The Rest of the Story

by Sarah Dessen

  “Sure!” the salesgirl, a skinny redhead in a too-short minidress, said as she hurried over. “That’s part of our new Femme Tropicale line. It’s all about being uninhibited and wild.”

  Roo looked into the mirror he was facing, right at me. “Hear that? Uninhibited and wild.”

  “Sounds exactly like Club Prom,” I said. “Grab them before someone else does.”

  “What’s your size?” the girl asked me.

  “She’s kidding,” Roo told her.

  “What?” She looked at me, confused. “You don’t want the shoes?”

  “No,” I said, narrowing my eyes at my reflection again. “Or this dress, actually.”

  “Good call,” Roo said. “I didn’t want to say anything, but you kind of look like the Grim Reaper.”

  “You think I literally look like death, and you weren’t going to mention it?” I said.

  “Well,” he replied. “Yeah. I mean, what’s with the cape?”

  “It’s not a cape, actually,” the girl told him cheerfully. “It’s a detachable midi top to add flow to the piece.”

  I faced the mirror again, and they both looked at me. Roo said, “Looks like a cape.”

  I sighed. “This is, like, the millionth dress I’ve tried.”

  “Then I bet number million and one is the charm.” He glanced at his watch, then added, “No pressure, but it kind of has to be. I’m supposed to be in the Yum truck doing the motel circuit by one at the latest.”

  I walked back into the dressing room. “You know what would save us lots of time?” I yelled over the door. “If you drove back.”

  “About as likely as someone not thinking that’s a cape,” he said. “Nice try, though.”

  Standing there alone, in front of yet another mirror, I smiled at my reflection. Normally, two hours of shopping for anything would try my patience to a point of rage. This outing, however, had been different. It was actually fun.

  First, there was the ride over, during which I got to relax in the passenger seat as Roo drove, entertaining me with stories about his interactions with the residents of Park Palms, the nursing home where he worked the night shift. Then, our arrival at Bly Corners, which was less a mall than three stores and a food court surrounded by a huge parking lot in which we were one of only four cars. I counted.

  “Is this place even open?” I asked as he pulled right up to the main entrance, taking one of many empty spaces.

  “Careful with the judgment, Big City,” he replied. “For Delaney, this is mobbed.”

  As we got out of the car, the only sound was Roo shutting his door and, I kid you not, a pigeon I could hear cooing from atop a nearby light pole. “Seriously, how do they even stay open if no one comes here?”

  “Selling overpriced dresses to desperate out-of-towners,” he replied. “Now, watch your purse. Pickpockets thrive in crowded places.”

  I laughed as we walked to the main entrance, where he pulled the door open for me. Nice, I thought again. This time, I heard it in my own voice, not Hannah’s.

  Our first stop was TOGS!, a narrow store blasting loud music where everything was neon and priced at twenty-five bucks or less.

  “NO!” Roo said when I presented him with the only thing I’d even slightly liked, a royal-blue dress with a pink ruffle underneath. “You look radioactive. Next.”

  That was Claudia’s Closet, a women’s boutique that specialized in flowing, loose-waisted clothing for women of a certain age that was not seventeen. Still, I tried on a maroon dress with a full skirt that swished when I walked.

  “Might look good with a high wind,” Roo observed when I emerged from the fitting room. “But we can’t count on that. Let’s move on.”

  We had, to Douglas Arthur, the department store, where we’d been ever since. Everything was fun and games until you were out of time, though. And we almost were.

  “All that is left is the green-and-white one,” I reported, again over the door. “With the halter neck.”

  “You know how I feel about that,” he said. “I told you when you picked it out.”

  “What did you say, again? That it makes me look like I’m—”

  “Being strangled,” he finished. “So that’s a no. Try this.”

  I stepped back, startled, as a dress was flung over the top of the door, its hanger clanking. The top had thin, gauzy straps, the skirt ending in a series of layers, all of it a pale rose color.

  “Pink?” I said.

  “Don’t be gender biased. Just try it.”

  I slipped out of the black one, then pulled the dress down, removing it from the hanger. Looking at it up close, I had more doubts: it was so simple as to be almost plain, the fabric delicate and thin.

  “I don’t think this is me,” I said. “How strongly are you opposed to the cape?”

  “I’m not answering that,” he replied. “Put it on.”

  I did, turning my back to the mirror as I slid it over my head, easing the straps over my shoulders. When I looked down, all I saw was pink.

  “This is a no,” I reported.

  “But we haven’t seen it yet!” the salesgirl said. “And he picked it out himself!”

  I sighed. At this point I’d leave with nothing to wear and Roo would have himself an actual girlfriend, not just a pretend one. Oh, well, I thought, and opened the door.

  He was standing right outside, the salesgirl a few feet behind him, a grin on his face. When he saw me, however, he immediately stopped smiling.

  I looked down at myself. Was there a cutout I had missed, exposing me? Could the entire thing be not just thin and delicate, but transparent?

  A quick, panicked check confirmed neither of these was the case. But he was still staring at me. “What?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest anyway. “What’s wrong with it?”

  He blinked at me. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s—”

  “Perfect,” the salesgirl sighed. “You look incredible.”

  I did? I turned, facing the mirror on the dressing room door to see for myself. And while I wouldn’t have said perfect—nothing was, in clothing or otherwise—I did have to admit that it worked. The color, which warmed up my skin and the beginnings of a tan I’d gotten since I’d been here. The cut, which emphasized my waist and made me look tall, even in bare feet. But there was something else, too, that had nothing to do with the dress itself. Roo had seen something in it, and recognized a part of me that matched. How could someone know you better than you knew yourself? Especially if they really didn’t know you, not at all.

  “I’m not convinced,” I said after a moment. “The fact it’s lacking a cape is kind of a deal breaker.”

  “You want a cape?” the salesgirl asked, dismayed. “Well . . . I guess we could look for something. . . .”

  “She’s kidding,” Roo told her. Again. Like a translator I never knew I needed. To me he said, “Seriously, though, you should get that. You look great.”

  I felt my face flush, hearing this, and quickly turned back to the mirror. Which was stupid, because of course he was still there in the reflection, although he immediately turned his attention back to the shoe rack. What was happening here? We were friends. Not even that. Acquaintances whose parents had been closer than close. But relationships were not passed down like hair or eye color. Were they?

  I looked down at the tag, hanging from my armpit. The dress was ninety bucks, which I knew was a lot more than Bailey had spent on hers from Bly County Thrift, even with the alterations it had needed. Nana Payne, though, would have plunked down three times that without hesitating, for herself or me. It’s important to remember this, I told myself, whether I was here three weeks or always. Don’t forget.

  “Okay, I’ll take it,” I said. “But only because we have ice cream to sell.”

  “And you don’t want a cape,” the salesgirl said, clarifying.

  “No,” Roo and I replied in unison. Then he looked at me in the mirror again. And smiled.

  After I paid, it was b
ack to the parking lot, where we were still one of the only cars present. Which did not make me any less nervous about having to drive out of there.

  “You know,” I said as Roo slid into the passenger seat, “you can drive if you want.”

  “Not our deal,” he reminded me, shutting his door. I stayed where I was, outside on the driver’s side. A moment later he swung it open again. “Are you getting in?”

  “Eventually,” I replied.

  “Can’t drive from outside.” Still, I didn’t move. “Saylor. Come on.”

  “I’m nervous!”

  Now he got out of the car, so we were both standing by our open doors. “About what?”

  I thought for a second. “Crashing.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s not enough?”

  “Planes crash. You still fly.”

  “You don’t know that. For all you know, I’ve never even been on a plane.”

  He considered this. “Okay, fine. How about this: pedestrians get struck by cars. You still walk. And I know, because I have seen you.”

  “That is not the same.”

  “As the car thing or the plane?” he asked.

  “Neither,” I replied. A seagull flew by, cawing above us. “Look. I never wanted to drive. I was fine without it. Then my dad forced me, and I hit that car. It was traumatic.”

  “Trauma can be educational,” he pointed out in that same maddeningly reasonable voice. “And even if you fail, at least you tried.”

  “Fail?” I said. “Do you think I can’t do it?”

  “You won’t even get in the car,” he said.

  I slid behind the wheel, feeling like I’d show him. Until I realized that was probably exactly what he wanted. By then, though, I’d already shut my door. Crap.

  “Okay. Put your foot on the brake.” I did, and he reached over, turning the key I’d put in the ignition so the engine revved to life. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, just the sound made my heart jump. “Now, tell me what you’re feeling.”

  I was too scared to go into more detail than “Terrified.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I might kill someone.”

  Roo took an exaggerated look around the mostly empty parking lot. “Who?”

  I tightened my grip on the wheel, right at the ten and two spots. “You. Me. Everyone.”

  “The only way to overcome a fear is to face it,” he said. “You have to knock down the power it has over you.”

  “Have you done that with clowns? Because if not, I don’t see why I have to do this.”

  “Because,” he shot back loudly, over the A/C, which had just come on and begun blasting us, “as we discussed earlier, clowns are location-specific. I see them on TV or at the circus. My fear of them does not prevent me from fully living my life.”

  “I am living my life!”

  “We’ve been sitting here for seven minutes,” he said, poking a finger at the clock on the dashboard. “Seven minutes, spent in fear, that you won’t get back.”

  Great. Now I was a failure and a waste of human energy. “You know, a lot of people don’t drive. They are just happy and grateful passengers.”

  He sat back, looking at me. “Yes, but when you only ride, you’re never in control. You get taken from point A to point B through no volition or work of your own. It’s like drifting. If life is a journey, wouldn’t you rather be the person behind the wheel than the one just being carried along?”

  I bit my lip, looking out the window at the empty row of spaces beside us. Put like that, I couldn’t help but think, again, of my mom. So willful, so strong in so many ways, and yet in the end she succumbed to something that drove her, so to speak, and not the other way around. I’d worried for so long about all the ways we were alike and what that meant for my own future. Here was a way to make one choice, at least, to be different.

  “Fine,” I said. And I turned the key.

  Since the engine was already on, however, it made a loud, screeching noise, sending another nearby gull into sudden flight. Shit. My face flushed, bright red I was sure, and I felt tears in my eyes.

  “Engine’s on,” Roo said cheerfully. He was not looking at me, but straight ahead. “Now let’s just get into reverse so we can back out of here.”

  I did, swallowing a huge lump in my throat as I did so. Then I hit the gas, gently, moving out of the space in a very slow, wide arc.

  “Tip number one,” he said as I switched gears. “Never back up more than you have to.”

  I looked around the empty lot. “We’re, like, the only ones here.”

  “True. But everything is practice. So you should do it right. Try again.”

  “Get back in the space, you mean?”

  “Yep.” He sat back, crossing one leg over the other. “I’ll wait.”

  I pulled back in, then reversed out once more, this time keeping the car tightly between the empty spaces. “Better?”

  “Great,” he said. “Now: the road.”

  It wasn’t easy. I got beeped at as I turned out of Bly Corners (“Not your fault, they’re being an asshole,” Roo said) as well as when I was merging onto the road home (“Okay, that one was your fault, watch your blind spot next time”). But unlike my dad, who did commentary on my driving between obviously clenched teeth, and Trinity, who ignored my panic while looking at her phone, Roo actually was, as he’d claimed, a calming presence. He watched everything, from what I was doing to the traffic around us, correcting and praising as necessary. Even when I froze as we approached a huge pothole—I drove right into it, almost taking Mimi’s muffler off in the process—he just said lightly, “And that’s why we steer around road hazards.”

  Even so, by the time I got him back to the Yum truck, I was soaked with sweat, my shirt sticking to my back and my nerves jangled. “I can’t believe I did that,” I said. “I think that’s the farthest I’ve driven, like, ever.”

  “You still have to get back to Mimi’s,” he reminded me. I slumped a bit. “But hey! It’s the perfect way to cap this off. Solo drive to celebrate. A win-win.”

  I just looked at him. “Are you always this positive about everything?”

  “Me?” I nodded. “No. In fact, about a year ago, I went through a real doom-and-gloom phase. Wore black, sulked, shut myself in my room. Good times.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” I said, because I really couldn’t.

  “I was working through stuff. Thinking about my dad, how I never knew him. You know, woe is me, et cetera.” He pulled a hand through his hair, leaving a bit sticking up. Something I was already thinking of as his signature look. “But then I realized me being all down was really a drag, not just for me but for my mom. She’s had enough darkness already. For her, at least, I figured I should at least try to look for the good in things.”

  “And it was that easy?” I said, doubtful.

  “It was a process,” he admitted. “I also got my license. That helped.”

  I gave him a look. “How convenient for this story.”

  “No, seriously!” he said. “Once I could drive, I could literally go places. This small town, my dad’s accident . . . I could get out of it all. Even if it was just for a little while. Like a trip to Bly Corners.”

  I considered this. “You could also walk there to clear your head, though.”

  “You could,” he agreed. “But the trip would take a lot longer.”

  I had to admit, he had me there. Not that I wanted to tell him this, so instead I said, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why does everyone call you Roo?”

  He sighed. “My real name is Christopher. When I was little, I was super into kangaroos. Some might say obsessed. I couldn’t say the whole word for a while, so I called them roos. It stuck.”

  I smiled. “That’s pretty cute.”

  “To everyone else,” he agreed. “Now I have a question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Have you ever been on a pla
ne?”

  I bit my lip. “Yeah. A bunch of times.”

  “I knew it!” He snapped his fingers. “I could tell.”

  “How can you tell something like that?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe you just look like you’re going places.”

  It was so stupid and corny, but still, I laughed. And now, on the porch with Bailey and Trinity, I felt myself again begin to grin, remembering this, before I quickly rearranged my face into a neutral expression. This had kept happening over the last few days, my mind drifting to one exchange or another from the trip to Bly Corners even when I tried to stay focused. Stop it, I thought. Blake is the boy you’re going to Club Prom with.

  Right.

  Celeste squinted into her camera, a Pop Soda dangling from her other hand. “Okay. Now let’s take one of just the girls. Gordon, get in there.”

  “Mom,” Bailey groaned. “I think you have enough pictures.”

  “What? I’ve barely taken any,” Celeste said, gesturing for us to move in closer in front of the gardenia bush chosen as the backdrop for this documentation. “Gordon. Put down the gorilla book and get between them.”

  “It’s chimpanzees,” Gordon said, getting to her feet and coming over to join us. She brought the book with her.

  “Whatever.” Celeste peered at her camera again. “Now, hold on, I think I’ve been in portrait this whole time . . .”

  “You need landscape,” said Mimi, who was off to the side with a Pop Soda, observing. “Turn it sideways.”

  “Mama, I know.”

  Beside me, Bailey sighed loudly. “I just want the guys to get here. Where are they?”

  “It’s only seven fifteen,” I told her.

  “Yeah, but we said seven.”

  “You can’t smile while you’re talking!” Celeste said. “Now, everyone look here. Say cheese!”

  We did, as she took several without a flash, some with, and then a few in portrait mode just to be on the safe side. “Perfect,” she said as Gordon returned to the steps, reopening her book to her marked place. “Now we just need a few with the boys and we’ll be set.”

  “No,” Bailey said flatly. “We are not doing that.”

  Celeste looked up from her camera, where she’d been examining the shots she’d taken. “What do you mean? Of course we are. It’s a formal dance, we need pictures with your dates.”