Tap a bold word to see what it means. Underlined words are from earlier chapters.
Previously: Aina thought her blue dress was not special enough for the Year 11 dance. Her rich friend Hana let her wear some beautiful diamonds for the night.
On the night of the dance, Aina's father drives her to the hotel. She is wearing the blue dress and Hana's . In the car she touches it again and again.
When she walks into the hall, people turn and . They cannot stop looking at her. Tonight she is not .
"You look ," says her friend Priya. "Really, really beautiful."
All night, Aina gets . The teachers say nice things about her dress. Girls she does not know ask for photos with her. Two boys from Year 12 ask her to dance. She has never felt so much before. Everyone seems to think she is wonderful.
Later, Hana walks past and in her ear, so quietly that nobody else can hear: "You're the star of the night."
Aina dances until midnight. Her feet hurt, but she does not care. It is the best night of her life.
At one in the morning, her father comes to get her. She is so that she falls asleep in the car. At home she walks slowly to her room, half asleep, and stands in front of the mirror to take off the necklace.
Her hand touches her neck. There is nothing there.
She looks again. Her neck is empty. Aina is . Her face goes white, and for a moment she cannot breathe.
The necklace is gone.
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
In plain English: We do not know what will happen to us later.
Story inspired by Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" (1884). Word levels: CEFR-J Wordlist v1.6 (Yukio Tono, TUFS) · Octanove Vocabulary Profile C1/C2 (CC BY-SA 4.0).