Laney
“Ready?”
Trina looked at me, eyes expectantly wide.
I took one last look at myself in the mirror and smoothed my dress down. Then I smiled. “Yes. Let’s go.”
We grabbed our purses and hurried outside to meet Adam. He was waiting in the Blair Hall parking lot by the party limousine he’d booked to take us all to the charity gala.
He and Trina had really gone all out to make sure I enjoyed the evening. He’d arranged the awesome ride and lent me some heavy gold and amethyst earrings from his mother’s jewelry collection, and Trina had done my hair and makeup so well that I looked like a movie star.
The three of us had also gone into the Royal Falls town center on Wednesday afternoon in search of an appropriate dress, bag, and shoes for me, and thanks to Trina’s keen eye, we wound up finding the perfect glamorous outfit in a high-end department store along the main avenue.
My dress was made by a pricey designer brand, but it was marked at 90% off due to a little makeup stain from a customer who’d previously tried it on and decided against it. I knew how to get makeup stains out, though, thanks to a quick Google search, so it was an easy fix. Plus, for $90 compared to the original $900, it was an absolute steal.
It made me feel like a princess, too. It was a full-length pure silk georgette gown with an empire waist and a beaded metallic high-necked bodice which sparkled like stars on the ocean. Breathtakingly beautiful.
I found some matching metallic shoes on the discount rack, along with a sparkly purse. All in all, my outfit only cost a little over $130. Pretty good considering most of the women in town walked around decked out in outfits worth thousands.
“This is amazing,” I said, feeling giddy as I looked around the limousine’s interior. It was lit with a hot pink glow, and the seats were made of butter-soft leather. A bottle of champagne sat in a bucket on one side, along with three champagne flutes. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“Drink?” Adam asked as he opened the champagne with a loud pop.
I shook my head. “None for me, thanks. I don’t drink.”
He handed me a little bottle of sparkling water instead, and Trina took the champagne flute. She clinked it against the side of my bottle. “Cheers to you,” she said. “You look incredible, and we’re totally gonna have the best night ever!”
My cheeks warmed. “Half the reason I look this nice is because you’re so amazing at doing makeup!” I said. I turned to Adam. “Seriously, Adam, look at my eyes. She made them look huge!”
“Trina’s always loved doing makeup,” Adam replied with a grin. He jostled her knee with his. “Remember when we were kids and you decided you wanted to be a movie makeup artist? And then you made all of us wear that zombie makeup?” He turned to me. “Laney, you should’ve seen it. It was literally just corn syrup for blood and talcum powder to make us look pale. We looked so fucking bad.”
Trina laughed and playfully hit his leg. “Seeing as we’re telling Laney embarrassing childhood stories… remember when you tried to impress everyone by making your own fireworks?”
Adam groaned. “Don’t remind me,” he said, putting his face in his hands.
“What happened?” I asked, already grinning at the thought of Adam getting involved in firework-related mishaps.
Trina leaned forward. “We were eleven or twelve, I think, and we were having a sleepover. All three Connery siblings were there for some reason, and Adam decided he wanted to impress us all by setting off some fireworks he made from some sort of kit he got online. He said they were supposed to make a star pattern in the sky.”
Adam was chuckling softly now. “I thought I was so smart and cool.”
“Long story short, he set the hedge maze on fire,” Trina went on.
“Oh, no...”
“In his defense, the fireworks did work! Until they set everything on fire, that is.”
Adam held up his palms. “Hey, one good thing came out of it! It made me realize I was interested in engineering, remember?”
“That’s right,” Trina said, rolling her eyes upward. “And now you’re going to be studying it after we graduate. None of us will ever be safe again...”
She erupted into a fit of giggles, and I did the same. Adam followed suit a few seconds later.
After the seemingly-endless week I’d just endured at RFA, it felt good to laugh and let everything go for a while.
The bullying hadn’t let up at all. People still broke into my locker all the time, leaving nasty notes or rotten bits of shrimp—to make it smell like the trash I was, according to Jessica Fitzgerald—and I was still receiving a ton of abusive texts as well.
The worst one so far was a message sent to me by some girl called Jenna Langford. I’d never even met her, but for some reason she felt it was appropriate to send me a text saying ‘No one would care if you killed yourself’ in the middle of the night on Wednesday.