I have never been happier.

As my head was tugged, prodded, and pulled from all sides, I repeated the words to myself. It had to be true. Everyone seemed to believe it. And yet, my gaze was set longingly out the window.

“Miss Pryce, please keep your head straight,” Melinda snapped, shoving my head so it was facing forward.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

But she was out of earshot already, halfway across the room, dealing with a flower catastrophe—pale blue ones had been ordered but navy blue ones had arrived. The color scheme was ruined.

While she yelled at the cowering delivery boy, I tried to calm myself down. Just be cool, Alice. Just be cool, and by the end of today, this will all be over.

My reflection was glaring at me from the gilded mirror. She was beautiful and aloof—her mahogany brown hair pulled into a slick bun, her blue eyes lined and highlighted. I almost wanted to reach out to the mirror and touch her, like one of those 3D images, to prove she wasn’t real. The woman in the mirror, the one who looked like me, knew what I was supposed to do.

Hell, even the team of makeup artists and hair design specialists and other strangers knew better than me what I was supposed to be doing and how I was supposed to be feeling.

“You must be sooo excited” was the refrain I heard every five minutes—the one that was becoming increasingly hard to make myself smile gaily in response to.

Yeah, I should’ve been “sooo excited,” so why was I feeling like I wanted to throw up my breakfast all over my sparkling, gem-encrusted shoes?

I looked away from my reflection’s icy glare. It was Lux’s fault really. This morning when I’d confessed my nerves, instead of her usual, infuriatingly accurate, “You sure you really want to do this?” my blue-haired friend had grabbed my arm, kidnapped me, and taken me to a run-down diner for an early breakfast.

That had caused a minor catastrophe with Melinda, the wedding planner chosen by Papa, whose 10 a.m. “brunch with the girls” had been replaced by “FIND THE RUNAWAY BRIDE AND GET HER BACK.” And get me back she had.

Ah yes, Melinda had been quite the sight, her false-lashed eyes bugging out and her lips so snarled it looked like she had none. When she had found me sitting in the corner booth of the diner, Melinda had handcuffed me with her magenta talons and steered me out of there, Lux laughing protests.

It was only once we’d been safely inside the white stretch limo that Melinda had delivered her beady-eyed rebuke: “What were you thinking?”

Instead of answering her, I had adjusted my 40-carat ring so it was sitting straight. I hadn’t answered her then, hadn’t even really thought about it then. Now, however, I knew. My reflection was glaring at me with the same disdain, with the same realization of my answer: I had been thinking I’d miss it. I’d been thinking, somehow, if I just sat in the diner long enough, if Lux rubbed my shoulders and I didn’t say anything, if we ordered enough blueberry pancakes and drowned them in enough maple syrup, the whole wedding would just happen without me. Then everyone could get their way.

My phone rang. Speak of the devil, it was Papa.

“How’s it going, kid?”

I took a deep breath as someone attacked the back of my head with hairspray. Then I gazed at my reflection, which looked every bit as beautifully desolate as I felt.

“Papa, I…”

“Eh, nerves are normal. Don’t you worry about a thing. We’ve already got the paparazzi here, ready to go. Everything’s going to be perfect. I have everything handled.”

And then, before I could get another “but Papa” in, he hung up on me.

Now my reflection’s blue eyes were bluer with tears.

I should’ve known. Papa hadn’t been calling to see how I was feeling; he had been calling to make sure I was there, that things were going according to his plan. It was his plan after all.

Over a month ago, I’d gone to him, teary and breathless, sobbing about my doubts, about my uncertain gut feeling about Paul, about the need to call off the wedding or at least postpone it—anything to buy me some time.

But Papa’s bristly gray mustache only lowered in displeasure while his eyes became hooded. When his wrinkle-creased fingers had reached for mine, I had known it was over.

“Alice,” he had said, “let me tell you something.”

“Papa, I know what you’re going to say, but please, listen to me. I’m begging you.”

He had nodded as if he’d heard what I’d said, but then continued saying the words that proved he hadn’t listened to me at all.

“Alice, when I was your age, I was marrying your mother. And you want to know something? I was scared shitless. And you want to know something else? It was the best choice I ever made.”

At the mention of my mother, a light film of tears had misted over his brown eyes.

“Your mother…well, your mother would be so proud, Alice. So proud to see you married to such a fine man as Paul.”

I had kept my gaze on the thick fingers atop mine, each hair on them dark and well defined. Certain. That was what Papa was about this whole thing. And yet, for all I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have made his certainty my own.

“But Papa, I hardly know him!” I had protested, and then his mustache had trembled.

“Alice, now is not the time for some teenage crisis. You’ve always been indecisive—in college, in boyfriends, in everything. I’ve already paid tens of thousands of dollars for this wedding. The Van Pattens are a powerful family, and this union will mean great things for the both of us. Paul is a good man—kind, generous, good looking. You’d be a fool to let him go. I’m not going to let your indecisiveness ruin this for me, or for you.”

When I had said nothing, he had continued.

“I mean it, Alice. I have supported you indiscriminately up until now—paid for your education, your clothes, hell, who has been footing your phone bill all these years? But I am not about to sit by and watch you ruin your life without saying something about it. Nor am I prepared to support a deadbeat daughter who can’t decide on anything. If you don’t marry Paul now, then you leave me no choice but to write you out of your inheritance.”

I had gaped at my father, at his face which was incongruously cool, as if he hadn’t just mentioned that he was ripping a billion dollars out of my hands.

“Papa, you said…”

“I don’t care what I said,” he had snapped, slamming his hand down so hard on the marble tabletop that his wedding ring had hit with a sound that had clanged throughout the room.

Leaping up, he had looked down his nose at me, his mustache quivering.

“Your mother always wanted you to be successful, to get into business, meet a nice man. She didn’t want you gallivanting off to Africa with a bunch of hippies and fleeing the best suitors in Denver!”

He had taken a step toward me and, towering over me, his brown eyes alight, delivered his ultimatum.

“Either you marry Paul and get your inheritance, or you are left without a penny.”

And, just like that, my indecisiveness had been swept aside. My choice had been made for me.

I had walked out of there with tears streaming out of my eyes. And as I’d collapsed onto the silk sheets on my bed, in my head a resigned voice had said, Well, there are worse ways to make a billion dollars.

After all, I could finally open up the charity I had always wanted to. Go back to Freetown, Sierra Leone, and continue the work I had started.

My phone had buzzed; a text from Paul that was all hearts and, at the bottom, I love you.

As I’d stared at the message, tears had welled up in my eyes, obscuring it into a white blur. Even now I believed it as little as when we had been dating. I’d only known him for five months, and we’d never had a deep conversation. How could he love me when he didn’t even know me?

“You must be sooo excited,” Melinda, back from her flower brawl, said icily, smirking her blood-red lips victoriously.

The flower boy was gone, presumably scrambling off to fetch the right flowers. A flurry of barks got Melinda’s head swiveling, owl-like, to the corner of the room.

“Who let that thing in there?”

Next thing I knew, she was scooping Randolph up in her arms and storming out of the room. In the mirror, Lux mouthed “sorry” to me.

I smiled wanly back. It had been a good idea, bringing my little chocolate spaniel to cheer me up. But Randolph hated Paul and couldn’t even be in the wedding party like we’d planned since he barked at Paul so much.

God, why was everything telling me that this was wrong?

“Be careful you don’t smudge your face,” a familiar voice said.

I turned to see Cynthia staring at me innocuously. I gaped at her for a minute. Her over-tanned skin was even more orange than usual, while her eyebrows had been sharpened into thick black points. She looked terrifying.

“Don’t want you looking anything less than perfect for my brother,” she drawled, and I nodded.

Cynthia was one of the most unwelcome parts of being with Paul. She was a vapid, self-obsessed, bitchy drama queen who had taken it upon herself to be my friend despite the fact that we had all of nothing in common. She frightened me, and, even now, I felt my heartbeat accelerate in her presence.

“Memorized your vows?” she asked in an accusatory tone, and I gulped.

My trembling hand dug into my sweatshirt pocket, feeling my apartment keys, my phone, and—nothing. My other hand dove into my jeans pocket and came out empty too.

“You have, like, twenty minutes,” Cynthia added helpfully.

Horror-struck, my gaze shot to my reflection in the mirror. As brushes powdered, stippled, and stroked my face, hands flashed around my head, and Cynthia gazed admiringly at herself in the right corner. The girl who wasn’t me trembled in the middle of it all, amid all the madness.

“I…” my mirror twin started to say.

But no one was listening. This wasn’t really for her anyway. This was for the news, for business, for something to do, for people to see, for food to eat and music to dance to. This was for everyone but her, and yet…

“I need a minute.”

Her voice was quiet, lost in the din. No one noticed.

“I need a minute!”

The noise stopped.

Brush, eyelash curler, and hands all froze, while Cynthia’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head.

Melinda, reappearing just in time from her confiscation of my dog, stormed up to me.

“What did you just say?”

“I said I need a minute.”

She blinked as if my words were as good as a gob of spit on her cheek. Then her eyes narrowed into battle-ready slits.

“You have fifteen minutes until you have to walk down the aisle, and you’re not even close to being ready. We don’t have time to waste.”

“I need a minute,” I said. “Or I won’t be walking down the aisle at all.”

It was so quiet that I could hear Lux’s admiring chuckle in the back. Now Melinda’s eyes were so narrowed they almost looked shut. Her tensed hands opened and closed, opened and closed.

She swept to the door and, talons on the golden handle, barked to the others, “Give her a minute!”

As if a gunshot had gone off, the room was thrown back into motion, everyone thrusting aside their tools and fleeing for the door. Cynthia was last, throwing a disdainful orange sneer at me. Then, finally, the door shut and I was alone. Alone, that was, except for Lux.

She was there in the corner, sitting on the floor, her blue hair as spiked-up and as crazy as possible, just like Melinda had told her it shouldn’t be, and her lip ring was even more noticeable than usual on her smiling red lips.

“Nice one, Al.”

But I couldn’t even look at her right then. I needed to think and be alone.

“Sorry, but you too, Lux,” I said softly, avoiding her gaze.

“Really?”

I nodded. “Just a minute.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah of course,” she said, her smirk of comradery falling into a disappointed pout.

The door shut behind her, and I turned back to the woman in the mirror, who was just as uncertain as I was.

What had been the point of this exactly? Why had I asked for one minute when I needed ten? No, not even ten. I needed the rest of my life.

Gazing in the mirror, I asked my reflection, “What do I do now?”

The answer came as a gust of wind from a window I hadn’t even noticed was open—a gust that rustled the white-gold poof in the corner. The dress. My dress, which wasn’t even my dress.

It had been my mother’s and didn’t suit me at all. Yet, for this reason especially, it seemed suited to this day.

The only thing left to do was to put on the dress.

As I stepped into it, images mashed against each other in my mind: my mother with her sad, wilted-lip smile; Papa with his mustache spread in victory; Paul with those empty, china-blue eyes.

My reflection was crying. I hadn’t noticed until I zipped up the dress and looked into the mirror at the beautiful stranger. She was crying tears I hardly felt. That was fitting, too.

Clad in the dress that wasn’t hers, wearing the face that wasn’t hers, about to attend the wedding that wasn’t hers, the stranger cried.

The tears slid down the immaculate, flawless-skinned face, down onto the gauzy white chiffon, over the golden taffeta leaves, down onto the floor, which shook as a noise exploded in the room.

As I turned around, I was grabbed.

“Lux?”

Next thing I knew, something cold and hard was pressed against my back. Lips grazed my ear.

“Say one word, princess, and it’ll be your last,” a man’s voice growled.

A gun cocked into the back of my beautiful, picture-perfect wedding dress.