The Unconditional Pledge

21 Ava

"Okay, Ava," Courtney says seriously. "Pink, or pink?"

I blink at Courtney, who's holding up two identical shades of lip gloss. "They're the same."

Courtney clucks her tongue, spinning back around to face the mirror. "And here," she sighs, "I thought we were making improvement."

Megan Amante marches into the room in a whirl of red. Her dress is strapless with a slit up the thigh, and her shoes make me dizzy just looking at them. She digs around her purse, a quilted Tory Burch bag sitting on the counter with the rest of everyone's things. "Has anyone seen my lash glue?" she barks.

Nicole Bledsoe, who's lounging on the sofa already finished, sighs. "How many times have you lost that stuff?" She flings a tiny tube at Megan. "There."

I turn back to the mirror. Apparently it's tradition for the Fieldbrook upperclassmen girls to gather in someone's house and get ready for the Fall Ball together, and today we're in Paige's three-story home — twelve of us so far, and more are revving up the driveway. With a guilty twinge, I think about how only Hannah isn't coming tonight.

"Ava, is that your dress?"

Juliby Singh, who's in a silvery sequin dress probably better suited for a beauty pageant than a high school dance, is eyeing the dress that's hanging next to me. "Yeah. Why?"

Juliby sweeps back a lock of silky black hair. "Nothing," she sniffs. "It just kind of looks like Paige's."

Courtney, who's scrolling through her phone nearby, snorts into her kale smoothie and quickly turns it into an unconvincing cough. "Is it?" I say, turning back around. "I had no idea."

When Juliby's gone, I meet Courtney's eye in the mirror, grinning. My dress is a beautiful black one with a sweetheart neckline and fitted waist, but it's no coincidence that it resembles Paige's dress, too. Courtney and I — as well as the rest of the school, at the volume Paige was speaking — heard about how her mother knows someone who works in Saks and could get her one of the best-selling dresses from the last Nanette Lepore season. As soon as we'd heard this, Courtney had pulled in a favor from her aunt, who, in a gleeful twist of fate, knows Nanette personally, and gotten me a dress from this season.

"I can't wait to see the look on her face," Courtney had sighed in my bedroom as she hung up from the phone call to her aunt. "She's going to regret making your pledge about replacing her."

And for once, I had agreed. As I curl another lock of her hair, I think about how much time I've been spending with Courtney and her friends lately. It makes me uneasy thinking about how fast I've managed to slip back into this lifestyle — this pretentious, high-end life that all Fieldbrook residents live and love. And it makes me feel even worse knowing that a part of me is enjoying it. I had, after all, only stopped during the months while I'd coped with my mom's death. So what if, I think to myself, this is who I've been destined to be since the start?

It's almost eight by the time we've all finished putting on our outfits. "I'm so excited," Dana Cruz, the setter for the girl's varsity volleyball team, gushes as we file into the foyer. She's in a flowy, salmon-pink dress that hugs her curves and white Louboutins that make her suddenly 5'9". "What do you think the boys have planned for the Whooping?"

Paige, who hasn't seen me yet, scoffs. Her hair is piled on her head in a complicated hairdo that just makes her look more old-fashioned than graceful, and even someone like me can see she's wearing way too many necklaces to show off her dress. "Knowing them, it's going to be messy."

"Don't look so worried, Paige," says Juliby, who's fixing her lipstick in the foyer mirror. "Your p—"

Before Juliby can finish the sentence, Paige elbows her. I pretend to be interested in my shoes. Juliby was just about to say something about Paige's pledge, I'm sure of it.