a pancake!” Lurlene shot back. “She looks like a twelve-year-old boy in it! The yellow makes the best of what she’s got!”
“I don’t know why I wouldn’t want to spend more evenings like this. It’s a damn mystery,” I muttered to no one in particular—which was fine, because no one was listening.
“What was that, hon?” my cousin Shaylene hollered over the din.
“I wonder if I could just wear some nice jeans and a pretty top!” I lied.
“Honey, no,” Lurlene barked. “We want Donnie to think you’re a nice girl!”
“I am a nice girl!” I cried. “And I’m sure nice girls have worn jeans at some point in history.”
“We want Donnie to think you’re traditional,” Braylene said.
“Isn’t that false advertising?” I asked, frowning.
“Honey, that’s all dating is.”
“True enough,” I said with a shrug.
“We could always have Vonnie whip something up for you,” Braylene said. “Obviously nothing as fancy as her bridesmaids dresses, but—”
“No!” I yelped. “No dresses from Vonnie.”
“Why don’t we just put it to a vote?” another cousin, Eugenelene, suggested. “Who likes the green dress?”
Six of my relatives raised their hands.
“And how many like the yellow?”
Four more raised their hands.
How in the hell did we fit this many people in my room?
“The green dress, it is!” Eugenelene announced brightly.
“Don’t I get a vote?” I asked.
“No!” It was the only thing they could all agree on, apparently.
Sighing, I slipped into the green dress and went to my makeup mirror. I’d intended to keep it minimal and somewhat natural, but the brushes were literally removed from my hands. I lost track of how many hands were on my face and it was all I could do not to bite out at them as they reached for my hair. By the time they were done, I was wearing a lot more eye makeup than I’d intended and a bouffant hair do that would put Vonnie’s 1980s brides to shame.
When they stepped back as a group and let me see the mirror, I marveled, “I look like a redheaded Grand Ole Opry-era Dolly Parton.”
“That’s what I was going for!” Lurlene crowed triumphantly. I thought maybe I saw sympathy in Shaylene’s eyes, but she simply disappeared to the back of the crowd. I hoped my younger cousins were paying attention. They were only seventeen, which meant they were due this sort of treatment in the next couple of years.
I pursed my lips and she smacked me lightly on the arm. “Don’t smudge that lipstick!”
“I’ll drive you into town,” Mama said, holding out a dainty pleather handbag I would never carry in a million years. There wasn’t even room for my cell phone in it.
I elbowed my way out of the room, waving off my aunts’ advice about good first date behavior and how to catch Donnie’s attention. I snagged my backpack on my way out of the trailer. Daddy was nowhere to be found, and I wondered if Uncle Lonnie had done something to get him out of the way.
“Can’t I just borrow the truck, Mama?” I asked as I climbed in. “I don’t need to be dropped off like some ten-year-old at a playdate.”
“No.” Mama shook her head. “I want to make sure you get there.”
“Because you think I’ll get lost?” I asked pointedly.
“Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady. You’ve been real sneaky lately, disappearing, not telling us where you are, who you’re with.”
“Well, maybe if you and Daddy believed me when I talked to you, I would tell you more,” I replied, pulling the visor mirror down the moment we left the compound. I shook my hair out of its ceiling-high arrangement and pulled it into a much more tolerable ponytail.
“Aunt Lurlene isn’t going to be happy about that,” she warned me as I started carefully wiping at my eyes.
“Aunt Lurlene will have to get over it,” I said, wiping at my lips.
“Don’t talk that way about your family,” she warned.
“I’m going on the damn date, aren’t I?” I shot back. When she looked away, wounded, I softened my voice. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m just really frustrated with all of this. I’m tired of being treated like what I want doesn’t matter.”
We turned onto Paxton Avenue and I wished like hell we could skip this whole restaurant thing. I wished I could ask Donnie to meet me at Specialty Books for one of Dick’s cappuccinos. But I couldn’t imagine he would be okay with going to a vampire-owned establishment.
I did not have high hopes for this evening. I’d been on