Free Size 12 and Ready to Rock by Meg Cabot Page B

hundred whole bucks down the drain. I feel kind of bad, except that she’d been trying to talk me into buying a dress in which I looked like a walking roll of toilet paper.
    “Oh,” the saleswoman says, smiling brightly. “Well, come back when you have more time. And bring a friend. Or your mom. It’s a big decision to make on your own.”
    I try to keep my own smile in place. Most brides’ mothers haven’t stabbed their daughters in the back, the way mine did. It’s not the saleswoman’s fault.
    “Sure,” I say. “Thanks, I will.”
    But I won’t be back. The company this woman works for obviously doesn’t make dresses that look good on girls who are a size 12. Or possibly larger.
    Safely back out onto the street, a little breathless from my narrow escape, I start down my favorite route back to the office. It’s one that takes me past the window of a small antiques store on Fifth Avenue.
    I’m not really a jewelry person, but there’s a display of vintage jewelry in the window of this particular shop that really is breathtaking. And there’s one particular ring in the display that I can’t help staring at longingly every time I walk by.
    As I call Sarah back I pause in front of the shop and see that the ring is still there, an oval sapphire with clusters of tiny diamonds on either side of it, set on a platinum band. It’s sitting by itself on a dark green velvet pillow in one corner of the window.
    “What’s going on?” I ask Sarah when she picks up.
    “Where are you?” she asks. “You’ve been gone forever. Are you looking at that ring again?”
    “No,” I say, startled, and turn away from the window. How does she know? “Of course not. Why would I be doing that?”
    “Because you make me go by that store on our way to Barnes & Noble so you can stand and stare at that ring, even though it’s completely out of our way. Why don’t you just buy it? You do have a job, you know. Two of them, as a matter of fact. What do you work so much for, if not to buy yourself stuff?”
    “Are you kidding?” I laugh so nervously I sound like a hyena. “It’s an engagement ring.”
    “It doesn’t have to be,” Sarah says. “It can be whatever kind of ring you want it to be. You can be the boss of the ring.”
    “I can also admire something and not buy it,” I say. “Especially if it’s not practical and probably costs a fortune.”
    “How would you know? You won’t even go inside to ask how much it is, even though I’ve told you a million times—”
    “Because it doesn’t matter,” I say, cutting her off, “since I don’t really want it. It’s not my style. It’s too fancy. And you never answered my question. What’s going on?”
    “Oh,” Sarah says. “I got a call from Dr. Jessup’s assistant over at Central. It looks like they did it.”
    I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Did what?”
    “ They picked the new hall director for Fischer Hall. What else?”
    “Holy crap!” I freeze in my tracks.
    I’m standing on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighteenth Street. A Sex and the City double-decker tour bus is going by, taking summer tourists to see all the places where Carrie Bradshaw and the girls used to have Cosmos and cupcakes.
    People glance at me, alternately concerned and annoyed. New Yorkers aren’t as hardened as the media makes them out to be. If I were to fall down in a dead faint on the sidewalk right now because of Sarah’s news, I’m positive several good Samaritans would stop to call 911 and maybe even prop up my head to make sure I had an open airway. But only because I’m wearing clean clothes and don’t appear to be intoxicated. If I were drunk and covered in my own vomit, people would continue to step over me until the smell became too intolerable to bear. Then they might call the cops.
    “Are you kidding me?” I yell into the phone. “Who? Who is it? Is it Simon? I swear to God, if it’s Simon, I’m going to jump in front of this