Girls in White Dresses

every part of her relationship with Matt until it wasn’t hers anymore. She would do it, but just not yet.

“We can stil live together,” Matt said, after he told her about the wedding.

“No,” Abby said. “No, we can’t.”

Abby’s parents didn’t have cable, so she watched old movies until she thought she could fal asleep. She read the books that were left in her room: Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, A Day No Pigs Would Die , and Bridge to Terabithia . She didn’t remember them being so sad. They were al so sad.

Abby didn’t want her mind to be free for even a second. Because when it was, she heard Matt saying, “Abby, I don’t know about the wedding.”

“What don’t you know?” she asked him.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” he said. He didn’t even sound mean when he said it. Actual y, he sounded nice and a little apologetic. Like he was sorry for what he was doing. Like he was sorry for ruining her life.

When she didn’t feel like reading anymore, she wrote. She made lists of things to do when she got back to the city. A list of things to buy for the apartment now that Matt was gone. A list of shows that she could watch now that he wasn’t there. She wrote down names of people who had been through worse things than this: her aunt Eda, the war widow; her friend Crystal, whose parents were kil ed in a car crash; Helen Kel er; Baby Jessica.

When she tried to go to sleep, her head was fil ed with the weird things people had said to her. She lay and listened to them, and then final y she got up to write them down. She thought maybe if she got them on paper, they would stop bothering her. She got out a pad of paper. The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds, she wrote. Then, I won’t drink the Kool-Aid. Then, It’s a more humane way to kill birds. Then, We can still live together. Then, I’m not getting married. She read these over again and again, until the sentences didn’t mean anything. Then she closed her eyes and fel asleep.

Abby woke up to the sound of a child screaming and sat up in bed with her heart pounding. She’d been having a nightmare, but she couldn’t remember what it was about. She walked downstairs, and found her mom peering out the kitchen window.

“It’s the peacock,” she said, without turning around. “He’s been getting noisier. One of the peahens is sick, and we think he’s upset.”

The peacock bleated and bobbed around the pen, and the peahens fol owed. One of the peahens was slower than the other one, and she limped as she tried to keep up.

“Why is she fol owing him like that?” Abby asked. “Why doesn’t she just take care of herself?” It made her angry, that stupid fucking bird, using al of her strength to waddle after him.

Her mom shrugged. “If we knew that,” she said, “we could solve al the mysteries in the world.”

Abby watched the peacock raise his feathers, and they were beautiful. The peahens raised their feathers too, but they were shorter and not nearly as magnificent, which seemed unfair. The peahens waddled around, fol owing the peacock wherever he went. He couldn’t see in the night, so he wandered aimlessly in the pen. Go the other way, she wanted to scream at the gimpy peahen. Stop worrying about where he’s going and just rest.

It seemed to Abby that the peacock was strutting, showing off his feathers to an invisible audience in the night. It didn’t look like he was worried about the peahen. He looked selfish and self-absorbed, like he knew he was beautiful. Abby watched his feathers blow in the wind, and she watched as the peahens fol owed with al of their strength. They fol owed because it was al they had ever done; they fol owed because it was al they knew how to do.

W hen Isabela waitressed in colege, she saw customers come in for blind dates al the time. “Has a man named Stuart come in yet?” they would ask. Or “Is there someone here who’s waiting for a Jessica?” When Isabel a would shake her head, they would look around nervously. “I’m meeting someone,” they would explain, and she would nod. “Someone,” Isabel a would think. “Someone that you don’t know.”

Isabel a always felt bad for these people, wandering into a restaurant, looking for something but not knowing what it was. “How sad,” she always thought to herself. “How sad and a little pathetic.” She remembered this as she agreed to go on her first blind date. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,”

she said to Lauren.

“You promised,” Lauren said. “You have to.”

It was the summer of yes—that’s what Isabel a and Lauren decided. “We’re going to say yes to every invitation that comes our way,” they told each other. “We’re going to be positive, and put positive energy out there, and then we wil meet someone.”

Mary decided that she would be a spectator for the summer of yes. She was studying for the bar exam and made it clear that she couldn’t say yes to anything. “I’m going to have to pass,” she said. “But I total y support you guys.”

“You think we’re crazy, don’t you?” Lauren asked.

“Maybe a little,” Mary said. “But it can’t hurt to say yes, can it? Plus, if you get Isabel a to go on a date, then it wil al be worth it.”

“That’s what I was thinking!” Lauren said.

“You guys, I’m right here,” Isabel a said.