"Which one do you want to try on?" Dani claps her hands excitedly.
"The red one," I say without hesitation. In addition to being the prettiest dress I've ever seen, it's red. Red is my favorite color, but I don't wear it often. I don't know why, probably because I feel I attract too much attention whenever I wear it, something I'm not very comfortable with. But today—tonight, actually—is different. And wearing red seems like the right thing to do.
"It's perfect," I say when Dani holds the dress in front of her, faking a bow.
She giggles. "I'll help you with it, then you can help me with mine. I tried getting dressed on my own and nearly wanted to tear the damn thing apart."
To my confusion, Dani waits in front of me while I take my clothes off, completely unfazed by my discomfort. I discard my plain little white dress on the floor and pull the red one over my head as fast as possible—with Dani's help. She's right, doing it by myself would have been a nightmare. For all its beauty, it's so heavy I hope I won't have to do much more than sit at a table for the rest of the evening.
When we finally manage to get the red dress on, I face the mirror.
It looks even more beautiful than it did on the hanger. Even more perfect. The long, bouffant skirt reminds me of the drawings in the storybooks I used to devour when I was little.
"What's your story?" Dani asks. I can see her frown in the mirror, as she concentrates on the monstrous task of pulling the laces through the more than fifty eyelets of the bodice.
"What do you mean?"
"How long have you and James known each other?"
"Um…" I take a moment to consider my words. If I tell her I just met him last night, she'll think—rightly so—that I must be insane to show up here. Pretending to know him well will backfire faster than Jess's car on a particularly bad day.
I go for a neutral, "We met recently."
Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and the thinnest rivulets of sweat ooze on my temples. What did he tell her about me? He must have told her something. But if he did, I need all the cunning in the world to find out what.
"So are you applying to Stanford?"
"God no. I've been admitted to Oxford," she says proudly, "to study English literature."
"Congrats," I say, slightly surprised. For some reason, I can't picture Dani, with her black hair and slightly tanned skin, in a place without sun. In a place as sad as England. But maybe England is just sad to me. "I'm a fan of English literature, too.”
For some reason, my comment brings a particularly bright smile on her face. "You're one of the very few people who didn't cringe and suggest I take up medicine or law."
"Well, I think everyone has the right to study what they want. Jess, my best friend, is studying history."
Her delicate hands have almost finished lacing up the bodice. "Not everyone can be business freaks like you and my brother," she winks.
Aha. What else did he tell her about me?
"He's quite smart, your brother."
And hot. The word forms in my mind by itself, and I'm glad Dani is so preoccupied with the eyelets. My cheeks turn almost as red as the dress.
"Please don't let him know you think that. Won't help that pigheadedness of his in the slightest."
I squelch the urge to laugh as best as I can, because she says this in such a solemn tone that I'm sure she'd be highly offended if I didn't take her seriously. There is a slightly awkward pause while she laces the very last eyelets, in which the only sound is a high-pitched laugh from one of the girls in front.
When she's done she takes a few steps back and looks at me approvingly. "You look beautiful."
"Your turn," I say. "Which dress is yours?"
She picks a white dress from the nearest metal bar and hands it to me. I make a point of keeping my eyes on the beautiful white chiffon while she discards her robe. After a few painful minutes, I actually manage to get her in her equally heavy dress without ruining her hair. She turns around and I start on the eyelets. I'm halfway through them when an eerie harp tune comes from Dani's robe. She completely ignores it.
"I think that's your cell," I say tentatively.
"I know. It's probably my boyfriend, trying to make up for completely bolting last night," she says through gritted teeth.
I proceed with the eyelets in silence.