Middle Aged Prom Dress #5

Lael Littke's Prom Dress: Chapter Five

Hi, friends,

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

If you’d like to start from the beginning of my Prom Dress coverage, the first four installments are here, here, here, and here.

My recapping of Christopher Pike’s Slumber Party starts here.

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Scholastic Point edition of Lael Littke’s Prom Dress

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Robin floated.

There was pain somewhere, but she could drift away from it if she tried. She was suspended in space, warm, soft space, and there was music playing. The sound waves rocked her, and she slept.

—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke

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Scene One: Robin, meet Felicia. Felicia, meet Robin.

Robin wakes up in excruciating pain. She hears someone saying her name, but is scared to open her eyes:

She’d had a dream, such a lovely dream about Tyler and a beautiful dress. They were at the prom, dancing.

But there was more. A nightmare of splintering boards and screams and then the pain.

Something was wrong with her legs.

She finally opens her eyes, sees a girl she doesn’t know and slowly realizes where she is, which makes her remember what happened:

“My legs,” she said, her voice rising toward a scream.

The girl took her hand.

The nurse tells her:

• she can give her pain meds soon

• that both of her legs are in casts

• that Tyler, her mother, and her sister have all been in to visit

• and that her name is Felicia

And then:

“What about my dress? Is my dress ruined, Felicia?”

Felicia smiled. “It’s almost perfect. I looked it over very closely. One seam opened up a couple of inches and a piece of lace tore loose. But there’s nothing that can’t be repaired. It’ll be as good as new after a little needlework.”

She asks about going home, and immediately clocks that Felicia evades the question. (Robin seems a little more on the ball, post-accident? I guess she’s not obsessed with prom any more, so there’s that, and maybe the thrall of The Dress fades after it Gets What It Wants?)

Someone is taking cues from V.C. Andrews, this is the most melodramatic thing I’ve read in a while (obviously i love it, it’s tailor-made for a Dramatic Reading):

It was as if something monstrous with iron teeth was chomping down on her feet.

She screamed. The pain, the pain. How could she dance with such pain?

Oh, yeah, the thrall is DEFINITELY gone:

How was she going to get the prom dress back to the attic before she came home? Suddenly she wished the dress was back there in the dark attic closet. She wished she’d never taken it, had never even seen it.

I dunno, this feels a little ret-connish?:

The thought of facing Miss Catherine, of telling what she’d done, made her shiver. What would Miss Catherine do? What could she do? She was small, and she was old. Why was Robin afraid of her? It was irrational, but something about Miss Catherine terrified her now.

She thinks about the possibility of Miss Catherine calling the police, etc., which is fair, because it makes sense to me that with the thrall lifted, she’d be panicking and her brain would be spinning out, but the TERROR thing feels either MAGICAL or, like I said, ret-conny.

She’s worried that Felicia is lying about the dress—not for Nefarious Purposes, but so as not to upset her—so she asks her to take it out of the closet:

Even through her pain Robin could see that it was not badly damaged. It hung from the hanger as soft and lovely as ever, shimmering in the light that came through the window. But what was it that made her feel cold again? That frightened her so?

As Felicia holds the dress, she looks at herself in the mirror, and woo boy, here we go:

It was funny, looking at Felicia holding the dress. Robin had once thought it must look best on a girl like herself, a girl with light hair and pale skin.

But the dress took on an entirely different aspect near Felicia’s dark hair and blue eyes. It still looked innocent and sweet, yet it was — what? Seductive? Had it looked that way on her?

“You’d look good in it, Felicia,” Robin whispered before the pain overwhelmed her again.

Felicia swayed as she held the dress, smiling at her reflection in the mirror.

I suspect that “You’d look good in it, Felicia,” is going to get cited as JUSTIFICATION for some DRESS-STEALING. Also I’m a little concerned about this SEDUCTIVE thing—given that it’s pretty likely she’s going to steal it to wear it to that church dinner party, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dean Goudy grabs her butt and blames her for being irresistible or something gross like that.

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Enter the Worst. Doctor. Ever:

The doctor came then. He was jovial and jaunty.

“Well, how are we today?” he asked. “I understand the feet are giving us a little pain.”

Using a plural pronoun there is SO. RUDE. It’s inaccurate and condescending, and paired with “a little pain,” it’s absolutely minimizing the agony that she’s CLEARLY in. I looked it up, and there are 26 bones in the foot and ankle? And I think it’s safe to say that most of hers got broken, let alone the tissue and muscle and whatever else damage? Add this guy to the list of terrible male characters in this book—in case you haven’t been keeping track, so far, we’re at 100%.

ALSO he won’t give her more pain meds until she’s talked to her visitors, which… prioritizing chatty-time over her pain seems wicked crappy to me, but what do I know.

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As he left, he told her that she had some visitors who wanted to see her before she went to sleep again. Robin’s mother and Gabrielle came in. Their eyes were anxious, and their faces were tight with worry.

—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke

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Scene Two: Robin has visitors

First up, her mother and Gabby:

They knew the truth. Robin could see it behind the smiles they tried to present. They knew she wouldn’t be dancing again, not with Tyler, not with her dance group, not at the university on her scholarship. They knew her dancing days were over as well as she knew it, even though the doctor hadn’t said it.

Then Tyler, who tells her that he wishes it’d been him who’d gotten hurt. He promises to come every day, and:

Robin watched him go. Would he really keep coming? Tyler liked action, not invalids.

I don’t know, man. Did Tyler get body-swapped or something? The Tyler from Chapter One would be like OMG ROBIN I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE STILL HANGING OUT IN THE HOSPITAL, IF YOU REALLY LOVED ME YOU’D KICK OFF YOUR CASTS, BLOW THIS POPSICLE STAND, AND GO FOR A RIDE IN MY SWEET TRANS AM, but this guy is almost tolerable.

Gabrielle is back:

After he went out, Gabrielle came back in to say she’d take the prom dress home for safekeeping.

“No!” Robin said. “Leave it here!”

Then there’s a whole back-and-forth because really, Robin has no logical way to frame keeping the dress at the hospital WITHOUT outing herself as a thief. She also doesn’t want Gabby even HANDLING the dress because now she senses that it’s EVIL.

So she has to come up with a reason:

A) for Gabby to NOT bring the dress home
B) for Gabby to NOT tell Miss Catherine that her dress is safe at the hospital
C) for Gabby to NOT talk to Miss Catherine, period

None of her reasons track, but luckily for her she starts crying from the pain and frustration, so Gabby drops it… FOR NOW.

Gabby leaves. Before Robin passes out again, she thinks she sees the dress start glowing—she’s not sure if it’s really glowing or if it’s the pain—and she sees Felicia head for the closet:

As if pulled by the light, Felicia went to the bright closet and took out the prom dress again. She held it up against herself as she had done before. She hummed as she checked its length and measured it across her hips.

Then just before she fell asleep again, Robin heard Felicia say, “This would be perfect, absolutely perfect for me.”

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Welp, this chapter was sadly a little short on ACTION—I guess we needed to bridge the gap between Felicia and Robin?

Hopefully we’ll get Felicia at the Sexist Dinner Party next week, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if the entire chapter is just about Felicia trying to decide whether or not to “borrow” the dress?

I’M KIND OF STARTING TO THINK THAT THIS BOOK COULD HAVE BEEN A SHORT STORY?

More next week!
Leila