Glitter Girl

by Toni Runkle

  Chapter 11

  Kat’s Influence: Like a Wreath of Radiant Fire

  By midnight, Chelsea had gone back to her hotel and the party had become pretty much like every other slumber party—a few girls got sleepy and flopped on the sofa in front of the TV, where they were streaming a movie everybody had already seen a hundred times. A few others were gossiping about boys in the kitchen while they ate some leftover raw cookie dough that never quite made it into the oven. Some others were still sorting through the box of goodies from Glitter Girl, making sure they hadn’t missed any treasure in their first frenzied rush.

  Up in her room, Kat Connors was sitting on her bed, typing away at her laptop, updating her blog with some last-minute additions she hadn’t been able to do during the party. She used her new Slam Cam to snap and upload some quick stills of the products from the box and was busy posting them to the blog with her comments on each one. Across the street, Jules’s bedroom light had gone out a long time ago, and to be honest, while Kat had been a little bummed about what happened earlier, she decided not to give it a whole lot of thought. It was just Jules being Jules. Kat figured they’d be cool by the time school came around on Monday.

  Before she left, Chelsea had given her some “ideas” for what other things to say on the blog about each product. Chelsea made it clear that Kat could write anything she wanted, but she also said there were certain things about the products that she wanted to make sure Kat “didn’t forget” in all the excitement of the evening. Kat looked at the three pages of Chelsea’s typed notes in front of her.

  It was harmless enough stuff, she thought. Saying that one lip gloss was “sassy” or that the shades of nail polish were “everything a girl could ask for and more.” No, they weren’t exactly her thoughts about the products, but it was pretty cool stuff. Besides, she was tired. And when you’re tired, somebody else’s words just seem easier to type than thinking of nouns and verbs and adjectives all your own.

  She even gave a positive review to that sparkly engineer’s hat Jules had thought was so hideous. Well, Kat thought the same thing, to be honest, and not just because she didn’t like hats—it truly was atrocious. But Chelsea had been sooo nice the whole evening and given them so much stuff. She closed her blog with the announcement that all this Glitter Girl stuff would be available exclusively at the White Oak Mall the next day (Chelsea had rented out an empty jewelry boutique for just that purpose) and that if customers would mention Kat’s blog, they’d get 10 percent off all their purchases.

  Kat read over the blog entry one last time. Her dad had always drilled it into her that her grammar and spelling should be impeccable, even on the Internet. It all looked good. She wrinkled her nose a bit when she read the part about the engineer’s hat but didn’t change anything. It was all more or less how she felt…sort of. She clicked on Post and voilà!—her words were part of the information superhighway. Kat turned off the laptop and looked at the clock. 1:47 a.m. Not bad for a sleepover. She put her head on her pillow, and before the clock hit 1:48, she was asleep.

  • • •

  Kat’s mom once told her about a shampoo commercial from when Trudy was a teenager, where the girl on the commercial says she loved the shampoo so much she would “tell two friends” about it, and then those girls would tell two other friends who would tell two more friends, and so on and so on, until the entire TV screen was full of girls who were all in love with the same shampoo. Well, Kat’s blog was kind of like that shampoo commercial.

  By the time she and the other slumber-party girls woke up on Sunday morning for Trudy’s waffles with strawberry butter, the entire city around them was simply abuzz about Glitter Girl. And this was not just Willkie girls. Girls of every age from every nook and cranny of the city had been reading and forwarding Kat’s blog and pestering their parents and squirming through church and waiting impatiently for the White Oak Mall to open at 10 a.m.

  By nine, the crowd outside the mall was two hundred strong, and there was more jockeying for position at the front of the line than you’d see at the Kentucky Derby. The security guards and mall managers scratched their heads. But the girls just kept coming. By nine thirty, the line wound around the parking lot, and a few local cops had been called off their regular shifts to run traffic control at the entrance. At ten, when the doors finally did open, the crowd flowed into the mall like a hunting party of lionesses with the scent of fresh zebra in the air.

  Outside the temporary Glitter Girl store, a barely rested Chelsea Ambrose stood smiling from ear to ear, watching the girls rush by with their mothers in tow. She couldn’t believe her good fortune. The sleepover had gone well to be sure, aside from that little issue with the frumpy neighbor girl, but this turnout exceeded even her own high expectations. Numbers coming in from the other states were solid, but these were off the charts! She had always known Kat Connors was a good choice, but this! This was lightning in a bottle.

  By noon, the entire Glitter Girl store had sold out. Everything had been snapped up by girls eager to be the first to sport Glitter Gear at school the next day. Chelsea walked through the empty store as a few of the temporary employees cleaned up. The place looked like Whoville on Christmas morning after the Grinch had tossed everything in his sled and headed back up Mount Crumpit. There was nothing left but bare walls and wire. But unlike the Whos in Kat’s favorite Dr. Seuss book, Chelsea was not about to join hands with anyone in the town square and sing. Instead, Chelsea had already started counting the money.

  Kat, who had all the Glitter Girl stuff she needed at the moment, was one of the few girls in town who didn’t make the pilgrimage to the White Oak Mall to shop for Glitter Gear. She went for an entirely different reason—Jules. Her birthday was coming up, and Kat hadn’t gotten her present yet. And considering what had gone down the night before, Kat wanted to make sure it was an extra nice one.

  As Kat walked through the mall, she was amazed at the madness that was happening at the temporary Glitter Girl shop. It certainly was clear that Glitter Girl was a hit, just like Chelsea had said it would be. The vague thought of giving Jules a Glitter Girl gift card as a gag gift crossed Kat’s mind for a moment, but she quickly shook it off. Now was not the time for jokes, especially not about Glitter Girl. In fact, she made a point of steering clear of the mayhem at the Glitter Girl store completely, for fear of seeming over-eager to Chelsea.

  Instead, Kat wandered through Forever 21 and Target and Macy’s, but she couldn’t really find anything that seemed to say “Jules.” In fact, most of the stuff she saw practically screamed out “NOT JULES” instead. Kat decided to steer clear of the clothes, fashion, and beauty product sections of the other stores as well.

  However, in the corner of the mall, there was a store Kat knew about, but just barely. The only reason it was on her radar was that it was on the way to that cart that sold cinnamon pretzels. It was a little store with a dingy sign: “McPhee & Sullivan, Independent Booksellers.” It had been there as long as the mall existed but Kat had never set foot in the place.

  Now, she entered the store. It wasn’t like one of those well-lit, well-organized bookstores where Kat and her mom would go to buy a book for Kat’s dad to read on the plane. Instead, new and used books were piled to the ceiling in no particular order that Kat could decipher. An elderly man who looked a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol sat on a stool behind the counter scribbling in a notebook. Kat nervously approached the ancient salesman.

  “Excuse me,” Kat said, barely audible.

  No reaction. A little louder this time. “Excuse me.”

  The old man looked up at her, almost surprised to be seeing a customer, or at least a customer under the age of one hundred twelve.

  “Well hello, young miss,” the salesman said, with an accent that sounded a little English or Irish or Scottish or something. Kat could never tell the difference. “Would you be wanting a book today?”

&
nbsp; “Uh, yeah, I think so,” Kat replied. “I’m looking for a present for my friend. It’s her birthday.”

  “Would she be around your age then?” the bookseller inquired, setting down his notebook and wiping his hands on a pea-green apron that must have been as old as he was.

  “Uh, yeah, we’re the same age,” Kat replied. “I really want to give her something special. And she loves to read.” Saying that, Kat remembered when she and Jules used to devour books and have reading contests during the summer to see who could read the most pages in a week. That hadn’t happened in a while. In fact, Kat could barely remember the last book she had picked up because she wanted to read it.

  “How about one of the Harry Potters?” suggested the old man. “They’re still quite popular with the young people.”

  “I think she’s got all of those.”

  “All righty then, could you give me a wee bit of a hint so I can steer us in the right direction?”

  “Well, she’s in the Shakespeare Club at school,” Kat offered.

  The old man’s eyes lit up. “Shakespeare you say, the ever-lovin’ Bard of Avon?”

  “Uh, yeah. I guess,” said Kat, vaguely remembering Jules using that nickname for him.

  “You are in luck, my good lady!” said the clerk. “For just this very day arrived in the store a very special shipment indeed. I haven’t even put it out on the shelf yet.”

  He reached under the counter and pulled out an enormous book.

  “The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare,” said the salesman, reading the cover. “The Complete Works, Annotated and Illustrated.”

  It was practically as large as Kat’s family Bible that her grandma gave her on her first communion day a few years ago. But it was even more beautiful, if that were possible. It was bound in deep scarlet leather, with pages that had gold around the edges. Kat paged through the book and looked at all the notes and illustrations. Scenes from each of the plays were in vivid color that made even Kat want to read them.

  As Kat was busy being dazzled by the book, she thought of Jules’s pile of dog-eared paperbacks that filled her bedroom. Or that discount Collected Works Jules had bought used for $9.99 on eBay, and when it finally arrived, she had discovered there were markings all over the margins and some of the pages of Hamlet had been torn out. This would put them all to shame. This was the perfect gift on a birthday that really needed a perfect gift, especially after last night. Only how much could it be? This was not just a book; this was a work of art. Kat scanned the inside and outside cover looking for a price, but none was to be found.

  She gulped, “Uh, how much is it?”

  “Well, I haven’t really priced it out yet,” the bookseller replied. “It just arrived today, you see.”

  The old man could see Kat was doing calculations in her head and looking for an answer. “What might be your budget for this gift, young miss?”

  “Uh, my mom said I could spend fifty dollars,” Kat said, knowing that such a treasure had to be more than that. “But,” she said, silently adding up all the other cash she had in her purse, “I could go as high as…seventy-five dollars?”

  The old man looked sternly from Kat to the volume of Shakespeare on the counter, doing his own set of calculations in his head. “Well, lassie,” he said, “as luck would have it, this particular volume is exactly that, seventy-five dollars, tax included.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No,” said the bookseller, sighing and seeming to be already calculating the loss he would be taking on the book, “I wouldn’t kid about such a thing.”

  Kat plunked down the seventy-five dollars, and as it turned out, she had $77.95 in her purse. She insisted the clerk accept all of it, which he did. The bookseller wrapped the book in some special brown paper and the transaction was complete.

  Kat thanked the man about twelve times and then left the store, clutching the special parcel tightly. She was elated because she knew in her heart of hearts that Jules was so totally going to love this and think it was the best present ever. It wouldn’t hurt, of course, that as a side benefit of such an amazing gift, any lingering bad feelings Jules had toward Kat would certainly instantly disappear.

  As he watched her go, the old clerk shook his head. “Mr. Sullivan will surely have my head for this one, glory be.”

  • • •

  The next morning, Kat got up early to design the perfect combination of Glitter Girl stuff for her school debut. She had already chosen the nail polish, a color called Grape Jelly that went perfectly with the purple sleeveless blouse with the draped neckline that she’d been dying to wear to school since she’d seen it in the last edition of Cosmo Girl. A little subtle lip gloss, some slingbacks, and a pair of skinny jeans, and she was ready to roll.

  Before she grabbed her backpack and headed out of the house, she grabbed the engineer’s cap and put it on. She looked at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t in love with that hat, but Chelsea had strongly suggested she wear it. Besides, she couldn’t very well give it a great review on her blog and then not show up with it on her head on Monday. It’s just this once, she thought.

  She hopped into the waiting Prius in the driveway, said hello to Jules’s dad, and then came face-to-face with Jules.

  “Hi,” Kat said, not really knowing what else to say. She was wishing today was Jules’s birthday so she could give her the amazing present right now and all this awkwardness would be forgotten. Instead, Shakespeare was nowhere to be found, and Kat was left on her own in the back of the Prius. Jules looked over Kat’s Glitter Gear as if she were looking at someone who had just refused to recycle a soda bottle.

  “Uh, hi,” said Jules, equally awkwardly.

  “You didn’t want to wear any of the stuff from the gift bag?” said Kat, who saw Jules had her usual jeans and T-shirt ensemble on today. This one was pale blue and had a stick figure on the front with a giant peace sign for a head. She’d worn this one before so Kat knew that on the back of the T-shirt in some outrageously large font size were the words “Think Peace.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Jules. “Some of that stuff wasn’t really me. How was the rest of the party?”

  “It was okay,” said Kat simply, even though it had been one of the best sleepovers ever. “We tried out some other products and told Chelsea what we thought of them. I blogged a bit more. And then we all went to bed. Usual stuff.”

  “Yeah. I read your blog,” said Jules simply. Kat felt a pang of embarrassment. Jules had read her review of the hat! Ick.

  “You look nice, though,” said Jules. Now she was the one not quite sure what to say.

  “Thanks,” said Kat. “You don’t think it’s too much purple?”

  Jules thought Kat looked a bit like an eggplant being devoured by some kind of hideous pink bug, but all she said was, “No, you look nice.”

  They didn’t talk much more than that for the rest of the ten-minute drive to school. Instead, Kat looked out the window and listened vaguely to Jules’s dad’s classic rock station that he always listened to when the girls were in the car.

  They got to the school about ten minutes early, so most of the kids were still outside the building, milling around and talking. Jules and Kat got out of the Prius and slammed the doors shut. Looking out into the mass of students, they had one simultaneous reaction:

  “O…M…G.”

  Wendell Willkie Junior High had been transformed into Glitter Girl Central. Every flavor of lip gloss was represented; every color of nail polish adorned someone’s fingers or someone’s toes. Girls were happily posing for pictures that they took with each other’s Glitter Girl slam cams. And the hats! How many girls were wearing those Glitter Girl engineer’s hats? Kat couldn’t count them all. There had to be a hundred at least, and that was just in the eighth grade alone.

  “Is this amazing or what?” said Kat.

  “It’s
something,” Jules had to admit.

  “I guess Chelsea knows what she’s doing.”

  “This isn’t about Chelsea,” said Jules. “This is about you, Kat. You must be very proud.”

  Kat was proud. Sort of. But in a way, it was a little creepy to see how many girls all looked the same. All of this because of what she had written on her blog less than forty-eight hours ago.

  “Good day, ladies.”

  Kat and Jules turned around and froze. Standing before them was a completely transformed…Ms. Donovan? She had highlights in her hair and her trademark glasses had disappeared, replaced by contact lenses! For a change she was wearing a dress that didn’t look like it could be pitched on a campground. And was that blue eye shadow?

  “Ms. Donovan. Look at you. Wow! You’ve changed!” said Kat.

  Ms. Donovan’s cheeks flushed a little.

  “Well, it occurred to me that I’ve had the same haircut since fifth grade, so I took your advice, Kat. I did the highlights, and while I was at it, I thought, what the heck…contacts!” Ms. Donovan’s voice lowered. “I even bought some Glitter Girl. The eye shadow. I happened to be at the mall yesterday with my nieces. They begged me to go to the Glitter Girl shop—which, by the way, they loved—and talked me into it. Mouthwash, they call the shade. What do you think? Do I look okay?”

  “You look—different,” was all Jules could bring herself to say.

  “But in a good way, right? You don’t think the eye shadow’s too much on an old gal like me?”

  No, it didn’t look bad to Jules. In fact, Ms. Donovan looked kind of pretty. But that wasn’t the point. This was her Shakespeare teacher who practically spoke in iambic pentameter! And yet this maven of the Renaissance had caved in to Kat’s pressure—the hair, the contacts, even the Glitter Girl! It would make your head spin if you weren’t so busy throwing up.

  “I think you look way cool, Ms. Donovan,” said Kat, speaking up. “And the eye shadow rocks!”

  “Well, thank you, Katherine. And I like your hat! I’m sorry I gave you a hard time about Glitter Girl. It seems like everything turned out okay, and the girls do seem to like it.” Ms. Donovan turned to go, then quickly turned back.