How I Found the Perfect Dress (20 page)

Ouch. I'd heard bad date stories before, but being left stranded on the moon kind of topped them all. “Did you guys get a chance to talk about the Faery Ball?” I asked, as delicately as I could.

“Morganne, apparently you are only a half-listening sort of half-goddess,” Jolly Dan roared. “Yes, those cheaply manufactured bookends talked about the Faery Ball! They are absolutely determined to go to the Faery Ball!
With Elvis.
” He sniffed. “They were just using me to get to the elf.”

“That's awful,” I said, while thinking,
I may have seriously underestimated those two
.

“They prefer to ‘stick together,' they told me.” Jolly Dan flipped over again in the crater and kicked and pounded his fists on the lunar landscape, raising sad, silvery clouds of moondust everywhere. “I thought minigolf would make me seem taller,” he moaned. “But it just made Elvis look like a giant.”

I started coughing because of the dust, and my eyes watered. I reached inside my backpack looking for tissues, but all I found were Colin's sneakers. At the sight—or should I say, aroma—of the shoes, Jolly Dan got even more upset. Slowly he climbed to his feet.

“I told you, I'm not making any magic shoes for your friend unless you find me a date.” His fancy new clothes were covered with dust, and there was a little leprechaun-shaped crater where he'd been laying. “And you didn't. In fact, you messed up big time!”

“I'm sorry.” I didn't know what else to say. “Meeting the right person isn't easy. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but that doesn't mean you stop looking—”

“Go!” he roared. “And take that smelly footwear with you!”

 

 

the leprechaun's right. this was all my fault, i thought, on the long, pathetic bus ride home from the mall.

If I were honest, I had to admit that I'd known the gnome girls were not quite right for Jolly Dan. They were the perfect size on the outside, sure, but not a good match on the inside. And the double-dating with twins idea was way too much to handle for a guy's first attempt at a coed outing.

I'd been so eager to get Colin's magic shoes that I pushed for something to happen that I knew in my heart was doomed to fail. Now, because of me, Jolly Dan had been through the worst date of his life, and not just because it was the only date of this life. The Spring Faery Ball was only days away, and Colin was no closer to getting unenchanted than he was before.

Maybe I'd left my magic mojo behind in Ireland after all.

Or,
I thought,
maybe the goddess part of me was the part that had known the gnome sisters were a bad idea, and I'd been too selfish and stubborn to listen.

When I got home, Tammy was ransacking the house looking for any empty shoebox for a school project, so I gave her the one Colin's shoes had been in. Then I stashed his now very unlucky trainers in a plastic Lucky Lou's bag, to contain the biohazard fumes.

I stowed the bag under my bed.
Colin's life might be ruined by a faery enchantment that I was too much of a loser to undo,
I thought miserably,
but at least he'd gotten a new pair of Cons out of it.

And Tammy got a shoebox. From the way she jumped around with joy, you'd think I'd given her a diamond tiara.

 

 

 

on saturdaЧ, mЧ parents' fragile peace treatЧ Was trashed like origami in a paper shredder when we were fined five hundred bucks by the Lawn Police. The notice was left in the mailbox quite early in the morning, in a nasty-looking envelope with the word
Violation
written on it in fat red marker.

Five hundred dollars? Great,
I thought, amidst all the yelling.
Now I'll
never
learn to drive.

And why would we get fined now? Now, after my dad had finally packed up all his precious gnomes and hauled them away, even if he'd been less than perfectly honest with my mom about their ultimate destination?

Because Glendryn and Drenwyn were joyously pirouetting dead center on the front lawn, that's why. Maybe Elvis had given them a lift home—whatever had happened, the threesome date had definitely left a fresh coat of twinkle on their eyes. I was glad to see they were all right, but their display of morning-after euphoria had several not-so-euphoric consequences:

Consequence number one: the five hundred dollar fine. I figured Dad could just take it out of the money he would now
not
be spending on my college tuition.

Consequence number two: Mom stopped speaking to Dad. He swore up and down that he hadn't put the gnomes there, but in Mom's pissed-off universe, gnomes on the lawn were my dad's doing. End. Of. Story. As Jolly Dan would say.

Consequence number three: Not surprisingly, Dad was
way
angry at me. I'd known where the gnomes were, I'd briefly had possession of the key—I was guilty until proven innocent in his eyes. The only good thing was that he couldn't tell my mom about his suspicions, because then his whole deceitful scheme about putting the gnomes in ministorage would come to blinding, marriage-ending light.

“Betrayed! By my own daughter! On the Ides of March!” he hissed, as he drove me to UConn for the robotics contest. I didn't know what he was talking about, but you didn't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that I was in big trouble, even if the exact terms of my punishment wouldn't be revealed until a later date.

I hope Colin and Alice win,
I thought wearily, as Dad's furious rant droned on and on.
It would be such a relief if at least one not-sucky thing happened today.

 

 

theЧ lost.

Correction: They came in last. Dead last, out of twelve teams. Colin had been telling the truth about lacking talent in the arts-and-crafts department. The papier mâché body he'd built using the gnome mould looked kind of dented and mutant, like a zombie toddler from an especially sick horror film. Whatever advantage he'd hoped to gain from the “anthropomorphic” presentation of their robot was instantly wiped out by the WTF expression on people's faces when they saw it.

As for technical performance, luck was not on their side, or maybe Colin's mental fog had messed up his work on the programming more than he and Alice had realized. Their task was to build a robot that could maneuver around obstacles, retrieve small objects and place them in a slowly moving container with ninety percent accuracy or better. To my horror, Colin had named the robot Nike, after the “lucky trainers” he thought I'd destroyed.

Nike did fine in the precompetition demonstration, but when the judges were watching the robot seemed to get stage fright. There were power supply failures, frozen hard drives and software malfunctions. Alice looked ready to kill, and the judges scowled and wrote copious notes on their clipboards.

After they'd gone, we sat and watched Nike score shot after shot, dropping its cargo in the basket every time. By then, of course, it was too late. At one point I even overheard Alice fast-talking one of the judges, explaining how Nike's physical design hadn't been her idea and asking to have her work evaluated separately.

“That's teamwork for ye. If I wasn't so tired I'd go give her a piece of me mind,” Colin said, yawning. “But I just want the day to be over so's I can lie down.”

Is this what his life will be like from now on?
I thought glumly.
Failure and exhaustion? All because I couldn't find a date for a leprechaun?

 

 

later, back in his dorm room, i offered to help him pack.

“Not much to do, really,” he said, collapsing on his bare cot. “Thanks for comin' today, though, Mor. Sorry we made such a poor showing.”

“Does it matter a lot that you didn't win?” I was rolling sock balls from the laundry basket just to keep my hands busy, and he watched me in silence for minute before answering.

“I'm on partial scholarship at DCU, ye know. And they review the funding every term. I was hoping a win here would guarantee me a free ride for next year.” He looked out the window for a minute, then back at me. “Me grades have been suffering because of all the poor sleeping and whatnot, so I'll just have to hope for the best.”

“Alice seemed pretty upset.” Not that I cared about Alice's feelings—but maybe Colin did?

“No doubt she is, but her armor's tough enough to take the hit.” He smiled a little. “I may have done less than me best this time around, but at least I know me stuff. Alice doesn't have a third of the technical know-how she pretends to. You can't get through life just bossing people around and making excuses. Maybe now that she's had a taste of humiliation she'll crack open a book or two. And,” he added, “she doesn't have any worries about scholarship money; her da owns some big factory in China, mass-producing plastic thingamabubs. She's loaded.”

Mass produced plastic thingamabubs from China . . . someone has to make them, I guess.
I kept folding Colin's clothes, trying to fill each T-shirt and pair of chinos with all the stuff I felt but couldn't say.

“So,” Colin said as he watched me, “tell me about this prom business. Who's the lucky fella?”

I folded a shirt. I thought of Mike. I didn't say anything.

“Don't try and pull one over on yer ol' pal Colin,” he prodded. “Somebody's asked ye, right?”

I made a sockball out of two mismatched socks and tossed it in his duffel bag. “Yes,” I said. “Somebody's asked me.”

With effort, Colin swung his legs over the side of the cot and sat up. “Is he a nice bloke? A good egg?”

“He's very nice.” I was careful to avoid eye contact.

“Well, ye said yes, didn't ye?”

At that point I guess I must have started to looked tragic or something, because Colin came over and took my hand.

“Hey, Mor,” he said softly. “You're not waiting around for me, are ye?”

“Don't you want me to?” I looked up and caught his gaze, and this time I didn't look away. There it was, the question I'd been wanting to ask him, for months and months—since the day I left Ireland, in fact.

Why had I waited so long to ask? Because I knew what the answer would be. And yet—a person could hope, couldn't she?

He exhaled heavily, but didn't let go of my hand. “It's times like this I miss smokin' somethin' fierce. Now, lass. That's an unfair question and ye know it.”

“Why is it unfair?” I sounded as stubborn as Tammy.

“Because if I say yes it'll only encourage ye, and that wouldn't be right”—he stopped me from interrupting with a look—“no, it wouldn't, Mor, because I can't be here for ye.” He paused. “And if I say no, that's not the whole bloody truth, is it?”

I looked down at the ground, my heart leaping and breaking at the same time.

“Stop staring at yer trainers,” he said, trying to make me smile. “What are ye thinkin', then?”

“That I could really go for a kiss right now.” I looked up at him and his face was
thisclose
to mine, and he looked so gorgeous and irresistible and thoroughly Colin-like, I could hardly stand it. Neither one of us looked away, but neither one of us moved either.

“A kiss, eh? That'd be sweet, for sure.” He squeezed my hand. “Say yes to the good egg, Mor. Yer still in high school. Have some fun.”

“Okay,” I said, in a voice that came from someplace far, far away.

“And, no hanky panky now. Yer only sixteen.”

“Not for long. My birthday's this week.”

“Is it?” He smiled. “I'm glad to hear it. It's about time you grew up some.”

“Shut up,” I said, trying not to cry.

“Hey,” he said, in a softer voice. “Send me a picture of you in the fancy dress, would ye? I'd give anything to see it.”

That did it. It took every molecule of strength I had not to dissolve into huge, miserable sobs. Unfortunately I was one molecule short.

“Promise?” he asked again, and held me as I cried.

I promise
was stuck in my throat, but that was way more than I was able to say at the moment, so I just gulped and nodded and blubbered. Colin handed me a sock to blow my nose in.

“Don't worry, it's clean,” he deadpanned.

“Not anymore,” I said, as I blew.

Then we both laughed, and I knew everything was fine between us again. But it was time for both of us to go home.

a
ll i could do sundaЧ, all daЧ long, Was watch the clock and imagine Colin on his journey, each step taking him farther and farther away from me.

I pictured him riding the bus to the airport, checking his luggage, waiting on line at the security checkpoint and dozing in the waiting area by the gate. Then, as the time for his flight approached, he'd board the plane, toss his carry-on luggage in the overhead compartment, settle into his seat and fasten his seat belt. He'd probably say something funny to the people next to him. Lucky them, whoever they were.

When it was the exact time of his flight I imagined him leaning back in his seat as the plane took off. The Aer Lingus jet would gain altitude before swerving and banking over the edge of North America and heading out to sea. It would fly a long, high arc across the ocean, soaring above the clouds for hours until it touched down on the other side, on the impossibly green grass of Ireland.

By the time I went to bed, Colin would be home. Just in time to spend Saint Patrick's Day with his grandfather, as he'd promised.

Tracking Colin's location in my head reminded me of something Mom liked to do with Tammy at Christmas. Together they'd visit this website that allegedly showed Santa's real-time location on Christmas Eve, tracking his flight path all night long as he delivered toys around the globe in his supersonic sleigh. “NORAD Tracks Santa,” it was called.