Will Work for Prom Dress (3 page)

I groaned at the reminder. “Explain to me again how we ended up filling in for someone at a professional dinner theater? And why I’m the one doing the acting when you are clearly the true genius in that category?” Anne might never
have deigned to step foot on stage, but the girl didn’t make it through a solid two hours of her life without acting her way into, or out of, trouble.

“I told you, you don’t have to act, you have to
react
. It’s really more of a set job than anything. Besides, it was my connection that landed the job, and I’m doing my part by getting us the boys. It won’t look believable unless we bring dates. It’s one little momentary bit of time in the spotlight, and you’re done. Free dinner, fifty bucks each, and we’re that much closer to our dream dresses. It’ll be fun. And showing that little upstart who she’s messing with ain’t a bad bonus.”

“Erik, now, is it?”

“T-Shirt.”

“Whatever. It’s still not like you to go for someone remotely close to our age. Whatever happened to that guy Chad?”

Anne waved a carrot stick in dismissal. “You had a point. If I’m serious about earning this money, I simply don’t have the free time to be running around with random guys all of the time. And it’s far too soon to even guess who I might want to go to prom with, so the whole exercise would be fun, but pointless. Until prom, chasing boys will be strictly limited to school hours.”

“You are so disciplined,” I said.

“It’s impressive, isn’t it?”

“Except, we don’t have after-school jobs anymore,” I reminded her.

“That’s where you’re wrong. I heard about a job for female models and signed us up. You don’t even have to have experience! Amateurs are welcome—”

“OMG, are you insane? That’s it. We are going straight home from school today. With your seven hundred channels, there’s bound to be at least three or four ‘after-school specials’ on.”

“Excuse me? Remember who got the thirty-four on the ACT. And still you think that I’m stupid?” Anne said.

“Well, ‘amateur female models wanted’ is code for ‘come and let me talk you out of your clothes and plaster the photos across the Internet—oh, and transportation included … in the trunk of my car.’ I hope you didn’t actually give them our real names.”

“Real names, phone numbers, and measurements, actually. I had to guess at yours—”

“Anne!”

“Calm down, Quigley. It’s not what you think. Really, you need to cut back on the caffeine or something. Mumsy
Dear is volunteering at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Fashion Institute one night a week. Some of her students need warm bodies to try their projects on as they design. They use those adjustable mannequin things for the early stages, but she wants them to see their creations in motion.”

“Oh. Well, that sounds pretty cool.”

“Told you I’d hook us up. It’s every Wednesday night from six to nine, and you can ride in with the queen of sateen herself. Ten bucks an hour to sit around waiting for some fashion geek to plaster us with chiffon. You can even bring your homework, since you seem so fond of doing the stuff.”

“I’m just fond of graduating and getting out of this town. Not all of us can memorize the entire textbook an hour before the exam and ace it.”

“Oops! That reminds me.”

I went back to my notebook as Anne checked her watch and pulled out her chem textbook. The Art King pizza got a last-minute reprieve as I used my pencil of fiery death to multiply the number of Wednesdays left before prom instead. If Ms. Parisi needed us for the whole semester, we’d be only seventy dollars short of our goal. The whole pizza fiasco had set us back. Not only did we lose our jobs, but the guy had charged us for all the returned pizzas. Six afternoons
of heinous hairnets and instead of a paycheck, we were down thirty-eight bucks apiece.

“Done!” Anne slammed the cover of her textbook shut.

“What? That was only like ten minutes, tops.”

“Oops, better hurry then. My brain only keeps the info for about three times as long as I spent memorizing it. Is that a number-two pencil?”

Anne plucked the pencil out of my hand and ran toward the cafeteria exit to download everything from her megabrain onto some unsuspecting exam sheet. The bell rang, signaling the whopping four minutes they gave us to get from one end of school to the other. I sighed and dragged myself up to head for the art building. At least I had my wobbly stool to look forward to.

“Where are they?” I asked Anne for the eighth time since we walked into the dinner theater. “This place is packed and the show should start any minute. I haven’t even been told what I’m supposed to do.”

“Relax. If T-Shirt says they’ll be here, they’ll be here. His friend Brian got busted in his dad’s car for not speeding through a yellow quick enough—”

“You mean, running a red?” Anne’s grasp of the rules of the road was frightening at best.

“Details. Anyway, T had to scrounge up someone else to bring last minute.”

“Great. Nothing like feeling even more pathetic.”

“It’s not really a date—this is just work. I’m going to run out and see if they’re in the parking lot.”

Anne slid easily between the round tables dotting the floor and scooted for the exit. Our table sat up front and center since I’d be helping with some as-yet-unnamed element of the action. A woman dressed all in black with a tiny headset motioned to me from behind the stage curtain to meet her by the side door. I looked around and hustled over, trying to be discreet.

“I’m sorry, was I supposed to wear all black?” I asked.

“What? No, you’re fine. Walk with me so we don’t attract much attention. We have the Poe Society here tonight, full house. Very demanding connoisseurs of this type of show, their approval will do great things for our company.”

We wandered out through a side door into a secret hallway from the kitchen to the theater. Waiters bustled back and forth with ominously smoking trays filled with ruby-red cocktails.

“Dry ice,” the woman explained. “Just a few drops of
water on a little piece in the middle of the tray—it gets the audience in the mood.”

“Ah. I just thought in all black I’d blend in while I’m moving whatever you need me to. Or is it just a matter of placing a dagger or bottle of poison somewhere strategic without people noticing? Anne said I didn’t have to actually act. I’m not an actor.”

“Oh, I think you can handle this,” the woman chuckled. “So Victoria’s daughter didn’t tell you what you’d be doing? Classic.”

Her peal of laughter set off a fluttering in my stomach. “Wait. What exactly am I doing?”

“Simple. Our dead body called in sick.”

I tried to concentrate on her instructions. They’d be setting down rolls and butter as the show started. Then the salad course. Mine would arrive sans dressing and then a shot would ring out. A spotlight would land on me right as I face-planted into my romaine. I tried to memorize her advice to chow down on the rolls so my stomach wouldn’t growl from the tempting smells as everyone else ate, and to make sure I adjusted the lettuce to leave a decent-sized breathing space so I didn’t get claustrophobic. To dodge the single cherry tomato added for effect as I landed. It was just all so hard to
remember when my brain was fully engaged in hating Anne. I tuned back in as the woman finished explaining the story line of the murder mystery.

“So that’s it. At the end, the main characters will come retrieve you from your seat and do a
Weekend at Bernie’s
routine—you know, the dancing corpse number. Don’t worry, they’re fantastic. Just keep your eyes closed and let them flop your body around. Then, lights will come down and you come back to life to do a proper curtain call as one of our performers!”

Music swelled from inside the theater as the waiters reemerged with empty trays.

“Oops, better get in there! Follow this hall to the end and take a left. You can enter the theater from the back.”

I numbly headed down the hall.

“Oh, Quigley?”

I turned, hoping she’d laugh and reveal it was all some elaborate prank.

“Break a leg!”

I turned back toward the theater, thinking of the patterned tights I’d admired on my best friend during the drive over. “Yeah. I think I just might know whose.”

I crouched down and headed toward our table in the
darkened theater as the actors performed an opening number. The silhouettes of three people sat at the table, so at least our dates had arrived.

I slid into my seat and leaned into Anne, who cut me off. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea, Quigley. I swear. I promise I’ll make this up to you.”

“You
totally
knew, the set lady told me. Now switch places with me and you do this or there’s going to be more than one dead body at this table.”

“I can’t,” she hissed back. “We’re already in our places and they said the dead body had to sit in that particular chair. If we move now, everyone will notice and it will wreck the whole show. We need this cash and you know how I feel about acting. Where’s your sense of humor? I thought you’d think this was hilarious.”

“Oh, really? So why were you apologizing then?”

I grabbed the last of the rolls from the departing waiter’s tray and took an angry bite.

“That’s not what I was apologizing for,” she said with a look of genuine remorse. “That is.”

I followed her gaze across the table to the smirking grin of none other than David Jenkins, the Art King himself. He waggled his fingers at me.

I was still choking on the bite of roll and trying to breathe as the waiter delivered our salads. Being unable to speak might have been a blessing since my brain in its fury wasn’t forming too many coherent words. T-Shirt, wearing his nicest
YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY TOMATO—IT DOESN’T REALLY MAKE MUCH SENSE WHEN YOU READ IT
shirt under a sports coat, offered me his water, while David just laughed himself stupid.

“Ewww, what is this?” Anne asked, poking at the thick pool of blue cheese dressing smothering her greens. “This is so not BP.”

She reached across and swapped our plates with a conciliatory smile. “This is way more your style—go for it. You deserve it tonight.”

The shot echoed through the theater and a hot blast of spotlight landed square on my face. I looked down, horrified, and gave a very convincing performance of someone about to meet her death as I flopped into my plate of creamy dressing, forgetting, until the moment it met my forehead with a sickening squish, to dodge the cherry tomato.

I could hear the clink of my parents’ silverware in the
dining room as I stood at the door watching for Anne’s mom. The urge to kill my good friend for the dinner theater fiasco died when she borrowed the Art King’s cell at lunch, pretending to want to show off his
Quigley’s Body
film of me being tossed around stage with lettuce and croutons glued to my cheeks and, instead, deleted it forever. It also helped that the rash from the acid of the cherry tomato had finally faded from my forehead.

My family was probably the last one left in America who actually sat down to dinner together every night. Anne thought it was cool, but I’d have traded for her brie-with-crackers or Thai-takeout-in-front-of-the-TV life, any day.

I pulled at the shoulder strap of the bikini Anne had lent me. She claimed that it was “one size fits all” since the straps just tied at whatever length you needed. I probably could
have fit one cheek into the narrow cloth at the back meant for both of Anne’s. But Anne didn’t believe in one-piece suits, and we needed to wear something so we could get fitted without flashing half of her mom’s design class. I’d have to find a time when Mom was out of the house to go digging through the summer storage up in the attic.

I decided not to go into a lot of detail about the job over dinner. My parents were already a little edgy over my hanging out with Ms. Parisi. Her frequent jaunts to Milan and Madrid when Anne was little were not my folks’ idea of proper motherhood. Even the fact that she’d scaled back once her career took off and had done a complete one-eighty, discipline-wise, after Anne’s first brush with trouble at school didn’t help her reputation with them.