by D. M. Paige
During the car ride home, I told Becca that I didn’t need a ride after work the next day.
“Making friends already?”
“Something like that,” I said.
She smiled. “See, you have nothing to worry about.”
When we got home, I finally called Bonnie.
“You have a date!” she squealed in my ear.
“It isn’t a date. I’m just helping him with his flash cards. It’s more a study date than a date date.”
Bonnie laughed. “He could hire a tutor. He could hire a whole stack of tutors. He’s like superrich.”
“Maybe he just wants to … I don’t know. But it’s not a date.”
Bonnie started singsonging, “Matt and Thea sitting in a tree—”
“I’m hanging up now,” I said, but I was smiling as I did.
TEN
After another day of Jamie’s almost insults and more time with the copier, I walked into the Starbucks down the block.
I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but it looked like Matt lit up when he saw me.
“Did you bring supplies?” I asked.
He looked at me blankly.
“For flash cards. You wanted me to help you with SAT prep?”
His eyebrows went up in surprise. “Oh, right. But I think we need to eat something first.”
Maybe it was a date? An hour later, we were sitting on a curb, eating In-N-Out Burgers and looking off at the Hollywood sign. I still hadn’t seen any sign of flash cards.
“Doesn’t your mom want you to do whatever you want?” I asked between bites. “I mean, she does something creative for a living. Why not you?”
“Mom wants me to have a ‘foundation.’ Go to the best schools and I can do anything. That way, I won’t have to struggle like she did.”
“Lorelei struggled?”
“Mom started her business out of our fourth-floor walk-up when I was a baby. She’d gone to design school, but she built her business all on her own.”
Everything I ever read about Lorelei was about her fabulous present. No one mentioned her past—her struggle. I had thought she was one of those overnight successes.
“Wow.”
“If you tell her I told you, she’ll kill you.”
I nodded. So Lorelei hadn’t always been Lorelei. Somehow knowing this made her a little bit less scary. And it made what I wanted seem a little bit more possible.
Matt pulled open the door of his blue convertible for me. I paused for a split second. I’d never had a guy hold open a door for me. Not on purpose.
Maybe he was just more polite than the guys back home? I was making myself more nervous.
Stay calm, be cool, be normal, I thought. Be in the moment.
I glanced at Matt’s perfect profile as he stared at the road, and then I looked away again. It was too much. He snuck a look at me too. I looked out my window, pretending not to notice.
When we got to Becca’s, I got out of the car before Matt could get around to it. But he still walked me to the door.
“Next time, you have to actually show me the flash card thing.”
“Next time?”
“I didn’t mean to presume … I just thought … ” His eyes widened in confusion. Probably no one ever said no to him. Except his mom.
“Kidding,” I said, tapping his shoulder.
He recovered and smiled broadly.
“I’ll meet you tomorrow. Same time, same place.”
He gave me a hug. He smelled like some cologne that none of the kids at Clinton wore. Hints of the woods and the ocean. He pulled away, and I realized I had closed my eyes to take in the scent.
I slipped inside the pool house and shut the door behind me. But the smell of the ocean—the smell of him—was still with me.
After I’d spilled every detail about my maybe date to Bonnie, I started to think about what Matt had told me about Lorelei. Then I took the scraps of fabric out of my bag and began to work on a new dress.
ELEVEN
The weird thing about fashion is that clothes are designed and sold a couple of seasons ahead. A spring line comes down the runway in the fall so that buyers and really rich people can see the clothes and decide what they want to buy. But Lorelei was designing a special “capsule” collection for teens, called L is for Lorelei. She wanted to launch with a rare summer showing. If the line were a success, it would become a regular part of Lorelei’s collection.
At the meeting to plan that launch, my job was to pass out lunches without spilling anything on anyone famous. “Then you can be wallpaper and listen in,” Jamie had told me, as though she were giving me the greatest gift ever.
And maybe it was a gift. By the second hour, the meeting was getting intense.
“We can do better than this, people!” Lorelei said, tapping her manicured nails against the glass desk. “I hear that Gwen Stefani will have a sushi conveyor belt for her launch. How do we compete with that?”
I tried to keep a straight face while stealing glances at Lorelei’s so very serious one.
Lorelei wanted to brainstorm about a bird theme. Each model would represent a different bird. She wanted to make a statement about girls and individuality in the face of bullying. The girls would wear wings. It was a little silly but also really fun. I never really thought about what my clothes meant—other than “cute” or “hot” or “fun.” But I guessed that what Lorelei was trying to do was say that the shows could mean something. They could be art.
Lorelei paused on Steffy Brown, a famous makeup artist, and then Jadin Snow, a rock star hairstylist. “Steffy. Jadin. Ideas. What does this event look like?”
Steffy held up a drawing of an eye-shadowed model wearing a peacock print. Lorelei shook her head. They went around the table again and again, but Lorelei’s reaction stayed the same. Nothing was quite good enough. I was glad I could stay safely in the background.
I had no idea what went into planning a fashion show. Lorelei had her hands on every detail, from the music to the design of the gift bags to the models’ nail polish.
After a while, Lorelei said, “Let’s move on. Jamie. What else? Where are we on a DJ?”
Jamie went over that and a half dozen other details, holding her tablet in one hand and sneaking peeks at Lorelei for approval.
Lorelei was decisive about everything. But she was also surprisingly open to suggestions. She seemed to want them—even if she had no problem saying a suggestion sucked. I liked her better by the end of the meeting. Not that I was any less clammed up by the time it finished. I wondered if you had to be that tough to get anywhere in the fashion business.
“It’s like planning a fifteen-minute prom,” I blurted to Jamie as we finally left the conference room. I was balancing a three-foot stack of binders. Jamie’s hands were completely free. She didn’t offer to help, not that I expected her to.
Although Jamie rarely spoke back, I’d decided to keep trying to have a conversation with her. When she did answer, it was usually because she thought I was wrong about something. Like the time after the meeting.
Jamie shook her head like I was hopeless. Her flawless hair didn’t move. “It’s more like planning a fifteen-minute TV commercial. You want it to feel like a party, but you also want them to go home and think about the clothes, and then go buy a little of that magic.”
What she said made sense. We were making clothes to sell them. Not just as a project for us. But as I looked at Lorelei stiletto her way down the hall, I felt sure it was more than that to her.
Once the day was finished, I sat down at one of the sewing machines in the workroom. Nobody had used the machines the entire time I’d been at the House of Lorelei Roy, so I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. Becca didn’t have a machine at her house, and I was actually ready to start sewing the dress I’d been designing. I could already sense that it was going to be the best dress I’d ever made. Lorelei was right—having the right fabric made all the difference.
After twenty minutes
of sewing, I leaned back in the chair and looked at my work. “Not bad,” I said to myself.
Just then, the door swung open.
TWELVE
Jamie stood in the doorway, looking at the dress and then at me.
“I knew it.” She said it like she had been expecting me to fail.
“I just saw all the fabric in the trash. I hated for it to go to waste.”
I reached for the dress, but Jamie was faster than me. She scooped it up and took a step away from me.
“It’s stealing. And I’m telling Lorelei.” She sounded like a ten-year-old ready to tattle, but I knew the situation was more serious than that.
“You were throwing it away,” I said. “It’s not like I was hurting anyone.”
My internship was over. My life was over.
“Tell it to security,” Jamie said, pulling her phone out of her pocket and unlocking it.
My first mug shot flashed before my eyes. Bonnie would be so disappointed. Gram would be so disappointed.
I gulped, swallowing a “please.” But “please” wouldn’t work on Jamie. “Please” would just be fuel for the fire. There was nothing I could do. Nothing I could say. Jamie had wanted me gone, and I’d given her the perfect weapon to get rid of me. I looked at the dress, still in her metallicnailed clutches. She was dialing her phone with the other hand.
And then things got really weird.
“Jamie!” boomed a voice from the hall. “Where are you?”
Lorelei.
Jamie smiled. Security had nothing on Lorelei.
“In the workroom,” Jamie answered.
Lorelei strode in, and Jamie didn’t waste a moment. “Our intern was stealing, Lorelei.”
She pointed at me, and my dress seemed to catch Lorelei’s eye. Jamie hissed something about me being a Dumpster-diving thief, but I could see Lorelei was only paying attention to the half-finished dress.
“Shut up for a second, Jamie,” Lorelei commanded. Lorelei looked into my eyes as though she was seeing me for the first time.
“You can rummage through my trash anytime you want,” Lorelei said. “But I’d much rather see what you can do with this.”
She turned around, picked up a piece of white lace, and handed it to me.
I took it, inhaling deeply.
“It’s for the new line. I want you to fit Madison.”
Lorelei turned on her heel and walked out. Jamie could only manage to say “But—!”
I waited until she huffed out behind Lorelei to let myself smile.
THIRTEEN
“This one is easy. Tensile means a) stressful, b) outdated, or c) stretchable.”
The day after Jamie found me in the workroom, Matt and I were sitting at Becca’s kitchen table, finally going over flash cards. Molly was at the other end of the table coloring in a coloring book. Matt looked at her like he’d rather be doing what she was doing.
“C.” He said.
“Right. That’s twenty out of twenty.”
He put up his hand for a fist bump.
After we ate some cupcakes—too many—to celebrate the perfect score, I walked Matt to the door, and he thanked me. I wondered if this was it. If he no longer had an excuse to hang out with me.
“I owe you one,” he said.
“No, you don’t. It was fun.”
“I always pay my debts. I’ll pick you up tomorrow. After work.”
Not good-bye after all.
FOURTEEN
When I stepped into the studio, Madison Belle was already there. She gave me a look that was somewhere between surprise and recognition. Did she remember warning me about Matt?
“I’m Thea. I’m supposed to help you with your fitting.”
I still couldn’t believe it. And neither could Jamie, who had been sulking all week. She had totally expected me to be carted off to juvie for using a few scraps of fabric. For a few minutes, I had expected the same thing.
“I’m Madison,” she said, as if anyone who ever opened a fashion magazine didn’t already know her name. “Call me Mad. My friends do.”
I had expected cell-phone-throwing diva behavior. Instead, she had just called me a friend. I laughed, a little nervously. Madison—Mad—seemed like a regular girl, but I couldn’t completely forget that I was talking to a supermodel.
Jamie had given me instructions for working with Madison. They were remarkably similar to those that she’d given to me about Lorelei. Don’t ask too many questions; be invisible. But Madison had started the conversation with me. It would be rude not to talk back.
“Um. Is it true you dated Justin Bieber?”
“Not true. But we have the same stylist. He gave me a lift on his private plane. Absolutely nothing happened except him talking about how awesome his current girlfriend was for like seven hours. It was nauseating.”
Madison’s stories were a lot different from mine. Losing a shoe on the runway in Milan. Going to sleep on a train in London on the way to a show and ending up in Liverpool. Supermodel problems.
I spotted Matt through the glass wall as Madison stepped down from the fitting podium. He waved at me, and I waved back.
Madison arched a perfectly tweezed eyebrow. “You didn’t.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.
“Just keep it on the DL. Or Lorelei will kill you.”
I wanted to hate Madison. But she was so different than I had expected. She was funny and nice and real, despite the fact that I was sewing her into a dress that cost more than Gram’s rent.
While I worked away, Madison told me all about her runway-walking roommates.
“Like America’s Top Model,” I said, “only no one gets kicked out every week.”
“Not exactly, but we do compete: Who books the most print? Who books the most runway? Who walks the best?. Who has the best billboard placement?” She wasn’t bragging. This was just her reality. Her supermodel reality.
There were downsides, though. “Once one of my roomies switched out all my clothes with smaller sizes,” Madison said. “I dieted for a week.”
“That doesn’t sound funny. It sounds mean,” I blurted out.
Madison’s face dropped as if I had given the wrong response. But my gut said I was right. The model house was playing its own twisted Hunger Games. “Why don’t you get your own place? They sound like monsters.”
She shrugged. “They’re my monsters. Five girls in the same apartment means regularly scheduled catfights. But I met these girls when I was fresh off the Greyhound. They know me and I know them. And in this town, that’s worth a few scratches.”
I nodded, thinking of Bonnie. “I have a friend like that back home.”
“Good for you. You’re lucky.” There was something a little sad about the way she said it.
FIFTEEN
“It’s reaping day,” Jamie said, almost smiling up at me. She was in an unusually good mood as I pushed the mail cart past her desk. I was in a good mood too. Something about Matt’s wave in front of Madison the day before.
Jamie probably expected me to be clueless, but Mad had told me what “reaping day” was. On reaping day, we picked the rest of the models for the L is for Lorelei launch. Madison was a lock as model-slash-muse. But the rest of the show hadn’t been booked yet.
Fifteen minutes later, we were standing at a long table in Lorelei’s private studio.
Jamie told me to take notes if I wanted. But my main job was to mark which girls were “yeses” and which were “nos.”
The models called the appointments “gosees.” Girls walked in at fifteen-minute intervals. They tried on a couple of dresses and walked the length of the conference room while we sat and passed judgment. Jamie led the girls in and out.
They all walked in wearing the same uniform of jeans, some kind of T-shirt, and hair pulled up in a high pony or blown off the face. Blank canvases for Lorelei to paint on.
The second the door slid shut, Lorelei made proclamations. And the other pe
ople at the long table sucked up, agreeing with her. It was a series of Goldilocks moments—too big, too small, etc. No model was just right!
Which was weird, because each girl that came in was prettier than the last.
“I like her, but I don’t know if she’s got the build for the teen line …” Lorelei paused. “She’s a no.”
But she’s a teenager, I thought. She’s sixteen. How can she not be right for it? But I kept my lips sealed shut.
When there was only one girl left, I sighed and glanced down at all the nos on my tablet. When I looked up, Lorelei was staring at me.
“Write this down: tell the agent that we love her, but we need to be sure that she stays true to the brand.”
Is that code for not gaining a pound? I wondered.
Lorelei stopped. “What is it, Thea?”
“I didn’t say anything.” I said, feeling the blood rush to my face. “I was just wondering … Is there a reason why we can’t have more girls who look like girls?”
Lorelei began to laugh. Jamie looked like she was going to die.
“We want to showcase the designs in the best possible light. I’m creating a moment of perfection. Any Lorelei Roy show is a moment of perfection.”
“But nobody’s perfect,” I said under my breath.
But Lorelei was looking into the doorway. “She is.”
Lorelei wasn’t wrong. The girl in the doorway looked like a young Naomi Campbell. Perfect skin and hair to her waist. She also had a body that owned the room like no one else had.
I looked down at the list again and put a check next to Brie Summers’s name.
Later that day, Madison pumped me for info about the day’s model massacre.
“They did pick one girl,” I reported. “Brie something?”
Her eyes lit up like she knew the name.
“Not Brie Summers,” Madison said.
“Yeah, do you know her?”
She nodded. “She’s one of my roommates.”