Flickering Shadows

Death By Dresses (Chapter 13)

DEATH BY DRESSES

I hate shopping.  Everyone who knows me knows that.  Shopping is painful-overpriced shirts and jeans.  I'm happy with my secondhand jeans and baggy t-shirts.  My grandma, on the other hand, is not.  Every few months she drags me out for a day of torture at the local mall.  Unfortunately, that tradition didn't stop since my incarceration.

           Today, my grandmother unexpectedly showed up.  "Why are you here?" I asked cautiously.

           "Shopping day!" she grinned, waving her wallet in the air.

           "No!" I moaned.

           "Come now, Lucille.  Get your shopping shoes on!" she commanded. Dylan watched from his room stifling a laugh, I'm sure.  I stuck my tongue out at him as I laced up my Converse. 

           "That boy is a nice, young man."  She noted in the car.

           "What boy?"

           "Devon or Darren or something"

           "Oh, him.  Yeah, he's cool." I said nonchalantly.

           "You like him." She giggled girlishly. "He is very good looking, Danny is."

           "It's Dylan, Grandma." I corrected.

           "So it is."

           There was an awkward silence as we drove.  "Why are we going shopping anyway?"

           "Look at you!  You need new clothes if that is what you have been wearing the past few months."  I hated it when my grandma criticized me.  She wanted to put me in puffy dresses in pink and yellow.  I would shoot myself before I wore a frilly, pink dress.  "And prom is less than two months away.  I want you to have a dress."

           Ugh, it would be about prom, of course.  I didn't want to go, but if she bought me a dress I had no choice.  A few hours shopping with Grandma though...kill me now.  She would make me try on everything!  I groaned as we pulled into the mall parking lot. "Oh hush!" she hit me playfully.

           I must have tried on at least a hundred dresses.  We were in an upscale bridal store when I put my foot down and refused to try any more.  I wandered aimlessly up the aisles and pretended to look around.  Then I saw the dress.  It was blood red with a matching red sash that had a crystal flower on it.  It was floor length and strapless. Ruffles covered every inch of the dress, but in a good way-not the over-girly way.  It was beautiful.

           Grandma saw me gawking at it and asked a saleslady about it.  "I think she likes this one."

           "Good, good.  This is a popular one.  Would you like to buy it?" The woman was in her late twenties. She was wearing the standard all-black employee ensemble, complete with a pretentious voice; her chin raised and her lip ever so slightly curled to show her distaste for us-me, is more like it.

           I nodded fervently and looked at Grandma with pleading eyes.  "How much?" she asked.

           "Five thousand."

           Grandma looked like someone had just punched her in the stomach.  "Oh, no. That won't do!  Is there any chance that it could go down to three thousand?"  Five thousand dollars...that was my entire college fund.

           "I'm sorry, ma'am, but no.  At the lowest, it will be four thousand."

          "Alright then." Grandma looked like she was about to cry.  "Goodbye. Come, Lucy."

           We slumped out of the store and back into the car.  "I'm very sorry, Lucille."

           "It's okay." I mumbled.

           "I would spend the remainder of my retirement on that dress, but I can't; now that Grandpa's gone."

           "I know, I understand."

           "You don't need a fancy dress though; you're beautiful no matter what you wear." She said as she dropped me off at the gate.

"It was beautiful!" I moaned to Dylan on the roof that night.  "I want it so bad!"

           "Man, I'm sorry.  It sounds really great."

           "It was," I sighed. "Oh well, I'll never get it anyway."

           "I wouldn't be so sure about that." He murmured.

           "Hmm?" I asked.

           "Nevermind." Dylan could be such a mystery.

           "So I have scratches all over my body from the dresses.  Beading does not feel good digging into your skin."

           Dylan laughed.  "You were maimed by a dress?"

           "Yes!  I could have died."

           "Death by dresses-I would love to see that."

           "That would sure stand out in the obituaries."