Beautiful Souls (36 page)

    
              A D.J. from Indianapolis had already been secured with the money made by selling concessions during football and basketball games, so now we only needed to secure donations from a few more town businesses that have yet to return our phone calls.

    
              Emmy and I --- well, mostly Emmy --- decided that our best strategy would be to meet the business owners face to face in order to reap maximum profits. I didn’t argue because anything was better than sitting in a stuffy school making phone calls all afternoon. Emmy’s plan would get us out and about on this gorgeous Spring day, and who knew, maybe she was right.

    
              “Let’s see if the boys want to go.” Emmy beamed excitedly.

    
              “I’ll text Leo.” I dug for my cell and fished it out of my side pocket.

             
u & Will want 2 go downtown with me & Em?

    
              A minute later I heard my phone chirp with Leo’s reply.

             
sorry, can’t…heading out of locker room to practice right   now…              meet later?

             
Sure!
, I texted back and re-pocketed my phone.

    
              “The boys have baseball practice,” I relayed to Emmy. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”

    
              Emmy stuck out her pouting lips then bounced up a second later, startling me. “Ah! Let’s, like, run by the dress shop when we’re done. I’m feeling, like, this Prom requires some vintage-wear.”

    
              My eyes lit up. “Good idea,” I agreed.

    
              What just happened? Did Emmy and I actually agree on clothing? That almost never happened. Oh well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Pure chance alone dictated that much.

    
              “I’ll drive,” I added.

    
              Emmy and I gathered our things and we were out the door in less than five minutes.

    
              It was completely inevitable that our paths, across the parking lot to reach my car, also passed alongside the edge of the baseball field where all the players were currently practicing. Both sets of hormone-driven eyes --- Emmy’s and mine --- locked on the field at the sight of twenty-five perfect examples of the male species running, jumping, and lunging in tight baseball pants. The sight demanded our undivided attention. My eyes were set on searching out one particular pair of tight pants, but who’s to say I couldn’t enjoy the entire view just the same?

    
              A whistle rang out through Emmy’s two fingers, jammed into her mouth and pressed against her inner cheeks.

    
              “Whoo…lookin’ good boys!” she called out.

    
              I blushed.

    
              Leo, along with ninety percent of the J.V. and Varsity teams whipped their heads around toward us when they heard Emmy’s whistle. I made eye contact with Leo as he halted first-base warm-ups to send me a smoldering wink. I smiled back, and sent him a slight wave using only two of my fingers.

    
              “All right team!” shouted Coach Austin. “We’ve all seen pretty girls before. Back to drills!” A few more catcalls rang out from the players, but for the most part they had all resumed practicing.

    
              “You can never resist the urge to embarrass me, can you?” I asked Em, shooting her an eye roll.

    
              “I couldn’t help myself. I mean, like, look at them,” she defended.

    
              “I know, I know.”

    
              Emmy and I climbed into my Bug and headed toward Main Street. We made our rounds quickly, hitting up the Dry Cleaners, the Pizzeria, and Tony’s Gas Station. All gave donations willingly.

    
             
“
We’ve collected, like, fifty dollars more than we actually need for The Club rental, and combined with earnings from the car wash planned for this weekend, we should bring in more than enough for decorations and refreshments. Let’s knock off early and, like, head to the dress shop now. Please, please, oh pretty please, with a cherry on top?” Emmy attempted to justify her case and apparently added the pleading simply for good measure.

    
              Emmy knew I was a stickler for the rules and we had two more businesses we were supposed to be charming into giving donations, but she did have a good point. Prom was still two weeks away and if the car wash this coming weekend didn’t bring in the rest of the money we needed, then we could always come back next week to hit up the remaining businesses that we neglected today.

    
              “All right, you talked me into it. Let’s go!”

    
              “Yay!” Emmy let out an overly excited squeal, as she clapped her hands at about a hundred beats per minute.

    
              “I think I already know which dress I want to buy,” I stated matter-of-factly.

    
              “No way,” Emmy protested. “You gotta, like, shop around. That’s half the fun.”

    
             
Lord help me, what’ve I gotten myself in to?

    
              “I really like the dress that I have in mind,” I defended. “My mom got in a couple of vintage dresses last week from an estate sale that she went to a few weekends ago. She sold the dresses to Marcie, and I’ve had my eye on one of them ever since. You know me and vintage.”

    
              “Well, that’s no fun,” Emmy said, slightly pouting as we walked past my mom’s antique shop. She waved at us through the front window. Emmy continued, “I thought all girls liked to shop.”

    
              “Fine. I’ll look around a little, but no promises.”

    
              “Jeez, you’re no fun.” Emmy rolled her eyes.

    
              “What can I say? I know what I like,” I declared proudly.

    
              As we passed my mom’s shop, and I glanced across the street.

    
              “Whatever happened to the Fitzgeralds's art gallery?” Emmy asked, following my gaze.

    
              Emmy and I both stared toward the empty store across the road. The newspaper taped on the inside of the storefront windows had never been taken down since the first day that the Fitzgeralds had come to town. The newspaper had yellowed due to the amount of sun-exposure it had endured, and it gave the building a sort of creepy, haunted feeling now.

    
              This sparked a new trend in town with all the teenagers. The newest way in our town for the kids to get a cheap thrill was to dare one another to commit a minor B&E in order to scope out what was inside the soon-to-be --- or maybe never-to-be --- art gallery. To my knowledge, no one had yet been brave enough --- or stupid enough, depending on how you looked at the situation --- to actually follow through with the dare.

    
              “I don’t really know,” I lied. I hated lying to Emmy, but there was no way that I could actually explain to her the reality of my new world and what I had come to learn about the Fitzgeralds.
I was doing her a favor by lying
, I convinced myself.

    
              “I heard they moved back to Chicago. Couldn’t handle the Fairview crazies, I guess.” Emmy laughed.

    
              “Yep, small towns aren’t for everyone.”

    
              “Weird about Luke though, right?” Emmy questioned.

    
              “What about Luke?” I asked, perplexed.

    
              “That he stayed, of course,” she explained, as she dug through her bag and pulled out a sucker, removing the wrapping and popping it into her mouth. “Want one?” Emmy asked, her words barely decipherable with the sucker taking up one whole side of her mouth, bulging her cheek.

    
              “No thanks. Um, why is that weird?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know. I kept my eyes pointed down toward the sidewalk, praying Emmy couldn’t read my expression and be able to tell that I was lying to her.

    
              “Hello?” Emmy asked sarcastically. “He’s still, like, in high school…and he’s living on his own. I know he’s eighteen and everything, and technically, like, an adult or whatever, but it’s weird. Don’t you think?”

    
              “Yeah, I see what you mean,” I answered placating her, my head still dropped watching our feet move along the sidewalk. “But he is an adult…legally, anyway.”

    
              “Can you imagine? His family just, like, up and left him here.”                   “They didn’t just leave, I don’t think,” I attempted to rationalize the situation. “Luke wanted to stay. He likes it here, and he’s eighteen so he chose to stay.”

    
              Emmy stared at me.
Ooops,
I thought. I must have explained Luke’s situation with slightly too much conviction.

    
              “That’s what I heard, anyhow,” I added.

    
              My added nonchalance in the end must have sufficed because Emmy seemed to drop the subject. We walked another block from my mom’s shop and I saw Marcie’s Dress Shop & Apparel come into view just ahead.

    
              Emmy saw the dress shop at the same time as I did. “We are going to look fabulous. Let’s go!” she giggled.

    
              Emmy was perfectly gleeful. She lived to shop, and shopping for Prom dresses just made this her most exciting shopping trip ever. The slap of her ballet flats sounded off the sidewalk as she set off in a run, pulling me with her. We rounded the display window of dresses, shoes, and handbags as she yanked me through the dress shop’s doorway.

    
              Marcie’s Dress Shop smelled like lavender candles and moth balls. She was known for stocking a good selection of new items along with a beautiful array of vintage-wear. If I did enjoy shopping or fashion, this shop would be my dream come true. It’s style was chic, classy, and adorned with simple, understated elegance ---
ah, a design after my own heart
.

    
              Marcie, on the other hand, was not. Her personal style completely clashed with her own shop. Sixty year old Marcie was boisterous, loud, and adorned herself from head to toe in dull, gold-colored costume jewelry. She wore layers of caked-on, red lipstick, and had dyed her hair every color from platinum blonde to jet black. Today was, apparently, a blonde day.

    
              “Well, hello there ladies!” Marcie called out over one of the dress racks when Emmy and I barreled our way through the shop’s front door. “What can I help you two with?”

    
              “We’re shopping for Prom dresses,” Emmy announced cheerfully, as she released my arm and skipped off into dress-land. After a matter of only seconds, she had been lost in a rainbow sea of satin and silk.

    
              “Oh, of course, of course. Let me tell you girls, I just got in the most fabulous shipment of…” Marcie trailed off as she followed Emmy into the overflowing symphony of dress racks.

    
              Every style and color of shoes lined the side wall, set up in matching pairs along with coordinating clutches or handbags; however, my sights were set another aisle over.

    
              Marcie liked to lovingly refer to the section I was after as ‘Vintage Lane’, and I had to agree with the nickname. Both sides of this aisle held a gorgeous array of dresses, night gowns, and blouses ranging all the way back to the twenties. Nothing in ‘Vintage Lane’ was arranged by style or size, only color. I made a bee-line straight to the area emanating a multitude of shades of gray and silver.

    
              I scanned the hangers of pewter-colored fabrics, hoping and praying the dress from the estate sale that my mom sold to Marcie last week was still here and hadn’t been bought already. The closer I came to the end of the color section, the more anxious I became. I started to think all hope of finding the dress --- my dress --- was gone. That’s when I spotted it.

    
              Next to last, in the row of pewter, hung my dress with its flowing gray satin, overlapped and draped with a shimmering net of rhinestones that started out tiny and closely clustered near the top, growing larger and more widely spread as they neared the bottom hem of the knee-length skirt.

    
              This was my dress and I wasn’t going to entertain the thought of looking any further. To hell with what I said to Emmy about agreeing to shop around; this was my dress, and she’d just have to learn to like it.