Chapter 15: Max P.O.V.
"Dylan asked you?!" Nudge squealed, and Angel standing bug eyed next to her.
"Dylan, as in captain of the football team and absolute dreamboat asked you to formal?!" Both girls simultaneously screamed at the tops of their lungs. I slapped my hands over my ears and screwed my eyes closed. Nudge grabbed my sleeve and shook it, trying to get me to take my hands off my ears.
"Max, tell us more about what happened!" Her muffled voice shouted, and Gazzy let out a laugh across the room. I tried to smother a smile as Nudge huffed and pushed me backwards, flopping down on her bed. I took my hands off my ears and Nudge frowned down at me and crossed her arms. Iggy tossed the seventeen magazine he was flipping through to the side and rolled onto his back on the floor.
"I can tell you how it went down, Nudge. I was sitting right across from them." I gave Iggy my best glare, but it was lost on him.
"You wouldn't." I said tonelessly, and Nudge flounced across the room and sat cross legged next to Iggy, rocking back and forth.
"Please tell me Iggy." She asked sweetly, and he sent me an evil glare.
"Let go get dressed first Nudgie, I'll share in the car." Nudge let out another ear shattering scream and I flopped back down on the bed, gathering the lavender comforter over my face. Nudge grabbed my ankle and tried to pull me off the bed.
"Nooo. I'm sleeping, leave me alone." I whined, but she yanked me off the bed and onto the floor.
"Comeon Maxie, its either dress now, or I'll be having a chat with mama Val." She told me, digging through her closet for a purse that probably matched her new sweater. Gazzy got up from where he was slumped over in a blue bean bag chair and tossed everyones coats around the room. It started snowing early friday, and so far hadn't stopped.
"But its snowing." I whined, as Angel pushed her arms through the sleeves of a winter coat that seemed to engulf her. I snickered at the sight of tiny angel in her huge, baby blue coat.
"Its not THAT cold Ange." She wrinkled up her nose at me and did the zipper of her coat.
"Well, this place isn't exactly Virginia, Maxie-Waxie." I got up from the bed and caught my coat as Gazzy threw it at me, pulling it on roughly over my shoulders and threw out my hair from the collar of my coat.
"Whatever, lets go." I followed Iggy and a chattering Nudge downstairs, and all of us piled into Iggys truck, Angel and Gazzy sandwiched on either sides of me in the backseat. Iggy passed his ipod back to me and I leaned forward to take it and turn on Pierce the Veil. Nudge groaned and leaned back in her seat.
"Not again Max." She whined, and I shushed her.
"You get to sit in the shotgun and no one in this car is going to listen to One Direction." She huffed and looked at Iggy for support, who was trying hard to smother a smile.
"Sorry Nudge." He chuckled.
"You guys are unbelievable." She said, the sound of her shiny silver coat rubbing together as she crossed her arms over her stomach. Iggy leaned over and poked her in the side, earning a smug smile and a smack on the wrist. Angel nudged me with her forehead and handed her phone to me.
"Look at Dominique's new profile picture, is that a smile or is she on crack?" I giggled and Angel began to fill me in on the weekly happenings and Iggy started telling Nudge the story of how Dylan asked me to formal.
I passed the phone to Gazzy and watched as his face screwed up at the image at Dominique practically grimacing at the camera.
"Maybe it would be better if she was wearing a whole shirt." I nodded as Nudge whipped around the back of her seat like a cat and swiped the phone out of Gazzy's hand.
"Hey!" She leaned slightly forward in her chair, looking like a gossip columnist examining a meaty piece for a front cover article. She motioned for Iggy to continue her story and the back seat rode in grumbling silence the rest of the way to the mall.
"Max! you can never tell what looks good until you actually put it on your body!" Nudge scolded, sifting through a rack of colorful and sequined dresses.
"I can tell what looks bad because everything is bad." I told her in a bored tone, and she rolled her eyes up to the ceiling of the store, Deb, or whatever.
"You're actually impossible to shop for!" She cried out dramatically, attracting the attention of all the other girls looking for winter formal dresses in the store. Angel looked over from where she was across the store and made her way over to us.
"I'm guessing you guys didn't find anything." Nudge sighed dramatically and continued fingering through a rack of size medium dresses.
"Max is being impossible again." Nudge told her matter of factly, and Angel just smiled sweetly and gripped my wrist and tugged me gently towards her.
"I'll take her for a while. Just look for a dress with Iggy or something." An evil smile spread over Nudges face and she bolted from the store to find Iggy, who was always at champs crying over baseball merch. I gave Angel a sideways glance and she tugged me towards the door.
"But my legs don't work in dress stores." I whined, when she pulled me towards Charlotte Russe next door. Angel huffed, and walked past the store and continued down, stopping in front of hot topic.
"Zip those lips Maxie." She told me, and I followed her half-willing into the store. Angel marched right up to the cashier at the front.
"My friend needs a formal dress and hates pink and sparkly things." The cashier looked down at the tiny, hollister wearing blonde, and then slowly moved her eyes to me, the ends of her lips curving up slightly in approval. Angel Then turned on her heel and walked quickly out of the store and back the way we came. I looked timidly back up at the cashier and she smiled a little more broadly at me, her silver lip ring going slightly crooked, and turned around to face the dressed hung up on the wall behind the register.
"What's your name, Tiny?" She asked, using a hook to take down a few dresses.
"Max." I told her, and she chuckled.
"Is it Maxine, or are you a crossdresser." I laughed, and she turned around, five dresses on her arm.
"Maximum, born a female, actually."
"What were your parents on when they named you that?" She asked, and I spurted a laugh.
"My name's Vera." She said, hanging up a black mesh maxi dress on the inside of the dressing room doors.
"Try this on. I'll help you." She gave me another smile and I went into the dressing room and shut the door. I pulled off my coat, jeans, and hoodie, and yanked on the dress grudgingly, the chilly air in the mall more noticeable without my coat. I looked down at my bare arms, and turned my wrists in as I stepped out of the dressing room.
Vera looked over me and motioned for me to turn, and I reluctantly turned and moved my arms so that she wouldn't be able to see them. When I faced her again, she gave me knowing glance and handed the the next dress on a hanger. I went back into the dressing room, slight shame bubbling up in my stomach. I yanked off the maxi dress and hung it on the hangar, and pulled on the next dress. The next one was an all lace, black bodycon with lace sleeves that reached all the way down to my wrists. I turned around in the mirror, admiring the dress a little.
I left the dressing room and looked for Veras green hair in the store, where she was talking to a group of kids near the front of the store. She turned and frowned, shaking her head at the dress, pulling at the shoulders of her asking Alexandria tee-shirt. I looked in the dressing room mirrors at the too-loose shoulders of the dress and frowned. They were way way too big. I snatched up the next dress without even looking at it and went back into the dressing room and whipping on the next dress.
The front was plain black and the skirt of the dress rose to just above the middle of my thigh, and a line of small spikes went around my waist. The back of the dress had a lace skull over the entire upper back of the dress. If I was Nudge, I probably would have squealed. I left the dressing room, totally forgetting about my lack of sleeves.
Vera gave me a full grin from across the store and swiped something up from where she was standing. She walked across the store and handed me a pair of fingerless gloves that matched the lace pattern of the dress, and went up to the middle of my forearms.
"Thats perfect!" She yelled, and shoved me back into the dressing room.
"Hope you like it cause you're buying it, sweetheart!" I smiled and pulled off the gloves and the dress, and put my normal clothes back on, my coat still a little warm. I checked out (with a few totally necessary band tees) and left to find Iggy, who was probably still crying over baseball at champs.
"Maxie!" Nudge called from behind me, as she jogged up to me, her arms loaded with bags.
"I thought today was only for dress shopping?" Nudge laughed and looped her arm over my shoulders and we walked into champs together, where Iggy was still looking through baseball jerseys and whatever else baseball people like.
"Wait, where's Angel, Max?" She asked, and I shrugged, and her eyes flew open and she clawed for my bag, which I calmly held just out of her reach.
"What did you buy Maximum Naira Martinez!" She screeched.
"A dress." She fell back on a red couch with no back and sighed dramatically.
"I accept defeat, when I comes to shopping with you." Iggy looked over and grinned, making his way over to us with Gazzy.
"What did you kill her with, Max?" nudge raised her head, and mumbled weakly.
"You can't kill me Max, Not even with your horrible fashion taste." She let her head fall back just as Gazzy rolled his eyes and his twin walked into the store.
"Woa, who killed Nudge?" Angel asked sweetly, and Nudges eyes flew open and she was up on her feet and shaking Angels shoulders.
"How could you let her buy a dress without approving it first! Its probably going to be a giant band tee-shirt and then her sister will totally be all like "Nudge what the hell" and I'll probably melt into a pool of rejected beauty and then I won't be able to get into a journalism school and graduate at he took of my class and wear red lipstick and break hearts just like Marina and I'll have to be a hobo or something!" She stood there not even out of breath, and Angel just patted Nudges head and replied.
"I'll remember that next time." She looked past Nudge at Iggy.
"Lets go Iggles. I'm hungry."