When Girlfriends Chase Dreams by Savannah Page

down lower,” Sophie instructs. She’s on top of a step stool, her lengthy legs not lending enough height to carefully clothe me in this much-too-long dress.
    It doesn’t matter, though. It’s only a test dress. Of course they’ll alter it for me. It has to work—it just has to! I can feel it.
    Slowly my head emerges from the dress’s neck, and the girls go straight to work on clasping me in to this strapless beauty. I can’t see myself yet, because the dressing room doesn’t have a mirror, oddly enough, but soon I’ll be perched back up on that pedestal and I’ll be able to see myself in all this Vera Wang vintage glory!
    As the girls finish the last of the clasps, I let my hands run along the gown’s bodice. It really is the softest thing I’ve ever worn in my life. The cool silk bazaar, or whatever it’s called, feels so crisp and cool on my fingertips. Oh and how it poofs ever so slightly around the bottom, like a sweet bell. Oh, get me to a mirror already!
    “Got it,” Emily says, finishing her fastening. She pushes open the dressing room door and ushers me towards the mirror.
    Gasps all around. Sophie picks up the back of the dress, Emily one of the sides, and myself the other as I eagerly tiptoe to the pedestal.
    “ Eeeee! ” I shriek as I see myself for the first time wearing the dress. That’s right. You heard me; it’s “ the one!” This dress is mine.
    “Wow!” Robin breathes.
    “Definitely wow!” says Lara, who’s at my side in the blink of an eye.
    “So?” Jenna says in a singsong way. “Love or what?”
    I can’t nod or speak or do anything but beam and run my fingers all along the gentle folds of the soft dress.
    “I think she’s in love,” Sophie says, snapping me out of it with a soft poke at my rear.
    I lift up the long gown and do a small series of twists from side to side, a sort of show-off-the-dress move. Oh! This baby will look unbelievable on the dance floor. It’s not even a typical flowing, ball-gown-style dress where when you spin you just know it’ll spin wildly with you. This dress has magic, though. It’s one of those where it’s really asymmetrical and barely A-lined, so you probably wouldn’t be sure to receive a full-on spin and twirl kind of action when you bust out the moves on the dance floor. But with Vera. Oh, with Vera, this baby will spin and swing and be so stylish and the talk-of-the-town. You know that with one look at it, with one touch of its soft folds, it’ll do whatever you want on the floor. It’s…perfection.
    “Like I said,” Jenna says, sidling up to me, “a one-of-a-kind gown.” She helps me lift higher the excess material that’s more than covering my feet, and she starts to attach pins to it.
    Oh no! What’s she doing with my beautiful dress? Pinholes?
    I’m about to ask what she’s doing—why she’s making this piece of perfection into a piece of Swiss Cheese—when she says, “These are very non-intrusive pins that we use especially for gowns of this material, so don’t you worry.” She continues to pin and I exhale the heaviest breath since I’d slipped into the gown.
    Jenna presses on with the pinning, transforming the dress into a perfect fit before my very eyes the dress.
    “As I was saying,” Jenna says, “this gown is the only ivory, strapless, and asymmetrical gown in the year’s collection. It’s a modified mermaid style gown…full-length and, if you’re interested, because many brides do inquire, it is alterable in several ways. We can even change the neckline—”
    “No!” I gasp, clutching the bust line. “It’s perfect the way it is.”
    “Obviously you’ll want to alter the length,” Robin points out, lightly bouncing Rose on her knees.
    “Oh, yes,” I say. “Yes, definitely alter the length.”
    “The dress can be altered in many ways—” Jenna proceeds, but I stop her again.
    “Only where it needs to be altered,” I say kindly. “Obviously I’ve got stumps for legs, so let’s