“Okay.”
I strip down to my underwear, no hesitation, even with Morgan in the room—after supervised gang showers, my self-consciousness around other girls has long since worn away—and slide my way into the dress from underneath. It has cups sewn in the front—which I’m grateful for more for the nipple coverage than any kind of support—and the hem falls just to the top curve of my feet, not the awkward too-short length that most long dresses hit on me.
As Morgan pulls up the zipper, I survey myself in the full-length mirror.
Good. I look good. It’s a little loose at the waist—I lost weight since Kai eyeballed my measurements—but not terribly, and the color is pleasingly stark against the winter-pale skin of my shoulders.
“Here.” Morgan nudges me with the gloves. I nod, take one and slip my hand inside, then stop.
There’s no mistaking the scars.
“Do I need the gloves, do you think?” I ask, swallowing. My voice sounds small.
Morgan click-clicks over to me, so we’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the mirror, like yin and yang, night and day: her loose blonde waves and my blunt dark bob, her frothy dress and my sleek one.
She clasps one of my hands, staring into my reflection’s eyes.
“You don’t need anything.” She grips my hand harder, pulling it to her chest as she pivots to face me. “You should go however you want.”
I nod, staring at her glitter-dusted collarbones and swallowing hard again. “I don’t really want to go at all,” I mutter.
“I know. But?—”
“But if I have to, I might as well freak people out.” I lift my chin and meet Morgan’s eyes. “Right?”
The concern washes off of her face, replaced by sheer delight. “Oh, hell yeah.”
We spend another few minutes on finishing touches—Morgan buffing and brushing various things into her face, me applying whatever makeup she tosses my way. I lift my peacoat off the hook, but hesitate. Something about the ordinaryness of my coat makes the ridiculousness of it all settle in. Like I’m a little girl insisting on wearing her Elsa costume to the dentist.
What am I thinking?
“Here.” Morgan tosses something at me—a small, pebbled-glass bottle with a chubby, tassled pump attached that I barely catch in time. “Try this.”
I hold it up to the light to study it, setting my peacoat down. “Perfume?”
“Special blend.” Morgan winks. “Keeps you warm. And smells like gardenia. Not permanently, but it’ll last for the walk across campus. Kind of like a beer jacket, but…”
“Classier?” I finish. Morgan cackles.
“Exactly.”
I’m aiming a few sprays at my neck and shoulders when there’s a knock at the door. Morgan sweeps over and throws it open.
“Wow,” she says. “Double trouble.”
She steps aside to reveal Lanz and Callahan, and they are dressed for a ball.
Lanz’s suit is darker, a color so deep I think it’s black at first until he moves and a slight sapphire sheen shimmers across thefabric—subtle, but there—with a narrow, dark tie. Callahan’s in gray, a three-piece, necktie a deep burgundy.
“To what do we owe the honor?” Morgan asks, arms crossed and drumming her fingers on her biceps. “Is Gwenna in extra danger tonight?”
Lanz and Callahan both shake their heads. Then exchange a look.
“We…figured it was only polite,” Callahan says at last. “Since both of you are going.”
Mhm. I’m sure there’s no other reason they were sticking together tonight. But I don’t say anything, or even let my face give me away. Honestly, if I can come to terms with Lanz just…using me, or forgetting about me, or whatever that was, then I can kind of admire what he and Callahan are up to. It’s pretty ingenious.
Not to mention it was…interesting to overhear them.
