have boobs and I don’t?” I called as I put the dress back on the rack and contemplated other options.
“Well… yeah,” Stevie said, and I laughed. “You’ve got that ballerina body. And ballerinas can’t have boobs, or they’d get unbalanced and fall over during pirouettes.”
I grabbed a velvet blazer and headed back out. “Oh, is that how it works?”
Stevie laughed. “Don’t get mad at me. It’s just physics. Ooh, that’s cute.”
“Right?” I tossed it to her on the bed. “Like over a tank, with skinny pants?”
“Totally.” She shucked off her cardigan and tried it on over her T-shirt.
I hopped up onto the bed and grabbed a peanut butter cup. “What train are you taking in?”
Stevie picked up her phone and pulled up the Metro-North app. “Probably the six-ten. I’m meeting my dad at his office, and we’ll go down to the Village together. The reservation’s not until nine thirty, so we’ll have time to hang out.”
Growing up so close to Manhattan meant that we’d both spent a lot of time in the city. I’d go in with my parents and my little brother for dinners and Broadway, to see the Christmas lights, to go to museums. Or we’d go in on school trips—theater department excursions to see matinees, science and history class trips to the Hayden Planetarium or exhibits at the Historical Society. I’d never gone in without my parents or a school group, though. Stevie took the train by herself on the occasions when she went in to meet her dad, because he almost never came back to Connecticut now. Since the divorce, it was like he’d lost custody of the state as well.
“Why is your reservation so late?” I picked up my bux from the bedside table.
Stevie shrugged. “I think it was all he could get. But he told me that we’re just going to pretend we’re in Spain, since you never eat there before ten.” She smoothed down the lapels of the blazer. “I’m not sure about this.”
“What about that maroon dress you like?” I asked as I started to get off the bed again. “You know, the prairie one?”
“I’ll check,” she said, sliding off the blazer, carefully laying it over her arm and getting off the bed. “And I’ll hang this back up while I’m in there.”
I took a sip of my mocha and unlocked my phone. Nothing new on the group thread, barely any new Stories, but I scrolled through them anyway. “Did you find the prairie dress?”
“No,” Stevie said, walking out, still holding the blazer. “But I did find this.” She held up the long blue-and-white dress that I’d borrowed from her at the beginning of the summer.
“I can explain,” I said immediately.
“Have you had this the whole time?”
“It’s not my fault,” I said automatically, trying not to laugh at Stevie’s outraged expression. “I put it with my mom’s dry cleaning, and then it ended up in her closet by mistake. She only found it, like, last week when she was packing up the last of her summer things.”
“Hmm.” Stevie shot me a look as she took it off the hanger and placed it on her bag.
“I’m not making it up,” I said, throwing a pillow in her direction. “Blame my mother.”
“Blame your mother for what?” I looked over to see my dad standing in the doorway. “Hi, kid. Hello, Miss Stephanie.”
“Hi, Mr. Thompson,” Stevie said, giving my dad a smile.
“Please, call me Mr. Thompson,” my dad said. It was his favorite joke, despite the fact that I’d begged him to stop telling it. My dad was a journalist who worked from his office at home—so when he was dressed for work, it meant he was wearing what he wore now—an ancient cardigan over a Red Sox T-shirt, jeans, and slippers.
“What’s up?” I asked. I held up my candy bag. “Candy?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, crossing over toward me and picking out some sour watermelon slices. “Just wanted to say hi… see how you’re doing…”
“That’s nice,” Stevie said with a smile, a slightly wistful expression on her face.
“Don’t buy that,” I said, taking the candy back from him. “He wants to use us for research.” Since my dad was freelance, he covered a pretty wide beat, with the freedom to focus on subjects that interested him. Sometimes it meant that he was in Montana for a month, talking to fly-fishers. But unfortunately, at the moment, it meant that he was here and judging my behavior.
“Actually,” my dad said, sounding affronted, “I just