Dating on the Dork Side

Chapter 9-2

“It’s not even your size,” I told her as the chime over the door jangled.

“Of course it is.”

Maybe Clarissa didn’t expect someone to snatch the dress away from her. Maybe she didn’t expect me to. Maybe that was why the satin slid through her grip so easily. I was halfway to the cash register before she called out, “Hey!”

“I’d like to buy this dress,” I said.

I shoved the blob of blue satin at the girl behind the register. Her eyes got huge. Not that I blamed her. I was still wearing the blue cream puff, after all. And I was trying to buy a dress I hadn’t even tried on with … my cell phone. My bag and my wallet were back in the dressing room.

“It’s mine.” Clarissa’s fingers crumpled a handful of dress, but I held on tight.

“You can’t have this dress,” I said. “You already did that.”

From across the room, Tillie’s voice sang out, “Lovely to look at, delightful to hold, but if you rip it, consider it sold.”

For a second, my gaze locked with Clarissa’s, and for a second, I thought we both might roll our eyes at that.

“Oh, please.” Clarissa’s tone went nasty. “You know you’re a joke, right? It’s the only reason you were even voted in. Just so people will have something to laugh about. So why don’t you make it a little less embarrassing for yourself? Give it up. Quit the court, just like your skanky friend.”

“I guess there’s only room on the court for one skank,” Rhino said. “What was it Aiden said? Something about the girl most likely to …?”

At that moment, Mercedes burst onto the sales floor. She was holding my wallet in her hand. “Rhino said you were going to buy the hoop! Wow, Camy, you really are radical!”

Clarissa shot both Mercedes and Rhino a death glare. I shoved my credit card at the poor girl behind the register, then turned to look for Sophie.

She was gone.

The moment the charge went through, I gathered the dress in my arms, tore off the price tag, and threw the whole thing over Rhino’s shoulder.

“Run. Find her. Please? I would.” I glanced down at the hoop. “But I’m not getting very far in this.”

He took forever picking his way through the bridesmaid dresses, but the second his feet hit the sidewalk, Rhino broke into a sprint and vanished from sight.

The girl at the register pushed a slip of paper toward me. “You need to sign,” she said. Then she took a step back, like she was afraid I might bite her. So I took the pen and signed. I had bought a dress that wasn’t mine, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Clarissa’s. If Rhino couldn’t catch Sophie, the dress might not belong to anyone.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Clarissa said.

Neither could I. Neither, I was betting, would Dad when I had to tell him I’d bought a dress with the emergency credit card, and it wasn’t my dress. Instead of answering Clarissa, I turned to Mercedes.

“Thanks,” I told her, “but I’m not buying the hoop. I’m not that radical.”

“Yeah, thanks, Mercedes,” Clarissa added loudly. She crossed her arms over her chest. “You know what?” She spat the words at the salesgirl. “Thank you too. Thank you for reminding me that I didn’t want to shop in this stupid store in this stupid town anyway.”

A loud “shhh” came from Elle’s corner. She twisted around, hitting Clarissa with a look sharp enough to shred satin.

Clarissa continued in a singsong voice. “I’m driving over to the Mall of America. Who’s with me?”

Elle’s hands flew to her hips. She scowled at Clarissa, then turned her back on her. Mercedes took her cue from Elle. She turned away too, although not as deliberately. I found myself holding my breath and waiting for Clarissa to look at me next. She didn’t bother.

Instead, she marched back to the dressing room alone. A few minutes later she marched out of Tillie’s, also alone. Something pulled me toward the front window to watch her. It was like there was an invisible thread connected to my bellybutton. I resisted it. I didn’t want to press my cheek against the glass and peer down the street after either Clarissa or Sophie. Not in front of Mercedes and Elle.

I glanced at the salesclerk. She looked away. I was about to head for the dressing rooms to escape the hoop when Rhino blasted back through the door. He took a few steps inside the shop and bent over at the waist. His hands were on his knees, and he panted hard.

He didn’t have the dress.

“I ran,” he said between breaths.

“I guessed.” I stared past him at the door. It was like waiting for a text to show up on your phone. “Where’s Sophie?” I asked when I couldn’t wait any longer.

“Somewhere … behind …me.”

“You know, the best way to recover from a run is to stand up straight and—”

Still hunched over, he shot me a glare.

Sophie appeared in the doorway behind him. She studied the dress in her hands, then looked at me. “I can’t believe you did this.”

I shrugged. “It’s a killer dress.”

“It’s got a killer price tag too.” She turned toward the register. “I hope Tillie’s has a layaway plan.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “because I do.”

“Huh?”

“No interest,” I added.

“I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like … owing people stuff.”

“Could you ask your mom?” I asked.

“My mom? Yeah. Right.”

“Or your dad?” I suggested. After all, Dad always came to my rescue.

“Oh, sure. My dad. He’ll fix everything.” The words coming from her mouth didn’t match the sadness on her face.

My own face burned. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I knew from tutoring her last year that Sophie lived with her mom. I knew her dad wasn’t around.

“This whole thing is ridiculous, anyway,” she said. “It’s not like either one of us has a real chance.” She nodded toward Elle.

That was when I realized we’d lost Rhino and Mercedes. They were both standing below Elle on her pedestal. While I couldn’t hear their words, it looked like Elle and Rhino were trading insults. Well, at least they were happy.

“I mean,” Sophie said, “The Ab is probably collecting pig’s blood as we speak.”

“What?”

“Come on, it’s in a book.” She looked surprised that there might be a piece of literature I didn’t recognize immediately. “By that guy, Stephen King. It’s the one where this weird girl gets voted prom queen?”

I drew a blank.

“And then the popular guys throw blood on her at the dance?” Sophie held out the hand that wasn’t holding the dress and let her mouth fall open. “You have to know this. It’s a classic.”

I shrugged. “Is it one of those stories where everybody dies at the end?”

For a moment, Sophie was like stone. Then she burst out laughing. Peals of it bounced off the walls, filling the store. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned toward her. Tillie smiled. Up on her pedestal, Elle beamed. Mercedes giggled. The clerk with the pins, the girl behind the register, even Rhino grinned. Because Sophie’s laugh?

It sounded happy.

“Okay,” she said after calming down. “Now let’s get you something real to wear. I’m thinking…” And she examined me again, the look pointed and unforgiving. “Something retro.”

Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in front of the three-way mirrors, my expression stunned. The dress looked like vintage 1950s. The neckline went straight across, showing off my collarbone and shoulders, but not much else. It nipped in at the waist, then exploded into a full skirt that didn’t quite reach the floor. Tillie called it tea length. I’d need shoes, really nice shoes.

Tillie sent one of her minions to search for a pair in my size. “I haven’t had a waist like that since I was ten.” She sighed and pinched the extra material along the sides of the dress. “We could have this taken in.”

I shook my head. The dress fit fine as far as I was concerned. Plus, tailoring cost extra and my credit card had a limit.

Sophie stared at me with one eye closed. “You are going to get the dress,” she said. “Right?”

“It’s not floor-length.”

“I don’t think there’s a rule about that.”

I glanced toward Elle.

“She doesn’t make the rules, either,” Sophie added. “Come on, try to tell me you hate it.”

I couldn’t. “Well,” I said. “It is long enough.” I bent down and raised the hem, revealing the scars along my knee.

“What the ... What did you do?”

“I should probably do a chair test, too,” I said, ignoring her question. I found a seat not far from the mirrors and plopped down. If I sat just right, the dress still touched the bottom of the lowest scar. It would do.

Sophie stood above me. “Jeez, what’s wrong with your leg?”

“I told you before,” I said. “It’s a football injury.”

“I thought you meant, like, tossing a football around in your backyard.”

“Well, you know, my dad says Walter Payton once—”

“Walter who?” Sophie interrupted.

“Payton. Sweetness? Greatest running back of all time?”

Sophie stared at me like I was a refugee from the planet Weird.

“So, yeah,” I said. “I used to play in the Olympia Youth Football League.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. My answer still wasn’t good enough.

“There isn’t a rule against girls playing, you know,” I added.

“You mean, you played with Gavin and Lukas and all of them?”

I nodded.

“You.” She picked up my wrist and circled it with her finger and thumb. “You have, like, bird bones or something.”

I did. But I had never played the line, and I’d been fast enough that I never ended up at the bottom of a pile. Almost never. “For a while in grade school, I was taller than a lot of the boys. I even outweighed some of them.”

Sophie leaned against the mirror. “That’s right. Gavin was a shrimp, wasn’t he?”

“It’s like I turned around one day and he was.” I stood and waved my hand about six inches above my head. Then I shook out the skirt of my dress. Yeah, my dress. I’d decided. For the second time in my life, I felt like what I wore could really make a difference. This time, I wouldn’t let anyone take that away from me.

From out of nowhere, Sophie laughed.

“What?” I said.

“These.” Sophie grabbed my wrist again, this time by one of my string bracelets. “You’re going to have to lose these, at least for one night.”

I’d never been all that into crafts, but I’d started on the bracelets down in Iowa that summer. My mom’s roommate had given me the kit as a welcome present.

I pulled the prettiest one from my wrist. A midnight blue and silver one. “Here.” I held out my hand, the bracelet dangling from my fingers.

“I can’t. I’ve already taken enough,” she said.

“It’s string.”

She mumbled a few words, but then she slipped the bracelet onto her wrist. We were saved from having to actually say something about this by Rhino.

“Whoa,” he said.

“What do you think?” Not that I really needed Rhino’s approval. After all, this was the boy who thought dressing up meant pulling something flannel over a chicken butt tee.

The crinkles around his eyes deepened. “Perfect.” Then, without another word, his hands went to my waist. He plucked the price tag from the dress, taking me a few steps with him.

“Hey!” I said, but Rhino ignored me.

He crouched, scooped up the shoebox, and headed for the cash register. By the time I caught up to him, he’d pulled out his wallet and was handing the salesgirl a big stack of bills.

“What are you doing?”

Rhino nudged the shoebox my way, then the tag he’d taken from my dress. He tapped the price of each of them. The numbers swirled for a moment, then jumped out at me. My dress? Two hundred and twenty-five dollars. The shoes? Another seventy-five. I added in the two hundred and eighty I’d spent on Sophie’s dress and felt sick. I didn’t need Rhino’s mathematical genius to figure this one out. I wasn’t sure what my credit card limit was, but I’d probably burst through it and gone soaring into the stratosphere.

He handed the receipt to me. “You’d better hang on to that, just in case.”

The piece of paper felt flimsy between my fingers. My dress. My shoes. Paid in full. In cash.

“What … what have you done?” I asked.

“Well, yesterday I sold two really sweet custom computer systems. Made ’em out of parts I got off of craigslist.” Rhino shook his head. “The things most people think are worthless … So, anyway, I felt like donating to a worthy cause.”

The salesgirl took the shoes and placed them in one of Tillie’s signature pink-and-white striped bags. The rustle of it filled my ears. I had no words for what Rhino had just done. Except, in a way, it seemed inevitable.

Didn’t he always ride to my rescue, whether it was with an ugly neon orange skirt or the cash for the perfect homecoming dress?

“Thank you,” I said. Sure, I knew I’d be paying him back. But I also knew that when and how wasn’t important to him.

He waved away my words. “Totally worth it. Besides, I figured there’d been enough dress drama for one day.”

Rhino glanced over his shoulder toward Sophie. I followed his gaze, relieved to see that she was busy with Mercedes. That feeling lasted only a second, until a pinprick sensation ran down my spine. I turned to see Elle staring at the mirror. It wasn’t me she was looking at. Not herself, either. It was Rhino. And, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t tell what her expression meant.

Dad had another surprise waiting when he picked me up from the dress shop. “Take a look.” He pointed to the backseat of our car. Nestled beside a stack of RedBox returns sat the most nerdalicious collection of homecoming campaign canisters in Olympia High School history.

I should have known this might happen. Dad had spotted contest containers for Clarissa and Elle while we were eating at Rolly’s the night before. A corner of the cash register desk had featured a gallon-sized blue plastic water bottle. A 5x7 glossy photo of Clarissa was splashed across it, along with inch-high Trojan blue letters that spelled out VOTE 4 CLARISSA!

Beside it, less than half the size and looking almost modest and oh-so-elegant, sat a tall white cylinder with one word spelled out in blue sequins: Elle.

What? I’d thought as my salad threatened to make a return appearance. When did they have time to …? And then I realized, of course, just like the white dresses, the campaign canisters had been ready in advance. They’d probably made them months ago. Years, maybe. That’s how sure these girls had been that one day they would be nominated to the homecoming court. That’s how sure I was that I didn’t stand a chance.

When we walked to DQ for dessert, Dad spied a canister for Mercedes too. At least hers looked like it had been made at home and not produced by a big-city advertising agency. A coffee can, some spray paint, puffy foam letters in bright colors spelling out her name, and a few cottony pom-poms scattered around. The effect was as fun as Mercedes herself. I couldn’t resist dropping in a few coins for her.

Peering at the canisters on the car seat made me sigh. My dad has so many talents. Subtlety is not one of them.

“They’re so … shiny,” I said.

“I know. I had trouble getting the aluminum foil to stick at first, but then I remembered that can of spray adhesive in the garage. How do you like the label?”

Which part, I wondered? The photo of me in pigtails and football pads, taken when I was five? Or the part where he’d turned my name into a bright blue acrostic that read:

Clever

Attractive

Mighty

Your best choice for queen!

He looked so proud.

I hid my face behind a canister, pretending to be captivated by what I saw there. “These are … great, Dad. Just great.” And really, they were very sweet. Up close, I could make out a faded caption beneath the picture: Daddy’s little girl, it said in my father’s familiar scrawl.

“Think I could take a couple to work with me?” he asked. “And your grandma, I know she’ll want one for her knitting club, and one for the senior center where she does her line dancing.”

Oh! I perked up. If I could figure out how to control the distribution so Dad’s canisters were seen exclusively by people who were either old or related to me, this might not be so bad. “What about Grandpa?” I said. “Does he still volunteer at the genealogy center? And how about Aunt Abby? And …”

“Whoa, there. If you give them all out to family, you won’t have any left to take to Rolly’s,” Dad said.

Was he reading my mind?

“Now that you’ve shown me how to do it, I can make more later. And, Dad? Thanks.”

“Anything for you, princess. Anything for you.”