Work in Progress - Vanessa

"What do you think, fifteen dollars for the mules?" Marianne says.

But I'm lost in thoughts about the dance on Olympus and buying sunglasses the same color as Aphrodite's dress…hot pink.

Waterpark Mom talks to me about direction late at night after I'm back from the ball in my bare feet and the rest of my fanciful friends have hung up their gowns and gone to bed.  "There are many," she says.  I hear a conversation about dresses, she talks about paths as if they are countries on a map.  Moonlight streams into my room and shadows dance on the wall.  I see what she means.  But at first, it's about all the other choices I could have made on prom, more sparkling, more color, more anything.  She tells me stories about where my boyfriend is, the guy she imagines for me.  She says he's back from a condo where everything - the room, the food, the sports, and even the entertainment are free.  Sometimes he lives in the condo, on one of those islands in the Caribbean.  "For summer vacations," she says.  "And the porch is gorgeous.  It looks out over the beach and opens to the ocean as if the entire landscape is the sea."  She tells me she's been thinking about a condo like this for us. 

The next day Marianne and I lounge on the porch and soak up the sun until she starts up about the fantasy boyfriend again.  I pretend she's telling me about Beast.