Aimee Ferris - Will Work for Prom Dress

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EGMONT
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First published by Egmont USA, 2011
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New York, NY 10016

Copyright Aimee Ferris, 2011
All rights reserved

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eISBN: 978-1-60684-240-9
LCCN number: 2010049442

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v3.1

Will work for Nakoa (happily)

Pepperoni, pepperoni. Cheese, cheese, cheese. Pepperoni , pepperoni. Cheese, cheese, chee I yelled.

Quigley! Do you have to do that? shouted Anne, my best friend and the person responsible for my current state of misery.

Anne, I have been elbow deep in tomato sauce for six afternoons, now. I have to do something to break the monotony, or Im going to knock old Helga aside and slit my wrists with her cheese grater!

At some point during my tirade, the roar of the assembly-line machinery halted, letting my words sail through the warehouse. I couldnt be sure exactly when the noise stopped. Judging by the nasty look I was getting from the German-accented lady to my right, I had to assume it was before I called her old. Or Helga.

Anne and I had not made many friends here in the frozen-pizza factory. But that was not our goal. We came to make some cash and split as soon as our measly paychecks covered our dress tabs for formal. Four months to find financing and dates. It was a toss-up as to which was less likely to happen.

The assembly line cranked back up with a roar, and the doughy disks passed by in a blur.

Quick!

Anne squealed as three pizzas flew by her untopped. I tossed what I could at them before we found our rhythm again and returned to our screaming chat.

You could have at least found us a gig at a chocolate factory? Like that old TV clip they always showthe I Love Lucy one?

What? yelled Anne.

You know, that one where theyre stuffing chocolates in their mouths, and down their tops, and everywhere else cause they cant keep up?

Chicken cutlets!

What?

This was getting ridiculous, my voice was going to go any minute.

I said chicken cutlets. The models, they use those things that look like chicken cutlets if they dont have real implants, she said.

Have the garlic fumes gotten to you? What are you going on about?

You were talking about stuffing your top, Anne said. I dont know why youre complaining anywayif anyone needs it, I do. But the models use those silicone thingies they call chicken cutlets. Ive never seen a raw chicken cutlet. I guess they look the same, or something?

No, no. It was this old TV show. Ah, just forget it.

I decided to save my voice and my sanity. Both were liable to leave me for good at any moment. What to do? Halfway done, two more hours to go. I decided to resume the little game Id started four days earlier. The goal was to make a portrait on the pizza of the lady across the line from me using only my incredible, but as yet undiscovered, artistic talent. And some sausage.

The first day, the portraits looked pretty much like smiley clown faces. It all started with me trying to get a laugh out of Anne without the supervisor giving me the look. But I was quite proud of some of my recent creations. The key was to get Anne to double her time and top most of the pizzas herself. That way I could work my magic on the moving line of blank canvas dough discs for a good twenty seconds before they were off to packaging, and then into the wild blue yonder. Or the steel-gray oven of some busy mom or frat house.

Check it out! I nudged Anne and pointed out my muse. Her giggles at my choice could almost be heard over the assembly line.

We all stood, covered in large white rubber aprons that reached our knees, with nasty damp gloves pulled up past our elbows. This ensemblethe latest in lunch-lady fashionwas topped with the classic, the ever-timeless accessory, the hairnet. Except ours looked like hotel shower caps.

Basically, everyone on the assembly line looked the same, give or take sixty pounds and sixty years. But my muse well, she was just different. I dont think of myself as unkind, but this poor woman had a mole on the top of her nose that protruded so far I couldnt figure out how she didnt end up cross-eyed. Anne had a theory. The woman was also afflicted with floofy eyebrows that seemed to fly out at the sides instead of lying flat. Anne was betting, with her superior knowledge of ocular physics, that they might pull her vision focus out instead of dead center, thus compensating for the nose mole.

This was just the sort of challenge I needed to occupy the rest of my shift. This would take calculation. This would take expertise. This would takean olive.

I took careful aim, with Anne poised, ready to assist.

Go!

Annes hands worked at lightning speed as she squirted sauce and tossed handfuls of cheese and meat randomly across the coming pies. I waited for just the right moment, then lunged across her and whipped down a light base of cheese and created a quick jawline with the unnaturally round sausage pellets.

Sauce me!

Anne shoved the tube into my right hand like a well-trained surgical nurse. I swirled an outline to frame my portrait. Tearing a pepperoni slice in half, I made some mournful eyes. The womans eyes were not really mournful, but, in my opinion, they should have been.

Cheese!

I grabbed great handfuls of mozzarella to create the perfect shower caphairnet effect, and la pice de rsistance (who said French class never taught you anything useful?)the olive mole. This final touch I made while crashing into the sturdy heft of Helga before the pizza disappeared under its cloak of shrink-wrap. But the job was done. Wed come close before, but the olive really topped it.

Anne jumped up and down on her half of the little stepping stool we shared. We high-fived and screamed in victory until the look was given, and we bent our backs to our work once again.

On the way home, Anne and I jogged and chatted. Well, she jogged, and I cursed her back and wheezed as I tried to keep up. It was just my bad luck that Id picked a friend who lived at the very top of College Hill. This was all part of Annes little plan of improvement shed decided we should undertake to achieve prom nirvana. We saved our bus money and got in shape for those perfect, slinky dresses, all at the same time.

Personally, I thought we should have been doing something to reward ourselves just for making it through the day. First, eight hours of schoolwell, seven and a half for Anne. She hooked up with her college-guy boyfriend at his place during the first half of trig. She had worked out that, by school rules, she could be up to thirty minutes late without a parents note. Five lates got you one after-school detention. Five after-school detentions were worth one Saturday morning detention spent picking up trash in the football stadium. It took five of those before the administration bothered to call a parent for one day of suspension.