Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson

Author:Laurie Halse Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

85.

Somewhere in America there was a girl who had nobody. No mother getting buzzed on chocolate doughnuts and secondhand smoke. No aunts who kept their prom dresses twenty years too long. No relatives or friends of relatives or neighbors of relatives who heard that the girl was going to a prom and had a sister whose daughter went last year and I’m sure we could borrow the gown, because you never know, it could fit.

I hoped that girl knew how lucky she was.

86.

The first dress I was handed came from somebody named Stacey Wiggans, whose mother worked with Aunt Joan. I never met Stacey Wiggans, but I’ll know her if I see her on the street. She has boobs the size of Alaska.

I zipped it up and stepped into the living room. Ma took one look and said, “I can see all the way to your belly button. Take it off.”

Aunt Linny handed me something black and velvet. “Try this.”

“Black is for funerals,” I said.

“Black is sophisticated; don’t argue.”

I took off the Stacey Wiggans Big Boob Special and shim mied into the black dress.

“Ta-da!”

Aunt Joan snorted smoke out her nose. Ma cracked up. “Okay, sophisticated you’re not. Next.”

Next was a blue polka-dot disaster, then came something that looked like a bedspread, then a gold shimmery thing that wouldn’t go over my hips, and then a dark purple beaded strapless that was pretty except that it fell down every time I raised my arms.

“Again with the boobs,” sighed Aunt Sharon.

A black dress with white stripes around the hem made me look like a lounge singer. The brown and gold thing made me look like a stripper. The pink one that came with matching gloves reminded me too much of a confirmation dress. There were two skintight dresses that looked like mermaid costumes, without the tails. I refused to touch Aunt Joan’s collection from the seventies. You looked at the dresses and you thought “bonfire.”

Ma unzipped a garment bag. “This one,” she said. “The color is right for you.”

She was right. It was a soft shade of dark green, the color of the leaves in the park when the sun is going down. The fabric was lightweight velvet. I stepped into it and held my breath as I worked it up over my thighs (should not have eaten ice cream for the last month) and my butt (too much pizza). It was tight, sexy tight.

“Turn around,” Ma said. “Let me zip you.”

I pushed all the air out of my lungs and pretended I had a twenty-three-inch waist.

Ma zipped. “Suck it in.”

“It is sucked in.”

She pulled the zipper up a little farther.

“Smush your ribs together.”

“What?”

She grunted and zipped me all the way up.

“It’s a little tight,” I squeaked.

“You’ll lose weight,” Ma said. “Turn around.”

“Ooooooooh,” said the aunts.

“This is definitely the one, honey,” Ma said.

I looked down. The dress fit like green velvet skin. I had a waist and hips and boobs, and it didn’t show the fat on the tops of my thighs that I hate more than anything, even my freckles.

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