Rehersal the following day was right after school. Shelly's mom had to use her car to go marketing, so Shelly had to ride with Nathan. When he picked her up his manager was with him.
"Hello, Shelly!" Richard said warmly as she squeezed into the back seat. She had to sit with her brother's guitar case on her lap.
"My sister said you looked great last night," Richard continued.
"Yeah," Nathan added. "She said you going break plenty hearts Friday!"
Shelly felt her face grow hot. All the talk about being attractive made her uncomfortable as it was, but to Shelly it sounded like they were talking about what happened after she danced, and even so oblique a reference to the holoku Auntie Marge had given her made butterflies in her stomach.
"Wait till you see her in the dress my sister picked out for her!" Richard said to Nathan.
"What, she got you one of those hot satin jobs?" Nathan asked, looking at her in the rear view mirror.
"Well, yeah, I guess so," Shelly stammered.
"Holy Shit! My baby sister? I no can handle!"
Richard broke up laughing.
"Too bad for you she's your sister. The rest of us guys can stare with a clear conscience."
When they got to the club Shelly had only one thing on her mind, to get back into that dress and see if it really did feel as good as she remembered. When she got to the dressing room she was surprised to see that it was gone. She went out to find Nathan to tell him, and ran into Auntie Marge.
"I can't find my holoku. The one you picked out for me," Shelly said in exasperation.
"Yes, dear. I sent it to be cleaned. I want you to look perfect tomorrow."
"Cleaned?" Shelly wailed. "When will it be back?"
"Oh, tomorrow. Around noon, I suppose. I'll pick it up for you."
The rest of the rehearsal happened in a fog. Shelly did her dance twice, stopping several times to get the pacing of her entrance just right and to find out just how far she could come down stage without losing the light. She did all the right things, but her heart was not in it. Already the act of wearing the satin holoku had taken precedence over dancing, and she had yet to dance in it.
That night she struggled to get through her algebra homework and read a little for her English class. Her eyes moved across the page but the ideas refused to stick in her head.
When she went to bed she finally perked up, calling up the memory of the mysteriously ticklish feel of the satin teasing her body. She thought again about playing with her boyfriend, and it was to that image that she shuddered into a nice little orgasm and fell asleep.