Between Darkness and Dawn

3.

It took another two weeks before Evie and Audrey agreed on a date for the shopping trip, but at the last minute they were called to an emergency ‘fashion disaster’ at the community fashion show rehearsal. That meant that Carmen and Harmony were left to their own devices which was more of a downer for Carmen since she always felt self-conscious around Harmony, especially when that was combined with anything to do with clothes. Although Carmen made her own clothes, thanks to her mothers insistence to be creative and love fashion, she didn’t fill her closet with home made, handmade items, because unlike her parents and Harmony, she knew how easy it was to lose money and decided to be wise about her spending habits.

She put money away regularly, into a savings account, in case she ever needed a safety net. Of course, to make sure that no-one could take advantage of that safety net but her, she had made the account entirely secret so that no-one but her and her bank knew it existed. That didn’t help with her shopping trip however. Her problem with shopping with Harmony was not financial or the fact that the two girls had never gotten along; the problem was that Carmen was at least two sizes bigger than Harmony and each time they were around clothes together, she noticed it more and more.

Carmen wasn’t a big boned girl, fat or any kind of name given to girls who were bullied because of their weight or who were judged for not being like everyone else. Carmen was curvy and she was never ashamed of her curves or the random weight that clung to her hips and waist on regular occasions, only to be naturally worked off during the chaos of campus life. Not unless she was stuck between a rail of clothes and Harmony. That was when she felt her most self-conscious, unattractive and downright greedy. Sure, she loved to eat like any other normal person. Well…not exactly normal. She could eat breakfast, elevenses, lunch, a mid afternoon snack and dinner, and still feel hungry on at least three occasions between seven and nine o’clock at night. She tried hard to beat her cravings and ignore them when she could, at other times, she gave in far too easily and, as Harmony would say, it showed darling. She would never change. She loved food and life and generally loved her fuller figure. Just not when it became a competition. And shopping with Harmony was always a competition.

There were a few ground rules to shopping with Harmony that Carmen brought to the front of her mind and she and her lifelong ‘friend’ stepped into the mall and headed straight for the first clothes shop in sight. The first rule, and most important in both their minds, was to never, ever choose the same outfit that the other girl had already chosen, even if it was in another colour. If Harmony picked up a little black dress with a lace collar then there was absolutely no way that Carmen would then proceed to even lift the hanger of the same dress from a railing, whether it be black, red or without lace. As long as it looked the same, Carmen neither wanted to look like she was copying Harmony, nor wanted to make Harmony mad by disobeying that one fundamental rule.

Rules two, three and four were a little more lenient but still fundamental to a good shopping trip with no arguments. There would be no lying about how an outfit sat, looked or shaped a figure; neither would let the other take complete monopoly over which shops they visited, they took it in turns to choose a shop and a department so that neither were either left out or got too bored. The third rule that came to Carmen’s mind as Harmony cooed over a pair of Manolo shoes was that she was not allowed to let Harmony, or vice versa, spend an inordinate amount of money on clothes, shoes or accessories, that were either impractical for the event or that would get her into trouble with her parents. If there was one thing Giles Dearne hated, it was getting bills for a vast array of shoes that ended up lying in a specially designed shoe closet gathering dust particles. And it was as much Carmen’s fault as Harmony’s if they had gone shopping together, only for her to shirk her duties of protecting her neighbour and ‘friend’ in that matter.