“I want to go shopping.”
I looked at her.
She was sitting upright in her hospital bed, wrapped in a blanket, her face thinner than it had been a month earlier.
“For what?”
“My graduation dress.”
My stomach tightened.
“Maya…”
“I know.”
Her voice softened.
“I still want one.”
So we went.
The hospital gave us a few hours.
Eli came too.
We drove twenty minutes to a little boutique in a neighboring town because Maya refused to shop anywhere somebody from school might see her wearing the ridiculous hospital bracelet she couldn’t remove.
She rejected seven dresses.
Too boring.
Too pale.
Too “funeral-ish,” as she put it.
Then she saw the red one.
It hung near the back wall beneath a row of formal gowns.
Maya stopped walking.
