Am I Pretty Yet?

Chapter Seventeen

This chapter has been edited 01/02/2017.

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The hallways were filled with non-stop Spring Formal gossip. Girls whispered behind locker doors about makeup choices and dress attire. Names of eyeshadow colors and blush brands were being swapped at the speed of fire to the point where it felt like I had entered a cosmetics department store.

As I passed by the boys' locker room, I heard echoey snippets of bets being made and decisions being deciphered in terms of choosing bows or ties. Every single question or choice sounded like word vomit to me, and I couldn't help but wish I had brought earplugs.

One dance, one night that wasn't even as important as prom, had every single student attending growing antsy.

"Nina!" a voice yelled.

Relieved to have reached my destination unscathed by the mob of the Spring Formal obsessed student body, Faith stood against my locker with an anxious expression. It was as if she had downed four bottles of Gatorade, and was now on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I squeezed past a cluster of girls swapping cell phones and showing one another pictures of their formal dresses.

"Why so chipper?" I asked.

"Guess who I asked to the dance?"

I whirled around to face her, my jaw dropping. "You asked someone to the spring formal?"

"Danny!" she went on, not missing a beat.

"From camp? So he does exist..."

She narrowed her eyes at me before continuing. "I was thinking a lot about it last night, and it came to me that things don't have to be so complicated. If I want to ask someone to the dance, I can ask them. So I picked up the phone and called him, told him about the dance, and he said he'd love to go!"

I pulled her in for a hug, grinning. "That's amazing, Faith!"

Her face was glowing. It was the first time in a long time that I'd seen her her smiling confidently and looking so sure of herself. I turned away from her to swing open my locker, nearly bonking myself in the face, and laughed instead of cringing in embarrassment. She folded her arms, smirking.

"You're extremely chipper yourself," she said.

I shrugged my shoulders. Jane's words from the day before had lifted me out of a sixteen year long funk. It felt like I wasn't alone in the world. Like all my emotions of confusion and anger towards myself and towards others had been acknowledged and reassured. Who could truly explain something like that?

The bell rang just in time, jostling us forward unexpectedly. I brushed my fingertips against my locker door, barely shutting it. Faith and I moved with the flow of hallway traffic, our arms looped through one another.

"Isn't today your pageant?" she yelled over the noise. I nodded. "And you're attending spring formal afterwards?" I nodded again. "Oh, honey, I don't know how you do it!"

I didn't either.

. . . . 

My ear still felt hot from the accidental curling iron fiasco, my stomach was growling because I had eaten only a granola bar and a yogurt cup, and I felt apprehensive due to the butterflies fluttering around in my stomach.

The sun was just beginning to set beneath the horizon. I watched it slink down behind the mountains as Parker drove through the highway. Richel was checking off a list of reminders: walk across the stage with your head held high; look straight ahead; put one foot in front of other, heel-toe-heel-toe.