“Nothing.” I smile, my pressed lips trapping the laughter.
This dress would be a little hard to truly dance in anyway. I thought I’d go for a pale pink or blue gown—something simple and floaty. But I surprised myself with this one: the color of milky tea, with crystals like a dusting of sugar. I tend to think of my coloring as plain: pale, freckled skin; unremarkably blue eyes; and ash-brown hair that falls nearly to my waist. But the neutral-tone dress works somehow, makes me look brighter by comparison. I think the mermaid silhouette and Hollywood glamour look surprised Lukas too. On the way here, he glanced at my neckline and tugged at his collar. “Are you sure it’s not . . . a little . . . showy?”
I laughed and said that if my pastor dad was okay with the dress, it was fine. He still looked a little disquieted, which I hoped was a compliment. Lukas is fast to share his well-thought-out opinions in class, but he can be hard to read in other ways.
In fact, it took me all of freshman year to realize that he liked me. We were both the new kids—me transferring from Sotherby Christian so I could join the swim team, him from North Carolina. He brought his faint Southern drawl with him, along with a collection of brightly colored polo shirts and his impeccable manners.
We met in second-period freshman biology, two days before my mom’s cancer diagnosis. Sometimes, when memories of that time come back like tremors, I think about what a good friend Lukas was to me. He handled the havoc with such grace—looking up statistics to comfort me, earnestly sharing scripture for whatever I was feeling. I’m a pastor’s kid; I know Bible verses. But sometimes it’s nice to have people present them to you. Like they thought so deeply about your situation that they sought outside help. He did all that without ever even holding my hand.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“When we met.”
He smiles, his gaze passing over my face. “It’s so different to see you with all this makeup on.”
“Good different?” My deep lipstick needed bold wings of eyeliner to balance it. Even though I have an online channel where I share makeup tutorials, I don’t use many products day to day. My parents don’t exactly love when I wear lots of makeup. And my parents don’t exactly know about the video channel.
“Sure,” Lukas decides. “Just different. You look like a slightly alternate-universe Lucy.”
“Hollywood Luce,” I suggest.
“Your parents didn’t think anything of all the makeup?”
I lift one shoulder. He’s unduly reverent toward my parents, so he considers my video channel a lie by omission. Whereas I think I’m keeping them from unnecessary worry.
But in this moment, with my best makeup artistry and my hair swept to one side, it feels like the culmination of what I hoped high school would be, all at once. I compose a quick prayer of gratitude—that I have both my parents still; that I have Lukas, who is steady and good; that I have swim team and a chance to be a good leader. Tonight, everything feels like it’s supposed to.
The second crisis cracks my world into pieces.
Lukas and I stay after the lights go up, exposing a sticky dance floor. He and the rest of the student council take down the balloon arches, and I pick up a few corsage petals that have been trampled underfoot. Most of the chaperones are seeing students out, making sure no one is drunk or being particularly stupid as the limos take them to afterprom.
I’m waiting for Lukas outside the ballroom when Principal Cortez comes back up the stairs. “Lucy, sweetie, what are you still doing here?”
“Oh, Lukas is helping tear down, so I figured—”
“Well, he can go too.” She touches my arm. “You’ve got enough going on.”
“Okay . . . ,” I reply. I guess I do have a lot going on, with swimming and my AP classes.
Her smile is an attempt to encourage me, I think, but she only looks sad. “Give your mom our love, okay? We’re all thinking about her.”
Because I don’t know what else to say, I reply, “Will do.”
She heads inside, flagging down a nearby hotel employee with a question I can’t make out.
Give my mom their love? They’re thinking about her? These are the sounds of freshman year, after everyone heard she had breast cancer. And everyone heard; when you’re a school nurse and a pastor’s wife, half the community knows you.
But she’s fine now—has been for a long time. If she weren’t, my parents would obviously have told me.
My dress itches at the neckline, and the straps bite into my shoulders. Moments ago, the ceiling outside the ballroom seemed lofty. Now, I feel trapped inside a too-small box with not enough air.
Maybe my parents have been a little preoccupied the past few days, but my dad is just struggling with this week’s sermon. I can always tell by the sound of his pencil on the legal pad, the sharp scratch as he crosses out ideas. And I did notice my mom twisting the ends of her hair, as she does when she’s worried. But the flu is getting passed around school, so work has been busy for her.
Still, a shudder slips down my spine, something deeply off in the world. My hands tremble as I pull my cell phone from my purse. I scroll to my dad’s number, since he’s the world’s clumsiest liar. Even his reactions to unflattering haircuts are badly acted.
“Luce? What’s wrong?” my dad demands. Of course he’s alarmed—his only daughter is calling home on prom night.
“Nothing! I hope.” Now I feel dramatic. Principal Cortez probably misheard some teachers’ lounge gossip. “Is everything . . . I mean, Mom’s okay, right?”
The silence. That’s what gives him away. It stretches out, a chasm carved into the conversation, and blood rushes to the center of my body. Flashes of heat in my arms and thighs. The feeling that comes after you slam your brakes, hard, to avoid an accident. No. No. It can’t be bad health news; she had a lumpectomy. Please, Lord, I will do anything if it’s not that.
Finally, my dad manages to say, “You know what, honey? Everything’s gonna be fine. The three of us will talk when you get home.”
“Dad.” The hotel is a too-fast carousel, blurs of color and light around me. Please, God. Let me be wrong.
“Luce?” Lukas’s voice is somewhere nearby, but the word floats over me, drifting past. I don’t know where it came from or where it lands.
“I’ll leave now,” I tell my dad. “I’m leaving now. Just please tell me. I can’t . . . I can’t drive home wondering, okay?”
Wait, I didn’t drive. Lukas did. He appears behind me, hand on my lower back and guiding me to the exit.
My mom’s soft alto enters the background, calm as she confers with my dad.
“It’s back, isn’t it?” I whisper.
More silence. Space enough for a gulp or a pained sigh or a pang to ache through your chest. “That’s what the doctors are saying. Yes.”
I don’t cry. But water springs to my eyes, the reaction to a slap.