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I shut her up by lifting her by the waist and throwing her over my shoulder.
“Drew! God! Stop it! You’ll wreck my hair!”
“Already wrecked.”
“My skirt will go flat!”
I adjust my hands on the back of her knees to make sure I have a good hold. “It’s a ridiculous design.”
She hammers her fists against my back. “But the pictures!”
“Just shut up while I get you there.”
She goes quiet, her billowy skirt tickling my cheek as I hurry along the side wall. If the only unlocked entrance is the main door, we’ll have to rush to make it. This place is huge.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Ensley says, her voice bouncing and breaking as I jostle her along.
I grunt.
“But Felicia wore this awful white dress.”
“So you decided to ruin it?”
“It was a wedding gown. She had netting over her face.”
“Like a veil?”
“Exactly like a veil!”
Franklin had complained about his future mother-in-law many times. She’s a real piece of work. When Ronnie’s dad first started dating her, we were concerned. Ronnie took losing her mother hard, and Sheila had been a mother figure to us all. The whole wedding crew grew up together.
And we were right. Felicia turned out to be every bit as bad as the stereotype. With her big hair and short temper, she’s a dead ringer for Cinderella’s evil stepmother.
The building goes on forever, and soon, fat drops of rain hit my face. I stop, peering into the sky. Great. The storm has arrived. We need to make it to the front.
The rain pelts us as I break into a run. We won’t be soaked if we can get to the front of the building. There’s an overhang where cars pull in. We can tidy back up and hurry inside. I don’t know exactly what Ensley will do about her shoes, but that’s not my problem.
Lightning flashes across the sky and a clap of thunder shakes the ground, causing Ensley to squeal. The rain intensifies, and Ensley hammers my back. “Set me down!” she yells, her poof dress deflating in the onslaught. “We’re too big a mess to go in there now!”
I do as she says. The grass here is better, less scraggly. Hopefully it is sticker free.
Ensley turns, her dress clinging to her, arms tight across her chest. Water streams down her face. Her hair is a clump of hairspray and pins.
“Now what?” she cries. I can barely hear her over the pounding of the downpour.
“Hell if I know!”
Ensley turns in little circles, her voice a singsong. “This problem has a solution. I am capable. I can handle what comes at me.”
Lightning flashes again, and her eyes go wide.
“How are those mantras working for you?” I ask.
She grabs my arm. “There’s a building in the trees,” she says. “I saw it in the flash.”
I ignore her, looking back at the country club. We still have a long way to go to make it to the next corner, and that might not even be the front.
Ensley takes my arm. “Come on.”
