“You made it?” she asked sweetly. “That explains a lot.”
I took a step forward. “Enough.”
She ignored me.
“Oh, this should be fun,” she said. “You’re going to show up to prom in a dress made out of old jeans like some kind of charity project, and you think people are going to clap?”
I looked at her and said, very quietly, “I’d rather wear something made with love than something bought by stealing from kids.”
The hallway went silent.
Her face changed.
“Get out of my sight,” she said, “before I really say what I think.”
I wore the dress anyway.
Noah helped zip me into it that night, his hands shaking the whole time.
I turned to look at him.
“Hey,” I said.
“What?”
“If one person laughs, I am haunting them.”
That got a small smile out of him.
“Good,” he said. “They should be afraid.”
Carla had announced earlier that she wanted to “see the disaster in person.” I overheard her on the phone telling someone, “Come early. I need witnesses for this.”
She thought she was attending my humiliation.
What happened instead was better than anything I could have planned.
At prom check-in, people stared at the dress.
But not the way Carla expected.
One girl from choir came up first. “Wait,” she said, eyes wide. “Your dress is denim?”
Another girl touched her own chest and said, “Where did you get that?”
A teacher leaned in for a better look. “This is beautiful.”
I was still braced for the laughter, still waiting for the room to turn cruel. I didn’t trust it yet. Carla was standing toward the back with her phone already raised, watching me too closely, like she was waiting for the exact second it all fell apart.
But it didn’t.
