The Taming of the Drew by Jan Gurley

when it really hit me. That I was going to meet the Dog and hang out with people who hated me.
    The butterflies in my stomach turned into wing-spreading, flapping pterodactyls. It felt like my body couldn’t possibly contain all the nerves I had. Just then, I couldn’t see the point of trying to look nice. It wasn’t like it would make anything better. But everyone had gone to all this trouble to come to my house and help me get ready. And they even wanted to go with me into a social inferno, where we all, along with our little bits of Phoebe-entertaining paper, were inevitably going to get burned..
    “All right, all right. Decision made,” I said. I took a deep breath and let it out. Heaven help us, I thought. Nothing was ever going to be the same. “Let’s do this thing.”  
    At that, Alex and Robin together lifted and dumped an enormous black garbage bag of collected clothes, shoes, accessories, and styling products on my bed.

    ***

    We stood shivering in the dark in the line to go into the gym, waiting to pay our ten bucks and show our I.D.
    It had taken us a while to get here, but now, standing in line, I was glad the gang took the extra time to dress me up. I wore my best outfit — the vintage Breakfast At Tiffany’s sleeveless narrow black sheath with a skinny belt I’d discovered buried under the mountain of items at the Clothes By The Pound stall in the farmer’s market. Over it I wore a round-collared fuchsia short-jacket with elbow-length sleeves and pink and black striped ballet flats.  
    There had been a quick but ruthless argument about my hair. Viola, Phoebe and Helena all voted for big and slutty. I wanted normal floppy frizz-curl because big hair made me feel like maybe this was some sort of date. I would rather die than send that message to the Dog and his teammates. Finally Alex and Robin, to everyone’s surprise, settled the argument by suggesting that I wear my hair in a tight, sleek, crown-of-the head ponytail, complete with one thick curl at the end. Then we had fun with the liquid eyeliner. End result? Except for the fact that I wasn’t hiding (under my clothes) painted-on waist-high panties and two anti-gravity nipple-less boobs, I was looking remarkably like vintage 1950’s Barbie.
    At least that’s how I felt until we got to the gym door.
    Celia had probably been tweeting the news since yesterday. An Academy dweeb and the Dog? Together at a dance ? All because of some “deal” that nobody knew anything about??? It was just too juicy to not share. A crowd of girls hovered inside, near the gym door. The lighting was dim, but you could see they were all wearing Betsy Johnson thin, silk ultra-mini baby-doll halter dresses that swirled around them in bright coral-snake colors ($600 each — with as much fabric as three hankies). They had big hair, and lots and lots of cleavage and I could hear their needle-tall stiletto heels tink-tinking in anticipation as they shifted around, trying to get a better look past the shoulder of Mr. Whitworth, the ticket-taker.  
    When Gonzo (the first in our group) handed over his money, a female voice behind Mr. Whitworth said, in the tones of someone announcing an impending plane crash. “Oh no. Tell me no. You are not going to believe this. She brought more of them.”
    One female voice from the door said, “Is she actually wearing someone’s old lady clothes? Ew.”
    Another voice started to answer, “You’d think she could at least get dressed up or something…” and then a riptide of conversation rose around me, threatening to drag me under.  
    By the time I reached Mr. Whitworth, my tummy pterodactyls had woken up again and my hand was shaking so hard my money flapped like wings. Mr. Whitworth looked up at me and said, “Nice to see some new faces here for a change.” He had the kind of mega-overgrown gray eyebrows that made you twitch to get out a weed-whacker and prune them back. He waggled both his bristly hedges at me, leaned