“We’re going shopping for graduation dresses this afternoon,” Vanessa says to me. “You should come with us.”

“Vanessa!” Kelsey hisses at her, but Vanessa waves her off.

“I have to work,” I say quietly, not really caring about graduation, which is a month away. Mom cries happy tears every time it comes up in conversation, like when I had to order my cap and gown, but to me it’s any other day.

“What time do you get off?” Vanessa asks, checking the time on her phone. “We can wait.”

I glance at Kelsey, who’s still ignoring me. “Three?”

“Cool,” Savannah says. “We’ll come back and meet you. Then we can drive over to the Galleria.”

Maybe it would be nice to have a new dress for graduation. But if I’m being truthful, I can’t afford a thing from the Galleria, and I’ll probably end up wearing the “perihinkle” dress Kyle loved. Mostly I agree to go because my heart pounded harder when I heard the girls laughing about how they took their prom limo to the drive-thru at McDonald’s. I bet that was fun. Shopping could be fun too, and distracting.

As promised, they pick me up at 3:00. Kelsey sits in the front seat and doesn’t even turn around to say hello when I slip into the backseat. Fine by me. The girls start chattering about what kinds of dresses they want, about how they went to the roller-skating rink in their fancy prom gear last night, about how excited they are for graduation, about college.

A Middle Tennessee State course catalog arrived in the mail the other day. I’m starting there in August, but I haven’t even ripped the plastic off the catalog yet. The college is only about half an hour from Franklin, which is good. It makes me happy I’ll be so close to my mom and brother. But that’s about all that makes me excited. I mean, I can’t bring myself to care about whether I’ll take math or politics. College just feels like the next step I’m supposed to take. I’ll go to classes, one day I’ll get a job doing something, and I will be able to support myself and not live in a trailer park. But the rest of my future feels hazy. Without him, why does any of it matter?

At the Galleria, we head straight to Nordstrom and pick out a bunch of outfits to try on. Kelsey carries a rainbow of dresses to the fitting room.

Savannah has been training to be a horse jockey for the past year, and even though she can eat like eight plates of cheese fries, she weighs nothing, doesn’t have much of a chest, and is super short. All the dresses hit below her knees. “Jesus! I look like an old lady!” She throws a dress over the fitting room door. Vanessa looks gorgeous in all of the dresses she tries on—the universe blessed her with supermodel genes. Kelsey and I have about the same body type: medium.

“God damn!” Savannah exclaims, and another dress goes flying. Vanessa bursts out laughing at her. I find myself chuckling too.

I strip off my Roadhouse polo shirt and jeans, which smell like onions. I pull a light blue dress off the hanger and try it on. It fits fine. When I turn to the side, I notice my waist is slimming down and my legs are trim. Running over twenty miles a week is bringing big changes to my body.

Vanessa eyes my dress. “That’s cute.”

I love her green silk dress with spaghetti straps. “Yours is great too.”

With a dress under each arm, Kelsey is texting a mile a minute. She speaks as she jabs buttons on her cell. “No, Colton, you can’t come dress shopping with me. You. Are. A. Boy.”

Still wearing the dresses we tried on, Vanessa and I wander barefoot back out onto the department store floor to browse the racks again.

She holds a silver sequined dress to her chest. “Listen, I wanted to talk to you. I saw in the school newspaper that you’re going to MTSU this fall. Right?”

“Right…”

“Are you living in the dorms?”

I was planning on it, considering that’s all my financial aid will cover. An apartment off campus seems too much a luxury. “Yeah.”

“So am I.”

“You aren’t getting an apartment?” A lot of kids do that, and Vanessa doesn’t hurt for money.

She gives the dress she’s holding a dirty look and pulls another from the rack. “My brother is making me stay on campus freshman year. And I’d rather not live with a complete stranger…”

I check the price on a pink halter dress I’d never wear. “Mm-hmm.”

“Kelsey and I are getting an on-campus place with her cousin. It’s a two-bedroom suite with a little kitchen and a bathroom. But we need a fourth person.”