consignment

You turned to the side, your face orange with desire, hoping the boy next to you would notice the dress you picked out of the clearance aisle at Helen’s consignment shop. Your Mom said it was okay to indulge and go there instead of just the Goodwill down Littleton Road because this was church and it was important to make a good impression. You wondered if it was important for the judgmental eyes of the congregation or whether it was for God because you had yet to learn that those two kinds of gazes were really the same. Your dress was blue with a ruffled hem. The yellowed tag on the back was only sewn in on one side and you can’t remember if you pulled it while getting dressed or whether it was always lopsided, but it stuttered against your skin as you walked through the door and down the aisles, as if you were meant to be uncomfortable here.  Along the sides were pink polka dots, which looked like the color of the velvet thing, which you forget the name of now, that you pulled down in front of your small white shoes when it came time to kneel and pray. You had to sit in the front pews because it was better to be closer to God now, while you still could be, before you lost faith and needed more than distance to be restored. You had a white cardigan that wasn’t as soft as it looked. You would learn that nothing ever would be anyways, but at least for now, you wore it because of modesty and because your Mom said that church was always cold not because you had learned to recognize the size of your arms in a sleeveless dress. You kept playing with the unhinged tag, your small fingers tucking it back in, until the boy from Sunday school sitting next to you tried to do it instead. His cold hands made you flinch, your green ruffles now scuffing the edge of his khaki pants. He muttered an apology under his breath, but you weren’t sorry for it, you were only sorry for the rouge in your cheeks and the glisten in your palms. You were worried about making good impressions before you even realized it. You clutched at the dress’s hem, stuffing it underneath your thighs, hoping to keep your ruffles and your feelings to yourself. You thought of your next-door neighbor Jack and why this boy was different, why you could be a monkey with him in the oak tree between your houses and why you could run to the corner store and buy him a bag of chips but you can’t bear to let your green ruffles touch this boy more than a couple, unassuming times. You don’t know about love. You only know about the feeling you get when you pick out your own church dress. You have yet to learn that those two kinds of feelings are really the same because what is love but pink polka dots that remind you of prayer, that remind you of the time the only thing you had to pray for was nice weather when you got out of church so that you could change out of your dress, become a monkey, and climb that old oak tree with Jack.