The moment Becca walked in later that evening, the air in the room crackled with tension. She was holding my gown, crumpled into a cheap plastic Target bag like yesterday’s trash. The stench of stale alcohol and something sickly sweet hit me before I even saw it.

When she pulled it out, a sob caught in my throat. It looked like a murder scene on white satin. A grotesque splash of red wine bled down the bodice and pooled across the train. The delicate hem was shredded, snarled with dirt and God knows what else. It was soaked through, a wrinkled, violated ghost of what it once was.