Middle Aged Prom Dress #2

Lael Littke's Prom Dress: Chapter Two

Hi, friends,

Welcome back to my deep dive into YA horror of the ‘80s and ‘90s!

As I said the first time around, when I was a kid, I jumped pretty much straight from middle grade to adult fiction, so I missed a lot of REALLY fun stuff. I know that loads of you probably have amazing memories of reading these, but I’ve got to say: Reading them for the first time as a 40-something is pretty amazing as well??

If you’d like to start from the beginning of my Prom Dress coverage, the first installment is here.

---

---

Front cover of Scholastic Point edition of Lael Littke’s Prom Dress

---

Miss Catherine’s faded blue eyes misted over a little when Robin showed her the two Charleston dresses she brought down from the attic.

—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke

---

Scene One: Robin pops the question

Robin bops downstairs with two flapper-style dresses—the red one and the black one—even though OBVIOUSLY her heart is still with the Forbidden Lace Dress of Doom that’s still up in the attic.

She asks Miss Catherine which of the dresses was hers, and we get more backstory:

“Well, dear.” Miss Catherine hesitated. “To tell the truth, both dresses were mine. Rowena could Charleston even better than I, but, you see, she had that birthmark on her face. The beaux all came to take me dancing.” She examined the blue-veined hands that lay in her lap. “Poor Rowena.”

Miss Catherine can be moody, so Robin decides to go for broke and just ask to borrow both of these beaded numbers, one for her and one for her buddy Cynthie. Miss Catherine is into it, and sends her to go try it on:

The flame-colored dress fit as if it had been made for her. She twirled in front of the dark, old mirror, making the fringes slither and swish around her body. It was perfect. Almost as perfect as the lacy, cream-colored dress that was still up there in the attic closet.

She does some dance steps to butter Miss Catherine up, and when Miss Catherine mentions the prom, she goes for broke and asks to borrow the lace dress.

Miss Catherine says no, and Robin asks AGAIN, and then we get THIS:

Miss Catherine shifted in her chair. One hand fluttered to her forehead. “Rowena made that dress, you know. I wore it to my prom, with Michael.”

“Oh, Miss Catherine, wouldn’t it be nice if it could go to another prom?” Robin hated the begging note that she could hear in her own voice. But she’d beg, plead, or stand on her head if it would do any good. The dress wanted her to wear it. She knew it. She remembered its rustling promises.

I’m really starting to think I’m right and that Rowena was/is a witch and quite deliberately stitched a curse into the dress???

Robin! Keeps! Arguing!

This is absolutely blowing my mind. I get that this thing has probably got some sort of whammy-compulsion-thing on her, but GOOD LORD. If I were Miss Catherine and this stinker pulled this nonsense with me, I’d have already dug in so hard that the dumb dress would never see the light of day again. (Yes, I have a contrary streak. ALSO, why has she not gotten rid of the dress entirely? Is it one of those things where you try throwing it in the ocean and then when you get home it’s hanging in the closet again? Probably.)

Miss Catherine finally drops the bomb:

“No, dear. That dress must not leave this house.” She side down further in the chair, suddenly looking old and crumpled. “Robin, that was the dress I was wearing when this happened.” She touched the ugly scar on the left side of her face.

I’m sure it goes without saying, but it is such a bummer to me that every single time her scar is mentioned, it’s tagged with the ‘ugly’ descriptor. I understand that Robin’s perspective is one of youthful, thoughtless jackassery, but it’s gross nonetheless.

---

Robin, wearing the flame-colored dress and carrying the black one, was still thinking about what Miss Catherine had told her as she ran up the front steps of her own house. She truly was sorry that Miss Catherine had had an accident while she was wearing the lovely lace dress. No wonder she didn’t want anyone to wear it again.

—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke

---

Scene Two: Enter Gabrielle

Just in case you were worried that Robin had grown a modicum of sense or empathy, she follows up her thoughts about Miss Catherine’s feelings with this:

But the accident hadn’t hurt the dress at all. There were no rips and certainly there were no blood stains. Robin had examined it thoroughly there in the attic by the light from the round window. And Robin definitely wasn’t superstitious.

WELL GOSH AS LONG AS THE DRESS DIDN’T SUFFER ANY TRAUMA

Normally, I’m not particularly superstitious, either. HOWEVER. If I was clearly in a horror movie—as Robin VERY OBVIOUSLY IS—I might take the Michael Scott view of things.

Robin might have made some friends in Forest Dale, but she’s not making any friends over here. What a jerk:

Gabrielle was still practicing the piano, her nimble fingers climbing a chromatic scale. Robin couldn’t understand how she could sit there hour after endless hour, staring at black spots on a sheet of paper. No wonder she hadn’t made any friends in Forest Dale. How many people do you meet on a piano bench?

So she’s internally a snot about Gabby—who is fourteen and super into vintage clothing, which seems like it might turn into a Crucial Plot Point—but is obviously totallyyyy fine borrowing her 1920s-era appropriate accessories and shoes and so on.

So Robin calls Cynthie, and she comes over, and Gabby decks them both out, and there’s lots of ooo-ing and aah-ing and so on, and then Robin blurts this out:

“If you think these are great, you should see the one Miss Catherine is letting me wear to the prom.” The words were out of Robin’s mouth before she realized she’d said them. She hadn’t planned on saying anything. She wasn’t sure that Miss Catherine could be talked into letting her take the dress. Why had she gone ahead and made the announcement before knowing for sure?

Um, maybe to preemptively box yourself into a corner so that you can tell yourself later that you HAVE NO CHOICE but to steal it???

Cynthie asks if there’s another prom dress for her, and Robin’s like SORRY BRO, but she doesn’t seem all that sorry.

Pretty sure you’re dodging a bullet, there, Cynthie.

---

Gabby was right about Robin and Cynthie being stand-outs in the concert. Only two other girls had managed to find authentic twenties dresses, but they weren’t anything like Miss Catherine’s.

—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke

---

Scene Three: Learning to love the Richie Rich lifestyle

So Robin does great at her dance recital, and largely chalks that up to having the right dress—apparently the right dress helps to “loosen her muscles.” And as much as everything Robin has done so far is a gigantic eyeroll, I have to admit that I know what she’s talking about here—sometimes the exactly-right article of clothing CAN make you feel super confident and rad? After the performance:

Tyler came backstage after the dance concert was over. “Keep your fringes on, Robin,” he said. “We’re going to a party, and I want you to be a knock-out there, too.”

Oh, is THAT what we’re doing, Tyler? Thanks SO MUCH for COMMANDING instead of ASKING—and for verbalizing in such a way that makes it clear that you’re basically showing off your prize steer—you’re SUCH a CATCH.

I… do not like him.

So here I am, assuming that they’re headed to a ridiculous house party, like something from the pilot of The O.C., but instead, Tyler brings her home to MEET HIS PARENTS:

They watched some old silent movies from Tyler’s father’s collection, then Robin and Cynthie taught the boys some of the Charleston steps they’d learned. There was a discreet maid who brought in food and cold sodas whenever supplies ran low.

A DISCREET MAID. Dying. (Also, obviously, imagining her as Anastasia Krupnik.)

If anything, this party at Tyler’s reinforces Robin’s obsession with The Dress—and Tyler’s tax bracket, good lord:

But this kind of life demanded the right clothes for every occasion. Now Robin was even surer that she needed Miss Catherine’s lace dress. It would be a disgrace to Tyler and his whole family if she didn’t wear something truly elegant to the prom. She’d have to try to explain that to Miss Catherine. Anything Robin could afford to buy would make her look cheap in Tyler’s world.

Robin’s ingrained assumptions about economic class—the idea that an affordable dress would be a DISGRACE to Tyler and his parents—are just DEPRESSING, in terms of her own self-worth, and in terms of what it says about how she views and values other people in general. WOOF.

---

---

Robin thought later that the plan must have formed in her mind right at that moment, because she decided not to take the twenties dresses back to Miss Catherine unwrapped the way she’d brought them home. Instead, the next morning she put them inside a thick, dark blue garment bag. To protect them, she told Gabby.

—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke

---

Scene Four: Robin pushes it with Miss Catherine YET AGAIN

Even if she hadn’t already settled on stealing—because, c’mon, she can try justifying this to herself however she wants, but it’s still stealing—the conversation she has with Tyler that afternoon decides it:

“Tyler, that was so much fun.”

“I thought so, too. Robin, my folks thought you were gorgeous. My dad says somebody like you deserves the best, so he’s sending us to the Royale for dinner before the prom. And he’s providing a limousine to take us there.”

And I guess one can’t just go to the Royale—which is “old and stately and reek[s] of money—in an OFF THE RACK dress, THE HORROR.

Over at Miss Catherine’s, Robin regales her employer with the story of her triumph, followed by the story of her second triumph at Tyler’s house, followed by her third triumph of being invited to the Royale… and then asks AGAIN if she can borrow the dress:

“It’s all going to be so totally elegant,” Robin said, standing my Miss Catherine’s chair, still holding the garment bag. “Miss Catherine, I’d really love to wear your lacy prom dress that’s up in the attic. I’d never find anything here in Forest Dale that would be that perfect.” She spoke faster. “It wouldn’t bother me that the dress had been involved in an accident.”

Miss Catherine reacts pretty much exactly how I reacted when I read that, and Robin’s Streak of Triumphs is broken:

“Robin, it would bother me,” she said. “You already asked me about that dress before, and I said NO. Don’t ask me again.” Miss Catherine’s pale skin was red with anger, making the awful scar look even uglier.

Attitude and language around Miss Catherine’s scar: still gross.

---

Just before she left, Robin took the two Charleston dresses up to the attic. The closet door opened easily this time. Unzipping the garment bag, she took the dresses out and hung them back on the long pole where they’d been for so many years, shrouding them again with the yellowed sheets.

—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke

---

Scene Five: Ocean’s… One?

Robin heads up to the attic and does her dirty deed:

Then, without even letting herself think, she took the lace dress from the closet, pressed it against her cheek for a moment, and slipped it inside the garment bag. It slid in smoothly, as if it wanted to go with Robin. She zipped the bag closed again. Her heart thumped so loudly that it sounded almost like ghostly footsteps, and she glanced guiltily behind her.

When she comes downstairs, she feels like Miss Catherine knows what she did—and you know, it’s probably just her guilty conscience, but a rather large part of me is hoping that Miss Catherine is secretly like… You know what, kid? I’ve warned you multiple times. Do what you’re gonna do.

As Robin is on her way out the door, Miss Catherine tells her that she’s going out of town for a few days, to a town called Cherry Springs. When Robin asks her if she and Rowena used to swim in the hot springs, she responds:

“Rowena was in an institution there,” Miss Catherine said calmly. “An institution for the criminally insane.” The right side of her face smiled. “Have a nice time at your prom, dear.”

---

WELP

LEGIT DID NOT SEE THAT COMING

End of Chapter Two!

More next week!

Talk soon,
Leila