They Dyed My Dress for the Dance. I Left the Group of Five novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Moonlight, White
A colorblind girl walks into the homecoming dance in a white dress her four closest friends dyed behind her back, and learns the swap was planned; she leaves their group chat as her best friend admits she has been sleeping with her boyfriend.
Homecoming dance. Theme: Moonlight.
Every girl had to wear white.
I'm colorblind, all the way down. The world comes to me in grays and nothing else.
I can tell a dark thing from a light thing in a heartbeat.
I just can't tell you what color either one is.
So when the dress came, I asked the four people I trusted most the same question.
"Is it really white?"
My boyfriend, Lance, zipped it up the back of me and grinned at the mirror.
"Relax. It matches everybody else's."
My best friend, Kinsley, hugged me from the side and put her chin on my shoulder.
"You're going to be the prettiest girl in the room."
My brother, Colby, was lying on my dorm bed with his phone.
"Looks white to me," he said, without looking up.
Milo, who has lived next door to us since I was four, only nodded.
That was enough for me.
I walked into the Union Ballroom at nine o'clock with my chin up.
The laughter started before I reached the dance floor.
It rolled across the room.
Heads turned. Phones came up.
I stopped and tugged the hem down, as if the hem was the problem.
I didn't know what the problem was.
A girl from my literature class pushed through the crowd and grabbed my arm.
Her face was red and wet from holding something in.
"Quinn, your dress," she said. "They painted it. It's red and green."
I froze.
The wash lights on the ceiling were set to the school colors, and everybody around me was lit in those two colors.
Everyone could see something on me that I couldn't.
Over her shoulder, three phones were pointed at my face.
Kinsley stood in the middle of the floor in a white dress.
It was the dress I had paid a hundred and forty dollars for, with money from shelving library books.
She was laughing so hard she had to bend over and hold her knees.
"I told you she wouldn't notice," she gasped.
Lance walked over and waved a hand at me.
"It's a joke, Quinn. Don't be a spoiler."
I stood there with my arms at my sides.
Behind them a dozen people huddled around one phone, replaying my face.
Then the photographer called for the group shot.
Lance, Kinsley, my brother and Milo walked to the backdrop together.
They stood in a neat row, close enough to touch.
There wasn't a gap left for me.
Kinsley slid her arm through Lance's and smiled for the camera.
"With that mess on, you'd ruin the picture anyway," she called to me.
That was when I understood.
They hadn't brought me to share the night.
They had brought me to be the joke.
I couldn't see the colors on my dress.
But I could finally see what the four of them were, and they fit the frame without me.
So I stepped out of it.
---
I didn't wait for the photo.
I locked myself in the last stall of the bathroom and held my hands against my knees to make them stop shaking.
Girls came in laughing.
"Her face," one said. "Like the world ended."
"Lance's crew is savage. Red and green. Total precision."
"Wait, wasn't that white dress Quinn's? Why is Kinsley wearing it?"
A voice dropped low.
"Kinsley wanted it. Lance let her swap."
I looked down at my skirt.
Gray. All of it gray, the same gray as any white dress.
Nothing on it was darker than the cloth around it.
Whatever they'd used was as light as the dress, so my eyes had nothing to catch.
But my fingers had caught the hem.
Last night, Kinsley had come to my dorm with the box.
She said Lance had picked it out himself.
When I held it up, the hem felt stiff, like the edge of a paper cup.
I'd asked her why part of it felt different.
She had hugged me. "It's an art-design thing. It needs texture."
I had been proud of that dress.
That stiff hem was the texture, and it was a punchline someone had planned for days.
My phone buzzed in my fist.
Lance had sent the group photo to our chat, the one called The Five.
My brother and Milo stood on either side.
In the center, Kinsley wore the white dress that was supposed to be mine, and Lance's hand rested on her shoulder.
They were all beaming under the lights.
The chat lit up.
Colby wrote, "Where's Quinn? Is she actually mad?"
Milo wrote, "Joke went a bit far. We'll coax her back tomorrow."
I read it twice.
Then I opened the chat settings with a thumb that wouldn't stay still.
The stall door rattled.
"Quinn. Open up."
Kinsley's voice was soft and breathy, the one she used when she wanted something.
I unlocked the door.
She stood at the sink in my white dress with her mascara still perfect.
"Don't be dramatic. It's one night."
"You wore my dress."
"Lance said I should." She shrugged. "Honestly, Quinn, you should hear it from me. We've been together since August."
The room went quiet except for the faucet.
"Colby knew," she said.
I tapped Leave Group.
The screen said I was no longer in the chat.
I walked past her, out of the bathroom, and into the hall where everyone was still watching.
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