Serena

Ni n e t e e n

The tips of my fingers run slowly over the silver sequins of the dress. I've never liked silver, but the dress was designed beautifully.

"Serena come look at this one!" Lee calls out a few racks over. I tear my attention away from the gown in front of me and make my way in the direction of Lee's voice. "What do you think?" she asks when I come into view.

She holds up an elegant navy blue dress made entirely of lace. It compliments her chocolate skin and I know that she'd be the most beautiful girl at homecoming this year in that number. Its floor length and usually girls wore shorter dresses to the dance, but a few were brave enough to step outside of that circle and Lee could definitely pull this off.

A nod quickly and smile, "I love it! You should totally get it," I say.

"Have you found one you like yet?" she asks, holding the dress up to her figure once again.

I look down at the long straw that was given with my smoothie and slosh the contents around in a circle, watching the purple liquid swirl. Usually the smoothies from the mall's food court was good but today not so much—probably because they were training that new girl. I take a sip anyways and shrug, "I have a few in mind."

Lee nods and toss the long dress over her shoulders, avoiding her afro of curls. "I wish Caroline could have made it. It would have been like old times again."

Apparently, Caroline had come down with the flu and was out of school Thursday and Friday and had gotten it from Kurt who's been out since Wednesday. Lee's comment about "old times"—though true—slightly irked me. Yes, it was obvious that since I basically fell off the face of the earth junior year that the three of us aren't as close. Before that, we used to spend almost every waking minute together, whether at each other's houses, in school, or here at the mall.

A small part of me yearns for those memories to be reality again, but I know that my reclusion has broken an invisible bond between us and that that will never happen again—at least not with Caroline. Lee has always been the more understanding out of the two and the least judgmental. I could tell that Caroline was in some ways still bitter towards me and she's known to hold grudges for a long time.

"Yeah, me too," is all I say.

Lee looks at me and slowly raises an eyebrow, "Is something wrong? Like, is everything okay with you in general?" she asks suddenly.

Her question catches me off-guard and I'm unsure how I should respond. "What do you mean?" I ask, turning around and flipping through dresses. I'm not really looking though, and only hope that I appear to seem normal.

Lee steps beside me and begins to slowly look through the dresses as well. "Well, I mean ever since you've come back to Monroe you've seemed...different I guess? Like not the same Serena that started out junior year with me. The one that made the dead pig dance that we were dissecting."

I can't help but to half-smile at the memory. Yes it was probably morbid of us to play with the small pig we were supposed to be learning the anatomy of, but at the time it was hilarious to us. But then another memory clouds my mind, one of that dingy room where hands ravenously grasped at my body. My eyes close as I try and think of something else. Anything else.

"Serena?" I hear Lee say in a slightly worried tone.

My eyes open and I shake my head, flipping through the dresses once again. "It's because I'm not Lee. I've changed," I say. For the worse. I sigh and grasp the current dress in my free hand and focus on the pearls that's sewn into the bodice. "I had to deal with something and...I don't know. I wish I didn't have to and that I could have stayed in school, I really do. But," I say. But what? I can't change the past no matter how bad I wish I could, so my only option is to move forward. "I'm trying to be the old Serena, Lee. It's just going to take some time, okay?" I say, meeting her warm brown gaze.