Dust Devil by Rebecca Brandewyne

and expensive, Sarah told herself
fiercely. Every seam had been stitched with love, and that counted
for more than anything.
    “ Do
you see that gown Evie’s almost wearing?”
Krystal Watkins asked, her eyes narrowed in her plain face. “Why,
it looks as though she were poured into it! And she’s
practically falling out of the top of it, too!”
    “ I’m
sure Parker is praying she actually will,” Liz Tyrrell drawled
dryly as, in the same tomboyish way she wielded a field-hockey stick,
she tossed aside her prom program. Parker Delaney, quarterback of the
football team, the Lincoln Lions, was the most popular boy in school.
Liz was sweet on him, even though he and Evie were going steady.
    “ Well,
if Evie’s dress does come
off, it won’t be anything Parker hasn’t seen already,”
Dorothy “Dody” Carpenter—people sometimes
spitefully called her “Dodo”— declared firmly. “I
overheard Evie in the girls’ bathroom one day, bragging to a
bunch of her friends about how she and Parker had gone all the way
several times. Is anyone hungry? I know I am. I didn’t eat any
supper, I was so afraid I wasn’t going to fit into my gown.”
    Everybody
was too polite to remark on the obvious: that Dody was so heavy that
it was a wonder she fit into any dress.
She was always hungry, always eating, after which she had taken
recently to retiring to the girls’ bathroom, where she forced
herself to vomit all she had consumed, in a futile attempt to avoid
gaining any more weight. Still, at least the buffet offered a chance
to escape from the sight of Evie in her tight dress, grinding her
hips against Parker’s as the sound of Renzo’s wailing
saxophone reverberated in the gymnasium.
    “ I’m hungry,
Dody,” Sarah announced abruptly, getting to her feet. “I
didn’t eat any supper, either.”
    She
had been too nervous and excited to eat. The arrival of the delivery
boy from the Flower Garden, bearing the box in which the white orchid
from Renzo had lain, had thrilled her beyond words. Mama had got
tears in her eyes when Sarah had untied the ribbon and opened the box
to reveal the orchid, because Mama had fretted so about Sarah not
having a date or even a corsage for prom night. Daddy had actually
teased Sarah gruffly about her “secret admirer.” Then,
with his Polaroid camera, he had snapped several pictures of her,
insisting she looked so beautiful that he was half afraid to let her
out of the house, for fear she would inadvertently cause a brawl at
the prom.
    She
had nearly broken down and told her parents about Renzo. But Liz,
having wheedled from her father her parents’ car for the
evening, had pulled up into the gravel drive just then, blasting
impatiently on the horn, and Sarah’s words had died unuttered
on her lips.
    Now,
as she followed Dody toward the buffet tables, Sarah wondered if the
rumors about Evie and Parker being lovers were true. From the way the
two of them danced together, Sarah thought it appeared likely. She
sighed heavily. She was probably the only seventeen-year-old virgin
in the entire high school. In the entire world. No matter what Mama
and Daddy said, it seemed everybody did it these days, even nice
girls; that those who saved themselves for marriage were hopelessly
old-fashioned. Or afraid. Or frigid. Sarah didn’t want to be
labeled any of those things. Or to lose Renzo because he thought she
was.
    At
the buffet tables, she moved slowly through the line, lingering to
pass the time as she filled a plate and accepted a cup of punch from
one of the teachers serving as a chaperon. Even though the louvered
windows of green glass set high into the walls of the gymnasium were
open to admit the night air, it was hot and stifling inside. Sarah
felt as though she were melting. Knowing it had been rumored that
some of the rowdier boys planned to spike the punch, she sipped it
cautiously, forced to admit to herself that she wouldn’t
recognize whether it contained alcohol or not. Daddy