No6: BROKEN EMERALDS

PHOTO BY JULIE AUERBACH (probably)

LUCIA AUERBACH

I bought my Prom dress in January.

That was my first mistake.

I knew I had over three months, a dance coming before Prom, and no one to go with. 

But it was Principessa! And on sale! 

I picked the lone dress and spun to the dressing rooms that were haphazardly lit and had curtains the color of beige that no one likes to see. 

Its emerald silk clung to my hips before diverging into two pieces of flowing fabric at my lower thigh. The straps thinly hung onto my shoulders and its v-neck pointed all eyes towards my décolletage. 

I felt real. I felt illuminated. 

I saw myself sitting perfectly poised on a burgundy velvet couch, laughing with the most charming people, balancing a glass of champagne in my hand with lights flashing from cameras I didn’t know. 

Slowly running my hand down the side of the dress, it stopped on a snag. A patch of pilled silk in an oval shape presented itself.

I studied myself in the mirror and the lights (or my vision) slowly began to fade. The girl looking back at me was not someone I knew.

She seemed older, wiser and more mature. She stood tall and self-assured. She was a fighter and leader. And the best part of it all, she knew it. Her lips began to curl into a smile.

But then I saw myself.

I saw the hair fried from humidity, the freckles masking themselves as large pores, the bruised legs, the slouched shoulders. 

That was the girl I knew.

I leaned into the mirror and pressed my forehead against the glass. Staring into my eyes, I searched for the girl I saw momentarily. The hazel irises presented themselves like a black hole that I promptly fell into. 

I was no longer the girl that had her hair extravagantly braided every day before school. The girl who sat in the school’s garden because she was too preoccupied with the new trees they planted to play with the other kids.

But I wasn’t the girl who stood on a stage to recite puns with her lifelong friend either. The girl who searched for a sense of passion by trying every sport and every club.

And I wasn’t the girl who walked into Principessa just five minutes before. The girl who defined herself through different numerical factors (grades, likes, friends, boys).

I saw the girl I was searching for. The one with undeniable talent and grace and beauty. Yet as soon as I saw her, she ran away.

She was calling out to me. Teasing me. Begging for me to follow her and her chase. 

I lifted my head from the mirror and wiped it with the navy Independent hoodie I wore into the store. If she wanted a chase, she was going to get it.

I bought the dress despite its flaws and saved it for Prom. 

I hung it up on my curtain rod in my room. Its emerald silk leaped out against the all-white background. 

The winter breeze would blow its fabric in the wind. It sat and collected dust and watched me. It watched me try on every other dress I owned for Winter Formal. It watched as the people I thought loved me slowly walk away. It watched my heart break over and over again because of the promises they kept breaking. It watched me pick myself back up again and pretend it never happened. It watched me relentlessly chase the girl I saw. 

My Prom date passed and the dress never moved. 

The girl who used to sit in the school’s garden, the girl who played basketball, the girl who counted her participation points, they all wanted prom. Homecoming didn’t matter. Senior year didn’t matter. Fondly remembering high school didn’t matter. But prom did.

Those girls were afraid of being eternally stuck on a dance floor. 

I put the dress away that June as I watched the girl and her chase slowly drive away. They sat in the back seat and laughed at me.

I never saw the driver.