Chapter 5 - Unveiling the Masterpiece
Z
Hazel stopped three feet from the dress. Her eyes traveled from the plush midnight-blue velvet of the neckline down to the shimmering ivory organza of the skirt. She didn't reach out to touch it. She looked at it as if it were a wild animal that might bite her if she got too close.
"Where did you buy this?" Hazel asked, her voice dangerously quiet. She turned her gaze slowly toward me, her eyes hardening. "Mom, how much did you spend on this? I told you to stop. I told you I wasn't going!"
"She didn't buy it, Hazel," Eli said softly.
Hazel blinked, turning back to him. "What?"
"I made it," Eli said. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and showed her his fingers—wrapped in rough white gauze, stained with spots of blood and engine oil from his garage light. "I’ve been working on it for fourteen days. Ever since the shop on Maple turned you away."
Hazel stared at his hands, then at the dress, her breath hitching in her chest. "You... you can't make a dress like this, Eli. This looks like... it looks like something from Paris. You're seventeen."
"My mom taught me how to alter suits when I was twelve, Hazel," Eli murmured, taking a small step closer to her. "You know that. You sat on the workbench while I hemmed my dad’s trousers. I know how fabric works. And I know how you work."
Hazel’s lower lip began to tremble, but she fought it, her defenses flaring back up like an armored shell. "Why would you do this? Why would you waste two weeks of your life making something for a girl who doesn't even want to exist anymore? I don't fit in dresses like this, Eli! Look at me! I’m not the girl who dances in the kitchen anymore! I’m heavy, I’m ugly, and Mason is dead!"
Her loud, agonizing shout echoed off the dining room walls, vibrating through the dark house. I made a move toward her, but Eli gently held up a hand, stopping me. He walked right past me, stopping inches from Hazel.
"Look at the gold thread, Hazel," Eli commanded, his voice dead steady, laced with an intensity that shocked both of us. "Look at the stars on the skirt."
Hazel shook her head violently, tears finally bursting from her eyes and running down her pale cheeks. "No."
"Look at them!" Eli insisted, grabbing her hand gently and pulling her fingers toward the fabric. "Look at what the stars are made of!"
Hazel tried to pull back, but her eyes involuntarily dropped to the gold stitching. She leaned in closer. Her eyes tracked the fine cursive lines.
Fat.
Ghost.
Pathetic.
She gasped, pulling her hand back as if the silk had burned her. She looked at Eli in utter horror, her face draining of all color. "You... you read my journal? My mom gave you my journal?"
"I asked her for it," Eli confessed openly, refusing to back down. "Because I wanted to see the monster you were letting kill you. Chloe Vance wrote those words. Ryan Smith said them in the hallway. They put them in your locker. And you kept them in a book beneath your bed like they were sacred scripture, Hazel! You read them every night until you believed them!"
"How dare you!" Hazel cried, slapping his shoulder with a trembling palm. "How dare you use my pain to make a project!"
"It’s not a project!" Eli yelled back, his composure finally breaking, his eyes shining with unshed tears. "It’s armor! Look at it, Hazel! I embroidered every single insult they ever hurled at you into the innermost hem of this dress. When you put this on, those words aren't hurtling at you from the outside anymore. They are trapped under your heels. You will be walking on their hatred all night long! They tried to make you invisible, but this dress... this dress makes you a king!"
Hazel stared at him, her body shaking with violent sob after sob. The heavy hoodie she wore felt suffocating, a ridiculous shroud over a girl who was being offered a rebirth.
Eli stepped back, reaching out to stroke the velvet trim gently. "Mason came to my room three days before he died," Eli whispered, his voice cracking.
The room went dead silent. Even the rain outside seemed to quiet down. Hazel froze, her tears stopping mid-fall. "What?"
"Mason came to my garage," Eli repeated, looking Hazel straight in the eyes. "He saw the sketches I was hiding under my bed. He didn't laugh at me. He looked at a drawing of an evening gown and said, 'When Hazel goes to prom, you're making her dress, right, man?' And I laughed and said I wasn't good enough. And Mason looked me in the eye and said, 'You better be, because my sister deserves to look like royalty, and nobody else knows her like you do.'"
Hazel collapsed to her knees on the hardwood floor, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving with deep, soul-shattering wails. The grief of her brother’s loss, the agony of the past year, and the overwhelming weight of Eli’s devotion crashed down on her all at once.
May you like
I moved forward and knelt beside her, wrapping my arms tightly around her trembling frame. Eli joined us, dropping to his knees, laying his bandaged hand over hers.
"Just try it on, Hazelnut," Eli whispered, using Mason’s forgotten nickname for the first time in a year. "Just one dress."
