“Yes! Yes! Charlie! You’re a genius!”
For once, Charlie was more modest than usual. “Yes, I am, but you’d probably planned on making it reversible the whole time.”
“No, I didn’t!” Emma laughed. “I didn’t! But who knows… maybe Allegra did!”
She eyed the clock. She really had to hurry now to get those buttons on. When she grabbed the tin box off her worktable, she giggled.
“What?” Charlie asked.
Emma held up the box that once had contained biscotti cookies—the very same one that had given Emma the idea for Allegra’s last name just three weeks earlier—and shook it. The buttons clanked around inside.
“That has to be a good sign, right?”
“Definitely,” Charlie agreed.
He watched as she made the alterations and adjustments to the vest. As she snipped the final threads, he reached behind the filing cabinet and pulled out a large shopping bag. “Here you go.”
Inside were three canvas garment bags with the Allegra Biscotti logo that Emma had designed in the upper-left corner of each of them. Emma hugged them to her chest.
“I love them. They’re perfect.”
“I asked my mom for some of the garment bags she uses to protect her costumes from all those musicals and heat-sealed your logo onto them,” Charlie explained. “I thought they’d make everything look more professional and official. Much better than those lame dry-cleaner bags you were going to use.”
“Brilliant, as usual.” Emma smiled at her friend, and now her partner. “Thank you.”
A few minutes later, Marjorie stuck her head into Emma’s work space.
“Ready, honey? The messenger from Madison is here.”
Her dad hurried in, too, not wanting to miss the big moment.
The sensationally cut, sparkly dress with a teasing slit showing a hint of watercolor silk; the fabulously dramatic charcoal jacquard overcoat with its brilliant-striped, pleated lining (and perfect box pleat!); and the dash-of-color vest with gray edges practically danced on their hangers, as if they, too, were eager for their big debut.
Emma zipped up the final bag and turned to Marjorie. “Ready as I’ll ever be!”
“I’ll take these up front for you, Ms. Biscotti,” Marjorie said. She lifted the three garment bags off the garment rack, whisking away Emma’s very first collection to face the scrutiny of fashion’s top editors.
Emma sunk down onto the stool, her whole body tingling. This was the most exciting, terrifying, satisfying, exhilarating, joyful, and proud moment of her entire life.
This must be what it’s like to be a real fashion designer, Emma thought as she followed Charlie and her dad out of her studio and turned off the light: Hurrying and waiting. A million ups and downs. Times when everything was going right and then it…wasn’t. Wondering what people would think. Hoping that someone would love what she created as much as she did.
Now there was nothing she could do—no sketching, no sewing, no snipping—but wait.
Chapter 15
Surprises
“Did you hear from her yet?” Charlie asked Emma when he saw her in the hall after sixth period a couple of days later.
“No! No text message or voice mail from Paige. Nothing. The photo shoot supposedly happened yesterday. What do you think that means?” Emma asked. The silence was driving her crazy. Was it good silence, or was it bad silence?
Charlie shrugged. “Who knows?”
Emma sighed. “It’s just been such a weird week, you know? I was on this awesome high right after delivering everything to Madison. But between not hearing anything from Paige and avoiding Holly, I’m just feeling kind of out of it. Plus, spending every afternoon studying for the Western civ exam is just not as much, I don’t know, fun as being Allegra.”
“I could’ve told you that, little Miss Split Personality,” Charlie said.
“It’s just so weird between me and Holly, standing next to each other at our lockers and not talking.”
Frustratingly, “Hmm” was all Charlie could muster. For Charlie, Allegra was fascinating and fun. Emma’s schoolgirl drama…not so much. She got that she would have to tackle the friendship crisis on her own.
The more she dissected their awful fight, the more she realized that she probably held a lot of the blame. Monday had been a bad and stressful day, and her head had been in Allegra mode, not in Emma mode. Not a choice time to get into it with Holly. Maybe she had overreacted.
What she did know, she decided as another day of mutual silent treatment came to a close, was she wasn’t ready to throw away twelve years of the friendship over Ivana or some guy she didn’t really know. Some guy who Holly didn’t appear to be going out with either, which Emma realized was odd after all of that gossip.
Maybe everybody was wrong, and Holly had been telling the truth. She knew Holly. Holly might be a bit caught up in this whole popularity thing, but she most definitely was not a mean, vengeful person.
There must be something I can do to fix this, Emma thought. And soon enough, inspiration struck. She would stitch their friendship back together.
The next day, Emma asked Ms. Lyons for a bathroom pass during world history. Rerouting to Holly’s locker instead, she spun the combination on Holly’s padlock that she had memorized that first day of school—22, the floor that Holly lived on, 18, the floor that Emma lived on, and 37, the reverse of the street Holly lived on.
Emma opened her own locker, pulled out a package wrapped in gold tissue paper and tied with a wine-colored silk cord, and slipped it inside Holly’s locker. She had thought about leaving a note but, in the end, decided not to. Holly would either accept the gift as a peace offering, or she wouldn’t—but she would definitely know who the package was from and what it meant.
And so Emma spent the rest of the afternoon waiting. Waiting for Paige. Waiting for Holly.
After school, Emma approached her locker as if on tiptoe. Holly was already there, methodically pulling out notebooks and dropping them into her bag. Had their fight been bigger than she thought? Emma wondered.
Holly’s body language did not look warm and inviting. Was Holly rejecting her gift—and her friendship? Maybe Emma had gotten so wrapped up with Allegra that she hadn’t realized how bad things had truly gotten with Holly.
She twirled her lock, her body feeling as if it was teetering on five-inch spike heels. She couldn’t seem to get her balance.
“This is pretty awesome.” Holly’s voice was low, almost a whisper.
Emma turned slowly. Holly held up the T-shirt Emma had sewn for her the night before. It was a riff on the patchworky-collage design Emma had made out of the vintage music band shirts a few weeks earlier.
Emma had sewn a patch out of an old Bazooka gum T-shirt onto a new Swedish cotton long-sleeve crew-neck shirt. And using thick, pink embroidery thread, she had painstakingly embroidered little circles—bubbles—in random spots all over the shirt.Holly allowed a small smile and then looked down.Emma shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, not knowing what to do next.“I’m sorry,” she finally said.“Me, too.” Holly smiled widely now.
“You know, Jackson and I aren’t a couple,” she added. “That was just a nasty rumor.”
Emma nodded. “I figured that out. A few days too late…”
“Can I explain what really happened at Kayla’s on Saturday night?” Without waiting for answer, Holly continued. “The minute Jackson got there, Lexie started throwing herself at him. It was crazy. So I sort of butted my way in to distract him, so she couldn’t completely sink her claws into him. That way you’d be able to talk to him when you got there.