Amelia Unabridged by Ashley Schumacher

Author:Ashley Schumacher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

The hot water feels supernaturally good. I massage shampoo into my scalp until my hair is so sleek my fingers can make squeaky noises against it. There are about ten different jewel-tone bottles of body wash on a copper-colored rack in the corner and I settle on one that smells like vanilla and sugar. It smells a bit like Jenna’s perfume, but I don’t mind.

Jenna was always trying to get me to dress up more. She took me on back-to-school shopping trips at the mall under the guise of going to the big chain bookstore, only to steer me to clothing boutiques.

“Try this one thing,” she would say, before shoving me into a dressing room. “Just the one, I promise.”

She never offered to pinky promise. It would have been a lie. Once she had me trapped in the fitting room, hanger after hanger of gauzy blouses, linen pants, and rompers with lace trim would form a chic barricade on the door, keeping me locked inside. Most of the time, this ended in me throwing a fit until she relented.

“Why do you hate it so much?” she asked once. “The clothes thing?”

She was appeasing me, post-tantrum, by letting me roam the electronics store with the fun gadgets everyone wanted to try but never bought. I slowly put the Bluetooth-compatible race car back on the display shelf to buy myself some time to answer.

It was a multifaceted creature, my hatred of clothes. It had been around since elementary school, when the other girls would have new pink jackets at the beginning of every school year while I was stuck with whatever Mom found in the clearance section. We’d always been lower income. I hated that you could tell by looking at my clothes.

How could I explain to my beautiful, fearless fashionista Jenna that her elegance and grace intimidated the hell out of me? You could put us in the exact same outfit, down to the socks, and she would look like she belonged while I would look like a kid trying on her wealthy cousin’s clothes. The Williamses always looked like a family in a catalog, even on the rare occasion you glimpsed them in their pajamas, all silken pants and button-up tops. They were willing to include me in their catalog spread, they wanted to, but it felt like another line that shouldn’t be crossed.

And when I looked at Jenna’s chosen outfit of the day—a ruffled red miniskirt and off-the-shoulder blue-and-white-striped top paired with strappy sandals—I wanted to cry.

“It’s not who I get to be,” I finally told her. “Maybe later it will, but right now it just feels … fake.”

Jenna didn’t miss a beat. “So? Fake it until you make it, right?”

“No,” I say. “No, it … it feels dishonest. Like I’m tricking people into thinking I’m something I’m not.”

But when I emerge from the shower and slip Valerie’s blue dress over my head, my hair wet and slicked back behind my ears, I feel more like myself than I have in weeks.

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