A/N: Just an extremely girly (sorry about that) teaser to let you all know that I'm working. The next chapter should be up in a few days.

"Have you seen the remote?"

"TV? How can you think about TV at a time like this? Ned needs our help!"

"Why did he decide to wear blue? I hate blue!"

"He has to match Sally's dress . . ."

"Hey, I'm blue!"

"GIVE THAT BACK! MOM!"

Ned groaned as the voices outside his bedroom grew louder. He'd locked the door, but somehow he didn't think that would hold his well-meaning — but incredibly irritating — sisters for long. He slipped under the bed. "Can you hear that?" he said.

"Hear it?" Patrick sounded faint and tinny over the phone. "I think that last shriek broke through my eardrum. Sally isn't there to help?"

He laughed. "Please, Pat. She and Sarah haven't spoken to me for hours. I don't plan on seeing her until tonight."

"I tried calling her house, but Sarah just said they were 'prepping' and hung up." He sighed and added, "So far, prom seems like a lot of work."

Ned agreed, but before he could say anything the door splintered. "Gotta go, Pat. Good luck." He threw away the phone and hunkered down amongst the dust bunnies under his bed as the door shattered and a wave of girls swarmed over the room, shouting his name and digging amongst the splinters to find his clothes.

"Don't worry," Sally had said to him, before disappearing to do girly things with Sarah. "Getting dressed is the hard part. After that it's all eating and dancing."

I sure hope so, he thought, cringing as the bed was lifted into the air by twenty furry hands and he was dragged from his hiding place. After this, all I have to worry about is eating and . . . dancing.

Dancing.

Oh, he was doomed.

Sarah had had a rough day. First, she had woken up and realized that her dress was the worst possible color for her fur. Black? She was going to look like a mourner or a nun! Sure, the dress wasn't the most modest, but now that she thought about it, scoop-necks went out of style last year, and the new fad was V-necks! How could she have been so stupid as to forget that? And if the catastrophe of her dress wasn't enough, there was the issue of her hair, which refused to be straight. It would never be straight. It could never be straight. And without straight hair, she would absolutely die.

For a girl who was so smart and bookish most of the time, Sally noted as she listened to her friend's endless litany of prom woes, Sarah cared a lot about fashion and appearances. Not that it was unusual for a teenage girl; it just sometimes made her remember long afternoons with Sherry, where the discussions revolved around lipstick colors and romantic acts highly inappropriate for sixth graders.

"But it's okay, because I have a solution!" Sarah said, hooking several elastic bands around her fingers and twisting Sally's hair into an updo in record time. "I will steal your dress and make you wear something agonizingly hideous — like my dress — so that I will look halfway-decent by comparison."

Sally laughed, causing her hair to unravel and Sarah to shout obscenities. Who was she kidding? Even at her most superficial and melodramatic, Sarah was still one of the most fun people she had the pleasure of knowing. Besides, the girl could do a mean . . . curly bun thing, or whatever this hairstyle was called. "Fat chance," she said, climbing gingerly to her feet and climbing into her prom dress. "I love this thing." It was absolutely perfect, a blue so dark it was almost black, with a V-neck (hence Sarah's jealousy) that was coated in silver sparkles all the way down to her waist. At first she had been terrified of how shiny it was, but once she'd gotten it off of the bright-yellow mannequin, it had grown on her. "Here's hoping it grows on Ned, too," she muttered, allowing Sarah to zip up the back.

"Here's hoping mine doesn't make everyone in the vicinity vomit all over their dates." Sally rolled her eyes. Though slightly less sparkly than her own, Sarah's dress was fine, and unworthy of all the abuse being heaped upon it. All she had to worry about was not falling over; the combination of a mermaid skirt and high heels might be too much for her.

It was a few minutes before she realized that they had nothing else to do. Nothing, that was, except go downstairs and wait for Ned and Patrick to arrive. In fact, for all she knew, they already had. She turned to Sarah, her eyes wide with panic. Her friend reached over and squeezed her hand, her smile nervous but comforting. "Come on," she said with a laugh. "Ned's already crazy in love with you. You don't have to impress anyone tonight."

Neither do you, she thought with a small smile. She was confident that this was the night that Patrick and Sarah got their act together and fell in love already. Enough of this on-again, off-again nonsense; she'd done it, and it was not fun. "You ready?" she asked, checking herself over again and taking a deep breath.

"No," she moaned. "I look so —"

Sally clapped a hand over Sarah's mouth and dragged her downstairs.