nineteen

                                    

                                          
Zarah wasn't sure why she said yes to Alex Rider when he asked her to go to the prom, maybe she was surprised or was just caught in the heat of the moment, but now that she was walking through the Westfield mall, she was sure of one thing. It was dread.
She didn't know anything about parties or dances, she didn't know how to dress, or how to act or what to do. God, she didn't even know where to shop for a damned dress. 
She's never had to dress nice, the nicest piece of clothing she owned was her school uniforms when she was at the agency she always wore clothes that were fit to train in, and now she couldn't afford expensive clothes. She wasn't even sure how she was going to afford a dress.
She didn't have long before she had to go to work and yet it didn't cause her to walk any faster. She knew she was stalling but she was not looking forward to trying to find a dress, she had never worn a dress before, the closes she had ever got to one was the uniform skirts.
The agency had found it unnecessary, they were fit to train in and they told her she wasn't pretty enough to go undercover at galas and balls, they told her to leave it to people who would get the mission completed.
Zarah didn't like to think about her childhood, or rather the lack of one, she had spent it all training, she spent the first few years of her life in a small room with a tutor. She would spend 12 hours cramped in the room learning, one bathroom break and nothing else.
She hated that stupid tutor and she was sure he hated her back, he would use a long plastic ruler to hit her whenever he felt like she wasn't working up to his expectations. The other twelve hours of the day were spent studying and sleeping.
When she was six that was when her real training began, hours upon hours of learning how to fight, shoot a gun, how to kill people. At night she would stumble back to her room, exhausted, barely able to stand, but it was still better than being stuck in that room with the tutor. He had really bad breath. 
She would train all week except Sundays which were saved for testing, they would take her blood, and check her vitals among many other things, she never was sure why they ran tests, she wasn't sure what would change over a week but they never missed one. 
All until her mission, this stupid mission. She had reported back to the commander about the MI6 badge she found, the commander had let her know that it was enough evidence against Alex Rider. 
It didn't make sense to her because she hadn't found anything that incriminated Alex specifically but she guessed the agency didn't care. Spies ran in the Rider family she supposed.
Zarah walked into the store, she hadn't bothered looking at the name as she passed through the entrance. She paused after taking a few steps in, there were so many colors, so many different shapes in sizes, she didn't know where to start.
She picked a random aisle and decided to go down it, she looked at the dresses but didn't pull out any, she felt like she shouldn't touch anything. She knew she wanted a long dress, that was the only thing she was sure about, and that only was because she googled it.
As she turned the corner she crashed into someone, right as she was about to glare at the person, she recognized the familiar head of curly hair "Tom." She said, her voice full of distaste. 
Tom's eyes widened in familiar surprise before his eyebrow furrowed "Zarah? What are you doing here?" His arms were full of different dresses all piled on top of one another.
"I would think it's rather obvious." She frowned.
He blinked before he laughed "Oh, you're looking for a dress."
She crossed her arms "And why's that funny?" Her voice was defensive.
He shook his head and glanced off toward the side "No reason, you're just the last person I would expect to wear a dress."