Assisting Victoria

Part Sixteen

“I think we need to make you look a little sexy,” Lauren told me as she stood in my room late Saturday, digging through my whole closet.

That was going to be quite a problem though, because sexy wasn’t me. I didn’t own a single thing that would make me look hot. She should have known that by then. I rolled my eyes and sat down on my bed.

“You know my mom won’t let me go out the door like that, especially if it’s to a party.”

Lauren shook her head.

“Kelsey, Kelsey, Kelsey. You’ve never done this before have you?” she asked. When I should my head she continued. “First off, we’re not going to tell her that’s where we’re going. Second… you’ll be wearing… this.”

She pulled out a jacket and some old sweat pants. I raised an eyebrow, slightly confused.

“Is that supposed to make me look sexy?” I asked.

All she could do was laugh.

“Of course not, Silly. You’ll be wearing it over this.” She held up a sparkly, black dress I had worn for our freshman year homecoming dance. “We just need to make a few alterations first.”

By “a few alterations” she meant cutting off a large majority of the length and re-sewing it to make it look like it was always that length. She also took it in a little to make sure that it nice and tight and cut off the thin straps that were supposed to be holding it up. Somehow it managed to stay in place though.

“Wow! Where did you learn to do that?” I asked.

She shrugged like it was no big deal, although I could never pull something like that off.

“My mom taught me. She does it all the time for a living. Remember?”

“Oh yeah.”

After that she threw me a pair of black heels I rarely ever wore, and I stuffed them in a bag before putting on my “workout” clothes over my dress. Then we went to her house so she could get dressed herself before going to the party.

People gave us weird looks as we walked in the door and we looked all around for the nearest bathroom. Luckily, we ran into Kevin.

“Hey where’s your bathroom?” Lauren asked.

Kevin pointed to his left. In his hand was one of those famous red cups and I could already smell the alcohol. Oh boy.

We pushed and shoved our way through the large crowd of people dancing and having a good time throughout his house.

“You didn’t say there would be this many people,” I said as I looked around.

I was beginning to feel nervous. I didn’t like being around this many people all at once.

“Relax. You’ll be fine.”

We quickly changed in the bathroom and I was afraid to walk back out the door. My dress ended very short and I feared that if I bent over people were going to see a lot more than I wanted them to. I tried to pull it down, but it was no use.

“You know… any less material on this thing and I’d say I should be out working the corner instead of in here.”

Lauren laughed.

            “But you look so hot,” she said cheerfully as she looped her arm through mine. “Let’s go show people what ya got!”

            She had to practically drag me out the door and once we were outside I saw the other party guests start turning their heads. I wanted so desperately to run back into the bathroom and hide for the rest of the night while Lauren had her fun, but I had a feeling she wasn’t going to let me do that.

All around us people were talking, and dancing, and laughing. It all looked like fun, but it just wasn’t my thing. All I wanted to do was go home and go to bed. Maybe even snuggle up in bed with a nice book and my favorite stuffed panda or something. Anything but this. I think I even heard some of the guys whistle at us as we walked by. Gross.

“Look,” Lauren began, “it’s not like we’re not the only ones dressed like this if that’s what’s making you uncomfortable.”

“Personally, I wouldn’t care if everyone else in the entire house was dressed the same. This is too much skin for me.”

She shook her head and we continued to walk our way through people. That’s when I saw a few guested I didn’t particularly want to run into. Mitch and a few of his friends were here. He saw me, unfortunately, and started to walk over. I tried to let Lauren know that we should start moving faster, away from him, but she didn’t get what I was trying to hint at.

“Wow! Someone’s looking mighty fine tonight. Would’ve expected you to be on the arm of your lover instead.”

“Lay off would you?”

Mitch looked from me to Lauren.

“You’d be one to tell me to lay off. Aren’t you the one that blabbed her little secret in the first place?” he asked.

Now it was my turn to look at Lauren. She turned to me with an apologetic look on her face.

“I swear I didn’t mean to.”

I couldn’t say anything. This meant that the reason our meetings after school were now being threatened to end had nothing to do with Mitch. Well, it did in the sense that he was the one that would tell our principal there was something else going on. The whole thing though, Mitch knowing, that was Lauren’s fault.

“And how exactly did you do that on accident?” I asked.

“Well my mom called and she’s been wanting to plan this get together thing and she wanted to make it after school, but I told her you were busy after school. Then she said we could just make it for another day, but I said you couldn’t, because after school was when you help Ms. Williams out every day right before you go to tutoring and… and he overheard. I didn’t mean to let him know I swear.”

I looked around at the room full of people and realized that more of them than I had originally noticed were watching me, waiting for a reaction. Instead of saying anything though, I walked away. I headed straight for the bathroom, grabbed my clothes, and left. I intended to walk all the way home, even though it was too cold to be walking in just a short skimpy dress, but the temperature couldn’t bother me anymore than how I felt inside.

Even if it wasn’t her fault, I still just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that if I didn’t tell her, Mitch wouldn’t know. I should have said something. I shouldn’t have just left the party like that. Lauren really did seem sorry. I just… I was so afraid he was going to say something. I really was. If Tori found out that he was even joking around about such a thing, she’d probably stop our meetings herself. Then what would I do?

I could feel my eyes starting to water at the thought. Just once I wanted to be happy without it coming at a price. I put the jacket on and wrapped it tightly around me, realizing I had a longer walk ahead of me than I would have liked. Not that it mattered when I saw who pulled into the driveway just four houses down the road.