Something Borrowed

by Catherine Hapka

  Something Borrowed

  How NOT to Spend Your Senior Year

  BY CAMERON DOKEY

  Royally Jacked

  BY NIKI BURNHAM

  Ripped at the Seams

  BY NANCY KRULIK

  Spin Control

  BY NIKI BURNHAM

  Cupidity

  BY CAROLINE GOODE

  South Beach Sizzle

  BY SUZANNE WEYN AND DIANA GONZALEZ

  She’s Got the Beat

  BY NANCY KRULIK

  30 Guys in 30 Days

  BY MICOL OSTOW

  Animal Attraction

  BY JAMIE PONTI

  A Novel Idea

  BY AIMEE FRIEDMAN

  Scary Beautiful

  BY NIKI BURNHAM

  Getting to Third Date

  BY KELLY MCCLYMER

  Dancing Queen

  BY ERIN DOWNING

  Major Crush

  BY JENNIFER ECHOLS

  Do-Over

  BY NIKI BURNHAM

  Love Undercover

  BY JO EDWARDS

  Prom Crashers

  BY ERIN DOWNING

  Gettin’ Lucky

  BY MICOL OSTOW

  The Boys Next Door

  BY JENNIFER ECHOLS

  In the Stars

  BY STACIA DEUTSCH AND RHODY COHON

  Crush du Jour

  BY MICOL OSTOW

  The Secret Life of a Teenage Siren

  BY WENDY TOLIVER

  Love, Hollywood Style

  BY P.J. RUDITIS

  Available from Simon Pulse

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 2008 by Catherine Hapka

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Designed by Ann Zeak

  The text of this book was set in Garamond 3.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Simon Pulse edition April 2008

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Control Number 2007931605

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-5441-5

  ISBN-10: 1-4169-5441-4

  eISBN-13: 978-1-41659-691-2

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  One

  I hate pink.

  Pink is the color of chewed-up bubble gum. Of scar tissue. Of Pepto-Bismol. Totally gagworthy.

  Not to mention that it totally clashes with my skin tone and somehow makes my strawberry-blond hair, which I usually love, look bright orange. As a bonus, it also brings out the mud in my hazel eyes.

  “It’s really not that bad, Ava,” my best friend, Teresa Sanchez, said. She sounded neither convinced nor convincing. In fact, I was pretty sure she’d been averting her eyes ever since I’d wriggled into the Pink Monstrosity.

  I was standing in front of the mirror at Olde Main Line Bridal, staring at the baby-butt-pink, puffy-skirted satin blob my older sister, Camille, was inflicting on me for her wedding. I was Camille’s maid of honor, probably due to two key facts: (1) I’m her only sister, and (2) most of her friends realized she’d drive them crazy within seconds of launching Operation Perfect Wedding. Having lived with Camille for all of my seventeen and three-quarters years, I was completely aware of both facts. I’d also figured it was pretty much a given that Camille, who was always a bit on the needy side, would morph into the Bridezilla to end all Bridezillas.

  However, the pink thing had taken me by surprise. After all, Camille had known me for those seventeen-plus years too. You’d think in all that time she would have noticed that while pink worked just fine on her, with her blond hair and blue eyes, it was a Hindenburg-level disaster on me.

  Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by Camille’s complete lack of taste, considering that she had chosen Boring Bob as her husband-to-be. In fact she had dated Bob and only Bob since the dawn of time, aka middle school. Even back then, though I was just eight years old myself, I’d been thoroughly unimpressed. The thirteen-year-old Bob had been one of those kids who got out of gym a lot because of his asthma and paid a more musically hip kid to make a cool mix CD for him to give to Camille on Valentine’s Day. Now, some ten years later, Bob had grown up into a total suburban metrosexual, too busy perfecting his hair-gel technique in front of the mirror to actually go out and do anything. Well, unless you counted pasta at the Olive Garden as doing something. Which I certainly didn’t.

  Anyway, I didn’t see the appeal. But I wouldn’t expect Clueless Camille to understand. Despite being sisters, the two of us had never had much in common.

  I twirled in front of the mirror, trying to convince myself that Teresa was right and the dress wasn’t that bad. On the plus side, it did make me look much more hourglassy than I really was, thanks to the enormous pouffy sleeves and bubble-butt skirt. Maybe my cute face and outgoing personality would be enough to pull off the look. . . .

  But no. The Pink Horror was just too strong. It was even starting to overcome my natural sense of optimism and joie de vivre.

  “Did I ever mention that I hate pink?” I mumbled with a defeated sigh.

  Teresa got up and came over to stand next to me. Her reflection in the mirror looked refreshingly nonpink. Her thick dark hair was pulled back from her gorgeous-without-a-speck-of-makeup (not even concealer—talk about unfair!) high-cheekboned face. She was wearing denim cutoffs and a white fitted T-shirt with the faintest hint of faded green horse slobber on the sleeve. Even though I was standing on that little platform they always have in bridal shops, Teresa was still a bit taller than me.

  “Look, Ava,” she said in her best listen-up voice. She’d developed it over her years of dealing with horses, and it worked pretty well on people, too. “Unless you decide to run away from home in the next two weeks, you’re going to have to show up at that wedding in this dress. So you might as well suck it up and deal.”

  That was just like Teresa. Despite her sultry foreign-film-star looks, she was definitely the no-nonsense, pragmatic type. I’d always appreciated that about her, especially since I tended toward the happy-go-lucky and giddily impractical myself. Or so Teresa had always told me. And she was almost always right.

  That didn’t mean I always had to admit it. “You’re just saying that because you won’t have to witness my fashion catastrophe in person,” I pointed out. “I still don’t know how you managed to make that happen.”

  She smiled serenely. “Don’t be silly. I signed up for that internship way before I found out Camille’s wedding date.”

  “Whatever. You’re just going to have to deal with the fact that y
ou’re missing the social event of the season. People from Ardmore to Malvern are going to be talking about this wedding for eons, and you’re going to miss it just for the chance to help a bunch of foreign horses improve their sex lives.”

  Teresa kept smiling. She didn’t seem too broken up about the idea of missing the wedding. In less than two weeks she would be leaving for a monthlong internship on a horse-breeding farm in Germany. I’d been kind of bummed when I’d first heard about the trip. Teresa was a year older than me and had just finished her first year at the University of Pennsylvania. Even though Penn was just a few miles up the road in Philadelphia, it had been a big change to go from seeing her every day to only on the occasional weekend. I’d imagined us making up for lost time over the summer: lots of days hanging out together by my family’s pool, at her barn, at the mall; lots of evenings double-dating with our respective boyfriends.

  Not that I’d been particularly looking forward to spending more time with Teresa’s boyfriend. Teresa and Jason had met at a college party, and I’d disapproved practically from the moment I’d met him six months ago. I still had no idea what she saw in him. I mean, sure, he was cute. Very cute, as a matter of fact: tall, sort of tousley brown hair, great butt. Plus he was smart, with a killer smile and a quick wit. For a second when I’d first met him, I’d been almost envious.

  Almost. See, it hadn’t taken me long to realize that despite those surface charms, Jason was almost as Boring Bob-like as Bob himself, what with the perfect hair and the perfectly preppy clothes and that smug little smirk of his that always made me suspect he was secretly laughing at me. I wasn’t sure of his feelings toward the Olive Garden, but then again I wasn’t sure about his feelings about much of anything. He barely talked about himself at all and seemed to have no particular interests other than watching basketball on TV and messing around with his computer. Like I said, boring.

  Despite all that, I’d been more than willing to tolerate his dullness if it meant spending more time with Teresa this summer. Of course, now we had a month less than I’d planned thanks to that internship. When I realized she would be hopping the plane for Munich exactly one day before Camille’s Big Day, my wistful disappointment changed to sheer envy. Unfortunately, it was far too late by then to sign up for that internship myself—not to mention the fact that horses made me a little nervous, and they mostly seemed to feel the same way about me.

  The bridal-shop woman had been busy on the phone for the past few minutes. But now she came bustling over to check on us. She was one of those quintessential Main Line ladies of a certain age: carefully frosted and coiffed hair courtesy of Toppers Spa or some such place, clothes so conservative that you just knew they had to be expensive, and a touch of plastic surgery to pull it all together.

  “How are we doing over here, ladies?” she asked in what I could only describe as a brisk coo. “Miss Hamilton, the gown looks fabulous! Though I think we may need to take it in a smidge more at the bust . . .” She pulled a tape measure out of her pocket and went to work.

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes at Teresa. If there’s one thing even more fun than trying on a fugly pink dress, it’s standing there with a complete stranger poking at your chest while basically telling you you have no boobs. Isn’t that exactly how any girl would love to spend a gorgeous summer Sunday afternoon?

  “Hey, Ava, I think I hear your phone ringing.” Teresa glanced in the direction of the dressing room. “Want me to grab it?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “Let it go to voice mail. It’s probably just Mom again, complaining about Camzilla’s latest breakdown.”

  Teresa grinned. “Right. What was it last time? Problems with the cake?”

  “Keep up; that was last week. Today it was something about canapés, I think. Mom didn’t go into detail in her message, but I’m pretty sure it involved the end of life as we know it.”

  The bridal-shop lady glanced at us both with a sort of tut-tut look on her face, though she was far too well-bred to say anything. Or maybe it was because she’d met my sister and realized what we were dealing with.

  It seemed like forever before the bridal lady was satisfied that, yes, the Pink Thing could be properly molded to my B-minus boobage. Finally, she stepped back and tucked away her tape measure.

  “All right, Miss Hamilton,” she said, “we’ll be sure to have your dress ready to try on again by the next fitting.”

  “What if it still doesn’t fit right?” I asked with a sudden burst of hope. “The wedding is two weeks from yesterday. Is there any chance it might not be ready?”

  Her reassuring smile made my new-found hope fizzle out. “Our most talented seamstress will be working on it. It will fit; don’t worry. Just leave it on the hook in the dressing room, and we’ll see you again on Thursday for the final fitting.”

  “Come on, Ave. Let’s go get you changed and get out of here.” Teresa grabbed my hand and dragged me off the little platform. We pushed our way past a rack of plastic-shrouded bridal white and through an arched doorway into the dressing room.

  In the same way that “dress” means something completely different in Bridal Shop Land, so does “dressing room.” Instead of the toilet-stall-like individual enclosures you usually find at the mall, this place had just one big, open room, complete with framed wedding photos on the walls, several tasteful white upholstered sofas and chairs scattered around, and a couple of those little platforms with accompanying three-way mirrors. The day Camille tried on her gown for the first time, there had actually been another bride, her mother, and about half a dozen giggling friends in there with us. I’d expected Camille to blow her top at that, but she’d been so busy freaking out over how the (pure white) buttons didn’t exactly match the color of the (pure white) fabric that I’m not sure she even noticed.

  Today Teresa and I had the place to ourselves, and I was glad about that. The fewer witnesses to my pink shame the better. I’d dropped my clothes on one of the white tufted chairs, and they were right there waiting for me, although apparently Bridal Lady had sneaked in and folded them while we were outside. Folded or not, I’d never been so glad to see them.

  Unfortunately, as I mentioned, the deluxe dressing room also included a couple of those giant three-way mirrors. That meant I was subjected once again to the view of myself encased in the Pink Horror.

  “This is really going to happen, isn’t it?” I asked Teresa as I stared at my cotton-candy-colored reflection. “I’m actually going to have to wear this thing in public.”

  “And be memorialized forever in the wedding photos,” Teresa said. Apparently realizing it wasn’t the most tactful comment in the world, she reached over and squeezed my arm. “But don’t worry. If anyone can pull off the look, you can. Besides, you’ll probably forget you’re wearing it once the reception starts and you’re dancing the night away with Lance.”

  “That’s true.” I brightened a bit at the thought. Lance and I had been together for nearly three months. As Teresa would say, that was practically a record for me, Ms. Short Attention Span. But Lance was pretty special. For one thing, he was super hot, with this spiky white-blond hair and biceps that would make Michelangelo drool. But it wasn’t his looks that made me really fall for him. And it certainly wasn’t the fact that he was Boring Bob’s stepcousin. No, the first thing I adored about Lance was his incredible passion for cars.

  Not that I was any kind of gearhead myself. I didn’t even have a car of my own—my parents always said that if I wanted one, I could pay for it myself, and somehow I’d always found better things to do with the paycheck from my part-time job than spend it on boring stuff like insurance and gas. Besides, why go to all that trouble? I had enough friends with cars that I could almost always get a ride. And in a pinch my parents would usually let me borrow one of theirs as long as I promised to top off the tank.

  In any case, even if my own motor didn’t race at the very sight of a perfectly restored ’65 T-bird, I could appreciate that kind of passion i
n Lance. I liked guys who had strong interests, who went out and did things. Okay, so after about the fourth time, those impromptu drag races weren’t that exciting anymore. And maybe spending at least half our dates listening to Lance talk about rotors and spark plugs was getting a teensy bit dull. But even so, after almost three whole months, I was still smitten. Or at least interested enough to stick with Lance for a while—definitely through the wedding, for sure. After that, we would just have to see.

  For now the important thing was that he was almost as crazy about me as he was about cars. And that he’d look awesome in a tux as long as he got the axle grease out from under his fingernails. That reminded me—I really needed to talk to him about the fingernail thing. . . .

  “Turn around,” Teresa ordered. “I’ll get your zipper.”

  “Don’t forget the stupid little pearl buttons at the top,” I reminded her as I turned my back. “Camille had them special-ordered from, like, Zimbabwe or somewhere. If we lose any, she’ll freak.”

  “How will we be able to tell?” Teresa joked. Her graceful fingers made short work of the pearl buttons and the zipper. “There you go. Free at last.”

  Well, not quite. See, the Pink Blob was designed in such a way that it was almost impossible to shimmy it off over my hips and butt, despite the fact that I’m not exactly J.Lo in that department. That meant it had to go off the same way it had gone on: over my head.

  “A little help here?” I said to Teresa. “And no comments about the SpongeBobs this time, please.”

  Teresa grinned but stayed quiet as she stepped forward. I just happened to be wearing a pair of garish and slightly baggy SpongeBob SquarePants panties that day. That was what happened when you let yourself get behind on laundry because you were so busy bridesitting. Still, it was one more reason I was really glad we were alone in the dressing room this time.

  The Pink Horror was halfway over my head, stuck somewhere around my shoulders and completely blocking my vision, when I heard footsteps approaching from nearby. I froze, picturing Ms. Tastefully Coiffed Bridal Shop Lady walking in with a bride or two in tow and fainting dead away at the sight of my bright yellow panties.