” I started, “you should get it.” But she didn’t hear me. She’d already gone out into the store to make sure Matt and Tabby had left.
Dina Marino, I thought—as I yanked my jeans up and put the horrific transparent dress back on its hanger—sweet, loyal, loving, passionate about the things she believed in, and surprisingly catty when the moment called for it. Now that was a true friend.
Chapter 9
Because of the whole terrible Matt Love/see-through dress episode, we ended up being almost ten minutes late for our shift. Mr. Goodman was pacing the floor in the day-planner section when we got there, obviously annoyed about the fact that his dinner was at home getting cold.
“Girls,” he said. “If you need help remembering what time your shift begins, might I remind you that we carry a wide selection of planners and agendas.”
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Goodman,” I said, taking my name tag out of my backpack and pinning it on.
“It was my fault,” Dina cut in. I shot her a look. “My, um, watch battery died.” I glanced at her wrist. She wasn’t wearing a watch. Thankfully
Mr. Goodman either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“Do your best to keep it from happening again,” he said. “That’s all I ask. In any case”—he walked to the cash and we followed—“you can make it up to me. Sales are still slow.” He patted Cupid’s head. “So I’m starting a new incentive program for staff. For every ten new customers you sign up for the customer loyalty card between now and Valentine’s Day, I’ll add fifty dollars to your paychecks.” Our eyes went wide. Fifty dollars was a lot of money, considering we only made minimum wage.
By the time Mr. Goodman left two minutes later, Dina had already done the do-gooder math in her head. “You realize if we sign up a hundred people, and add that money to what we collect at the party, we’ll be able to sponsor two pandas. A hundred people is nothing. That’s just twelve or thirteen people per shift. We can totally do that!” My head was still achy from crying in the dressing room. My heart still felt heavy. I had a hard time sharing her enthusiasm and—honestly—if I had an extra fifty bucks, I wanted to spend it on a really good blond wig. That way, I could disguise myself at work and never risk Matt or Tabby spotting me at the mall again. . . . But Dina looked so optimistic. And after she’d been there for me at American Apparel, I didn’t want to let her down.
“We’ll have to be aggressive though,” she went on. “We can’t just sit back.”
I nodded vaguely, then slit open the packing tape on a box of merchandise Mr. Goodman had left us to shelve. Inside were mini boxes of heart-shaped chocolates with love propaganda written on them in pink bubble letters: You complete me. Be mine always. I adore you. Seriously, I didn’t know if I could take nine more days of this. It was beyond cruel when even my favorite food reminded me how broken my heart was.
I tried to count off the boxes against the packing slip, but I was also eyeing the entryway to make sure Matt Love and Tabby weren’t about to walk in, staring smushily into each other’s eyes. I kept getting my numbers screwed up.
Rhymes with Cupid Page 8
