Chapter 29: 29

Lee held up a goth-compatible dress. “Isn’t it perfect?” she asked.

We were, embarrassingly enough, in the juniors section of the department store. Scarlet was still staring around at everything. The ceiling was so high and the room so big and the lights so bright, it probably felt alien to her. I could hear Elias a few aisles down in the men’s section giving Christian a good ribbing, though I wasn’t sure exactly what it was about.

“Don’t you think it’s a little bit uh… revealing?” I offered. Scarlet was short but even on her the dress would only come down to her thighs. And that was a problem because Hallow’s Greed was going to be outside.

“But it’ll be soo cute,” Lee pressed.

She held it up towards Scarlet to exaggerate her point.

She wasn’t wrong, the petite, pale skinned girl would look good in the black dress and the vaguely halloween-like lacing on her looked gothic by itself. But between the short sleeves and exposed legs, I couldn’t allow it.

Scarlet turned back to us, her face fully revealed for once. The department store lighting made her look even more pale than usual and her eyes somehow looked more pinkish, too.

I really wished Lee hadn’t interrupted our moment earlier…

Scarlet came up and ran her fingers over the dress.

“I like it,” she said.

“But… we’ll be outside,” I explained.

It took a moment for her to catch the deeper meaning and nodded.

“What other black do they have?” I asked Lee and started to part through the dresses myself to look. 

Scarlet started to cling to me again, apparently bored with staring at the ceiling and its lights. Every dress I pulled had one to two problems. It was either too short, showed way too much cleavage to be in the Juniors section, or it was completely sleeveless. As it was, I didn’t know exactly how we would protect her face from the light. Maybe a fancy hat, but that would be even harder to find and much harder to correlate with whatever dress we eventually picked out.

Lee bit her lip as we hit the bottom of the racks that would fit.

“Maybe not a dress?” I suggested. I looked at Scarlet. “What do you want to wear?” I asked.

She didn’t offer any more input than a small shrug. I held back a sigh.

“What about some punk outfit things?” Lee offered. “I can even loan her some of my old things.”

I shook my head. “How about we just walk around and if something catches your eye, point it out to us,” I directed the comment at Scarlet.

She nodded, agreeing and took my hand. 

Maybe she really did like me. Like, more than just friends.

Lee, Scarlet and I split from the others to go back into the bright sunlight. Scarlet pulled the hood over her face protectively and then pulled her hand back into the too-long sleeves. I caught Lee’s sideways look as she hurriedly looked forward again. She went quiet.

We walked almost the full length of the strip mall until we stepped into a dimly lit chain-store that specialized in the kinds of clothes Lee and I wore. We had very different fashion senses but some pieces fit in that middle piece of the venn diagram of Goth and Punk.

Scarlet was happy to be out of the sun. She put her hood back down.

“Soooo,” Lee said. “Is it the sun you don’t like?” she asked Scarlet.

“I— the sun—I,” Scarlet stuttered.

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“She has very sensitive skin,” I explained.

Lee nodded. “Is sunscreen too harsh for you?” she asked.

Scarlet had no idea what she was talking about.

“It might be worth a shot,” I commented. “Do you know, is it the light intensity that bothers you or is it just sunlight?”

She shrugged.

“Hm.” A theory was working its way through my head and in the interest of science I pulled her with me toward a blacklight. “Put your hand under this,” I said and waved my hand underneath the purplish glow.

Lee was looking puzzled. Scarlets hand was even more ghostly under the light as she stared at it. “It doesn’t hurt,” she said. 

My brain was puzzled and then I saw Lee typing on her phone. “Uhh…” she scrolled. “It says here blacklights are short wave UV lights and the sun has longer wavelengths. So… I guess they’re two different types of UVs.”

That was a disappointment. Scarlet looked baffled by all of this, and also fascinated with the purple glow. “I guess,” Lee said, “We can try it out in the more dangerous way.” She started rummaging around in her purse to produce a tiny travel-sized bottle of sunblock.

“Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said. I wasn’t sure how sunblock worked or how sunlight hurt Scarlet.

Either way Lee offered the sunblock to Scarlet, and when the girl didn’t take it, I did and took a deep breath. “Are you comfortable testing this?” I asked. “You could get burned.”

Scarlet shrugged and went over to the glass door. She squinted at how bright thelight was. “How should it work?” she asked. 

“Well, this cream blocks sunlight with just a very thin layer, so it’ll protect your skin. I’m just not sure that it’ll be enough.”

She nodded. “Let’s try it.” She held out her hands and I took another deep breath. If she caught on fire, I wasn’t sure how we would explain that, or if there was any kind of fire extinguisher nearby.

I squirted a generous amount on my hands and started lathering one of hers. Her skin turned an even whiter white and once it felt try, although quite greasy, to the touch and took my hands away. Lee was observing in interest. I wasn’t sure what skin condition she thought Scarlet might have but so far she’d been kind enough not to ask. It was one lie I didn’t have to worry about.

“Is that it?” Scarlet asked. She looked at her even-paler hand and then slowly crack the door open, letting in a sliver of unfiltered sun. With a deep breath she put both of her hands out there. 

After a long moment, she pulled them back, wincing slightly.

I swallowed, expecting burning flesh. Instead one of her hands looked like she’d laid in the sun too long. The other was— perfectly fine. Just still smeared with an intense amount of sunscreen.

I let out a relieved breath as she looked down at the difference in skin tone. It looked like a painful sunburn, but at least we knew some sunblock would significantly reduce the risk of her suffering.

“Alright then,” Lee said, happily. “That seems to have worked.”

My breath wavered. Was that bit of vampire lore really so easy to dispel? Just a bit of sunscreen?

Lee turned and started to hunt through the racks, pulling out many different shirts and pants for Scarlet to try on. I was quietly remembering that Scarlet didn’t really have proper undergarments either, but I could sneak some from the department store or the next time we went to the MegaMart.

For now, getting clothes that weren’t really baggy on her was the best thing.

Scarlet ended up picking out only one shirt and one pair of leggings. Both were similar, just different sizes of other clothing articles I’d loaned her. It was both embarrassing and sweet.

She walked into that store looking a bit silly in my old oversized clothes, but as we walked out, she held my hand. My hoody was still pulled over her face for protection but she was much cuter in clothes that fit.

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