It's been eighteen agonizing months since I last heard of that sweepstakes. We all forgot about it by now... We are now sophomores In college. Two more years, woopty-fucking-doo. I was about to leave my psychology lecture when my teacher, Mr. Felkins, called me up to his desk. His scrawny form was hunched over his desk as he was organizing papers. He looked up at me and pushed us his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with his long fingers. I thought I was in trouble. What'd I do?

"Miss. Quinn, a letter was sent to you today" he said with his nasally voice focusing on shuffling through papers.

He finally found the letter and handed it to me not making any eye contact. It was a small red envelope that read my name in calligraphy. I turned it over to find a black stamp, a mask imprinted into it. I furrowed my eyebrows together.

What the hell is this?

"Thank you?" I said, well more like asked.

He replied with a grunt and went to go clean the whiteboard. I walked out the empty classroom and fixated so much on the card I ran into an open door. There was a small fit of giggles and crude comments I walked further along the hallway and stopped. I was about to open the card when a tall boy dressed all in black rushed into me. I dropped all my things, papers and books flying everywhere.Without looking back, he continued dashing through the halls.

"Asshole!" I whisper-yelled, knowing he didn't hear me.

I huffed and bent down grabbing all of my belongings.

"Fucking Andy Biersack wannabe making me drop all my shit. He could've helped me but nooooo he had to fucking haul his ass outta here." I mumbled as I put everything back in my bag.

I got up making sure I had the letter and walked out the front doors. I found a glaring Emilie and a wandering Marien as I walked over to our usual spot.

"What the hell took you so long?!?! We've been waiting here for like five minutes!"

Bipolar much?

ok think of something clever, hurry up!

"Wow five minutes you must be exhausted!" I stated with a touch of sarcasm.

I regretted saying that immediately. She just scoffed and started walking. Marien just shrugged her shoulders and walked behind her. I was in the back of course...

Ugh why are you so annoying!? Do everyone a favor and shut the hell up!

I clenched my fists and closed my eyes as we were walking. Why can't I just shut up foREVer?

We arrived at Emilie's house and went into the living room. I sunk my body into her black leather sofa and pulled out my phone. The room was filled with an awkward silence as everyone sat promptly in their chairs. Emilie quickly stood up with a smile and grabbed something out of her bag. See, bipolar.

"Guess what I got" she sang skipping back to the sofa.

Marien quickly looked up from her phone and said " Lemme guess, a letter?" She said implying sarcasm.

Emilie crossed her arms and stomped one foot.

"How'd you know?" She demanded sounding irritated.

" I have no idea, I was being sarcastic... I got one during my forensics lecture today" Marien stated.

"Yeah I got one too" I said looking up from my phone.

Emilie grunted and dropped her body on the couch.

"It's not special anymore!" Emilie whined grabbing her phone.

"Are you on the rag?" Marien asked.

"Maybe..." Emilie grumbled.

Emilie pulled out the letter and told us to go get ours. I went and got my bag and sat back down.

"We open on three ok? One...Two...Three!" Emilie eagerly announced.

We ripped through the envelope And it revealed a card made of thick paper. What the hell?

It read, ' We invite you, Alex Quinn, to our annual Masquerade on September 25th, at 9:00pm at the Royal Hall in Los Angeles California. The dress is a Gothic Renaissance theme, please no inappropriate dress. Thank you.'

I turned the card over and in bigger letters it stated ' Save the date of the Masquerade, 9/25/2014, please arrive at 9:00pm.'
Ok, this is my kind of thing! I have a half smile on my face and look to Marien. She was biting her lip trying to avoid smiling like crazy. Emilie on the other hand, was prancing around like an emo horse. She stopped abruptly and crossed her arms.

"Aren't you guys excited?! This thing is gonna be so cool!"

Marien and I didn't say anything just looked at Emilie smiling. Here comes the mean Emilie again...

" I've had it with you guys! Being all mature and shit. You used to be fun we would drink and party and be stupid little idiots all the time! What happened to you guys? You're sucking the fun out of your lives! You know what? I'm just gonna go be stupid without you!" Emilie protested.

And with that, she stormed out of the room going into her bedroom slamming the door behind her. Marien and I sat there like wide-eyed children as we rehabilitated ourselves from our scolding. We both slowly got up and walked to Emilie's door. We opened it to find Emilie hanging upside down from her bed with her headphones on so loud I can hear it from across the room. Her eyes were closed so she was startled when we shook her. Emilie sat up cross-legged on her mattress taking one ear-bud out and handing it to Marien who sat beside her. That left an awkward me standing in the middle of the room scuffing my shoes.

"So" Emilie started breaking the silence. "Are we going to go? It's in a month, it'll give us time to prepare..."

Marien and I nodded to her and she smiled. Emilie stood up on top of her bed and pointed upward.

"Women, to the sewing machines!" She lead jumping off her bed and running out the door. She peeked her head in a second later gesturing us to go. Her mom is a seamstress so she taught all of us how to sew really well. We went to her garage, a.k.a the sewing room and took out the machines. Her mom has shelves and shelves of different fabrics of every color, texture, and design. Emilie searched up a renaissance dress blueprint on her iPad and that's what we followed. We planned on having our dresses the same design, but just color coordinated to our hair color. Mine would be red and black, Emilie's would be white and black, and Marien's would be black and blue.

I picked a solid solid deep red silk, a Black lace fabric, a solid black silk, and some black string. It was more of a modern design so it had a high low skirt and off the shoulder sleeves.It was Friday so we had the whole weekend to do this. I planned on wearing it with black nylons and black victorian heeled boots.

It took us the weekend and four school nights to finish our dresses. We all kept our dresses the way we planned them to be and they looked amazing! I overlapped the lace over the red fabric to make the corset and used the string to hold it together. I embedded a lot of little red and black rhinestones into the corset making it more royal. I used the black fabric to make the off the shoulder sleeves which flared out from the elbow down. We kept the high-low concept with the middle being the solid red fabric and the black lace overlapping it on either side. It ended in a short tail that dragged behind us. We went to jewelry shops and found perfect necklaces and hair accessories, we went on Amazon to find masks and our boots, and bought makeup we were going to use.

This whole thing better not be a joke... Cause it might be Emilie's time of the month again and she'll kill everyone, no doubt. We had a week and a half to mentally prepare ourselves for this big event and it better be perfect.....

Notes

Hai guys! How's your day? So here it is, I hope it's good! What's your favorite part? Anything that I should change? Questions? Comments? Concerns? Thank you ily! Big thanks to Kelci!

-Patryce/Kelci xoxo



( multiple questions for @Forgetful-Insomniacs c; )