“No,” I say. “Do you know how many bad movies there are where the poor little crippled girl goes to the dance? No way. I am not sitting in a corner while everybody drinks Hawaiian Punch and takes selfies and tries to dance like Beyoncé.”

I can see it in my head—me, sitting at the edge of some sad strobe light while everyone around me pretends not to see. I look at Bert in his too-white suit and too-big shoes. Wallflowers unite. No thank you.

Mom and Mema join Grandpa at the door behind me. Bert bends down and picks up the flowers, totally calm.

“Well, hon,” Mema says, “why don’t you let the boy get a word in edgewise?”

I point a finger at her. “You’re in on this, aren’t you?”

Mema winks and Grandpa looks at his shoes. Mom is currently the only one who looks as confused as me.

“Who said anything about the dance?” Bert says, and I’m spinning around between people, trying to figure out if this is one big joke.

“We’re not going to the dance?”

“Nope,” Coralee says, stepping up beside Bert and scaring the daylights out of me. She came from behind the holly tree again wearing her red dress from Christmas Eve. But now she’s covered in glitter and has a headband with heart-shaped antennae on her head. She looks like a very shimmery ladybug.

“Do you think for one second I would go to a middle school dance? Laaaaame,” she says.

“So where are we going, then?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Then I still say no.”

Bert holds up his hand like a Boy Scout. “I promise, where we are going, you will not have to dance.” And then he places the flowers gently on my lap.

“Promise on your most favorite purse.”

“It’s a satchel.”

“Promise on your most favorite satchel.”

“I promise.”

“All right, all right.”

“Rock on!” Coralee yells. “You have exactly half an hour until this ship sails!”

Mema turns to Mom and smiles. “You don’t mind, do you, Alice? I told Bert’s dad you’d drive.”

Mom and Coralee follow me into the bedroom. I stare into the closet like it will magic the perfect outfit out of thin air. But how do you pick what to wear when you don’t know where you’re going?

“Warm or cold?”

“Definitely jacket weather,” Coralee says, and sits down at Mema’s old sewing machine in the corner. I stare some more. Corduroys. Sweaters. Jeans. T-shirts. Two winter dresses and three summer ones. Behind me I hear the pump, pump, whir of the sewing machine. Coralee’s got her foot to the pedal, and the empty needle bobs up and down.

“Do I have to wear a dress?”

“Do I look like your mother?”

“No. No, you do not.”