The New Dress

Flash Fiction

The New Dress

My grandmother bought me a new dress-up dress for my birthday. We’d been talking about my first school dance coming up and how excited I was, except I wasn’t sure what to wear.

My birthday is in September, and this dance was the first of the year, my first real dance. I was so excited, especially since John Clifford was going to be there. (I’d had a secret crush on John since second grade…)

Gram decided to help me out by buying me a new party dress for my birthday! That would have been wonderful, except she picked the dress out herself (a surprise!) and apparently you have to be very careful talking to someone a good forty plus years older than you about some stuff, like appropriate clothing…

It was horrible! First it was white, but all the stitching was red! It had a huge flowy skirt that came down half way past my knees. Then on the front a giant green bird standing on a nest and looking straight at you, with giant eyes! It was atrocious!

Gram seemed so excited as I held it up! Both of my parents looked just as shocked as me, but we all held it in because we didn’t want to hurt Grammie’s feelings.

“How do you like it?” she asked, smiling from ear to ear.

“It’s, ah, unique…” I said, not knowing what else to say…

“Did you see it has a pocket?” she asked.

Feeling how could it be any worse? I reached around and found the pocket, and noticed there was something in it. A gift certificate to my favorite clothing store!

Gram laughed her head off! “Got ya!” she said. “You can wear this one on Halloween!”

And I did, as I went trick or treating with John.