by D. M. Paige
“If you need anything, reach out. Mr. Holt wants this to be a positive experience for all the interns involved.”
I clutched the card in my hand as Bosley deposited me on the doorstep.
The door swung open. The inside of the house smelled like heaven—a breeze tinged with sugary sweetness.
A small, pretty woman with an open, round face and a tiny Afro stood in the doorway. She was wearing an apron. Was she the maid?
“Rebecca, this is Thea,” Bosley said.
I couldn’t help myself. “What is that smell?”
“I hope you like cupcakes,” she answered.
It turned out that my host was Becca Grayson of Babycake Pops. She had started her business in her home kitchen, and she still used her kitchen to try out new designs and recipes.
Becca explained to me how she had left her career to start her own business. Now she was opening stores in twenty states. Bon and I had had her cake pops once at the mall back home. My favorite was mint chocolate chip. I couldn’t believe that I was standing next to a cake pop mogul.
“I used to be a corporate lawyer. But once I had Molly, I took some time off, and Babycake was born. It’s a pretty sweet life. Excuse the pun,” she laughed. I wondered when we would get to the room where all the cooking magic happened.
She gave me the grand tour. Even though the house was fabulous, it looked lived-in. There were toys everywhere. When we finally reached the kitchen, there was a little girl, probably about five, sitting in a circle of stuffed animals. She ran up and hugged me.
“She never does that. She doesn’t usually take to anyone this easily.” Becca smiled wider.
“I’ve done a lot of babysitting,” I replied. “Maybe she can sense it. If you ever need me to pitch in …”
“I might take you up on that, but my guess is you are going to be pretty busy with Lorelei. I really want you to feel like you’re at home here. Now, Molly, let go of Thea so I can give her the rest of the tour.”
I didn’t mind really. I think I needed the hug.
Becca led me to the pool house, my home for the next month.
“All this is for me?”
“Unless you want to stay in the main house,” Becca said. “We thought this would give you more privacy.”
All this is for me, I repeated inside my head. It was like my own little apartment. There was an overstuffed sofa and a flat screen TV, a breakfast nook, and a full kitchen. A set of stairs inside the pool house led to a king-size bed and a dresser. And a bouquet of cake pops stood on a table next to the bed!
“The fridge is fully stocked. But we have dinner at eight, and we’d love for you to join us.”
I nodded, still digesting the idea that I wasn’t going to spend my summer in a dorm room. Instead, I’d have my own little corner of an estate.
“I’ll give you some time to get settled.”
Becca patted me on the shoulder and walked out with Molly trailing behind her.
I pulled my cell phone out of my bag and sank back onto the downy soft bed.
“You will not believe where I am.”
SEVEN
“I can get here on my own next time,” I said the next morning. Becca pulled up in front of the tall, lipstick-shaped building. The House of Lorelei Roy was on the fiftieth floor.
Becca shook her head. “It would take you three buses. And this place is on my way to the shop.” She reached back to the backseat, where Molly was playing with a kid-sized laptop in her car seat. “Here.”
She handed me a box of cake pops.
“Lunch?” I asked.
“No, for Lorelei—as a thank-you.”
I entered the all-glass skyscraper, box in hand. My nerves began to kick in. What if they didn’t like me? I looked down at my favorite dress for a boost of confidence. The paisley-printed, pink, pleated minidress had taken me hours and hours to get right. But it had been worth it. Every time I put on the dress, I felt pretty and powerful, like I could face anything.
A security guard directed me to the top floor. After a fifty-floor elevator ride, I stepped into the House of Lorelei Roy reception area. A pretty receptionist took my name and called someone named Jamie to get me.
Jamie had red hair cut into a severe bob, with those straight bangs that never look good on anyone with less-than-perfect bone structure. Jamie was that one in a million.
Although Jamie wasn’t tall, she wore six-inch heels.
She looked at my feet immediately. “What size are you?”
“Size eight?”
“I’ll lend you something from the closet.”
It turned out that the comfortable two-inch heels I’d worn specifically for running around Lorelei’s offices were completely out of place. I looked around. Everyone was wearing at least four inches.
Jamie led me to a main room filled with glass cubicles and girls dressed in Lorelei Roy’s more affordable line.
“I’m Thea, the intern,” I said.
“I know. Don’t take offense about the shoes. We have one every season.”
Did she really just say that? I had heard that fashion people could be brutal. I just didn’t expect her to be so in-my-face about it.
“What are those?” Jamie asked.
“Cake pops. I’m staying with Rebecca Lawson. From Babycake Pops?”
Jamie shook her head as if to say I was completely in the wrong place and then took the pops from me.
“I brought those for Lorelei,” I added.
“And if you give them to her, I’ll be looking for another intern.”
“They’re gluten-free.”
“Right now, Lorelei is food free. She’s on a cleanse.”
All I could manage was, “Oh.”
Jamie absently tucked the cake pops under her arm and began a tour.
The LR logo was everywhere—monogrammed on the wallpaper, etched in glass on all the cubicles, even visible on the floor tiles. Jamie spotted me looking at the white-on-white embossed Ls.
“The walls are also scratch and sniff,” she said, and for a half second I thought she was being sarcastic. But I leaned in and scratched the wall anyway. It smelled like Lorelei’s signature scent, Lavish—lilacs and lavender and some other sweet flower I didn’t recognize.
Jamie’s tour felt more like a lecture. She was showing me not just where things happened but what not to do when I got there. I wished I had brought a notebook to write all the don’ts down.
“Do not take pictures of anything we do here. Do not post anything to Twitter about our line unless we ask you to. We control the brand as much as we can. We make the message.”
I nodded.
Jamie led me to the second most important room in the office: the coffee room.
“Lorelei has a double cappuccino with double foam. Skim milk. I’ll show you how after you meet Lorelei.”
Ms. Hampton had warned me that most internships involved a lot of menial labor. A small price to pay in exchange for total exposure to the inner workings of Lorelei’s empire.
“PR, reception … ,” Jamie announced, moving on.
She led me to another room with drafting tables and chairs. An iPad was docked at each station. Two guys sat in the room, probably both in their thirties. They could have been twins.
“There are three in-house designers in addition to Lorelei. That’s Brandon and Jason. And yes, they are brothers. Lorelei likes having a matching set of designers. And here’s Marnie. She’s been with Lorelei from the beginning.”
None of the designers looked up. They were so absorbed in their work that they didn’t even notice the interruption.
Next, Jamie led me to what she called the War Room. I was expecting a conference area. But it was a room full of fabric. There were three sewing room stations set up. No one was sitting at them.
“None of the designs are completed yet. So Paloma and Sophia have nothing to do yet. You’ll meet them later.”
When we got back to her desk, she handed me an iPad and an iPhone
. I still sketched all my designs on paper, but Lorelei was apparently completely digital. I only had a second to contemplate sketching on a tablet before Jamie got down to business.
“Don’t get too attached,” she said. “You have to return them at the end of the summer.”
EIGHT
Lorelei’s office was literally the size of my house back in DC.
Lorelei run-walked into the room on a perfumed breeze. Lavish, of course. She circled around me like she was inspecting me. Her eyes traveled over my outfit.
“Nice lines. Excellent workmanship.”
Lorelei Roy liked my dress! I felt the blood rush to my face.
I blurted out, “I made it,” despite Jamie’s order that I not speak unless Lorelei asked me to.
“Poor choice of fabric.”
It still was a compliment. Sort of. Let the design speak for itself—that’s what she meant.
She nodded at the door as if dismissing me.
I wanted to say something more. That I’d been looking at her designs in magazines for years. That I snuck into the library to watch her fashion shows on the computer during lunch during fashion week. That I was her biggest fan. But Jamie had given me instructions not to talk unless I was answering a question.
I turned and walked toward the door, but I couldn’t stand it. Who didn’t want to hear a compliment? She may be Lorelei Roy, but she was still a person.
I turned back.
“Ms. Roy, I just wanted to say …”
She looked up surprised, “Yes, Theresa?”
“It’s, uh, Thea actually. I just wanted to say that it’s a dream come true to work for you.”
She studied me for a beat and then said, “Thea, sucking up isn’t a requirement of this internship. Can you send Jamie in please?”
I nodded and walked out. The heels weren’t the only part of me that hurt as I left the room.
I walked out of Lorelei’s office feeling gut punched.
“Lorelei wants to see you,” I told Jamie.
Either Jamie read my face or she knew that people typically needed to recover after meeting Lorelei. “Take ten minutes. Get to know the coffeemaker,” she said.
Whatever sting I’d taken from Lorelei, I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Madison Belle was sitting outside Lorelei’s studio. The Madison Belle. Modeling superstar Madison Belle.
She was impossible pretty. My height but way more slender and graceful, like a ballerina or something. I was staring at her, but she was staring at a really cute boy who had leaned over one of the cubicles to grab a stapler. Another intern? A male model?
I must have been drooling.
“Look but don’t touch,” Madison warned as she turned her big green eyes on me. Boyfriend? Or had she just called dibs on a person?
Madison responded to my raised eyebrows. “He’s just off-limits.”
Before she could say more, Jamie reappeared and motioned to Madison. “Lorelei’s ready for you,” Jamie ordered with one hand on her barely-there hip. Then Jamie gave me a look that asked why I hadn’t taken the break she’d ordered.
Following Jamie’s orders, I headed for the coffee room. It was empty. After a couple of tries, I made a cappuccino with extra foam and sank into one of the white plastic chairs. I took a sip. If I was going to have to make the drink for Lorelei, I had to make sure that it tasted okay.
Mystery Boy entered, carrying a backpack and muttering to himself. He took a seat across from me, seemingly unaware that I was there.
I got up to leave, but he turned and started talking to me.
“You must hate her too.”
“Hate who?”
“Lorelei Roy.” He said as if everyone felt that way.
Was this a test?
I wasn’t Lorelei’s biggest fan at this exact moment. But I wasn’t about to say that to a total stranger—no matter how dreamy he was.
“I have to go,” I said. “My ten minutes are up.”
They weren’t, but I wasn’t good at talking to boys. And I couldn’t exactly figure out what his deal was.
“I hate her sometimes,” he said.
“I’m sorry … What did she? … It’s none of my business.”
“It’s less fun if you don’t react,” he added.
“Excuse me?”
“Lorelei. She’s expecting you to crumble or pout or roll your eyes. But if you don’t do any of those things, she’ll move on to the next victim.”
It was the same advice Gram used to give me about bullies—only I hadn’t thought I’d need it at work.
“Thanks,” I said, “I should really get back to my desk.”
He dropped his backpack on the chair and stood up. “I’ll go with you.”
“Okay?”
The guy was even cuter up close. He had to be a model. But why was he walking me to my desk, which was directly across from Jamie’s?
When we got to it, he asked me my name.
“I’m Thea. And you are … ?”
“I’m Matt.”
With that, he was off. I heard him push open the door to Lorelei’s office.
A voice boomed: “There he is. My pride and joy.”
Who he was and why he was off-limits hit me like a truck. He was Lorelei’s son.
The rest of the day was a blur. Everyone had a job to do, and there was little time to talk, so I had to learn by watching. And when there were breaks, everyone else seemed to have superclose relationships, complete with inside jokes. It wasn’t that they were excluding me exactly. But they had their own rhythm. Or maybe they just didn’t want to bother getting to know someone who would only be around for the summer.
I spent the car ride to Becca’s house listening to her and Molly relive the highlights of their play date. I was happy not to talk about how my day went. I’d thought that fashion people would be my people, but it turned out the House of Lorelei Roy was a lot more complicated than that.
“How was your first day?” Becca asked from the kitchen.
Awesome, terrifying, terrible, I thought.
“It was cool.”
First day. The only chance to make a first impression. But the only impression I had made so far was on Jamie, and I wasn’t sure if it was a positive one.
“You want to try my new recipe?” Becca asked.
I said sure. As she handed me the cake pop, she added, “You want to talk about it?”
I shook my head no. And I took a huge bite. It tasted like a caramel sundae.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“Magic,” she laughed.
I could use a little of that, I thought.
NINE
The next day, around 4:30, Matt was in the break room again. I was there to make Lorelei’s third cup of the day. I didn’t bother to be coy. “Do you just come here every day to hang out with the models?”
“No, I have summer school,” he said. “My mom wants to make sure I do my homework. So I do it here.”
“What subject?” Was he one of those kids who didn’t bother to study because he had everything?
“Test prep.” He held up a book. It was the same SAT book that Bonnie and I had shared this year.
“Mom wants me to go to an Ivy. And if I want a shot at that, I have to score well.”
“And what do you want?” I asked. He didn’t sound too interested in the future that his mom had planned for him. I had taken the SAT prep class voluntarily. Good test scores were still important to scholarship committees.
“No one ever asks me that,” he said, looking surprised.
“Maybe you should be asking yourself that.”
His face fell. Then he looked up at me with a smile. “Maybe I will.”
“I took that same prep course last year. The key is to make flash cards.”
“You took the course before?” Was that surprise, or was he just glad to meet someone else who had suffered through the same thing?
“Yeah, after school last semester. My best and I took it togeth
er. We made flash cards and practiced between work shifts. That way it feels more like a game than homework.”
“Do you think maybe you could show me your cards?”
“I don’t have them with me. They’re back in DC,” I replied.
“Oh. Do you think you could show me your technique then? You’d be saving my life.”
“Well, if it’s a matter of life and death … Sure.”
“What time does my mom set you free tomorrow?” he asked.
“Six,” I said, unable to take my eyes off his.
“Can you stick around afterward?”
“But your mom—”
I was making it sound like we were planning something much more than a flash-card session.
“Right,” he said as if he just remembered that Lorelei existed. “Okay. What about the Starbucks on the corner?”
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
I walked out of the office carrying Lorelei’s too-cold coffee.
I was smiling for the rest of the afternoon. Smiling while delivering mail, smiling while getting coffee, and smiling while running the copier. Even smiling when the copier jammed.
Jamie was still at her desk at six, when I was on my way out. I think she noticed my bubble and decided to burst it with a pile of extra work. “One last thing. Drop this in the trash room on your way out.”
She held out three bolts of gorgeous silk.
“You’re throwing that out?”
“Lorelei says that it should be burned. But the trash will have to do.”
“But they’re beautiful … ”
She shrugged and went back to work.
I took the bolts down to the trash room. And gasped. The inside of the room looked like a dream. There were gorgeous silks and brocades, crisp cottons. Fabrics of every color and texture imaginable.
I left the bolts and began to walk away.
But when I got to the door, I turned back. I dug through the bin and pulled out a gorgeous pink charmeuse. It was just Lorelei’s trash. But her trash was my treasure. And after a day of copying and coffee making, I needed some treasure.