There's a Playground

Cue Saturday night. Homecoming was next week and Skye and I had yet to get our dresses. I’d convinced her to come with me, despite the fact that she had no date. I figured that it would be more of the ‘friend date’ vibe that I was going to try for. Don’t get me wrong. I really liked Craig, but there was just…I don’t know. No chemistry between us, I guess? Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s the description I was looking for…

Skye understood, and agreed with me after I explained it to her. The last few days had been rather…awkward. Craig’s arm was almost always around my waist. I didn’t really mind, but it just made things a little awkward. I mean, Max didn’t look happy at all, and I had no idea why…

On the other end of that, Skye was still staying at my place. She hadn’t said why she didn’t want to go home other than that, apparently, her parents were out of town and she hated being alone in her house. I wasn’t exactly buying it, but what did I know? I didn’t really know her parents or anything. My mom liked her, though, so that was a bonus. And it was nice to have someone to talk to that was a girl and in high school.

As far as Max went, we hung out sometimes after school. And it was generally over at his place, considering that his mom was never there. Skye stayed at my house for the most part, leaving well enough alone and, also, doing her homework. Which I would do before going to bed.

I didn’t really know what was up with him, but he kind of distanced himself from me ever since Craig asked me to Homecoming. He’s with some new girl now, but I don’t really think he likes her. He doesn’t look happy when he’s with her, just annoyed and pissed off. But again, what did I know?

I did, however, find out that Ronnie liked Skye. I mean, Max kind of gave it away the night he told me to bring Skye to their band practice because it would make Ronnie less of an ass. But my friend actually admitted it to me. After I promised not to tell either one of them about it. Which wasn’t very hard to do. I was pretty damn good at keeping secrets…

So anyway, back to Saturday night. “Wednesday! Fuckin’ a! The mall is going to close soon, damn it!” Skye called from down the hall. I was in the middle of braiding my hair in the bathroom when she shouted that at me from the living room. I heard my mother laughing and I sighed, tying off that second braid before heading back into the living room. “Kat’s in the car already. Come on! She’s gonna leave with out us!” My friend whined and I smirked as she dashed out of the door and towards my mom’s car without me.

For one reason or another, shopping was a huge deal to her. I liked shopping, but not as extensively as Skye apparently did…

About fifteen minutes later, we were walking arm-in-arm through the mall. My mother had abandoned us to shop for ourselves while she went looking for books and clothes of her own. Which I was glad for because it meant that I didn’t have to listen to my mother whine about going into stores like Hot Topic or Spencer’s. And I got to have some girl time with Skye. Always a good thing…

Skye dragged me into Hot Topic and over to the dress part of the store. My friend then proceeded to shove various items of clothing into my arms before shoving me back into the dressing room. I sighed. Maybe I should have opted to go with my mother. But whatever, I’d deal with Skye’s pushiness…

It wasn’t that big of a deal, anyway.

“You have to come out and show me when you have them on!” she instructed through the door as I stripped down to my skivvies and grabbed the first of five dresses she wanted me to try on.

It was a simple black pencil dress that I wouldn’t have tried on had she not picked it out for me. Frowning, I stepped out of the room so that she could see me. She frowned back and shook her head. “Next.”

After the other four were rejects, I got to wait until Skye had tried on all she could. Neither of us found anything, but we each got a few t-shirts. And after another forty-five minutes of hopping around from store to store and not finding anything, we finally just decided to go look at ROSS. At least they were cheap and I’d spent a lot of the hundred and fifty dollars I’d gone in there with on various other things that had absolutely nothing to do with dresses.

But I now had a new pair of converse, a couple shirts, a new pair of pants, and a few more hair accessories to add to my collection.

Skye was pretty much in the same boat I was in. Though she had started out with fifty more dollars than I had and we were at about the same budget on dress buying right now. And so, ROSS was pretty much our last and only option to get a dress.

“Okay, Skye. You have to promise me that the only thing we are buying in here is dresses. Said dresses will be the last thing that we buy today. Understand?” I said, holding onto my friend’s bag-filled hands with my own. She nodded solemnly at me, her blonde hair falling into her eyes before she jerked her head to get it to go away.

“Okay, Wendy. I promise. I also promise that I’ll let you pick out my dresses if you let me pick out yours.” I sighed at that, rolling my eyes slightly before nodding in agreement and dropping her hands. “Okay. Let’s do this then!” The excitement that had been bubbling through the both of us all night while shopping was evident in her voice once again as we turned into the store and made our way directly towards the dresses. There was to be no temptation of buying anything else…

Within the next ten minutes, Skye and I exchanged the six dresses we’d picked out for each other. And five minutes later, we’d decided that we should just try on the dresses that we picked out ourselves. So Skye’s promise didn’t really go fulfilled, but it worked because there were some really cute dresses that I’d found for her.

“Haha! Wendy! Get out here, I want you to see this one! I think this might actually be the dress and it’s only twenty bucks!” Skye announced as I was busy trying to lace up the back of the third dress I’d tried on from ROSS.

“Hold on, Skye. I need to…finish getting dressed here,” I told her, frowning to myself as I struggled to tie it behind me. After a few more failed attempts and Skye knocking a few times impatiently on the dressing room door, I decided to just go with it and let the strings hang down for now.

Stepping out, I grinned as I saw my friend. And I opened my mouth to compliment on what she was wearing when the announcement over the intercom of the store sounded incredibly loud and I almost jumped.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the mall will be closing in thirty minutes. Please make your final purchases now. Thank you and have a wonderful evening.”

“Holy fucking shit, is it ten already?” Skye asked, looking over at the clock on the wall as I nodded, smirking. “Damn. Anyway, Wendy, if you do not get that dress, I’m going to kick your ass. Purple suits you so well!” She dragged out the ‘o’ on ‘so’ and I smiled at her, turning to look in the mirror.

I was wearing a dark purple corset dress that had a short and flowing skirt. The corset wasn’t really a ‘corset’ per say, but it had two columns of laced ribbons going down both sides of the front of the dress. It hugged my torso tight, but in a comfortable way. And the skirt was, like I said, loose and flowing. It ruffled around because of the amount of fabric on it and how it was gathered. It was cut in a tiered shape, almost, with the way that it was longer in some parts than it was in others. There was also a layer of black mesh over the skirt, and there was the occasional loose purple ribbon hanging down from the bottom of the corset top. As for the back, the thin straps crossed together before going down in a corset lacing with the same dark purple ribbon, the bow gathered at the bottom of the lacing.

“Thanks, Skye. I really like it, too…”

“God, if you don’t get that, I swear. Craig’s going to go nuts. Do you have shoes? Boots would look really cute with that…”

I nodded to them and smirked at the comment about Craig. I turned around towards her, grinning at her again. “If you don’t get that dress then I’m completely liable to shoot you, too. You look hot.”

At my compliment, she blushed. But I was being honest. She was wearing this very fifties-looking dress. White with black polka-dots and a black band at the top and a thick ribbon tied around the waist. It fit her snug while the skirt flared out. There was a white mesh layer coming out of the bottom of the skirt that had a black ribbon trim on it. My friend, most definitely, looked gorgeous.

“Okay, okay! I’m getting it! We should probably get changed and shit, huh? I don’t want to be locked in here…that’s scary…” Skye muttered before going back to the dressing room to change again. Ronnie was going to drop dead when he saw her. Not that they were going together, but he was going to still drop dead for sure.

I changed quickly, holding onto the dress that I was going to get while having the rest of them in the other hand. And I, somehow, managed to balance all my bags after leaving the dressing room with Skye. We got out of the mall with five minutes to spare before the closed. My mom had a smirk on her face as she sat in the car, watching us with an amused glint in her eyes.

“Have fun?” she asked and we both nodded, eager for next weekend to get here already.