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The Most Mauve There Is
    By Nancy Springer
    The true horror of my situation didn’t hit me until the family females took us family males to be measured for our “formalwear.” Up till then, I thought my sister’s wedding, and her sugar-brained idea of what I was supposed to do in it, would just go away, you know? She was always breaking up with guys, so what made this Mark whatshisface any different? I hadn’t been paying much attention.
    But what I saw in the Tuxedos and More store woke me up so fast I freaked.
    “I’m not! I won’t! You can’t do this to me!” I yelled when they brought out my “ensemble”: shiny black buckle shoes like Christopher Robin going to visit Winnie-the-Pooh, and white stockings, short pants with black ribbon bows at the knees, a little bitty black jacket with tails , a white shirt with ruffles , and I’m thirteen years old, for gosh sake. “Ewww! I’d rather be the flower girl!”
    “Hush up, Avery Alexander.” Mom’s use of my first and middle name signaled an orange level of alert for potential parental terrorism. Quick, I checked Dad, but the look on his face didn’t belong there. My father’s all about taking charge, so why did he seem, like, helpless?
    “ I’m the flower girl!” screeched my brat kid sister who always takes everything seriously. “ I get to scatter the rose petals! Valerie said!”
    “Shhh, Julie,” Mom told her a lot more gently than she had shushed me. “Of course you’re the flower girl. Avery’s just being—”
    I cut her off. “I’m just being sane! Get some little kid who won’t care. I’m too big to be a ring bearer!”
    “You’re small for your age,” said Mom, like my being the midget of middle school was real helpful. I’d been told that as a kid Dad had been undersized, too, till he had a growth spurt and shot up a foot in one year.
    “I don’t mean that kind of too big!”
    “I know exactly what you mean, Avery Alexander, and my response is, suck it up.”
    “Easy for you to say! You don’t have to face my friends.” When my Avery-hating girl cousins got me in the sights of their cell phone cameras, and everybody in school saw me wearing—
    “You’ve got to be kidding!” I yelped as the Tuxedos and More lady, a large woman with hair like coils of steel wire, bent over and put a big satin thing around my waist. “What’s that?”
    “Your cummerbund. To go with your Little Lord Fauntleroy tie.”
    “But it’s pink ! ”
    “Not pink,” Mom snapped. “Mauve.”
    Julie whined, “But you told me my dress is going to be pink! I like pink!”
    “Mauve is a very special kind of pink.”
    I’ll say. Like the color you might get if a pink cat coughed up a hairball.
    Here came the metal-haired lady with the tie, another huge satin monstrosity made of pink ribbon in a bow. I jumped back. “I’m not doing it!” My voice came out deep at first but slipped up into a squeak; I hate that. “Not if I have to wear this stuff! It’s not natural!”
    “Avery,” said Dad with a sigh. “If I have to wear a monkey suit with a pink vest and a pink tie—”
    “What sort of family are you?” my big sister Valerie burst out. Up till then she’d just been standing around holding Mark’s hand and looking like he was the pancake and she was the maple syrup. But all at once there she was in our faces, leaking tears, aiming big wet eyes at Dad and me. Mostly at me. “All my life I’ve dreamed of having a real Victorian wedding,” she bleated like a weepy sheep, “with satin and lace and roses and mauve , which is the most Victorian color there is and my favorite color in the whole world, with my little sister as flower girl and my little brother as ring bearer, is that too much to ask?”
    “Of course not,” Mom said right on cue. “It’ll be your day, Valerie, and you’ll have it just the way you want.” She turned on me. “Avery Alexander Holsopple, not another word out of you.” Three names; threat level red.