My stepmother bought me the worst dress she could find to embarrass me at the prom – but before the night was over, she was crying and begging me to take it off.
“Did you take your husband’s money and put his daughter in her dead mother’s dress?” another mother asked. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I would never let my stepdaughter come in here looking like that,” a third voice interrupted. “Never.”
“What’s going on here?”
I turned around.
My father was behind me. His eyes moved from me to Alexis, then to the circle of chaperones around her.
No one responded immediately.
Then one of the mothers turned to him, her expression stern. “What’s happening is that your wife took the money meant for your daughter’s dress and humiliated her in front of the whole school.”
The father’s face paled. “What?”
“She put that little girl in her dead mother’s old dress and stood there smiling while everyone laughed at her,” said another mother. “And from what it seems, it wasn’t the first time.”
For the first time in a long time, my father actually looked at me.
Then he turned to Alexis. “Tell them they’re wrong.”
Alexis opened his mouth, but no words came out.
The silence said it all.
Alexis’s face broke down. She ran to me, tears streaming down her face.
“Emma, please take it off. Take it off now. I’ll buy you anything you want.”
“No.”
“Please, I’m begging you. Everyone is watching.”
“Fine. Let them watch.” I looked at the faded gold fabric, the careful stitches my mother’s hands had touched. “You thought you’d dress me in rags as a joke, but you were wrong. This is the most meaningful dress I’ve ever worn. And I’m not taking it off for you.”
She fled the gym in tears.
I stood under the lights, my mother’s arm brushing against my shoes, and I realized she had been with me all night.
Not long after, my father apologized for ignoring how Alexis and Brianna treated me. He eventually divorced Alexis.
I went to college and, on my first trip back home, I went to the attic and found my mother’s diaries.
Alexis may have hidden my mother’s life from her, but I managed to reconnect with her anyway.
