Middle Aged Prom Dress #6

Lael Littke's Prom Dress: Chapter Six

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 five installments are here, 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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Felicia didn’t know exactly when it was she decided to borrow Robin’s dress. It must have been when Robin asked her to bring it from the closet so she could make sure it was all right. Felicia had held it up against herself so that Robin could see it better. As she’d held it, she’d caught sight of herself in the mirror which hung on the wall over the little shelf where the patients put their get-well cards and familiar knickknacks.

—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke

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Scene One: Felicia keeps telling herself she’s not going to take the dress

We’ve all been round this merry-go-round once before, but that’s the thing about merry-go-rounds—they don’t exactly change up their route.

I find this interesting… and WORRISOME:

It added warmth to her coloring in a way that the stark whiteness of her nurse’s uniform never could, yet with a softness and modesty just right for a minister’s wife. It made her feel kind and generous.

Felicia thinks the dress makes her look modest, whereas Robin saw her as seductive. It’s possible that I’m giving this worldbuilding more credit than I should, but it feels to me like the dress is showing Felicia what she wants to see, and Robin is seeing what everyone else is going to see. (This dress feels like an object that Mr. Dark would offer up in Something Wicked This Way Comes, gah.)

Either someone’s seen Rashomon, or someone had a word count to hit, because we saw this in the previous chapter from Robin’s perspective:

Moving over to the mirror, she held the dress up against her body to see if it would fit, humming a romantic tune as she did so.

“This would be perfect, absolutely perfect for me,” she said.

As before, our Probably-Doomed Heroine tries to resist, but The Dress is insistent:

But her conscience nipped at her. She couldn’t take Robin’s dress.

Resolutely she took a step back toward the closet.

But the dress clung to her.

I wonder if it’s a DONE DEAL when they start seeing themselves as marked in the mirror?

Suddenly she leaned close to the mirror. What was that odd blotch on her left cheek? Had she smeared something on it?

MORE DITHERING:

Getting it out wasn’t going to be easy. If she got caught, she could lose her job.

Maybe it was too risky. Maybe she should forget the whole thing.

OH MY GOD JUST STEAL IT ALREADY

BARF:

Yet she couldn’t wear one of her low-cut dresses to Dean Goudy’s dinner, either. And it wouldn’t be any better to go looking like a frump. Judging from Dean Goudy’s own wife, he liked ministers’ wives to be stylish as well as pure.

She goes shopping to look for a dress she can buy instead of steal—she’s worried that if Mark finds out, he won’t propose—but the only one she finds that MIGHT work looks “cheap and tacky:”

Still, better to be cheap and tacky than a thief.

She puts off buying it because plotting, and then her dirty old man patient Mr. Ottley dies, also because plotting. His death throws her into an tailspin—all Mr. Ottley’s son cares about is money, thus reminding her of her jerk dad and of the guy she dated before Mark, who was also Very Into Money, and apparently she is also suddenly dealing with Imposter Syndrome??—so when she gets home she’s an emotional wreck and calls Mark and he comes over and comforts her and stays there super-late even though he has to be up early and so obviously this means that he is the MOST CONSIDERATE PERSON EVER even though good lord this is pretty low bar, it’s just common decency to care for your partner when they’re in emotional distress.

But Felicia is Felicia, and from what I can tell, she’s only ever really interacted with her father (trash), her old boyfriend (trash), and Mark (boring but nice even though he doesn’t understand that morning dates are Not Great when you work nights), so this all means:

She loved him so much. She’d do anything to be the kind of wife he needed. She owed it to him to look like that kind of wife at Dean Goudy’s dinner.

And then she has a dream about wearing the dress and DANCING WITH MR. OTTLEY??? What even. I guess that even with the ass-grabbing, he was the father figure that she never had. Ugh, it feels VERY UNFAIR that the dress is going after her, she’s so tragical.

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She took the dress the next night at the end of her shift.

—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke

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Scene Two: Felicia takes the dress

OMG FINALLY.

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The look in Mark’s eyes when he came to pick her up made all the risk worthwhile. It was a look made up of love and admiration with just a tinge of something very like relief. Felicia was somewhat amused by the last ingredient, but she understood. He’d seen some of the rather revealing clothes she’d stocked her wardrobe with before she’d ever met him, and very likely he’d been worried that she might have worn one of those dresses for this very important party.

—Prom Dress, by Lael Littke

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Scene Three: In which Mark and Felicia literally WALK TO HIS CAR

In case anyone hadn’t clocked Mark as a corndog:

“Wow,” he breathed as he stood back and gazed at her. “Wow, Felicia, you’re sensational.”

This is going NOWHERE. GOOD. These books don’t acknowledge boobs unless someone is about to get assaulted:

The dress was every bit as lovely as she’d known it would be, and although it fit a little snugger than it should across her bust and hips, that didn’t take away from the air of sweetness that it gave her. She’d bought a pair of cream-colored, high-heeled pumps that showed off her nice legs without drawing attention away from the dress. She’d also bought a little beaded evening bag, in which to carry her lipstick and the money she always took along, no matter where she went.

Ugh, at least she’ll be able to get a cab after whatever happens, happens. FELICIA DON’T GO TO THIS MEAT MARKET, IT’S SO GROSS AND YOU DESERVE BETTER

Felicia, also corny. And possibly a time-traveller:

“Thank you, she said to Mark. “You look pretty nifty yourself.”

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Next week: THE DINNER PARTY, I HOPE. But the way this is getting dragged out, it’ll probably just be the car ride over, lololol.

Talk soon,
Leila