“I’m not going to,” I said, furious that he’d read my mind.

“I want to try it on.”

“I’ve measured your shoulders. You’d rip the seams out.”

He tugged the dress off the hanger, and I cried out a little bit, as though I’d been physically harmed.

“You good?” he said.

“Fine,” I said, and I was fine, really—just a little embarrassed over having developed an emotional connection to something so silly as a dress so quickly. “Just—be gentle with it, okay?”

Oliver helped me load all the costumes into the back of my car, plus the white fur coat he’d been wearing (“Phoebe might dig it, though I doubt the director will go for it,” he said). The dress, the dress that I had already started thinking of as my dress, we draped gently across the back seat, moving the leftover Halloween costumes out of the way.

“All right—let’s get back to campus,” I said. I threw the car into reverse and glanced in my rearview. “God, those skirts are so fucking big I can’t even SEE out the back—”

Oliver was giving me a strange look.

“What?” I said.

“It’s just—hold on—may I?—you have something—”

He moved his hand toward my face. The pace was glacial, as though I were a dog that might bite, but then once it became clear that I wasn’t going to move away, his touch was gentle and firm: two fingers below my right eye, on the curve of my cheekbone, the crest where tears gathered speed, if they made it that far. He turned his hand over to show me: An errant sequin from the dress—my dress—now clung to Oliver’s fingertip.

“Make a wish,” he said.

And even though I was not the sort of person who believed in wishes—even if I were, it seemed to me that wishes always came with a cost—I blew onto his fingertip and watched the sequin disappear somewhere into the mess of my car.

Footnotes

9 The magazine was filled with gems: glossy photo shoots of the cast, deep dives into the filming of certain episodes, even tips and tricks on how to become a better roller skater (Find your stance! Engage your core!). There was a featurette on important props, like the scissors Blade Mendoza used to cut Kenna’s laces, and the spare hot-pink wheels the costumers kept on hand for when the wheels needed replacing. There was also one photo of Oliver Teller that I often found myself turning to—him, tank topped and pouty lipped, pushing his hair back with one hand, another in the pocket of his jeans. Let’s just say the magazine pretty much fell open to that photo, and upon remembering this, I was doubly relieved the magazine had left my car.