“Try it on.” She shoves me into a changing room just as Laney comes out of hers in a glittery sapphire number.
The same model hangs from my finger. No way am I even trying it on now. Attending school dances dressed identically is social suicide. A couple of years ago, a popular senior demanded that another girl go home to change.
I close the curtain and try option one first—a white dress with feathers sewn into the short hem.
Rae scrunches up her nose. “You look like you fought with a swan, and it won.”
Mel smirks. “I think it’s great.”
Like I’d ever takeherword.
I return to the changing room, yank off the dress, and pull on the leopard print.
Rae whistles when I exit. “Sexy.”
“You don’t think the print’s a little loud?”
“I love the split skirt,” Laney says. “You have such great legs.”
Rae checks out my legs as though she hasn’t seen them a million times before. “It’s from all her dancing.”
“I used to dance,” Laney says. “Ballet. What sort of dancing do you do?”
“Mostly modern. I have an amazing teacher,” I offer.
As I tell Laney about Steffi, Rae scrutinizes my dress. “It’s missin’ something.”
Barefoot in her burgundy gown, she traipses through the aisles of clothes, stopping at a display of accessories. She returns holding a wide black belt and a hot-pink glass necklace. As I fasten the belt around my waist, she hooks the necklace around my neck, the burst of color taming the print.
“You’d make such a great stylist,” Mel says, admiring Rae’s work.
“She’ll make an even better cardiologist,” I volley back.
“Cardiologist?” Mel’s nasal voice sounds uncharacteristically high-pitched.
Laney cocks one of her black eyebrows up. “Is that what you want to do, Rae?”
I’m secretly pleased neither of them knew this.
“That’s the dream. But I need the grades.”
“You already have them,” I say.
“Actually, I’m sliding in math. I was thinking of askin’ Ten to tutor me.”
As though bees were poking me with their stingers, my skin begins to burn. “Why would you ask him?”
Rae gathers her blonde hair in her fist and rolls it up, holding it atopher head, then lets it unravel. “Mrs. Larue commended his math skills and thought it could help him fit in if he tutored one of his peers. Her words, obviously. Not mine. And then she told me that the Buddha once said,Helping one person might not change the world, but it could change the world for one person.”
I toy with the belt that feels as though it girdles my lungs instead of my waist. “The year just started. How can she even know if Ten’s all that good in calculus?”
A smile curves Melody’s berry-lip-balmed mouth. “Is someone jealous?”
“I don’t care about being the best student,” I shoot back.
“I don’t think she was talking about grades,” Laney says softly.
I can feel Rae watching me but don’t meet her gaze. Instead I look around the store. By a mannequin stands a girl in oversized sweats and a baseball cap.
