I grab my black dress and head to the fitting room, slamming the door behind me. I don’t want to think about what she said. I clamp my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut.
Sammi is standing outside the door apologizing. And I know she’s right because everything she says is what I’m already thinking. But it’s also what I don’t want to admit to myself.
“Come out once you have the dress on,” she says, and hollers that she’s in a dressing room just a few doors down.
I hate looking at myself in the mirror now. My purple bra, so damaged and affected. It’s the bra I was wearing that night and I’ve been avoiding it for so long. Now I wish I hadn’t worn it. I take it off and stuff it under the bench. I wonder if other people like me feel like they need all new clothes.
Sammi’s head pops under the bottom of the dressing room door.
“You’re like a dreamy witch girl,” she says. Her eyes sparkling.
“Get off the floor, you loser.”
I open the door and she gets up. She’s wearing a teal knee-length dress with a short cape. Her fists on her hips. Looks up at the sky.
“You’re fucking Captain Marvel.”
She shakes her hair out. She’s so pretty. A different pretty than Blythe. A different pretty than Donnie. They’re like a perfect pretty—the kind of girls who don’t look damaged. The kind of girls who can keep all their secrets on the inside. All their pain.
I pull out my phone. Tell her to pose against the door.
“Don’t post this, Ali. I swear—I will hurt you.”
“No, it’s just that I haven’t collaged in a while. And I want to make some different pictures. Pictures of people that I, you know, love. And who, uh . . . love me back.”
Sammi stands super close to me. “Can I hand-hug you?”
“Oh my God, Sammi.”
“I didn’t want to seem cheesy just straight-up hugging you.”
“Hand-hug is fine.”
She takes my hand and we cup each other’s fingers. We look nothing alike, but sometimes when I stare at her, like now, I feel like she and I are the same person.
“Hand-hug over,” she says. “It’s time to play dress-up.” Like we did when we were younger. Until I gave away all my glittery princess dresses. Told my dad to give them to the babies next door. His face, devastated. It’s weird to want to be little again, but I wish I could go backward.
Sammi lifts her cape and tears out of the dressing room, down the aisle of the store.
The woman behind the counter stares at us. She has silver hair slicked back in a small ponytail. Red lips. Catcus and bird tattoos up her arm.
“That cape dress is my favorite. What’s it for?” she says.
“School dance.”
“Those are some cool dresses for a school dance,” she says.
Sammi and I smile at each other. She takes my hand and twists me around. My black chiffon dress, her pink cape.
The woman flips to a song on her phone. “Here. Try this,” she says. “The B-52s.”
The song starts with one person banging on a high key of a keyboard. A woman sings out in breathless pain, talking to her ex. She begs him: think about how we talked when we were in love, right before you broke my heart.
Then she screams the next lyrics with the kind of heartache that comes from deep within. I’ve never heard anything like it. Except I have. I’ve heard it because it sounds like me.
Why don’t you dance with me?
I’m not no Limburger.
I don’t know what a Limburger is, but I think she’s screaming, “No. You can’t do this to me. What makes you think you can do this to me?”
23
BLYTHE
My mother scoots me through the first floor of Bergdorf, where the white walls are lined with glass cases filled with colorful purses. The high ceilings, the marble floors, and the enormous crystal chandeliers make it look like someone’s Parisian apartment. No. More like their massive walk-in closet inside their Parisian apartment.
We take the elevator to where the gowns and dresses are. They’re not as much for sale as they’re on display. This is a fashion museum, not a store. And there are stores within stores, tiny spaces and hallways filled with velvet couches and rows of gold shoes and masks and paintings. I go to a mirrored spot with a few dresses hanging and get a good glance at myself, because if you’re not staring at yourself in this store, then are you even here?
And I pull out a nude dress. Floral embellished with sequins and beads.
“Pick something with confidence. Something that’ll stand out. You don’t need to blend in, Blythe.”
“I have plenty of confidence.”
“Really? Because that dress says insecurity.”
“Jesus, Mom.”
“I’m just being honest,” she says.
Before I can escape, a sales rep named Blanche wraps her arm around my waist, fawning over my hair and my height. “Is this for the Bal Des Debutantes? We have the most gorgeous gowns that don’t fit any of these short girls who come in here wishing they were Gisele. Oh my, darling, you are a dream come true. Stunning. Absolutely stunning. I want to cover you in seafoam and strut you down the aisle.”
“It’s for a school dance.”
“A dance? In Manhattan?”
“No. New Jersey.”
Her face is stricken. How I’ve disappointed her. That I’m not a debutante. Just a schoolgirl from New Jersey going to a dance in her gym. I know, I want to say, to comfort her. I feel the same way.
“I’m just getting ideas,” I say.
“Okay, because if money is an issue—”
“Money is not an issue,” my mother says, jumping down the woman’s throat. Because God forbid we appeared like we had no money. It’s all about appearance. No mental illness. No credit cards with $30,000 in charges. No rehabs or