Disclaimer: That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC.

CHAPTER SEVEN
TRYING ON NEW CLOTHES

Jackie smashed her palms into Hyde's chest, and he fell backward onto the tattered couch. "You?" she said. "You set all this up?" Her flushed cheeks and the pain in her eyes were more bruising than any punch. "Why?"

The basement was too crowded for this conversation. Forman, his mom, and Donna stood by the sheets dividing the room. Fez sat on the armrest of the couch, and Kelso was circling Mark, as if assessing his competition.

Even Red didn't get the concept of privacy. He'd retaken his spot on the lawn chair and seemed as eager to hear Hyde's answer as Jackie.

"To keep you away from him," Hyde said and nodded at Kelso.

Kelso shrieked behind Mark. Mark winced, but he didn't elbow Kelso in the face like Hyde would have. He scooted beside Red. Not an unwise move. Kelso was unlikely to tackle him with Red so close.

"Away from Michael?" Jackie's voice quivered, and Hyde's stomach clenched. He hadn't intended to hurt her, but he'd done it anyway. "This whole Dating Game plot was your idea just to keep me away from Michael?"

Hyde pushed himself off the couch. Having this discussion here, under these circumstances, was going to damage whatever he and Jackie might have left. "Jackie, man, you know how you are..."

"No, I don't know."

"Hyde," Donna said. His name was a warning, but what was he supposed to do? Jackie had him by the stones. He'd fucked up, and he owed her an explanation.

"You're too forgiving," he said, focusing only on Jackie. No one else in the basement mattered right now. "You can't stay pissed enough to save yourself."

The skin of her forehead reddened, matching the color of her cheeks. "And Mark's your solution to that?"

"May I offer some perspective?" Mark said, raising his hand, but he didn't wait for a response. "I've been told you two dated, and I'm guessing you—" he pointed at Jackie, "went back to him." His finger shifted to Kelso. "And from what I've seen, he's a bit of a dick—"

Red snorted in obvious agreement, and Mrs. Forman said, "It's true. He is."

"Mom!" Forman said. "Don't talk about my friends that way."

"But, sweetie, Michael has cheated on Jackie over and over. Sure, she can be pushy, but that doesn't mean she deserves to have her heart broken."

"Or be humiliated in public," Donna said and grasped one of the sheet dividers. "But I guess it's too late for that."

Mark left Red's side and approached Jackie. "Jackie," he said low but not low enough, "from what Hyde's told me, you're an intelligent, compassionate girl. Don't let yourself be a pawn. If your two exes are battling it out, get off the board."

"Only one of them is my ex." Jackie's fists twisted in her jeans pockets. Donna was right. Doing all this in public—discussing Jackie's psychology, her relationship with Kelso—in front of friends and a stranger had to be like being ground into fragments. But Hyde was the one who'd crammed her into the meat grinder, and he was the one who had to get her out.

"Okay, enough." He swept his gaze over everyone. "Game's over. Night's over. Anybody who doesn't belong here, get the hell out."

"It's my basement!" Forman said.

"No, it's my basement," Red said.

"And it's my life." Jackie stepped close to Hyde. She jabbed her finger at his face and scratched his chin in the process. "You had no right to do this. If I want to date Michael, I will—"

Kelso pumped both fists into the air. "All right!"

She turned toward him. "Shut up. I don't want to date you. If I want to date anyone," she indicated Mark, "that's my choice, not yours."

"Peter Frampton? You'd pick Peter Frampton over me?" Kelso darted to Forman's shelf of records. He yanked out Frampton Comes Alive and waved it in the air. "I'm way hotter than Frampton."

"Kelso—" Forman rushed to him and snatched the record from his hands.

"Michael, you have no say in who I date." Jackie's voice rose in volume but remained steady. "You have no rights over me. You have no hold over me." She looked at Hyde again. The pain in her eyes had become disappointment, and it breached his chest. "Tonight wasn't to keep me away from Michael. It was to keep me away from you."

He couldn't deny it, despite the slight shake of his head, and she stepped back from him. "Well, Steven, mission accomplished. At least now I know how you feel." She reached behind her neck and removed the necklace he'd given her. "Little advice, though: with the next girl, just tell her."

The shooting star pendant glinted in her palm, but she tilted her hand, and the necklace fell to the floor. His gaze clung to it as every part of her disappeared from view. Her footsteps clacked on the concrete, and the basement door squeaked open. It thudded shut, deepening the breach in his chest.

Loving her had created fresh fissures in both their damn hearts. Because he did love her. In spite of his efforts to remain indifferent, he'd fallen for a girl he'd just kicked into the dirt.

Jackie yanked Donna into the Sharp, Snappy, Sleek Boutique! and propelled herself to the rack with the sluttiest clothes. Slut was a word she'd tried to stop using. Watching that episode of Donahue about feminism had opened her mind, made her aware of her own internalized misogyny. She could even teach Donna a few lessons about it. But slutty and other disempowering words infested her thoughts, thanks to Steven.

He'd demeaned her last night. Recruited friends and strangers to help him do it, but they weren't aware of his true motives. That was the only reason she could look Donna in the eye and bring her to the mall. Donna hadn't meant to hurt her.

"This isn't your usual store," Donna said over the boutique's bass-heavy disco. From a neighboring rack, she pulled a mini-skirt that was little bigger than a headband. "You'd be expelled from school for wearing this."

Jackie gritted her teeth. She was going for a smile but ended up snarling. "Want me to buy it for you?"

"Thanks but no, thanks." Donna put the skirt back. "I can't wear anything that's in here, and I don't just mean Sharp, Snappy, Sleek. The whole mall is banned from my wardrobe now that I'm going to Catholic school. I can't believe this is my last day before hell."

Jackie understood. Sending Donna to Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow was the same was exiling her.

"At least you can come home to the basement." Jackie gathered a few sheer blouses from the first rack and moved onto the next. "Eric'll welcome you home with bony arms."

"Yeah, but it's not the same. I'm gonna miss hanging out with him between classes, passing notes during classes, eating lunch together. And not just with him. I'm gonna miss you and the guys, too. … This year is gonna totally suck."

"Worse than last year?" Jackie held a leather mini-skirt against her body. The hem reached halfway to her knees, and another customer in the store—a woman in her twenties—nodded her approval.

"No," Donna said, and she stopped talking as Jackie added more clothes to her try-on pile.

Five minutes in, Donna offered to carry Jackie's selections. She never did that. Guilt about last night had to be driving her. Or maybe she was feeling generous. Either way, Jackie let Donna act as her assistant.

A little while later, Jackie had a see-through blouse in her hands. Not sheer. Transparent. It was too much, and she returned it to the rack. She had plenty of clothes to try on anyway, and the time had come to learn if they should be worn or burned.

"How many items?" an attendant said at the front of the dressing room line. The woman was gray-haired, wrinkled, and seemed entirely out of place, especially with the disco music vibrating the walls. Her name tag identified her as Irene, and she wore glasses with a neck strap. But maybe she was like those "sexy librarians" in dirty magazines. The outside displayed an old, frowsy woman while underneath existed a wild nymphomaniac who went braless.

Donna counted the clothes Jackie had picked out. "Sixteen."

"Only ten items allowed at a time," Irene said with little affect. A table covered in lingerie and shredded, punk-inspired shirts sat before her. She was busy sorting through the unbought clothes, or perhaps Wild Irene was choosing items to buy for herself.

Jackie peered past her to the main dressing area. It had a pink carpet and black leather walls. More significantly, a few stools were scattered outside the privacy booths. "Could my friend sit with the rest of my—"

Irene waved her into the dressing area. "Next!"

Jackie and Donna left the growing line of customers, and Jackie chose a booth. With the privacy curtain drawn shut, she tried on a lacy, off-the-shoulder top and a pair of leather pants. The pants skimmed her butt perfectly, but the blouse stretched across her chest like a frown.

Still, the mixture of hard and soft was appealing. It fit how she'd decided to present herself at school this year. She might be the prettiest girl in Wisconsin, sensitive and loving, but she was also no one to mess with.

"Donna," she said through the curtain, "prepare yourself." She stepped into the main dressing area and modeled her new outfit.

"Wow. Those pants..." Donna gaped at her from a stool. She was hugging Jackie's remaining clothes on her lap and crinkling them.

"I know!" Jackie disappeared behind the curtain again. The next two outfits bordered her taste level, but the fourth blasted through it. The polyester dress was cinched at her waist so tightly she resembled a 1940s hooker, especially with the deep neckline. One wrong move, and her breasts would slip out.

She modeled the dress for Donna anyway.

"That's … no, that's terrible," Donna said.

"Really? But it's what your good friend Steven seems to think I should be wearing." Jackie bent at the waist, giving Donna a good view of her breasts. Another of the boutique's customers gestured for her to stand up straight, but Jackie ignored her. "He tried to peddle me off last night, Donna, like he was my pimp."

Donna squeezed her temples between her thumb and forefinger. "Jackie, that's not what—he wasn't—"

"Only he didn't quite get how it's supposed to work," Jackie said over her. "The john's supposed to pay him. He's not supposed to pay the john."

"I'm sorry about last night," Donna said. She released her temples, but she still seemed pained. "I never meant to make you feel like—well, like you have to go all slutty."

Jackie straightened up and placed her hands on her hips. "There's no such thing as slutty, Donna. Women should be able to show off their bodies without being labeled or judged."

Donna's brows furrowed. "Okay, when did you become a feminist?"

"Over the summer." Jackie went back into the privacy booth. The last three months had brought a lot of change to her life, both positive and negative. But just as her new sense of self was solidifying, Steven had laid it to waste.

She shimmied out of the prostitute dress and put on an A-line chambray dress. It had to be the classiest, most romantic piece of clothing in the boutique with a hem that reached her ankles. The bodice was embroidered with a stylized floral pattern, and the majority of the dress's fabric was the color of a winter sky.

The color of Steven's eyes.

She stepped from behind the curtain and twirled in the dress. The pleated skirt flared out, and she felt free, like herself. Communicating through her clothes wasn't necessary. Honoring whom she believed herself to be, whom she hoped to be, was the right road. Whoever didn't recognize her would be left behind.

"Jackie," Donna said, brow still creased like she had a headache, "I really am sorry—and that's a very nice dress."

Jackie smoothed her hands down the skirt. Its material was soft against her palms. She'd definitely buy this one. "I appreciate the apology," she said, "but your heart was in the right place. You don't want mine to be broken again."

Donna's expression finally relaxed. "Exactly! Kelso's dicked you around enough."

He had, but... "I really am over him now. He doesn't have the power to break my heart anymore."

"But Hyde does," Donna said.

The statement slammed into Jackie's stomach. Air shot from her lungs, and she combed her fingers through her hair. It was an old habit meant to soothe, to get her breathing. But she imagined Steven's hands in her hair, his fingertips grazing her neck, his lips inching dangerously close to her mouth.

"Jackie?"

"He should've just come up with another haiku and been done with it," Jackie said and thrust herself into the privacy booth.

"What happened between you two?" Donna shouted over the disco music, and the question reached Jackie through the curtain. "What actually happened."

"Nothing!" Jackie shouted back. She removed the chambray dress. The last item left in the booth was a satin negligee. She slipped it over her head and studied herself in the mirror. Negligee was from the French word that meant neglected. An omen?

The negligee she'd selected emphasized her curves and breasts. She adored how sexy it made her look, but who would see her wearing it? Sharing her body with someone required her to share her heart. She'd tried once to do the former without the latter and hit on a man old enough to have dated her mom.

One who had dated her mom.

Nausea rolled through her at the memory. Back then, she'd floated into the sky, higher and higher with no tether. Michael's cheating had cut her safety lines. Steven became her anchor, but her heart had been too fractured to process her feelings for him. She'd let him go and gravity lost its hold on her.

Gravity was loosing its hold now. Dizzying, detaching anxiety assaulted her body, and she pushed her back against the privacy-booth mirror. Her parents' marriage was dissolving. Michael had destroyed her future with him. Steven … if he could see how labored her breathing was, how she'd begun to shake, he'd pull her into his arms and stop fear from yanking her into space. Even if he had no desire to date her, he'd try to make her feel better, to feel safe.

"Jackie," Donna said from outside the curtain, "are you okay in there?"

"Fine! Just admiring myself..." Jackie cringed at the strain in her voice. She collected the clothes she wouldn't buy and stepped out of the booth. "See?" she said breathlessly, and she modeled the negligee in front of Donna and whoever else decided to stare. "I'm not just beautiful. I'm hot."

"Um … sure." Donna took the clothes Jackie passed to her and exchanged them for the ones Jackie hadn't yet tried on. "Did you and Hyde have sex?"

"Donna!" Jackie's mouth went dry. She licked her lips, but the moisture evaporated. "Nothing romantic happened. Nothing."

"You just seem, like, super guilty right now. All flushed and flustered."

"That's because Steven and I … we've always had this connection, you know?"

"No?" Donna's brown boots tapped on the pink carpet. "You insulted his upbringing on a regular basis. He mocked you and generally disrespected you—"

"That was before. But over time, we learned about each other. He protected me … a lot." And maybe the latter was what he'd tried to do yesterday: not pawn her off but send her to what he thought was safety. "Am I overreacting, Donna?"

"A hundred percent." Donna jutted her chin toward the privacy booth. "Now would you put on something less … revealing?"

"Prude." Jackie returned to the booth and changed into a fitted Ramones T-shirt and pair of jeans shredded at the knees. The outfit was one Steven would probably appreciate—on another girl.

She bit into her knuckle. The mirror was smudged where her back had leaned into it, and the foggy smears distorted her body. That was how Steven must've seen her, misshapen. Her beauty had never inspired lust in him, and she'd overestimated the value of their conversations. So why had he spent the summer with her when, obviously, she had nothing he wanted?

Teeth marks branded her finger, just as Steven's pity branded her heart. Because that was the only conclusion that made sense: he felt sorry for her. His Dating Game plot stank of a misguided sense of charity. It was an insult, along with every kind thing he'd ever done for her.

"'Poor pathetic Jackie,'" she muttered. Her fingers dug into the Ramones T-shirt and tugged it off her body. "I am not poor." She kicked off the shredded jeans. "And I won't be disrespected."

She exited the booth in her own clothes, a knit top and pink corduroy pants. "I don't love him," she said, dumping the boutique's shirts and jeans onto Donna's lap. "I feel sorry for him."

"Okay?" Donna stood up with the heap of clothes. Jackie grabbed what she planned on purchasing, and Donna draped the rest over her arm. "Who are we talking about?" Donna said, but Jackie strode from the dressing area to the cashier line. "Jackie, who are you talking about?" Donna repeated. Her arms were free of clothes. She must've given them to Irene.

"He's going to end up alone," Jackie said. "In his own way, he's as bad as Michael. He'll have plenty of sex but no one to anchor him. No one to share his life with." She exhaled a long breath, and her shoulders sagged. "But, I guess, that's what he wants, so he'll be happy."

The customer directly in front of her glanced back. An eavesdropper. Jackie made a nasty face at her, and the woman turned around.

"You're being too hard on him," Donna said. "It sounds weird to say, but Hyde genuinely cares about you. I think, maybe, he was afraid you'd mistake it for something more and go back to your creepy, stalking ways."

"I never stalked him," Jackie said, and the customer ahead of her gave her another glance. The woman had a mountain of leather bustiers in her arms, and Jackie pointed at it. "Lady, if you look at me like that again, I'll choke you with one of those—"

"Jackie," Donna clasped Jackie's shoulder, "don't take your anger out on her. Your voice is carrying."

"Whatever." Jackie held tightly the clothes she intended to buy. "I didn't stalk him."

"You didn't take no for an answer, either."

"Please. I didn't make him ask me out on Veteran's Day. I didn't force him to kiss me."

Donna slapped Jackie's arm. "You shut your lying mouth. He kissed you on that date?"

Jackie didn't answer. The eavesdropping customer had reached the cashier, and Jackie waited until the woman was thoroughly distracted. "We kissed each other. It was mutual."

"And?" Donna said.

"It went nowhere. Clearly."

Donna blinked a few times, as if processing this new information. "Okay, look, he'll probably kill me for saying this, but he doesn't want you to end up in a bad relationship again. With Kelso or anyone."

Goosebumps rose on Jackie's arms and shoulders. She peered up at the ceiling, at the strip of paper attached to the closest air conditioner, but it wasn't flapping. The cold was all hers, internally generated.

"Then I should thank him," she said, putting artificial warmth into her voice.

"I don't think he expects a thank-you," Donna said, "but you could go easy on him."

"Oh, I'll definitely be thanking Steven. He saved me from another bad relationship."

Donna's eyebrows rose, but Jackie didn't clarify. Fortunately, the cashier said, "Next in line!" saving Jackie the effort of redirecting the conversation.

"Did you find everything you need?" the cashier said, and Jackie slammed her clothes onto the counter. The cashier was a gum-chewing, stick of a woman. She could've gone bone-to-bone with Eric in a scarecrow contest, and she pointed at Jackie's negligee. "Oh, I love that nightie. I bought two, one in black like yours and one in red."

Jackie didn't speak. Her thoughts were too cruel. They were spilling onto strangers they didn't belong to, and staying silent was the wisest choice. Steven believed she couldn't stay angry at people who betrayed her, but she''d prove him wrong. She wouldn't forgive him for his scheming, for his warped view of her, or for his most brutal of crimes: acting like he might possibly love her.