“Almost,” I yell. I empty out every last little bit of air I have in my lungs and suck my stomach in as far as I can. I pull on the zipper hard and it finally slides all the way up. I have this fleeting thought that makes my heart stop and my insides flip-flop around, but I push it to the far corners of my mind. I’ve been eating three meals a day like a normal person since I got here. It’s catching up to me. The seams are straining, but I’m in the dress and I’m hoping that with all the beads and shine no one will notice it’s too tight. I bought a lacy shawl at a thrift store last week. I wrap it around myself before I go out in the hallway so Ethan won’t notice. He desperately wants everything about tonight to be perfect. I’ll just try to keep my shawl on as much as possible.

“Smashing, my darling. Positively smashing,” Ethan says when I meet him in the living room. He’s holding a plastic clamshell box with a huge wrist corsage of pale pink roses and sprigs of rosemary. It’s the first time anyone has given me roses. Matty never brought me flowers when he took me to homecoming.

Ethan opens the box and slips the corsage on my wrist. “As promised.”

We stop in to see Robert at the bar to show him our costumes and bring him a microwave lasagna.

Robert laughs. “You guys do realize we serve food here.”

“It’s what we do, right?” I say. “Bring lasagna to the person who doesn’t have a date?”

“We didn’t want you to feel left out,” Ethan says.

Robert kisses me and ends up with a mouth full of red lipstick.

Ethan takes me to a club on Grove Street that’s decked out like an old-time dance hall. Punch in big bowls. Streamers hanging from the ceiling. We dance like Fred and Ginger all night long, even though the music is wrong and everyone else is swing dancing. We almost win the best costume contest, until someone realizes I’m not a drag queen.

“Next year, I’ll be Ginger. Then we’ll win,” Ethan says, laughing so hard at the whole misunderstanding that he looks like he might wet his pants.

On the way home, we dance down the sidewalk in front of his house. Ethan sings Top Hat, White Tie and Tails at the top of his lungs while he twirls me around. When he tries to dip me, we stumble to the ground. We lie on the sidewalk laughing, and stare at the stars. It feels like a movie. I didn’t get to go to my prom, but I’m sure this is so much better.