How I Found the Perfect Dress (13 page)

“Yes.”

“Even though this mythical Colin person is too old for you anyway?”

“He's not mythical,” I insisted. “And he's only twenty. It's more like I'm too young for him. I'll be seventeen in less than two weeks,” I added lamely, sounding closer to Tammy's age.

“By your birthday, Colin will be, like, a zillion miles away,” she declared. “And Mike Fitch is
here
. And he really,
really
wants to take you, Morgan Runaway Rawlinson, to your one and only junior prom, on your one and only seventeenth birthday, the end.”

“I don't even know if I can go,” I wailed, wishing so much I could tell Sarah the truth. “The whole prom thing is pretty complicated for me right now.”

Sarah sighed. “A shmo like Raphael and you fall.”

“That was last year,” I said quickly.

“A guy who lives in another country, and you're hooked,” she went on.

“You haven't even met Colin,” I protested.

“I know I haven't, and what is
up
with that?” she said, as if I were only proving her point. “But a great guy like Mike, who's here and available and interested, and you're a mass of excuses. Morgan, has it ever occurred to you that you are seriously messed up about boys?”

“Yes,” I said. “It has.”

“I'm just saying.” Sarah turned her attention back to the clothes. From the look of concentration on her face I knew she was done arguing and was now focused on finding herself the perfect dress. She was going to prom, even if her idiot friend Morgan decided to stay home and sob into a pint of Ben & Jerry's all night.

We shopped in silence for a few minutes, until I couldn't stand it anymore. I pulled a particularly hideous dress off the rack. “Fine.” I tried to sound dead serious. “I will consider going to the junior prom with Mike, but on one condition.”

“What?”

“If I can wear this. What do you think?”

She looked the dress up and down, and thought for a full minute. “It's like, Felicity's holiday gown from the American Girl collection got into a slap fight with the BeDazzler from hell,” she said, “and the BeDazzler won.”

“I was thinking the exact same thing,” I deadpanned.

Sarah cracked up so hard that tears ran down her face. If I hadn't been so worried about Colin, I would've joined her.

 

 

horsing around With sarah in the dress store felt so much like old times, I had to remind myself to stay on the lookout for anything having to do with leprechauns or magical tailoring shops. I hadn't noticed anything unusual yet, but since picking up my dress was what the Wee Folk Custom Tailors & Alterations message had instructed me to do, I figured I might as well try some on.

With the help of a shell-shocked Strohman's saleswoman who was clearly already suffering from prom season burnout, Sarah and I gathered up armloads of dresses and camped out in two adjoining booths in the dressing room. Then we took turns changing and stepping out to hear each other's uncensored opinions.

Sarah, who is tall with a lean, athletic build, looked good in almost everything.

I, on the other hand, am medium height with a more curvy shape, and I had a harder time finding something that suited me exactly, but when I did—

“Oh my God!” Sarah practically yelled, when I came out to show her. “Perfect.
Perfect.
That's it. You're going to prom, no arguments. You
need
to be
seen
in
that
.”

On tiptoe to simulate the effect of high heels, I walked over to the angled cove of mirrors that had the magical ability to let you check out your own butt. The dress was a pale beige color, just a shade darker than my skin, with a bronze sheen that made it shimmer as I moved. The fabric was substantial but fluid, and hugged every curve closely enough to look amazing, but not so closely as to turn my silhouette into a nightmare of weird bulges and visible panty lines.

I looked in the mirrors, and I had to admit: The three of me looking back had never, ever looked so good.

Behind those three were a zillion more Morgans, all turning and looking and preening in unison. They were reflections of reflections of reflections, and I knew every single one of them was thinking how perfect it would be to show up at the junior prom wearing this dress . . .
and Colin would be in a tux, and together we would slow dance. . . .

“Nice dress,” said the saleswoman. “But not as nice as the one we're holding for you.”

I wheeled around. It wasn't the same saleswoman. This one was young and pretty with long black hair and Asian features, just like Alice, in fact, and she was wearing thick-rimmed glasses and an emerald-green apron embroidered with the words, “Wee Folk Custom Tailors & Alterations.” Pinned on the apron was a large button that read: “‘Wee' make it so it fits!”

“The dress we've put aside for you is worthy of a princess,” she went on. “Would you like to see it?”

“Of course.” I looked around, wondering where Sarah was.

“Come this way, please.”

The woman stepped directly into the center of the maze of mirrors, and disappeared. As she did, the reflections scattered and reformed, the way they do when you toss a penny in a fountain.

I stared at my own bewildered face in the mirror, multiplied an infinite number of times. I was barefoot, and the security tag on the gorgeous beige dress was starting to chafe under my armpit.

I hope this doesn't count as shoplifting,
I thought, as I followed the woman into the mirror.

 

 

“there Чou are,” she said, as i emerged on the other side. We stood in the hallway of what seemed like an elegant, old-fashioned office building, with ornate moldings and doors of gleaming dark wood lining the hall. The deep green carpet was soft as velvet beneath my bare feet.

Some of the doors had engraved brass plaques on them—FREIDA'S FANTASTIC FIDDLE BOWS, the nearest one read. THE BEST IN ALL OF FAERY! I wanted to read the others, but the woman was waiting for me in the doorway directly across the hall. She shut the door behind me as I stepped inside.

The Wee Folk shop was tiny and filled with shelves of buttons and threads and bolts of fabric. There was a small, old-fashioned sewing machine and chair next to a desk. “Now,” the woman said, as she led me to a tiny curtained booth behind the desk, “if you would step into the dressing room and disrobe—”

“Disrobe?” I squeezed inside, letting the curtain fall closed behind me.

“This dress has been custom-made just for you, Miss Morganne! I'm certainly not going to let you leave without a fitting.” Her long arm poked through the curtain and hovered there, waiting.

Reluctantly I slipped out of the knockout beige number and draped it over the woman's arm, which she promptly withdrew.

“Marvelous,” I heard her say. “Let me get rid of this old rag and bring you a
real
dress. Be right back!”

She was probably only gone for a minute, but a minute is a long time to stand barefoot in your bra and panties in a dressing room in faeryland, wondering what the fek is going to happen next. Just as I was starting to get chilly, I heard her footsteps returning.

“Here you go, Miss!” The arm poked through the curtains once more, this time proudly offering the one-of-a-kind prom dress Wee Folk Custom Tailors & Alterations had whipped up on my behalf.

“Well?” she asked. “Whaddya think?”

“It's . . . indescribable.” If only it were. Imagine the kind of cheap, last-minute Cinderella costume you'd get a kid for Halloween at the drugstore. Puffy pink sleeves, layers of pink taffeta, bubblegum pink polyester bodice. It had, excuse me, bows around the waist, made of pink lace-edged ribbon and a whole lotta ugly.

“Really, my dear,” the saleswoman said proudly, “you are sure to be the absolute belle of the ball in a dress like this. Unless you'd prefer something more princessy?”

“No!” I was trying not to gag. “This is plenty princessy, thanks.”

“Let me know if you need help putting it on!”

Putting it on? Ugh. But since this woman had taken away the other dress and my real clothes were lying on the floor of a dressing room that was located in a different dimension of reality, it was a choice between Pretty Disgusting in Pink or standing there in my underwear. I slipped the nightmare dress over my head and stepped out from behind the curtain, keeping my eyes fixed on the floor in case there was a mirror nearby.

“Oh!
Gorgeous!
” the saleswoman twittered, as she spun me around and yanked up the zipper. “Absolutely perfect for the junior prom. Innocent, yet feminine! Glamorous, yet feminine! Classically elegant—”

“Yet feminine?” It was just a guess.

“Exactly. Tell your date to bring a white corsage. Red would clash. Yellow would clash too.” The saleswoman pursed her lips. “Really, there are not very many colors you can wear with this shade of pink.”

“No,” I said, looking down at myself in dismay. “There aren't.” The layers of stiff taffeta made my legs itch, and I found myself hopping back and forth on my bare feet like Tammy doing the Reverse Easter Bunny soccer move Colin had taught her.

Tammy would love this dress,
I thought, remembering how funny she looked in her princess skirt and soccer pants.
A pair of cleats would really complete the outfit. It would be sporty, yet feminine. . . .

And then I remembered.

“You're so right about the color!” I exclaimed. The woman beamed. “Do you happen to know,” I asked, trying to sound casual, “where I might have some shoes dyed to match?”

“You'll need to consult the shoemaker, of course,” she said. “He's very rarely in; we almost never see him. But we can try. Follow me.”

We left the tailoring shop and walked down the long, green-carpeted hallway. “Sorry it's so messy,” the Wee Folk woman apologized, as we turned a corner and the hallway started to curve gently. “We're terribly busy this time of year. We've made so many dresses, we have to store them in the hall!” Along one curved wall was rack after rack of formal dresses, grouped by color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple. . . .

It's a rainbow,
I realized.
A rainbow of prom dresses . . .

The hallway dead-ended at a wall with a small door in it, no more than three feet high. Together we crouched down to listen. The tiny plaque read GO AWAY, NOBODY'S HOME, but through the door we could hear a
tap-tap-tapping
sound, like the sound of a tiny hammer.

“You're in luck,” said the Wee Folk woman. She grunted as she straightened herself up. “It sounds like Jolly Dan Dabby is here after all.”

i
Was so nervous about the fact that i Was about to meet an actual leprechaun that I could barely bring myself to knock. I was afraid that I might frighten the shy, reclusive creature away. I shouldn't have worried.

“What!”
bellowed a male voice from behind the door. He sounded plenty big in attitude, if not in actual height.

“Relax, Jolly Dan,” the Wee Folk woman said. “I have a customer for you. Unless you've gone out of business?”

“Wiseass,” I could have sworn I heard him say. “This customer—it's not a great looming skyscraper of a thing, like you, is it?”

“Not quite, no,” the woman replied, rolling her eyes. She was a few inches taller than me. “But not a shrimp like you either.”

“Humph.”

The Wee Folk woman turned to me. “Don't take any nonsense from Jolly Dan,” she stage-whispered. “He can be horribly rude, but it's just an act. Inside he's really very sweet.”

The little door flew open. There, looking every inch a leprechaun (and there were maybe twenty-four inches of him, total), was a miniature bearded man, green coat, buckle boots, smoking a pipe, the whole deal. He looked me up and down and made a face of pure revulsion.

“Disgusting!” he roared. “That is, without question, the most hideous dress I've ever seen!”

I liked him already.

“Jolly Dan Dabby,” said the woman coolly, “allow me to present the Half-Goddess Morganne.” She bent down and gave a knock to the top of his hat. “She's a partial
divinity
, you shrunken oaf! She is a very
prestigious
customer.”

“How do you do,” I said, extending my hand down to him. He ignored it.

“By the beard of Saint Patrick, I hope you're not going to ask Jolly Dan Dabby to make shoes to match that puke-a-thon of a gown,” he grumbled. “I'd rather retire right now! And I can afford to, believe you me.”

“Perhaps this conversation should take place in private,” the Wee Folk woman said, fanning herself with a hand. “Where it can't upset anyone's digestion.”

Jolly Dan glared up at me.

I could play his game. I glared back down at him.

“Well,” he said, after the staring contest got old. “Come in, then.” And he disappeared back through the three-foot-high door.

What could I do? Feeling very Alice in Wonderland, I gathered up my poofy taffeta skirt, crouched down and prepared to wiggle my way through.

“Careful with the dress!” the Wee Folk woman cried in alarm.

Jolly Dan stuck his head back out. “Not that way, you ‘half-goddess.' ” He said it like he'd meant to say “half-wit.” “Use the service entrance! Does Jolly Dan Dabby have to do
all
the thinking around here?”