I gaped.And then I finally said, “Why do I talk to you two?Never mind.Where’s Indira?Because I amnotasking my parents for two hundred bucks.”
Keme snorted.Then he locked eyes with Millie.
Millie beamed at me.“Don’t worry, Dash.I’ll fix it.”
“Uh, no, that’s not necessary—”
But she was already making her way down the hall, checking her hair as she passed a tarnished old mirror, adjusting one sleeve, and then, as we watched, fiddling with the waistband of her dress.The hem suddenly shot up about six inches.
And let me tell you: that girl didn’t have six inches to spare.
The best word for the sound that fell out of my mouth was “Uhhhhhhh.”
“OH MY GOD!HI, ROBBY!”
The DJ—shellshocked, but somehow still on his feet—said something (probably that his namewasn’tRobby).Millie laughed and said something I couldn’t hear (a first), and then Robby laughed.And then Millie put her hand on his arm, steadying herself as she fixed her shoe, and Robby got an eyeful of that, and then Millie was done fixing her shoe, but her hand stayed on Robby’s arm, and Robby’s face was turning pink, and he was looking at Millie the way an unsavory acquaintance of mine (Ozzy, who had been the absolute grossest in middle school) had looked at the page of the Kmart shopping circular he kept in his backpack.(It was the bra page, in case you couldn’t figure that out.)
“So,” I said tentatively.“Are you, like, going to fight him?”
The look on Keme’s face suggested that, at least in some ways, he was infinitely more mature than I was.Which was reinforced by his despairing mutter: “Dude, grow up.”
Millie waltzed back to us, a smile glowing on her face.“All set!Dash, did I ever tell you about the wedding where my Aunt Sally fell down the stairs, and then she had to explain to everyone why she forgot to wear her bloomers?”
4
True to Indira’s prediction (er, witchcraft?), the weather was perfect.The guests moved outside to take their seats.Music began to play.Bobby and I had planned our entrance so that we’d approach from separate sides of the house, which meant that, for the first time in forever (at least, according to my increasingly blurry memory), I was alone.On my wedding day.
The whole day, I’d been fine.For weeks and months, as we’d been planning this, I’d been totally normal.(At least, as normal as I ever got.)
And now, alone in the den, I went from pacing, to collapsing into my favorite chair, to jumping up to pace again.My legs felt like they had the structural integrity of Indira’s sponge cake.My stomach alternated between clenching until it felt like I needed to rush to the bathroom, and then—presumably in a fit of fancy—turning into this billowing, fluttering mass that rose up into my lungs and made it hard to breathe.
There were people out there.
There were so.many.people.
Waiting for me.
And they’d be watching me.
And what if I screwed up?
There were a thousand different ways I could absolutely botch things.What if I did it wrong?(Whateveritwas.) What if I forgot what I was supposed to say?Or I said the wrong thing?What if I dropped the ring?What if this was all a trap, and I saidI do, and then Bobby ripped off his mask and was actually Hugo?(Not likely, I know, but I pride myself on being anxious about even the most exotic possibilities.) We were getting married outside.What if a bee flew right at me when I was trying to say my vows?Or I got struck by lightning?Or I fell off the cliff?(The beauty of a brain like mine is that literallyanythingis possible.)
My stomach clenched again, and another possibility occurred to me (I’d definitely take falling off a cliff over anything, uh, bathroom related), when I heard a familiar voice say a word that you can only put on a wedding cake if you’re getting hitched in Vegas.
I pushed out into the hall.
Keme was kneeling in the hall, his head buried in a Victorian commode (it’s not what you think, and Ihatecalling it that).He said a few more of those words—let me tell you, you would definitely have to pay extra to have somebody put it all in those neat frosted letters—and dragged himself out of the commode.He slapped the lid and half-shouted, “Where the fudge are you?”
(Er.)
“Everything okay?”I asked.
I expected a glare (probably set to level seven: immolation.) Instead, Keme stiffened and—the movement quick and automatic—ran a hand across his eyes.When he finally did look at me, they were still wet, although it looked like he was trying to cover up that fact by being annoyed with, well, me.
“You need to go outside,” he said, getting to his feet.“It’s almost time.”
“We’ve got a few minutes.”
