by Kim Zarins
No, she would have to buy it.
Which meant someone would have to buy it for her, and not her parents or her boyfriend. Someone with influence and money.
And at Southwark High, that someone was Cannon.
After school she asked if he wanted to hang out, and he took her for a drive. Have you been in his car, with the fin? Very sweet ride. She opened up and told him about the money she needed for The Dress. If he could get her that money, she’d do anything. Anything.
He put an arm around her. “Call them to reserve it for you, and if they give you a hard time, I can hold it on my credit card. You free Thursday?”
She was. She told him Franklin was going to be away for the game.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. Cannon already had a plan.
* * *
Cannon went to see Franklin.
“I brought you something,” he said, and he gave Franklin a bottle of absinthe.
Franklin got excited. “Sweet. How much do I owe you for this?”
Cannon smiled. “Actually, this is your free sample for listening to my sales pitch. I’ve got this new lead, and I can get loads of this stuff, but it’s pricey and the seller wants money up front. Think you could spring me a loan? I’ll pay you back fast, probably next week. How about it?”
Cannon left with the money in cash.
While Franklin played third base for an away game, Cannon picked up Reiko.
“I can carry that,” he said, and slung her overnight bag on his shoulder. “You brought your bathing suit?”
She nodded.
“Good. But first things first.”
Cannon took Reiko to Saks Fifth Avenue. He waited outside the changing area as she came out nervous and radiant in her dress.
He just looked at her with those dark eyes, that dangerous face. He was a bad boy, but tonight he was playing the gentleman very nicely.
He walked full circle around Reiko. “You look amazing. How do you feel?” He put his hands around her waist.
“Great,” Reiko said. “I love it.”
“We’ll take it.” He barely spared the saleswoman a glance, he was so focused on Reiko in her dress.
He paid for it in cash, a huge stack of twenties. “Thank you,” Reiko gushed, kissing his cheek right there at the register.
Then they were off in his car.
Reiko was enchanted with his apartment—the hot tub on the roof, the furnishings and signs that no parents lived here.
She checked out the view from the window and then flopped on the bed. “Nice place.”
That night, she gave him everything he wanted.
“Well, well,” Reiko says, smiling like she’s part embarrassed, and part pleasantly surprised.
“He didn’t even buy the dress,” Frye says, scowling at Saga. “You could have put me in there. I could have talked Franklin into lending me the money.”
Saga sighs. “Cannon’s in a different league, Frye. But this is fiction, remember?”
For once Frye doesn’t have a comeback line.
Meanwhile, Reiko absentmindedly pulls off Frye’s ring and turns it over in her hand, like she’s thinking of the difference between the kind of jewelry Frye can buy for a girl and the kind of jewelry a guy like Cannon or Franklin can buy.
Or maybe she’s not thinking about the money. Maybe she just has a thing for Cannon. A lot of girls do.
Reiko arrived at prom looking absolutely perfect. Every girl there was jealous of the way she looked in The Dress. She glowed.
Franklin glowed too, knowing he had the hottest girl in the room. He savored the way everyone turned their heads when she walked past. He didn’t understand the finer points of the plunging back or the clinging fabric or shoulder straps that did more to reveal than to cover, but that dress brought out a sexiness he’d never seen before. Which kind of made him want to rush the night and get it off her. But, no, he let her enjoy the evening—and he enjoyed it too.
He ran into Cannon at the dance. They shouted greetings over the music.
“Oh!” Franklin shouted. “About the money?”
With a lazy hand Cannon shooed away the question. “Already paid you back. You weren’t home, so I left the money with Reiko. It’s all good. See you!”
But Reiko had never mentioned anything like that. So when they got back to his place, he sprung the question while he helped undo the buttons on her lower back. Buttons, no zipper. It was another tantalizing detail to The Dress.
“Babes, did Cannon give you some money for me?”
Reiko hesitated only a moment; Cannon had given her a heads-up at prom. “Oh, that money! Yeah. I think you missed a button.”
He undid the last button, and The Dress swished to the floor. She stepped out of it with her hip cocked. Reiko started helping him undo his buttons, then ran her hands up his chest.
“And?” he pressed, but he started losing his focus.
“And? I bought this lovely dress with it,” she answered, not a bit sorry.
He narrowed his eyes, but now they were both undressed, and it was either have a fight or just roll with it.
“And what a lovely dress it was,” he said diplomatically. Because who’s going to fight when your girl looks so good and shows she’s so ready?
“I knew you’d think so,” she said, and she left The Dress in rumpled perfection on the floor and took him to bed.
The end.
You can feel the difference in opinions immediately on the bus. Most guys aren’t saying a word, while the girls burst into excited chatter.
“Come on,” Frye says, almost whining, “that can’t be what Cannon’s apartment is really like. And it’s not like he lives in his own place.”
Saga shrugs. “Fiction, people. I dressed things up.”
Her knowing smile suggests she’s been to his place. It’s part of Cannon’s magic that everyone wants to pretend they’re tight with him, and no one wants to look left out. But not one of these people has seen his place. Or places. Ever since he moved out of his mom’s apartment, he’s been living with some guys a few years older, but I’ve never been inside, never met them. I don’t press him for a tour, but I’m probably the only person from school who’s sat in the parking lot while he runs in to get stuff. It’s definitely not the kind of building you’d take a girl to, unless it were a horror movie so you could time the murder with the trains roaring past and pan out to all the random rust stains on the peeling exterior. “Low rent,” he said that first time, smiling, like he’s cheated the system of having to live with his mom.
I never figured out if living on his own makes him glamorous or sad. But to everyone else, he’s pure glamor. The kind of person who might have a hot tub on his roof.
Reiko grins at Saga. “That was intriguing. But I have to ask, what made you think of me?”
Saga smiles. “Your measurements, of course. The Dress I had in mind was kind of made for our body type. You know, people with arms.”
“Dress sisters!” Mouse shouts, but Briony frowns and whispers something to Kai.
“You can’t just tell a story like that and not show dress pics!” Alison says.
Saga passes her phone around to show her current dream dress.
“Looks a lot like your prom dress,” Briony says coolly, then passes it on.
“Interesting,” Cece says, and by now everyone looks to her as the voice of Ultimate Feminism. “There’s the belittling stereotype that women will do anything for clothes, and they turn to men to buy clothes for them. However, she takes initiative in a male-dominated world and manages to get what she wants. I think this one’s okay.”
“It’s an old, old story,” says Saga. “There’s this Scandinavian myth about Freya, the goddess of love, who wanted a necklace that enhanced her beauty threefold. She slept with some dwarves to get it.”
“Too bad Peter Jackson missed that one in his Hobbit movies,” Rooster says, but he’s quiet, and the laughter from the guys is forced. Bryce is looking at his hands in
his lap, not sure how to turn this into a joke. Maybe he’s wondering how Saga got her dress this year, especially if her stepmom really did refuse to pay for it.
“Seriously,” Briony says, all nettled. “So unfair to the guy. Right, Franklin?”
Everyone turns to Franklin, who looks like a cornered animal. “Hey, I’m cool with the story contest, but sometimes things take a feminist turn, and I have no idea what to say when that happens.”
“Pard, you say something,” Saga says. “You value clothes, and you’re no prude. You’d have done the same thing. Explain to the guys.”
Now that he’s being called on, I finally I let myself stare at him.
Pard sits alone, sideways, feet dangling in the aisle. He sticks his nose up from his sketchbook. His small face is pinched like he’s barely holding himself together. I mean, right after our conversation about girls’ clothes, Saga is asking him for a speech on the same topic. “I don’t think I’m the right guy for this. I’m a romantic, remember?”
He’s right—he’d never sleep with someone to get a nice outfit. I’d always assumed Pard had slept with Greg and pretty much every gay guy at school, and now I’m not sure. I mean, there are rumors of him doing certain, um, things with this boy or that one, but I’m not sure anyone’s ever returned his favors, or if it’s even biologically possible for him to accept them. Even if something were possible, word would have gotten around that he’s not a regular boy. He’d be hazed if people knew.
Then it hits me, what he’d said. Something about his last school. Something like, If they knew, the guys would assault me like they did at my old school.
He’s sitting there so sharp and cynical and smart, but his body is so small, so defenseless. I felt that when I raised my fist. Why did I assume he had it easy just because he had no sister to mourn? Someone hurt him. He said as much, and I didn’t even listen.
I push against my chest, against whatever is spilling out. I blink back tears. Someone hurt him. I’m the only one who knows this, and I brushed him off as a freak. Shit, I pretty much asked him what he had in his pants, like that’s all I cared about. Then I refused to sit next to him. People hurt him, and then I hurt him. All I ever do is hurt him.
I’m dimly aware of Saga’s pouty scold. “Oh, come on! What’s more romantic than clothes . . . God, your pants are filthy.”
I want to tell her to leave him alone, but of course, I do nothing.
Pard rolls his eyes and snaps shut his sketchbook. “Fine, Saga. It’s true: The only things people can really count on are their clothes. Lovers come and go, but clothes are the real deal. Clothes make the man. Or woman. Whatever. It’s just too bad your heroine has to ditch her dream dress sloppily on the floor at the end, when clothes are the only things she can really count on in life. She should have at least had the decency to hang it up.” He goes back to his sketchbook and seems to be crossing something out fiercely.
He doesn’t look in my direction once.
“Okaaay,” Saga says, like Pard’s just a basket of nerves, not someone who’s been attacked in a hate crime and then coldly rejected by his former best friend. Just prickly Pard. The silly gay boy.
I hate myself. I tell him that, telepathically. Pathetically.
He doesn’t look up. He’s either drawing from memory, or he’s just holding that sketchbook to get him through. I could say something right now. Tell him something. Gush out across the length of the bus, Sorrysorrysorry.
But I pull my signature move. I do nothing.
MARI’S TALE
Mari’s up next, and she gets loud cheers from Sophie, Mouse, and Lupe.
“Don’t be too literary,” Rooster warns. “You writer types always ruin stories that way.”
Mari looks annoyed. “What do you mean, ‘too literary’?”
Sophie jumps in to defend her friend. “Mari is only the best writer ever. Didn’t you read her werewolf story in the Southwarks January issue? You know, the one where the werewolf’s wife steals his clothes, and the werewolf is stuck in wolf form until he finally gets them back?”
It was a brilliant story—my favorite werewolf story ever, published by anyone. After talking to Pard and hearing Saga’s story, I realize the werewolf tale also seems to be about clothes and trying to be yourself.
Rooster taps his chin. “Yeah, that one’s okay. But there wasn’t enough sex. Actually, there wasn’t any.”
Mari gives Rooster a stern look. “That’s what you mean by too literary? Fine. This time, you can be the sex-crazed hero.”
He hoots. “Tell on, my minstrel.”
On Zuckerman’s farm, the pig Wilbur had been feeling lonely. Try as he might, no one wanted to play with him. He’d asked the old sheep, who said she didn’t play with pigs. He’d asked the goose, who was too busy. He’d asked Templeton, the rat, who had no interest in playing, least of all with a whiny little runt.
Wilbur was running out of options and feeling desperate.
“Hey, this is Charlotte’s Web,” Rooster cuts in. “Didn’t we read this in, like, fourth grade? How can this be any good?”
Alison, Mouse, and Sophie shush him simultaneously.
Then Wilbur saw the rooster for the first time, a very striking bird. He had huge tail feathers that streamed from his backside like banners, his wattle dangled importantly—
“Worship my wattle, ye mortals!” Half standing in his seat, Rooster thrusts his hips back and forth, and I’m not sure if he’s playing on Mari’s use of the word “wattle” or really doesn’t know that roosters have droopy skin under their chins.
—and he shone in the sun with brilliant reds and russets and browns and burnished gold, plus the deep inky darkness accenting his wings and back, and his stunning turquoise toes. He was the gem of the whole farm, the all-important announcer of the dawn, and the most virile creature within miles. His name was none other than Rooster.
Rooster breaks into a “cock-a-doodle-do!” and Alison gives his wattle (the northern one) a love bite. Meanwhile, I watch Pard smile in spite of himself at Rooster’s antics, then study Mari as he sketches her.
I try apologizing telepathically: I’m so sorry.
But, again, it’s like I’m not even here.
Stirred by Rooster’s energetic beauty, Wilbur was about to ask Rooster to play, but, upon closer inspection, he noticed Rooster busily playing with a troop of chickens. The flapping wings and chaos and noise confused Wilbur. The game involved Rooster climbing on the chickens’ backs one at a time, and each time he did it, he stayed up there struggling and crowing loudly in a kind of crescendo before he climbed down again. He seemed to enjoy the exercise mightily.
“What are you doing?” Wilbur asked.
Rooster spared Wilbur a glance. “Treading feathers,” he replied happily, and then he and the hen he was on top of started crowing louder and louder.
“Can I play too?” Wilbur asked a few times. It was hard to get Rooster’s attention, he was so engaged.
Rooster climbed off the hen, who shook herself and went to look for a snack.
While he waited for her to return, Rooster surveyed his remaining chickens and turned to Wilbur. “Sorry, Pig, these ladies are all mine, but you’re free to watch. Isn’t he, Pertelote?”
Pertelote cooed uncertainly, but then squawked as Rooster mounted her.
While Rooster and Pertelote did their thing, Templeton sidled over to Wilbur and gave him a quick explanation of what this game of treading feathers precisely involved, and then the goose came over to admire the game and verify its generative function.
Wilbur was scandalized. “But—he’s putting his—but—oh my!”
“Oh yes—oh yes—oh yes!” the goose said cheerfully. “Nothing like a bit of copu-opu-lation for the species’ propu-opu-gation.”
Lupe laughs. “I remember the goose! This is kind of sick!”
The guys hoot and crow in some sort of approximation of chicken sex, while chanting: Treading feathers! Treading feathers!
&nbs
p; I can’t help but love this boisterous group, but what moves me most is Reeve’s soft, nerdy heh-heh, and mouthing of the chant that I would never have noticed if I’d sat farther back. I would have assumed he was muttering clipboard data, but I wonder if half the time, he’s just participating in his own way. Here’s a kid who’s been rejected time and again, and he embraces his post as a nark and killjoy—yet sometimes he forgets his grudge and laughs along, even if the other kids never forget he’s a social outcast. He sees me smiling at him and grabs his clipboard, and the moment is lost. I can’t do anything right today.
Wilbur, nauseated by the fornication before him, escaped from his pen and tried to make a run for it. The animals broke out in raucous chaos, with flapping wings, trotting legs, and a chorus of voices, including loud bawks from Rooster’s entire harem.
“Why, he’s running from rutting,” laughed the old sheep. “Scared of the beast with two backs, I’d say.”
“COCK-A-Doodle DOOOOOooooo!” Rooster screamed with an explosion of lady wings beating underneath him.
“You realize if you live long enough, you’ll be expected to carry on the same performance with a sow,” Templeton told Wilbur.
“Noooo!” squealed the pig, scarred for life. “I’ll never put that part of myself into an animal in such a coarse fashion.”
“When you’re older, you’ll be surprised-surprised-surprised,” clucked the goose. “You’ll play the game like everyone else.”
“Never,” Wilbur insisted, and he trotted off, but not too far. Even if the other animals were disgusting and played terrible games with their bodies, they were still his extended family. He didn’t know where to go without them.
After a confusing dose of freedom Wilbur was more than ready for Lurvy and Zuckerman to arrive with slops in hand, and the pig went docile, but still confused and friendless, to his pen.
That night Wilbur called a meeting in the barn and asked if anyone would be his friend. A platonic friend, he specified, with a nervous glance at Rooster and his nymphomaniac hens. “What’s ‘platonic’?” asked Rooster, who had a small vocabulary. This is when Charlotte befriended Wilbur and promised to show herself the next day. There was a nice logical tone to her voice that comforted the confused and frightened little pig.