“A gala, huh?” I asked, setting the waters down.

“And this way, we can cross off number eight.”

I smiled at that—it had actually been my first thought. Though I realized that I hadn’t checked on the dress in over a month, and it might have finally sold. “I’d love to.”

“It’s the last day in July,” he said, giving me a level look. “Do you need to check your social calendar?”

I laughed at that, taking the rest of the drinks with me and leading the way outside.

The next day, I stepped into Twice Upon a Time, blinking at the dimness of the store, which was a stark contrast to the brightness outside. It was a consignment shop I’d been to many times with Sloane, but never alone. Maybe it was just that I had more time to pay attention now, but the store seemed somehow smaller than I remembered it seeming only a few months before, and a little more shabby.

“Hello there.” Barbara, the owner, emerged from the back room with a vague, fixed smile, the kind she always seemed to give me. “Welcome to Twice Upon a Time. Have you shopped with us before?”

I swallowed hard and made myself smile at her. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised that she hadn’t remembered me, despite the fact I’d been in a dozen times at least over the years. “A few times,” I said, already heading for the last place I remembered the dress hanging. It had never been a question in my mind which dress Sloane had meant. It was a dress I’d tried on purely for fun one afternoon when she seemed determined to try on every skirt in the store, twice. I tried it on as a lark, since I had no pressing need for formal wear.

But as soon as I put it on, I realized I didn’t want to take it off. It was floor-length and black, with a high neck edged in gold and a plunging, open back. It was the most sophisticated thing I’d ever worn and I somehow felt different in it, like I was a person who had places to wear a dress like this, and exciting adventures to recount afterward.

Sloane had freaked out when she’d seen me in it, and insisted I buy it, right then and there, which was of course what she would have done. She even tried to buy it for me, sneaking it over to the register while I was getting dressed, and I had to wrench it away from her to get her to stop. Because the fact was, it was too fancy, too expensive, and I had no place to wear it.

Until now.

“I was actually looking for a black dress,” I called to Barbara, as I looked around the store, beginning to panic because it wasn’t hanging in any of the places I was used to seeing it. “I think I saw one in here, it had a low back . . .”

Barbara just blinked at me for a moment, but then recognition dawned. “Oh yes,” she said. “I think I just moved it to the sale rack. Did you want to try it on, dear?”

“Nope,” I said, as I plucked it from the rack and brought it up to a very surprised Barbara at the register. “I’ll take it.”

Getting through the list was apparently making me more bold in other aspects of my life—which was how I found myself sitting in a chair in front of Dawn’s cousin Stephanie, at Visible Changes, the downtown salon where she was apprenticing.

“Are you sure?” Dawn asked from the chair by my side, looking at me through the mirror.

I brushed some droplets off my forehead and thought about it, about how this was the only way that I’d looked for the past few years. I picked up a lock of the hair that hung halfway down my back, then dropped it. “Anyone can have long hair.” I nodded to Stephanie. “Let’s do it.”

An hour later I left the salon with sideswept bangs and hair in long layers that grazed my shoulders, feeling like someone else, but in the best way—like this was a me I hadn’t known existed until that moment.

Pick-Up Your Pace, Porter! (Even More Songs about Trucks)

Somethin’ ’Bout a Truck

Kip Moore

Before He Cheats

Carrie Underwood

That Ain’t My Truck

Rhett Akins

Cruise

Florida Georgia Line

Runnin’ Outta Moonlight

Randy Houser

That’s My Kind of Night

Luke Bryan

Dirt Road Anthem

Jason Aldean

Mud on the Tires

Brad Paisley

Drive

Alan Jackson

Papa Was a Good Man

Charlie Rich

Tim McGraw

Taylor Swift

Highway Don’t Care

Tim McGraw

Barefoot Blue Jean Night

Jake Owen

Dirt Road Diary

Luke Bryan

You Lie

The Band Perry

Take a Little Ride

Jason Aldean

“In a well-ordered universe,” I said to Frank, “there would be no mysteries.”

He glanced over at me. We were doing a late-afternoon run, seven miles this time. He’d noticed my hair as soon as I’d stepped out of my house. This surprised me, because, well, he was a boy, but also because it was back in my usual running ponytail, so the change wasn’t that obvious. But he’d told me that he liked it, which was more than I’d heard from my parents, who still hadn’t noticed anything different. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Sloane?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “You’d just know things. There wouldn’t be these big, hanging questions.”

Frank nodded, and we just ran for a while. “Lissa would argue with you about that,” he said. “She got really into philosophy last year. So I’d have a feeling she’d say something like ‘To know is not to know.’ ”

I glanced over at him. Frank didn’t bring up Lissa very often, so I noticed whenever he did. “Is she having a good time at Princeton?”

Frank nodded, but then added, “I mean, I assume so. We’ve both done it before, so it’s not like it’s a new experience. And it’s not really about fun. But she says the classes are great, really intense.” We ran in silence for a few minutes, and I thought maybe we had moved on, when Frank said, “I would have seen her more, but they don’t leave you a ton of time for socializing.”

“Absolutely,” I said, wondering why he felt the need to justify this to me.

“And she’s coming for my birthday,” Frank said, “so there’s that.”

“When’s that?”

“July nineteenth,” he said. He glanced over at me and raised his eyebrows. “Why? Are you going to get me a present?”