How I Found the Perfect Dress (19 page)

“Got it.”

“Or your wedding.”

Like I could ever get married. If I couldn't deliver those gnome girls to their date with Jolly Dan, I'd have to join a convent or something.

“I swear, Dad! Just tell me!”

“You know the ministorage place, near the train station?”

“Yes.”

“They open at five a.m.” His voice was a grim monotone, like a character in a spy movie. “I brought the gnomes there this morning. I begged the guy to let me pay cash for the room so your mother wouldn't see it on the AmEx bill.”

Colin's old sneakers were in a shoebox wrapped in a plastic, stink-proof bag inside my backpack. I knew what I had to do.

“Dad, I need the key.”

“What key?”

“To the ministorage. Please. I just need it today and then I'll give it back.”

“Why do you need the key?”

“I can't tell you,” I said, with the conviction that comes from speaking the pure truth in a moment of total desperation. “Because it's a secret, the kind of secret I can never tell, and I never will—”

“Morgan,
what
are you talking about—”

“—just the same way I will
never
break the promise I just made to you about not telling Mom that you lied to her about trashing the gnomes. Never. I swear.”

Whew. Dad and I were deeply into mutual-blackmail territory now. But we seemed to understand each other.

“It's room one-one-one-four.” He reached into his shirt pocket and tossed me the key. “We won't speak of this again.” And then he stared straight ahead and drove me to school like nothing had happened.

 

 

mЧ locker door wouldn't Close after i Crammed in the shoebox with Colin's Nikes, so I stood there trying to rearrange all my textbooks and gym clothes before the home-room bell rang. Sarah's locker was two down from mine, and she watched me struggle. “I heard you got an invitation,” she said.

My heart skipped a beat—
how does she know about the Spring Faery Ball?
—but then I realized she was talking about Mike.

“Yeah,” I said casually. “I didn't give him an answer yet, though.”

“Leaning yes or leaning no?”

Leaning yes,
I was about to say. Now that I knew I had to go to prom, there was really no way to avoid the Mike situation. But before I could answer, Sarah held up a hand.

“On second thought, don't tell me. Tell Mike first, and then tell me. But you can't tell him right now. He's home sick.”

“Sick?” I repeated, dumbly. “What's wrong with him?”

“Dunno, sounds like he's coming down with the flu or something. He called Dylan this morning and said he could barely get out of bed, he was just feeling super tired.”

“Oh no!” I sounded more tragic than I meant to. “That's terrible!”

“Why? You two didn't make out, did you?” Sarah smiled mischievously. “Are you worried you might have caught something from him?”

“No,” I said, knowing that the truth was exactly the opposite. “I'm just sorry he's sick.” I shoved the locker door with my shoulder and it shut, barely.

“He'll be fine by prom, I'm sure. He told Dylan that even his feet hurt. Funny, huh?”

Oh, yeah.
The bell rang, and I thought of the rats again.
Hilarious.

 

 

the bus didn't stop at the ministorage place, but it let me off close enough to walk, and I found room 1114 without any trouble. Dad must have been really flustered when he'd loaded all the gnomes in before dawn. They were heaped in piles and jammed in every which way.

“Hey,” I whispered. “Drenwyn? Glendryn? Are you in there?”

“Mmmmmmph!” I heard from near the top of the pile. And then an answering “Mmmmmph!” from down below.

“Pardon me,” I said, as I rummaged through the gnomes.

“Sure.” I heard a crabby voice from the bottom of the pile. “Take
them
out! Take out the
sisters!
Leave the rest of us here to
suffocate!
”

“Taffy Smoothcheek, if you don't shut up, we will implore the half-goddess to remove you permanently from our company. And
then
see how you like being all alone!” That was from a pair of matching bearded gnomes who, despite their silly pointy hats, apple-cheeked expressions and the comical ability to speak in perfect unison, seemed pretty ticked off.

I ignored the squabbling and looked for the girls. Finally I spotted Glendryn's crumpled pink party dress, all the way in the back.

“Ouch!” she squealed, as I grabbed her by the leg and pulled her out of the pile. “Don't forget my sister; she's in here too!”

“‘Don't forget my sister! Don't forget my sister!' ” Taffy mocked.

I found Drenwyn a moment later. Her berry basket was lost. She was trying not to cry about it, but she looked pretty shaken up.

“It's all right,” Glendryn said soothingly. “We'll get you a new basket. We'll get
matching
baskets! How about that?”

“Sorry about the ministorage thing, guys,” I said. “I don't have time to explain right now. I hope it's only temporary.”

“I hope, she says!” Taffy whimpered. “What, do you mean you intend for us to live in this prison cell
forever
? What kind of goddess are you?”

“A half-goddess,” I corrected impatiently, “who has to get to the mall.” I shoved the sisters in my backpack and relocked the door to the storage room. That Taffy was starting to get on my nerves.

 

 

mЧ plastic Cargo and i Were riding the escalators to the second floor of the mall when I got a text message:

 

Most of it was clear, but what did mnglf mean? Mango loofah? Mongolian food? And did 5 mean five o'clock? If so, what was I supposed to do for an hour with the two gnomes in my backpack? Not only was it dark and crowded and hot in there, but Colin's sneakers were jammed in the bottom, which had to be creating a noticeable funk factor. I opened the zipper a couple of inches, just for circulation.

I stopped in front of the mall directory to skim the list of store names. There was a Gap, an Old Navy, an Abercrombie & Fitch, a multiplex cinema, a Macy's, a Saks, a Barnes & Noble, a Borders, a Japanese import shop that Sarah and I always called the Hello Kitty store though they had way more stuff than that, a Hot Topic and some other faux-punk boutiques that carried edgy logo tees and stuff to streak your hair blue, Strohman's Designer Discounts, a CVS, a Body Shop, a Circuit City, an Office Max . . .

I felt some squirming in my backpack and shifted my weight until the girls settled down. Then, just as I was about to go order a Starbucks mocha latte in defeat, I saw what I was looking for, all the way at the top of the directory map, by itself, with a shiny sticker next to it that read GRAND OPENING.

Level five. Minigolf.

I had to laugh. Minigolf? Was that the perfect setting for a first date between a leprechaun and a garden gnome, or what?

 

 

forget cutesЧ landscapes of Windmills and ginger-bread houses. This was Lunar Minigolf, an outer-space themed, black-light funhouse that you played in the pitch dark, with Pink Floyd music piped in from invisible speakers. There were a lot of kids my age going in there, and I kept my head down in case I ran into someone from school.

I paid to play a single game of eighteen holes, grabbed a putter and went in. I didn't dare put the backpack down because the place was so dark I was afraid I'd never find it again.

“Mmph! Dark in here,” I heard at one point from inside the bag.

“It's dark out here too,” I muttered, taking a swing and almost landing the ball in the Lake of Perseverance.

“Try the Sea of Tranquility, it's a lot easier.” I knew that mocking voice. What a perfectly gross place to run into my perfectly gross ex-boyfriend.

“Golfing alone?” Raph's white T-shirt glowed in the black light, but his face came in and out of view. “Why don't you join us?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I'm just working on my swing.”

“Is that him?” my backpack squealed.

“No!” I answered sharply.

“Okay, I heard you the first time!” Raph backed off. “Yikes. You don't have to be a bitch about it.”

For a second I felt bad for being rude, but then I heard Raph's voice receding as he walked across the moonscape with his friends: “Nah, she's on the rag or something. . . . Hasn't changed, same old Morgan, doesn't know how to have fun . . .”

I wondered what the odds were of me whacking a golf ball in the pitch dark with enough speed and accuracy to clock Raphael firmly on the back of his arrogant head, but I forgot all about that when I saw the next hole.

It was marked Hole 19, which would tend to indicate something unusual, right? And all the other holes had these poetic moonscape names, like the Sea of Dreams and the Ocean of Storms.

This one was called the Tunnel of Love.

“Freshen your lip gloss, girls,” I said to my backpack. “I think we've arrived at your date.”

 

 

inside hole 19 Was a Whole other World.

We were still on the moon, but it was a different sort of moon. It was bathed in a cool, bluish—you'd have to call it moonlight, I guess. This was a moon made of green cheese, with an animatronic cow jumping over it. Beneath our feet, the ground was smiling.

“Man in the Moon, I presume?” I asked, looking down. He nodded, which made the whole place rock gently.

“Whee!” cried Glendryn and Drenwyn, so glad to be out of the backpack and scampering about. The gravitational field was accurately moonlike, and the sisters held hands and bounded and leaped through the air like they were on a trampoline.

“Ahem!”

I turned and stifled a cry of alarm.

“It's me,” Jolly Dan said sheepishly. “It's Jolly Dan.” He shrugged. “I thought perhaps you might not recognize me because of all the . . . improvements.”

Jolly Dan's appearance had definitely changed, but whether you'd consider the changes “improvements” would depend on whether or not you had any taste. What I saw was a two-foot tall leprechaun with a George Hamilton tan, blindingly white teeth, gel-spiked hair and a beard that was braided and ribboned like the tail of a show pony. He was wearing a pair of skinny trousers, a vintage suit jacket over a loose collared shirt and black square-rimmed glasses. It was like, pint-sized cruise ship lothario meets indie rock hipster, and it was making my head hurt.

“This is my friend,” Jolly Dan said, indicating a very tall, very gorgeous, very Orlando Bloomish-looking guy dressed in simple white robes. Then he said something that sounded like “Q'nessir mith'ela rahdili taurgoth,” except played backward.

I stared at the tall gorgeous guy. We are talking serious, serious eye candy here.

“You will not be able to pronounce my true Elven name,” the elf said. “But you can call me Elvis.”

I shook off his hypnotic stare, called the gnome sisters over, and introduced them to Jolly Dan and Elvis, amidst many giggles and “isn't the moon great?” pleasantries. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the sisters asked me to leave.

“We may be little to you, but we're not children,” Drenwyn pointed out. “We don't require a chaperone.”

“After all, we have each other,” Glendryn added.

So I left, but I told them I would swing by in an hour to pick them up.

“Best to keep the first date short,” I said. “No offense.”

“Later, crater!” called Elvis, as I half-walked, half-bounced away. Behind me, Glendryn and Drenwyn were laughing a little too hard at the elf's green-cheesy pun.

t
he double date Was out of mЧ hands, so i Wandered the mall, with Colin's shoes still fermenting in my backpack. I stopped at Starbucks and got my latte and then browsed through some CDs at the Virgin Megastore. For laughs, I bought myself a “Best of Kiss” collection.

I checked my phone frequently,
to keep track of the time,
I told myself, but that was bogus because I was wearing a watch. Really it was to see if Colin had called to say hi, or make a joke, or give some indication that he might still be speaking to me.

But there was nothing: no calls, no messages, no texts. I almost called him just to make sure he was okay, but I was planning to go to UConn the next day to see how his project did in the robot competition, and if I talked to him now, while he was probably still furious at me, he might tell me not to come. Overall it was better if we didn't speak.

Luckily malls suck up time as easily as they suck up money, and the hour passed quickly. Back on level five I flashed the Lunar Minigolf inkstamp on my hand, reentered and found my way to Hole 19.

The moon was deserted. The man in the moon had closed his eyes. Even the cow was gone. I bounded and bounced around for quite a while before I found him.

Yes,
him
. Jolly Dan was alone, lying facedown in the Sea of Despondency.

“Hey,” I said. “Where is everybody?”

“They left.” He didn't move.

“Left?” I tried not to jump to any horrible conclusions. “Where did they go?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Jolly Dan rolled onto his back and started yelling. “Ask Elvis! Your plastic friends couldn't tear their eyes off his freakishly elongated figure, and before you can say ‘Kiss off, Jolly Dan,' the three of them ditched me! End. Of. Story.”