“You should try something on,” she tells me as she walks around the two-story store. Soft golden light illuminates the interior, but bright stage lights are hung on the ceiling for show. This entire shop is like one big runway—one that wasn’t built for the tattered tennis shoes on my feet.

“No thanks.”

“Oh, come on. Shopping is no fun if we don’t both try stuff on. Don’t you try things on when you go shopping with your girlfriends?”

I guess maybe I would if I ever actually had the money to go shopping . . . or if I ever had close girlfriends before Rowan and Dee . . .

“You do have girlfriends, right?” Danica asks with her brow knitted.

“Of course I have girlfriends,” I scoff. “I just don’t really like shopping.”

Danica eyes me skeptically before turning back to a rack against the wall. “We just need to find something you’d like. Liiike—oh!” she squeals, tugging a dress from the rack. “Like this! This is gorgeous. What do you think?” She holds the garment up so I can see it: a very short, very slinky pale pink dress. “Hailey, you would look so pretty in this.”

“How much is it?” I ask on impulse, but Danica simply shakes her head.

“It doesn’t matter. Do you think it’s pretty?”

The truth is, I do. It’s made of some soft, flowy material that I want to reach out and feel between my fingers, and the color is beautiful.

“I wouldn’t look good in something like that,” I answer, but Danica rolls her eyes.

“Hailey, do you like it or not?”

When I nod, she grins from diamond-pierced ear to diamond-pierced ear.

“Good. You’re trying it on.”

In a fitting room that contains a plush, embroidered, fringed freaking sitting chair and a hanging crystal chandelier, for God’s sake, I set my five-dollar purse down and take a calming breath. I’d honestly rather be cleaning up dog poop than tiptoeing around this store.

I spent all yesterday evening at the dog shelter, and I worked there again this morning. With the arrival of all of the new dogs rescued from the fighting ring, the shelter is extremely overcrowded and grossly understaffed. The few volunteers who work there have been stretching themselves thin, myself included. Rehabilitating abused animals is a time-consuming process, but it’s worth it to see them go home with a new family, one that will play with them and take care of them and teach them what it means to be loved.

I don’t have time to be trying on dresses I can’t afford, but here I am, carefully slipping one over my head. I let it slide over my skin—it’s almost as soft as the dress Dee made me for the music video, but not quite—and I stare down at my socked feet before letting my eyes travel up the length of the wall mirror in front of me.

It’s not anything I would have picked for myself—a cotton-candy-pink dress that’s high in the front but dives low in the back. I zip up the skirt portion of it and stand there studying myself until I bend down to yank off my neon-green socks.

With my bare toes on the white marble floor, I turn this way and that. I run my hands down the skirt. I spin a little back and forth to watch it fan out around me. I smile in the mirror.

“Are you ready?” Danica calls from the dressing room across from me, and I swallow as I open the door and step out to meet her.

She takes my breath away in the bright red dress she chose, which looks like it was made just for her. It fits like a glove on top and ends at a soft hem at the middle of her thigh, and I forget all about the reason she’s buying it as I open my mouth to tell her how pretty she looks.

“Oh,” she interrupts, scrunching her nose at me. I close my mouth, and she steps in close enough for me to see the line between her brows when she furrows them in disapproval. “You’re right. This dress doesn’t look good on you at all.”

I stare down at the pink dress that had made me smile at my reflection just a minute ago, and then up into Danica’s dark brown eyes. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Well, for one, it’s supposed to end here, not here,” she says, poking my thigh and then just above my knee. “I mean, I suppose you could get it hemmed, but—” She lifts her hand to her mouth to conceal a quiet chuckle. “Hailey, you’ve got the worst chicken legs. I figured you would have grown out of those by now.”

My cheeks stain red as I stare down at my knees while Danica circles behind me.

“Even your shoulders are bony.” She comes to face me again, shaking her head. “No, this dress looks terrible on you.”

“Oh . . .”

“We’ll find you another one,” she says with a white smile before spinning around. “What do you think of mine?”

“It’s really pretty,” I tell her, still thinking of my chicken knees and resisting the temptation to frown down at them.

“What about the back?” Danica asks, turning away from me.

I take in her smooth, lightly tanned skin; the perfect lines of her shoulder blades; the generous slope of her curves; her long, not-bony legs. “Beautiful,” I tell her, and she beams when she turns back around.

“I think Mike is really going to love this one,” she says, and I force a smile to keep my face from falling. “Okay, get that hideous dress off and let’s pick out something else for round two.”

We’re on round five when Danica suggests we split up. “I’m going to check out those racks over there, but find something you like, okay? Remember, we’re having fun.”