“But they’re fashion. They’re meant to be worn,” I said firmly. “Their destiny is to be worn. Preferably, some place fabulous. Like, say, a recording-industry party.”
Jess was silent; her jaw hardened and her eyes glowered.
“Dude, are you insane? We are lucky, LUCKY, that we got away with the whole Audrey thing without getting caught. You know what happens if somebody figures that out? I’m still waiting to see if Joe reviews the security camera footage. I’m hoping they record over them every night, or I get fired. Fired! And both of us get hauled off to jail. End of story.”
“Nan doesn’t think we’d actually do any jail time,” I offered.
“Oh. My. God!!!! Seriously? You told Nan? What part of ‘we can’t tell anybody about this, ever’ was unclear?”
“Calm down. The police were at my house—not for me—for Ryan, and I freaked. Nan asked, and you know I can’t lie to Nan. She won’t tell anyone. She thought it was funny.”
Jess shook her head and exhaled sharply with disappointment. “You’ve got to be effin’ kidding me. I can’t believe you’re planning to risk my job just to go to another cocktail round with the trust-fund crowd. To be Tabitha Eden’s groupie.”
“It’s not about Tabitha. And we’re not talking about the Audrey dress. It won’t have anything to do with the museum.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You don’t think that when this whole charade blows up in your face and they start asking questions, they won’t trace it right back to Page Six, the Met, and that gala?” I hadn’t thought about that.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I said. “You’re the one who’s always saying I should find something to be excited about.”
“I meant a career! Shit, even a hobby. Not risking public humiliation, unemployment, and jail to pull an Audrey Hepburn con job on a bunch of socialites and your sad little pop star.” Jess sat down on the chaise lounge, looking annoyed. “And what would you gain if you pulled this off?”
I paused.
“I don’t know.”
“Dude, I think it’s cool and everything, but where does it go? Do you want to become some kind of professional poser at parties for a career?”
She was right. I didn’t have a plan or goal—other than to get to that record party to see what it would be like to hang out with Tabitha Eden for one more night. I craved one more sip of starlight. But how much of a plan did Cinderella have when she went to the ball at the prince’s castle, anyway?
“I’m sorry, Jess. I’m just miserable,” I said. “I feel like my life is hurtling down a mountain at a thousand miles an hour and the destination is all wrong. Last night at the Met in Audrey’s dress, something happened. I know I was a complete fraud, but there was a spark of something inside me that I just can’t let go of. It wasn’t just the dress that fit me perfectly; it was the whole feeling that there was this other person inside me. It’s different for you. You’ve always known what you were meant to be. But I’ve been clueless until now. Last night I could feel it. I could taste it. But if you don’t help me, I’ll never be able to touch it. I don’t know how, but I feel like it could change my life forever.”
A sad, puzzled expression crossed Jess’s eyes.
“You know it’s not like you can just put on a dress and waltz into some world you don’t belong in,” she said. “Don’t you think they’ll check up on you and wonder who you are? Where you came from? What you’re doing there? These are blue bloods. They hang with blue bloods.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was too painful to think about being stuck where I was. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to cry. When I opened my eyes, Jess had picked up the Dior and was holding it up to her body, looking in the mirror. She inspected a tattered piece of the hem.
“We probably found these dresses just in time,” she said.
“Yeah, nothing lasts forever,” I added wistfully, watching her turn the Dior inside out, running her fingers along the stitching.
“My profs would consider your suggestion blasphemy,” she said. “Taking a pair of scissors to a vintage Dior or reworking a Cassini is crazy.”
“Aw, come on, we don’t have to treat these dresses as history. It’s the perfect combo of everything you know and what you want to do,” I said. “Besides, the dresses are mine. Nan gave them to me.”
I hated that I sounded like a child saying that, but I could see her mind was working a million miles a minute.
“That’s breaking a lot of rules,” Jess said.
“Yeah, we don’t want to break any rules,” I said. Hidden in the corner of her mouth was a budding smile dying to come out, and I knew I had a chance.
“Well, I guess everyone gets to do some idiotic thing before going to college.”
“You’re the best friend ever,” I said, throwing my arms around her and squeezing her tightly, trying to ignore that she’d just said the word “college.”
“Don’t you forget it,” she said.
“It’ll be our little project,” I added. “We’ll call it Being Audrey Hepburn.”
She should have said no, but she didn’t.
16
I needed a secret identity.
“Lisbeth Dulac.” I figured that would work. It was Nan’s maiden name, so it seemed like less of a lie, better than picking a random name out of a phone book.
Sliding the closet door closed, I retreated to the privacy of my tiny childhood refuge. Tabitha’s record party was three days away, and I needed more than just luck and Nan’s old dresses.
Phase 1, Jess and I agreed, was to create a Facebook page. It was the quickest way to invent a present and a past, something that could be googled, proving that the new “me” existed. I wasn’t a tech wiz, but, like everybody, I grew up on Facebook and knew a thing or two.
I chose May 4, Audrey’s birthday, and a birth year three years before my actual one and then opened a new account with a bogus e-mail, but my fingers froze on the keyboard when it was time to start filling in the details. I didn’t have a clue how many languages Lisbeth Dulac spoke, what her favorite music was, or what high school she attended.
Sinking into the pillows, I tried to get my head around the situation. Every piece of information I entered could be the one that blew my cover and exposed me as a fakester. It made my brain ache trying to think about it. The soft hum of the minifridge lulled me, making it impossible to keep my eyes from closing.
The sound of Nan’s music box playing “Moon River” was swimming round and round in my head until I awoke, realizing the song was actually the muffled sound of my phone ringing buried beneath the pillows. Groggy, I answered and figured it was Jess calling. She’d help me figure this out.
“Hey, wuz up?”
“… Lisbeth?”
I froze. Whose voice was that? Crap.
“Lisbeth? Is that you?”
My God. Tabitha.
I powered off my phone and dropped it on the floor like it was red hot. I panicked. Shit.
Then I thought, My voice message.
Crap. If she called back and heard my normal, goofy, homegirl message, the whole plan was cooked. I had to move faster than Tabitha’s little manicured fingers on her jewel-encrusted phone.
Powering my phone back on, I went to the phone settings, voice mail greeting and selected default—then sunk back into the pillows, watching, waiting, heart beating. My thoughts raced. Maybe it wasn’t her after all.
Clearly there was at least one problem with living a fantasy life—it made me paranoid as hell.
The phone lit up, playing “Moon River” in my hands. I let it ring through, and allowed myself to breathe.
For a split second, I actually considered forgetting the whole scheme. I wasn’t the kind of girl that lied, even on normal stuff. When I told a lie, I got this queasy, fluttering feeling in my stomach like there was a little trapped creature down there who couldn’t get out.