“You don’t have a future unless you plan one in advance,” Abigail says.
“Well, there’s still a whole two weeks before regular applications close. And after that there’s rolling admission, so basically the amount of time I have is forever. I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was a freshman. I’m gonna savor it.”
“Okay, I think I found the one,” Hilary says, sashaying over to us in an emerald-green ball gown. She recently dyed her hair a cool blue that makes her dark eyes look even darker.
“I love it, Hil,” I say, patting one of the ruffles awkwardly. Love is maybe an exaggeration.
“Right?” She checks herself out in the mirror next to the door, and the woman behind the counter nods in approval.
“Very eighteen-hundreds chic,” the woman says with absolutely no intonation in her voice.
Hilary reaches around to check the tag. “And I can even afford it! The world isn’t always on board with your girl’s financial-aid budget, but Willa’s Closet knows how to deliver.”
“Amen to that,” I say.
“I’m just worried that we’re shopping too early,” Hilary says, moving from her reflection in the mirror to her reflection in the window because sometimes mirrors don’t tell the truth. “What if my style changes in three months?”
My eyes linger on the white dress for another second before I tear myself away. “Nothing’s gonna change in three months except we’re finally gonna be free of high school and parents and Mr. Garcia quacking at us to stop making out in the hallways.”
Abigail looks forlornly out the window of the shop. “Can you believe three months are all that’s left in senior year? Are we ever going to meet your parents before we graduate, Cham?”
“I’ve told you eight million times: They don’t really live in this universe.”
“Yeah, yeah, they’re aliens, or they work for the CIA, yadda, yadda yadda,” Abigail says. “I’m just realizing all the things we still haven’t done.”
“Don’t get too sentimental too soon,” Hilary says. “You have to save some of that for your valedictorian speech, which you will beat Josie for.” I nod distractedly, the white dress catching my eye again.
“Did you want to try it on?” the woman behind the counter asks me. She has her laptop open, and it has all sorts of stickers on it. When she gets up, I realize she’s not really a woman, she’s more of a girl, but that always confuses me. I thought I’d be a woman when I started buying tampons and face cream, but now that I’ve passed those milestones, I’m starting to think I’ll never be a woman. Or worst of all, I’ve actually been one all along.
“Here,” the woman/girl says. She jumps up into the window display and takes the dress off the mannequin. When she holds it out to me, its shoulders slump.
“That’s okay,” I say, averting my eyes from the naked mannequin totally exposing herself to the center of town. “I don’t think it’ll fit. Besides, I’m gonna pass until my boyfriend secures the deal and shows me the tickets.”
“You could ask him,” she says, with just enough judgment in her voice to piss me off. You’re a shit feminist, the line of her mouth adds.
“Nah,” I say coolly. “I asked him to officially be my boyfriend. Now it’s his turn to make a move.”
“Well, are you sure about the dress?” She holds it out to me and I notice the cup size. Grapefruits, at least. I look closer. Scratch that. Watermelons.
“It’ll never work.” I point to my chest. “Tiny-tits committee.”
Abigail comes over and hits me in the arm. “We’re being body positive, remember? It was our New Year’s resolution.”
“It’s never the new year,” I say, drifting toward the rack of shoes. There’s a pair of lace-up combat boots almost identical to the ones I’m wearing. “By the time it’s the ‘new year,’ it’s just the year.”
“Oh, shut up, Cham. I put up with so much shit from people about how fat girls can’t dance, and I just keep shaking my ass anyway.” She starts party-girling around Hilary, who laughs.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” I put the boots back and look down at my boobs. “I’m sorry for underappreciating you, my itty-bitty titties that last grew in seventh grade.” I pat the top of my bra, which always drifts away from my chest like a sailor going out on a whim.
“Good girl,” Abigail says, now shimmying in front of the mirror, and Hilary shimmies against her back too. Neither of them has any qualms about dancing in public. I stand beside them and run a hand through my dark, frizzy hair until a knot stops my fingers.
“Shouldn’t you be at dance practice anyway?” Hilary asks, turning to a rack of “special-made” denim items. How do we live in a world where recycled jeans cost more than nonrecycled jeans? “Or do you get to skip because you’re a captain?”
“It got canceled,” Abigail says, frowning at the jeans on jeans on jeans.
While she tells some story about how practice got canceled because her coach’s pug had a panic attack at doggy day care, my phone dings. I look down at it, stepping out of the way of the only shopper in the store besides us, who seems completely unfazed by the recycled-jeans scam as she piles a pair over her arm.
“It’s Gene,” I say a little too loudly. The woman looks over at me judgmentally, but it’s not my fault that seeing his name on my screen creates a little lightning storm in my belly.
“And how is Eugene Wolf?” Hilary asks in the British accent she frequently catches from a mysterious airborne virus. She tries to get her chin over my shoulder to read my text, but I clear my throat and turn from her because I try not to encourage other people’s character flaws. “He says, I have a surprise for you!” I feel a huge grin take over my face.
“There she goes,” Hilary says, crossing her eyes at me, and Abigail laughs. They call it the Cham-in-love grin, but it’s actually the Cham-in-like grin, because until Gene says it, I’m not admitting anything. There’s nothing worse than being in love with someone who’s only in like with you. Not that I know that for sure, but I’d rather not find out.
“Maybe the surprise is a prom ask?” Abigail says. She selects a few dresses from the nearby rack while I pretty much entirely lose interest in shopping.
“I hope it’s a prom ask,” I say, looking down at my phone and wondering which cute-but-chill thing to respond with. “I mean, I definitely want it to be a massive romantic gesture, but I also don’t know if I’m properly prepared for that. I need to wax my mustache before I get a surprise like that.”
“That’s so cheesy,” the woman/girl says. She’s appeared out of nowhere with a box full of hangers. She slaps her hand over her mouth. “Oops, I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
I laugh and pocket my phone. “What’s wrong with cheese? I love a good stinky blue.”
She collects more hangers from the rack and adds them to the box. Her ponytail is high on top of her head, and her big hoop earrings look like they weigh a whole personhood. She shrugs. “I’ve just never been that impressed by anything a guy has surprised me with.”