Free The Most Mauve There Is by Nancy Springer Page A

“Stand still and let the lady take your measurements.”
    So there I stood, as helpless as if they had handcuffed me, not so much because of my Mom’s warning as because of the hurt-lambie look in my sister’s eyes. That look gets me every time, and I hate it. I let that wire-for-hair woman put her tape measure all over me and I didn’t say another word, but I thought of plenty. Harsh ones. Especially when I saw that the groom, Mark, didn’t have to wear pink, or mauve, whatever; he had a white tie and vest with his tux. I glared at him the whole evening after that. I hated him. Why’d he have to marry my sister?
    *
    When I said my wedding outfit wasn’t natural, what I meant was, all my life I’ve been running around the farm—Holsopple Orchard, Fine Apples, Peaches, Plums, Apricots—and fishing in the creek and swimming in the pond and taking care of cows, goats, Julie’s pony, whatever, and helping with the work; that’s what I mean by natural.
    And dogs. I’ve always been good with dogs. We adopt stray dogs, and I train them to come when they’re called, sit and stay, keep off the road, and leave the chickens alone even when nobody’s looking.
    We had three mutts, and a few days after Tuxedos and More, I was taking them for a long walk to get away from all the mayhem, melodrama and mauve in the house: tables piled with ribbons and fake flowers and lace so a person had to eat standing up over the sink, no place to sit because in every chair was one of my aunts making velvet roses or fancy pink fans, Valerie running around with fake ivy decorating everything except the toilet seat, and yelling at me not to track in any dirt, keep the house clean, clean, clean for the wedding, which was going to be inside if it rained, but she hoped outside under the apple trees.
    “That makes a lot of sense,” I remarked. “We’re supposed to dress up all Victorian to go tramping through a field?”
    “Hush up, Avery,” ordered my Mom, who was trying to bake, from original Victorian recipes, the worst cookies I ever was told not to eat, while Julie paraded around with a frilly basket practicing how to be a flower girl, and my cousins, the ones with the deadly cell phones, showed off their high heels and long dresses—how come they got to be bridesmaids but I wasn’t a groomsman?
    I was the ring bearer. I was supposed to carry the rings on a pillow. Satin. Mauve. With lace hanging down from the edges.
    The whole thing had me so bummed that, walking through the shadowy old part of the orchard, I didn’t look up until all three dogs started barking.
    I told the mutts to hush, but when I saw who was jogging toward me between the rows of gnarly trees, I wished they’d bite him. It was Mark.
    “Hi, Avery,” he puffed as he caught up with me. He had, like, followed me?
    “What do you want? Why aren’t you down at the house sucking face with my sister?” Finally, I had a chance to be rude to let him know how extensively I didn’t like him—I mean, what was to like? There was nothing special about Mark that I could see, no reason for Valerie to put me through mauve-colored hell so she could marry him. He wasn’t a football player or anything like that, just an average sort of geek.
    But he didn’t seem to mind my dissing him at all. “I want to talk with you,” he answered, keeping up with me easily no matter how fast I tried to walk away. “I want to ask you for some advice. Val tells me you’re really, really good with dogs?”
    Huh.
    “Well, yeah, I guess,” I muttered.
    “Well, that’s awesome. I don’t know a thing about dogs, but I’d like for Val and me to have one. I thought I might get her one for a wedding present.”
    “Yeah?” I still wanted to be rude, but I have to admit I was interested.
    “Yeah. But my question is, what kind? See, it would have to be a Victorian sort of dog.”
    Under the circumstances, the words “Victorian” and “dog” together in one sentence made me groan out