Not the Same

Chapter twenty-nine

Holiday balls are supposed to be exciting.

They are a night where you and your friends dress up and dance all night. It's a night where you're supposed to forget the stressors of your life and pretend that everything is fine.

I don't know about you, but I'm not really in the dancing mood. The past couple of months have been overwhelming.

I mean, from realizing that my best friend would rather sleep with my brother than be my friend, to being pushed into a shark tank from said brother, and also having someone who is most likely my brother send me threatening notes on soccer balls?

I think anyone could see why I'm not really thrilled to be going to a dance.

I mean what is my brother tried to do something again? I wouldn't be surprised. While nothing particularly bad has happened this past couple of days, I can't help but think that this is the calm before the storm.

"Just try on one more!" Jess begs, a pleading look in her eyes.

After about an hour of pleading and begging, she finally wore me down and I let her take me dress shopping. Cameron had a smug look on his face until the guys reminded him that he would have to buy a tux.

"Jess," I groan. "We've tried on a thousand dresses."

"We've tried on four."

"Four very puffy dresses that took a lot of effort to put on."

She gives me a look, as if to say that there was no way I was getting out of this.

"Fine," I sigh.

One more dress turned into twenty more, and I'm not exaggerating this time. Each dress felt worse than the next. They were all so puffy and covered in ruffles.

I don't do ruffles.

"Well, why don't you pick out one?" Jess suggests.

"I guess it can't hurt," I shrug.

I make my way through the rows of dresses, trying to keep my not so nice comments to myself when I passed one that I thought looked hideous.

Weaving in and out of dresses, I'm really starting to believe that this is hopeless, until I catch one dress out of the corner of my eye.

Deciding that I have nothing to lose, I grab the dress and make my way back into the dressing room. The dress glides on perfectly and glides along my skin so smoothly.

Opening the door, I tentatively step out so Jess could see the dress.

"Oh Avery, you look beautiful. This is the one."

The dress did feel really nice. It was light blue and floor length. The top of the dress was strapless with a sweetheart neckline. It hugged my waist perfectly and flowed out ever so slightly until it grazed the floor. The entire dress had beautiful silver gems throughout the dress as well.

I let the soft smile stay on my lips. Jess was right, this is the one.

The week unfortunately goes by too fast. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually jazzed when the week goes by fast because that means it's the weekend, but in this case, the weekend means that it's Holiday Ball.

It's Friday night, and I told Jess that I would pick up some snacks because we were running low. If we don't have candy in our room at all times, we will be very cranky. Candy is what keeps us happy in the world.

Walking into the store, I start to walk through the familiar candy isles. I pick up many bags of candy and dump them on the counter, giving them my ID to pay. After looking at it, the cashier says that someone bought me some snacks already. Thinking that this is slightly weird, but who am I to turn down free snacks, I grab the snacks and head back to my room.