I blink.
“Shadowhunters?”
I shake my head.
Levi buries his head in his hands, Aaron groans.
“Cultural philistine,” Gwen says, grinning. “I’ll let you borrow the books, if you want.” Then she points at a lilac-colored piece of material covering her entire desk. “Here, I’ve been working on this the last couple of days.” She presses a lever on her sewing machine so that the needle moves upward and pulls the fabric out from underneath. It’s a dress. For her program. Gwen’s face is glowing with pride as she holds it out under my nose. “Nice, right?”
More than that. The straps lead in an elegant herringbone pattern into a perfect neckline that only just covers the cleavage and frames the completely open back.
“My God, Gwen! You sewed this yourself?” I take a few steps forward and run my fingers over the ruffles. “It must’ve taken you ages for the sequins!”
“Show her the bow,” Aaron says, and Gwen turns the dress over. At the lower back the herringbone pattern shifts and becomes a delicate bow.
“This isn’t a dress for a program; this is a party dress for Kate Middleton.”
Gwen laughs and punches my shoulder. “Kate Middleton’s eyes are brown. That would never match.”
“Your eyes are brown, too.”
“Yeah, it’s not for me.” She pushes the dress against my chest and jumps up and down twice. “Do it, try it on!”
“You made thisfor me?” I can hardly breathe. Really. The last time I received a gift was in kindergarten. Josephine Hangster didn’tlike her Tater Tots and nudged them onto my plate. “Gwen, this is…too nice. I can’t…”
“You can. Mine’s been ready for weeks already, and if you don’t wear it it’ll just rot away in my closet.”
“On top of it, we can’t let you go out on the ice in your training dress tonight,” Levi says. He says the word “training dress” with a rumpled nose, as if it had to do with the lice that Josephine Hangster found on my head after giving me her tots. I close my eyes a moment to collect myself, suddenly everything’s just a bit too much for me. Although it’s just a dress, it means the world to me.
“Thank you, Gwen. Really, thank you.”
She shrugs as if it were nothing. As if it were normal. Maybe it is now.Normal. The idea that my life could simply be normal triggers a tingling feeling in my body; “normal” is the most beautiful word you can use. It wasn’t clear to me how much I had missed, how much Ineededto have friends. From the moment I took off, I’ve been a castle with thick walls. Secure. But lonely. Levi, Aaron, and Gwen pulled me out. It’s nice out here. Frightening sometimes, but beautiful.
I pull the dress on, twirl around in a circle. Levi whistles and Aaron says, “Shit, Paisley. If I wasn’t gay, I’d eat you up.”
Gwen falls onto her desk chair. She’s wearing thick Frodo socks, really, his face is everywhere, and pushes off the ground with them to spin in circles. Then she says, “If you ate her up, Aaron, you’d have a big problem.”
He runs a finger down the freckles on his arm. “Why?”
“Because Knox is into her,” Levi and Gwen say in unison. They look at each other, the corner of Levi’s mouth curls in amusement and Gwen laughs in her way, which always sounds a little bit like a pig’s grunt.
“Can we please not talk about Knox?” Pulling my wool sweater over my head, my voice comes out muffled. A week from now it’s Christmas Eve, and today Aspen’s Christmas party is taking place atSilver Lake. Those of us from iSkate are showing a selection from the programs we’ll perform at Skate America. It’s a tradition.
“Why not?” Gwen takes a step toward me in her Frodo socks. “I thought you two got along?”
I mutter something incomprehensible and hope that the issue is now closed, but of course it isn’t.
Gwen covers her mouth with her hand and makes a weird movement, which causes a chair caster to bang into her rabbit cage and makes her wobble dangerously for a second. Bing Crosby flattens his ears and crawls into his little house.
“You slept with him!” she shrieks.
“God, no! Why do you always think that?”
“It’s Knox, Paisley.” Levi wipes his dark bangs off his forehead, slides across the floor to the cage, and tries to lure Bing Crosby out of his house with odd squeaks. I think it’s more disturbing to the little guy than Gwen’s attack with the chair. Levi gives up and looks back at me. “Ieven find him hot, and I think ninety-nine percent of female tourists come here in the hopes of running into him.”
“And hauling him off.”
“I’m not one of the ninety-nine percent of tourists. Hey, can I use this to mend my legwarmers?” I grab a ball of gray wool out of Gwen’s basket and lift it into the air. Gwen nods, hands me a needle, and says, “Something happened between you two. And I want to know what.”
