Linda's Story

Pick Out A White Dress

Linda sighed and ran her fingers through the hair at her forehead. This was... hard. There were so many choices!

"So many too expensive choices," she grumbled. The wedding was five months away, and it was the beginning of July. Her birthday was in a week- she'd be twenty two (the perfect age to get married, if someone asked her).

She heard smallish feet approaching the table, and looked up and smiled at Jamie. All the Reagans were busy that day, and although fully capable of staying at the house alone, Jamie had wanted to go to the city to get Danny "the perfect wedding present". Linda had volunteered to accompany him on that trip.

Jamie had gone off into Target, searching for what he had in mind. He had told Linda that she wasn't allowed to see what he got because she'd tell Danny.

"I am an excellent secret keeper!" She had playfully argued back, "I'm still holding a secret from Sally, when we were seven!"

"You still can't see! Danny can be very persuasive."

She couldn't argue with that; her fiancé just had to show her puppy dog eyes and that pout, and she started to break. "Fine, I won't look."

Linda had resisted the urge to get things from Target- she needed to save, save, save! So she stood in the video aisle, looking at all the movies ready to be bought. (She almost bought Grease- at fifty cents it was a steal, but that fifty cents had to be saved towards her wedding dress).

"What're you doing?" Jamie sat down at the table next to her. He looked at the scraps of paper, the big paper with math on it, a plate of fries, and the iced coffee slowly melting.

"I'm trying to budget."

"We learned about that in school. It seems simple enough."

"If you don't have a wedding coming up, maybe."

"What? You can't pay for the wedding?"

She sighed, "no, I can't. Neither can Danny. Not at these prices. Look at this," she pointed to a wedding dress she had cut out of the magazine and set aside. "Twelve hundred bucks, and for what? A glorified version of my nightgown!" She took three fries and ate them, shaking her head and sighing.

Jamie frowned, "that thing is ugly. Why'd you save it?"

"I like the color. And the fabric." She put her pencil and the picture down and groaned again. "Jamie, when you get married, hire a wedding planner. She knows what she's doing."

"And you don't?"

"Not a clue."

**********

"There's something you need to know about Linda," Brie told Danny when he came to pick up his fiancée later that evening.

Danny felt his heart stop, "what? Is she okay? What's wrong?"

"She, um..."

"Just tell me!"

"She cuts her hair when she's stressed."

"What?"

"She cuts her hair when she's stressed."

"Where is she now?"

"In the bathroom, probably thinking 'what have I done'."

Danny walks past Brie into the bathroom to find Linda standing in front of the mirror, no longer with her long, blonde hair. It was still blonde, just to her chin instead of past her shoulders. She turned to see him, and offered a small smile.

"What did you do to your hair?"

Linda held up two braided sections of hair. She cringed, "I cut it."