Beautiful Souls (37 page)

    
              “I’m trying this on, Marcie,” I called out to her platinum curls that could be seen bobbing over clothing racks on the opposite side of the shop.

    
              “Go right ahead, darlin’. Your friend already went back a few minutes ago… with a sizable stack of dresses, I might add. Thought she’d topple right over if she dared add one more…” Marcie trailed off again, as I made my way toward the dressing rooms.

    
              “Em? You back here?”

    
              “Voila!” Emmy sprang from one of the dressing room curtains, twirling around endlessly in a floor-length, red-satin number with a split up the side clean up to her hip. “So?” she asked, slowing her twirling s could admire her and the dress. “Whaddaya think?”

    
              “Wow! Very nice, but I think your mom might veto that split.”                   “It’s my Prom, not hers. She had her chance, like fifty years ago. Now it’s my turn to shine,” Emmy said, twirling again.

    
              “Unlikely it was fifty years ago, Em. Can I ask what happened to feeling vintage?”

    
              “Hey, what can I say. A girl’s gotta keep her options open.” With that, Emmy spun herself around toward the dressing room with a smile that spread wide across her face. “Wait a minute.” Emmy stopped short. She turned to stare me down. “What’s that?” She pointed toward the gray fabric, draping my arm.

    
              “A dress,” I answered defensively.

    
              “Only one dress? What happened to shopping around? I got, like, a billion of ‘em here. Let me see it.”

    
              “Ugh, uh. No way!” I spun around, blocking the dress from Emmy’s reach. “No one sees till I have it on.”

    
              “Okay, fine,” Emmy sighed, giggling at me. “Go try on your
one
dress, but hurry up. I still need your opinion on the rest of mine.”                   We both swung the dressing room curtains closed with a dramatic swoosh.

    
              An hour and a half later, I walked out of Marcie’s Dress Shop with my vintage dress in tow, and Emmy walked out behind me with the red, split-up-to-her-hip number. Her mom was going to kill her.

Chapter 16.

Prom

prom

/pram/

Noun

A formal dance, esp. one held by a class in high

school or college at the end of a year.

                   Hours upon hours had gone by. Those hours were spent bouncing back and forth between the mirror over my dresser and the mirror across the hall in the bathroom.

    
              When Emmy needed the hair dryer and styling irons, I gladly moved to my bedroom; when she needed to perfect her make-up once again, I switched back over to the bathroom mirror. Who knew that one person could spend so much time in front of a mirror grooming themselves?

    
              “Em? You almost ready?”

    
              “You just asked me that, like, two minutes ago.”

    
              “No…that was twenty minutes ago,” I argued.

    
              “Ah!”

    
              I sat on the edge of my bed with my legs crossed and my dress fanned out around me, attempting not to wrinkle it before the night had even begun. Emmy ran back across the upstairs hallway toward the bathroom for about the hundredth time, cursing her hair in the most lady-like way possible.

    
              “Gosh, dang it…stupid curls…stinkin’ flat…fudge and biscuits…”

    
              I heard a loud crash in the bathroom about a minute later, followed by a lot of clattering and more of Emmy’s so-called curse words.

    
              “Holy cow…gosh freakin’ dang it…”

    
              “How are you girls coming along?” my mom asked, as she appeared at the top of the stairs.

    
              “Good,” I answered. “I think Em is just finishing up.”

    
              “Well that’s good. The boys just pulled up so don’t keep them waiting
too
long.”  My mom tilted her head and glanced sideways, indicating that I should get Emmy to finalize her preparations. Enough was enough. I nodded toward my mom, understanding her intent, as she made her way back downstairs to keep Leo and Will company while they waited.

    
              I heard my mom ask the guys how baseball season was coming along, as I sauntered toward the bathroom, still barefooted. I was slightly afraid of crashing and burning in my red, high heels --- okay, I was flat out terrified --- so I hadn’t worked up the nerve to actually put them on yet. Around here hardly anyone ever wore heels unless they wanted to fall and bust their ass on the gravel or winter ice. To say I was out of practice would be a huge understatement.

    
              “Hey, Em. The boys are here.”

    
              “Oh no, not yet…no, nonono…”

    
              I gingerly wrapped my hands around Emmy’s, leading her away from the bathroom mirror. “Friends don’t let friends over-primp. Now, you look amazing… fantastic…mesmerizing…your gonna be the bell of the ball.” I said anything that came to mind in order to get her away from those mirrors.

    
              “Really?”

    
              “Really,” I replied sincerely.

    
              “Okay.” Emmy visibly relaxed.

    
              “We need shoes.”

    
              “Right.” Emmy took a deep breath.

    
              We both wiggled into our heels. Both red, hers satin and mine snake-skin. Such a strange combination to mix vintage pewter satin, chiffon, and rhinestones with dark, blood-red, snake-skin stilettos, clutch, and ultra-thin skinny belt, but something about the extreme opposites made it all work well together.

    
              My antique necklace from Leo, draping over my collarbone, is what had inspired the idea to accent my vintage dress with red, and once I’d run the idea past both my mom and Emmy and both seemed excited about the idea, I just ran with it.

    
              Emmy was draped in snug red satin from the shoulders down. The color set off her porcelain skin and intensified her violet-blue eyes. Every single of streak of strawberry-blonde in her hair seemed to shine exuberantly, being brought to life by the surrounding sheen of red satin. She was stunning. Will was going to flip.

    
              “Girls,” my mom called. “Let’s not keep the boys waiting.”

    
              “Let’s do this,” Emmy grinned through the words.

    
              My stomach muscles immediately tightened.
Please God, don’t let me fall.
Images of my careening body, tail-spinning down the stars, flooded throughout my mind, but they all were wiped clean as I rounded the top of the staircase. Leo was staring up at me from the bottom step, and my heart skipped a beat.

    
              I watched Leo’s chest rise with an intake of oxygen as I paused at the top stair, allowing Emmy to make her grand entrance first.

    
              Leo and I shared a look that could’ve only said,
‘I love you’
. If nothing else happened tonight and the entire evening ended right here, it was enough. Leo’s face, and the way he looked at me, was enough.

    
              I followed Emmy’s trail a few seconds after she descended the stairs. Leo put out his hand when I was within his arm’s reach, and he helped me down from the final few steps. We exchanged flowers --- my wrist corsage for his single, red-rose boutonnière --- as my mom and Emmy’s mom flashed their cameras, acting as the local paparazzi.

    
              I couldn’t take my eyes off Leo. I had never seen him in a tux, and the sight of him had left me speechless. He was decked out in all black and pewter, apart from the single red accent of the rose pinned to his lapel. The close proximity to him while dressed that way left me feeling dizzy, and my heart beat with such a rapid intensity that it seemed to strangle the air out from my lungs.

    
              We both stood motionless for what seemed like only a few awkward seconds, but in everyone else’s reality it must have dragged on a bit longer. We stood awe-struck and in love, simply taking in the sight of one another.

    
              “Ahem,” my dad cleared his throat and stepped into view as Leo stepped away from me, clearing the way for my dad.

    
              “Dad?”

    
              “I’d like to give my daughter the first,” he paused looking toward Leo, “and only kiss of the night.”

    
              “Sir,” Leo said, never really agreeing or disagreeing.

    
              My dad leaned in to kiss me lightly on my faintly-blushed cheek. “You look beautiful,” he whispered in my ear.

    
              I felt the sting in my eyes and fought back the happy tears, sure to ruin my mascara. “Thanks, Dad.”

    
              “You take good care of our girls,” my dad directed sternly to Leo and Will.

    
              The tears still swelled in the back of my eyes, and my throat stung as I tried to hold them back. What was I doing? I had never been a crier. My emotions ran rapidly through my body as I tried to make sense of my feelings.

    
              I knew that this night was a special teenage milestone and sharing it with Leo, my best friend and boyfriend, just made it that much more meaningful. I was overcome with memories of everything we’d been through together along with the thoughts of what our shared futures may hold.

    
              Sadness gripped me as I realized that this would be one of our final, spectacular nights together before he left for college in the fall. All of these feelings and thoughts, coupled with my dad’s display of affection and loving protective threats, had left me with my cup overflowing. No wonder all these surfacing emotions had attempted an escape through bottled up tears.

    
              Emmy’s parents joined mine as they walked us out to the sleek, black limo waiting in my driveway. My mom’s photo snapping and paparazzi tendencies had reached an all-time high at this point.

    
              “Did you do this?” I questioned Leo about the limo.

    
              “Guilty as charged, babe.”

    
              I blushed, but what’s new.

    
              Emmy and Will were in their own manufactured lover’s world, and the adults stood watching the four of us from enough of a distance away that they couldn’t possibly hear any of our words.

    
              “How long do you think we’ll have before another Zoey-type makes an appearance in our lives?” I quietly pressed Leo for an answer.

    
              “Are you worried something will happen tonight?”

    
              “No…well, maybe. Things have been so good lately, that’s all, and I was just thinking that hell, maybe they’ve been too good.”

    
              Leo smirked.

    
              “What?”

    
              “Nothing.” He grinned that
‘oh, so perfect’
crooked grin. “You’re just unbelievably cute is all.” Leo leaned in toward my ear. He didn’t have to bend down much at all since I happened to be wearing almost five-inch stilettos. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me in that dress…and those heels?” Leo very slowly licked his lips. “Remind me to thank Emmy for those later.”

    
              I gulped down the lump that had just formed in my throat, trying to shake off the warm tingles that Leo’s breath on my neck had just caused. A chain reaction of shivers flooded throughout my body. How was I ever going to get through the entire night with him licking his gorgeous lips and staring at me with that steamy look in his ocean-blue eyes?

    
              I wanted nothing more than to jump into his arms and wrap my legs around his waist and never stop kissing him until the sun came up. With great difficulty, I kept myself in check due to the number of on-looking parental units still waving us off.

    
              I focused my brain. “Hey, I can pick out my own clothes, you know.”