The White Satin Dress
When I first saw the dress, I checked the price tag twice.
The price made no sense.
A white satin dress.
The neckline was modest, the waist was fitted.
The hem was long enough to touch the floor.
Under the lights, the fabric shimmered like silver.
I shouldn’t have been able to afford it.
Not at a normal price.
But this shop was different.
It was a secondhand clothing store.
It was in an alley just off the main street downtown.
The window was dusty, and the bell above the door rang sharply whenever it opened.
I needed something to wear to the winter formal.
It was the school’s winter dance.
My friends had picked their dresses weeks ago.
Some bought theirs at department stores, some said their mums had them tailored.
I just smiled when they talked about it.
We couldn’t afford a new dress.
Mum said,
“You’re only wearing it once. It doesn’t have to be new.”
She wasn’t wrong.
So after school, I went to the secondhand shop alone.
The shop smelled like old clothes.
Naphthalene.
Dust.
Fabric that had been folded for too long.
Hats and coats hung on the walls, and a few dresses covered in plastic hung on a rack in the back.
One of them was the white dress.
I knew instantly.
That was the one I’d been looking for.
The sho