Sixteen the Hard Way -16.3- Lovely?

I stood there trying to swallow my panic.

I wasn’t going to be able to get out of this. I might as well be a girl if I were going to look like one and have to dress like one. I looked down at myself again. No one was going to believe I was a boy, anyway.

I didn’t start crying, though it was a near thing. I knew if I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop until I had cried myself out.

“Joni?” Mom’s voice came from outside the changing booth. “Are you okay, honey?”

I sighed. “I guess so,” I said. I sounded exhausted, even to myself.

“Honey?” Mom sounded unsure. “I guess we really don’t have to do this? I mean, not right now?”

I blinked. Mom didn’t usually back down from something like this. I blinked again, my eyes burning. Was I going to cry now?

Donna’s voice came through from the other side of the door. “Oh, Joni, I didn’t realize I had given you an extra-small! It was the only one they had in blue. But I brought you a small, now and a medium, both in green!”

“Oh!” So she hadn’t been trying to be funny! “Uh?”

“I’ll hang them over the door,” Donna offered. “That okay?”

“Sure,” I managed. “I guess?”

Donna put two of the jumper skorts over the door with their hangers holding them there. “Thanks….” Why did I say that?

“Have you tried Mom’s pick out yet?” Donna wanted to know.

“No,” I admitted.

“Well, I’d like to see you in it, too,” she said. “I think you’d look really good. I mean….” She trailed off. “You know, pretty? You’d look beautiful in something that suited you, like I think that dress would. Huh, Mom?”

Mom agreed. “That’s why I picked that one,” she said. “You would make a lot of other girls jealous, I’m sure.”

I looked at the dress being discussed again. I frowned. “Is that the right attitude to go to church with?” I pointed out.

They both giggled.