For once, someone saying that finally felt like something worth hearing.

36

Worth the Wait

It’s not a date.

It’s a boring old winter dance. Everybody goes. All seven of us are meeting in a group in the parking lot and going in together. Then we’ll probably hang out together most of the evening. No big thing.

Can I help it if Devontae happens to be waiting by himself at the curb when we pull up in front of the school? Or that we’ve been hanging together more and more in the almost three months since I flipped that awards ceremony onto its head?

Ale reaches over the seat and pokes my shoulder. “Uh-huh,” she whispers. “Just all going as friends. Sure.”

I poke her back, nodding at my dad in the driver seat and giving her a Hush up! look. Dad’s eyebrows go up, but he shakes his head.

“How about I pretend I didn’t hear that,” he says. “We’ll talk about it when you’re thirty. Maybe thirty-five. Have fun, Emms.” He leans over to give me a quick hug.

I roll down the window as Dad climbs out and goes to the bed for my wheels. “Fancy running into you here, Boots.” I hope I sound a whole lot cooler than I feel.

Devontae’s wearing a silver-trimmed black shirt and boots to match. Looking handsomer than anyone should. “I love coincidence.” He opens my door with a grin. “Don’t you?”

“Shuri says you look nice,” he adds in a whisper. Then he sees what my dad has unloaded from the bed and whistles.

“Daaang,” he says, drawing it out. “You weren’t kidding about that new ride of yours. Worth the wait, indeed.”

It totally was, and I feel a grin, proud and happy, spread over my face. Dad parks my new chair beside the truck, and I swing down into it, smoothing my fluffy skirt over my knees. I’ve cut down another one of Mom’s costume dresses to fit me, and I’m especially pleased with this one. It’s shimmery silver, like snow and smoke mixed together, and the spangles on the skirt catch the light from inside the school like tiny rainbows.

We all tell my dad bye and head up the pavement toward the school, where the rest of our friends are waiting. Logan, of course, is the first with something to say.

“Wow,” he says, looking over the new chair. “Did you get green and red for Christmas? Can you get different colors for every holiday?”

Everyone groans, and Tina pokes him. “It’s Poison Apple,” she says, like it’s obvious. “And she got it because it’s amazing.”

Logan looks a little squashed, but I can’t help joining in the laughing. Now that he’s gotten the message that help’s only help if someone wants it, Logan’s growing on me. Sort of like an intriguing fungus. Tina’s right about the chair colors, though. All the rest of it, too. It is amazing.

It took two more months’ hard work, sewing chair bags and chopping and tying sappy little firewood bundles and wrestling stringy Spanish moss into plastic bags. But I did it.