After endless searching, Mom and I regroup in front of a table of folded tank tops with witty sayings on them in sparkly letters.

“No luck?” Mom asks.

I shake my head. “You?”

She holds up a pair of black stretchy pants and a shirt that I think might actually be a painting smock.

I snarl.

She blows a raspberry. “You’re right.”

“I like one dress,” I tell her, pointing over my shoulder to a black-and-white-striped dress with red, pink, and yellow roses scrawled over the stripes, almost like they were hand painted.

“Maybe they have it in the back,” she says, even though the both of us know the answer to that question.

“Let’s just go,” I beg.

“Let me just ask.”

“Mom, please.” Not now.

I shake my head again, but Mom’s already charging toward the counter at the center of the juniors’ department. She dumps the reject items on the counter and rings the bell, prompting the woman behind the counter to turn around.

“Oh!” the woman emits at the sound of the bell. She’s tall with wide, round eyes and board-straight red hair. Her freckles are faint and spare across her pale cheeks. Something tells me she’s never had to ask if a dress her size was hiding in the back room of the store.

Mom squints at her name tag. “Judith?” She smiles warmly, turning on her therapist charm. “Judith, how are you on this fine day?”

The woman nods, a little stunned, like that somehow answers Mom’s question.

Mom nods back. “Yes, well, you see, my daughter and I were admiring that black-and-white dress with the roses.” She points past where I stand, trying to camouflage myself in a rack of swimsuit cover-ups. “Could you please tell me where we can find that dress in a juniors’ size eighteen?”

“Just a moment,” Judith says as she scurries over and grabs a dress off the rack. She holds it to her chest as she returns to the counter and scans the tag.

I know how this will end, and still my stomach twists into knots as Judith’s expression falls into a pout. My cheeks flush as I press my sweaty palms against my sides.

“Hmm,” she says.

In my head, I beg her to whisper as she breaks the news so that no one else around her will hear. Not only do I have to face the embarrassment of the store not carrying my size, but I know that my mom will not take it well.

Still, Judith fails to catch my brain transmission as she announces clearly enough for every shopper to hear, “I’m sorry, we don’t carry that size in the juniors’ department. You’ll have to check the regular women’s department or the plus-size department.” She points to a section behind me, and I don’t have to turn around to know it’s mostly muumuus and sweatpants.

Mom’s shoulders rise and fall as her nostrils flare. I swear the woman breathes fire when she wants. “And why isn’t the dress made in a size eighteen, Judith?” Mom asks, overenunciating her name. “Because society has taught us that there’s no use in dressing bigger bodies in beautiful clothes, because we do not value bodies of all shapes and sizes. And you want to know who’s fed that lie to society?”