She beamed, but I could still see the anxiety building in her eyes. Her hair was still pulled back in a bun, but she’d added glitter to her sleek black strands, and it caught in the twinkling lights stretched across the courtyard. Her pink flowing dress hit right above her knee and made her look like a tiny ballerina. “Thanks. You do too. Scandalous. I hope Headmistress Dweller doesn’t see you.”
I rolled my eyes and looked down at my dress. It was red, which was already an alarming thing that might cause our old fashioned and conservative headmistress to lose her cool. It was a halter and accentuated the fact that I had large boobs, but in a good way, of course. I had started getting boobs when I was nine years old and had taken to wearing baggy shirts and jackets to cover them up. Now that I was older and enjoyed dressing up, especially when Madison and I went dancing, I dressed for my body type. No use in letting them hide when they were so nearly impossible to do so anyway. The dress hit at least a hands width above my knee but it wasn’t that short.
Plus, I had left my long hair down for once, in messy waves so my shoulders were even covered. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s like a shirt, Zoey,” Madison said, smirking a little.
“It’s a dress,” I protested. “But I will take your compliment and forget your doubt in my dress. This cost a good chunk of my monthly allowance.”
“Also known as the mom guilt money,” Madison finished. “You think it looks good, really? The dance, I mean.”
“It does,” I said, firmly. “You worked really hard on it. I still don’t really get the apples hanging from vines when apples grow on trees but it looks good.”
She threw me a glare. “It’s fall. The apples add a fall ambience.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Fall ambience, sure.”
Madison looked like she wanted to say more but was momentarily distracted as her boyfriend Brody approached us. She lit up, and I shook my head again at the endearing yet vomit-inducing love they shared.
Sometimes, Madison treated dating like another thing to tackle on her never-ending to-do list. I remember the first day of freshman year, sitting on the steps that led up to St. Joseph’s and planning which boys would be the best to date—and would help her lift her social strata. This was basically part of her plan for world domination. She had the grades, the fashion sense, the family pedigree, and the determination and ambition. She needed a boy to fit into that.
But Brody snuck up on her. He was nondescript, according to the list she had made of attributes necessary for a perfect boyfriend. There was no denying that he was good-looking with his shaggy blond hair and green eyes. But he was from Brooklyn and a scholarship student, and my dear social-climbing friend just couldn’t handle that sort of reputation for her future boyfriend.
He was always there though: volunteering to help her campaign for class president, helping her bake cupcakes for the Honor Society bake sales, and helping her to study math, her hardest subject. It wasn’t long before she dropped the cold method of finding someone suitable to her list and fell madly in love with Brody Levitt. That was three years ago, and she has never lost that dreamy look on her face when he came near her.
“Dance with me?” he asked, holding his hand out to her.
She grinned, taking his hand. She looked at me. “You okay over here?”
I nodded. “Go.”
“Have fun, wallflower,” she called behind her as Brody led her to the dance floor.
“Hey, that’s a good book,” I retorted, but she was too far away and the music was too loud for her to hear. I stood around for a moment, watching my classmates dancing on the dance floor before deciding to walk over to the dessert table and grab a cupcake. Madison had managed to get the cupcakes donated by Crumbs, and I had been dying to try one all night.
I was peeling the wrapper off a dark chocolate cupcake when Ash came up to me. “And here I thought you weren’t coming to the dance.”
I shrugged, trying to ignore how good he looked. None of the guys at St. Joseph’s looked particularly good in the uniforms, but once they were out of them, it was a completely different story. “I helped put the decorations up, might as well see my hard work in action.”
He laughed, reaching for a cupcake himself. “Don’t lie. You may act all cool and aloof, but I know that you love to dance.”
“And how do you know that?” I asked, swiping a glob of cream cheese frosting off the top of the cupcake and stuck it in my mouth. I nearly moaned; this was delicious.
“I pay attention, Z,” he said, biting into his own cupcake. Unlike me, he didn’t hold back and a moan escaped his lips. “Jesus, these are amazing.”
“What do you want, Ash?” I asked, shaking my hair out of my face.
“Come dance with me.”
I burst out laughing. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“I know you love to dance, Z, and I know you’re dying to right now,” he said, wagging his eyebrows up and down suggestively. “So come dance with me.”