“You look great,” I said, trying to shake whatever it was that was making everything feel like molasses.

How could I not have noticed?

“Hey!” Tanner was wearing a navy suit matching Sarah’s navy dress. They waved as they walked toward us.

“Hey,” Gilly said, cautious.

“You guys look great,” Sarah said quietly. “Are you going in?”

“Yeah,” Gilly said, “in a second.”

“Okay, well.” Tanner nodded. “We’ll see you in there.”

Gilly seemed to wait till they were out of earshot to release a relieved sigh.

“So, you guys are all good,” I asked in a low voice. I wondered if they’d talked since the chem lab fight. Maybe not. I mean we’d all spent a week in rehearsals, so I knew Gilly was at least able to be in the same room as Tanner and Sarah, but I hadn’t seen them talk.

“Yeah.” Gilly touched her chin to her shoulder. “I mean, Sarah’s been texting me, more and more, I suppose. She was angry, but. . .I think we’re still friends? I don’t know, I probably should have stood up for myself a long time ago.” She looked up at me. “I’m sorry I asked you to do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“At the party? I thought. If you talked to them. Like, then everything would be fine, you know? And we could all hang out? It would be fixed.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “it probably would have been better if you had talked to them. Since they’re your friends.”

“Maybe.” Gilly smiled up at me. “But it all worked out! We don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

A chill crept up my coat sleeve. She didn’t really get it. I mean, she asked me to fix something she needed to fix. After all that happened? And now it was just. . .fine, in her eyes?

“Um. Okay,” I offered. “What do you want to talk about?”

Gilly looked over my tuxedo, her eyes pausing on my multiple accessories. “That’s quite the, uh, outfit.”

I took this to mean she wanted to talk about my outfit. I flexed the lapels. “Thanks. I like yours too!”

“Thanks.” Gilly’s head bobbed slightly. Then she looked like she wanted to change the conversation again. A silence stretched out between us like gum.

Finally I cut the awkward with, “We could go into the dance now, if you’re like, ready?”

“Yeah, sounds good.” Gilly’s hands gripped her crutches. “Let’s go.”

The gym was decorated mostly with the orange-and-green-fabric leaves you get at craft places, all of which faintly smelled like vanilla, which combined with the smell of teen sweat to create a curious Greenville funk. The funk did not match the music, which was, I would say, modern dance electronica.

“Sorry, I can’t really dance,” Gilly yelled over the bass as we made our way into the gym.