Decode // Michael Clifford

Chapter 8

5. 21 . 2009

"So, which dress do you want to wear?" Haley mused, throwing half of her closet onto her bed and turning to stare at me with her hands on her hips.

I frowned, my eyes behind my thick framed glasses scanning the skimpy pile of clothes critically. “Um, you lost me at dress.”

Haley sighed exasperatedly and began sifting through the clothes herself. “You’ve gotta wear a dress, Quinn. It’s just a thing.” 

"A thing?" I questioned.

She nodded. “A thing,” she confirmed. She gathered a couple of dresses in her hands and held them up to show me. I made a face, unwilling to wear any of them. They were all so short and revealing, and I knew I would have a hard time fitting in any of her clothes, since I was considerably bigger than she was and she knew it. 

When she realized that I wasn’t going to pick one out myself, she thrust one of them at me. “Here, try that on.” 

I felt a lot of lace and saw black and blue, but I just swallowed back my protests and turned to enter her bathroom. I was right - it took me a while to squeeze into the skin tight dress. Eventually I got it on and stared, slightly horrified, at my reflection in the mirror. It didn’t look bad, but it wasn’t me. I was used to comfortable shirts and skinny jeans, not short dresses, and I just knew that Haley was going to put me in some of her towering heels. I also knew that Haley always got her way, and there was no use even arguing with her. I resigned myself to wearing the dress tonight.

“Where are we going, anyway?” I asked, as I stumbled out of the bathroom, tugging unhelpfully at my dress in an attempt to let me breathe easier.

Haley shrugged, squirming into another one of her dresses – a skin-colored number with dark lace along the shoulders and hips. “Y’know, the new club downtown.”

I frowned, crossing my arms over my constricted chest. “The After Life? Really? Haley, I’m a short white girl with no sense of direction and an extreme fear of crowds, how the hell do you expect me to survive in there?”

Haley rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a drama queen, you’ll be fine.”

- + - + -

“I’m really not fine. Like, at all.” If I hadn’t had to shout over the pounding music, I would have been grumbling. I still wasn’t sure exactly why I kept letting Haley drag me into these things, but here I was. In the middle of a 21+ club, clutching my fake ID that Haley had shoved into my hands as we approached the entrance, and surrounded by people. I felt about 2 inches tall in the mass of bodies, being shoved back and forth to the beat of the grinding music. I fumbled nervously with my fingers and then shot out my hand to latch onto Haley’s forearm, desperate not to lose her in the crowd.

Haley led me through the crowd, not paying attention to the fact that I was gasping for air by the time we got to the bar on the far right wall. As usual. Once we got there, Haley slid herself onto a bar stool and flashed her white teeth at the bartender, who immediately sailed over to her and leaned down onto his elbows. “What can I do you for, gorgeous?” he asked, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

Haley giggled and tossed her light hair behind her shoulder gracefully. If I tried to do that, I’d probably hit myself in the face. “Just a couple cosmos for right now, but we’ll see about later.”

The bartender grinned and spun around, beginning to make our drinks. He was cute, I wasn’t going to deny it, but he seemed a little too cocky for my liking.

"Cosmos?" I asked, sitting down next to Haley on one of the stools. I wrinkled my nose in distaste.

Haley rolled her eyes. “They’re good, I promise.”