My evening gown project was going to be awesome. Epic. The best thing I’d ever created. I’d already sacrificed a movie night in the lounge to log more hours in the workroom.
Only right now, the gown was not cooperating. Or, more accurately, the satin nightmare clinging to the dress form attempting to call itself a gown was not at all cooperating.
“Arrrgh!” I stomped away from my work area after pricking myself yet again with a pin. This was why thimbles were invented. The little metal finger covers really did have a use beyond serving as a game piece in Monopoly.
Amy plopped down her tote full of scrap material on the worktable beside me. She squinted at the dress form I’d draped material over. “Is that ruching?”
I took in a breath. “Not intentional ruching.” The seam was supposed to lie flat, not all puckered like the horrible satin I’d bought oh-God-how-many-yards of tended toward. “I guess I’m better at picking out dresses online.”
She walked a lap around the dress form. “Do you do patterning at home? It could be you’re not used to draping yet. They’re very different methods of construction. May I?” She looked up and I nodded. She prodded the seam with her fingers, and then went for the seam ripper.
I gasped. “Wait!”
She held up her hands in surrender. “I’ll be gentle, I swear.” She then removed the stitches with delicate but swift dips beneath the threads.
I marveled at her work. Barely a pucker left in the fabric. “How did you do that?”
“Practice. Messing up is how you learn to sew the right way. Believe me, I’ve messed up enough to become practically expert. Here.” She handed me a case of different-size needles and a roll of sewing tape. “We can totally fix this.”
Amy demonstrated her fix, and after more ripped stitches, I reworked the seam. “You’re amazing, Amy. Amazing. Thank you.”
She stood back, surveying our work. “No problem. Now, for my own sewing drama.” She unrolled her design template across the table. “This sketch is for a costume I plan to wear at a con later this year. The character is from a video game. For my project, I need to go for inspiration, and not an exact replica. So I need to decide what to change, and what to maintain.” Notes on construction and materials used were listed in the margins.
I looked over the leather pants and structured jacket. There was a holster sketched for holding a crossbow, and cool detailing with pockets and seams. “Wow, this looks—” overly complicated, I wanted to say, but who needed a Debbie Downer. “Really cool,” I finished. “I’d wear those pants to school.”
“Oh, I plan to.” Amy grinned. “My theme is bringing costuming into the everyday. How we can use fantasy elements in real life.”
Impressive. My theme was … an elegant gown. At least the satin nightmare hung a little less grotesque on my dress form thanks to Amy’s help.
“Hey, why do you look discouraged?” She tucked her sketching pencil into her topknot.
Because this was hard. Sewing was hard. Designing was hard. Developing themes was hard.
I took a step back and then circled in again. I didn’t want to say those words out loud. I was here in New York for a reason. Back home in my bedroom when I ran up against a sewing challenge, what did I do? I searched YouTube for tutorials. This whole internship was a giant tutorial. I’d learned draping methods today, but it didn’t mean I was going to be awesome at it first shot.
“Have you constructed your piece in muslin first?”
I snapped out of my daze and looked back at Amy. “Good idea. I should practice on the plain fabric to get the base layer the way I want it.” I dug out more fabric from my bin and set to work. “Thanks. This whole collaborating thing is pretty helpful.”
Laughing voices broke our concentration a few minutes later. Two girls wearing sundresses walked in. They stopped when they saw Amy and me.
“You’ve been in here a lot.” The spiky-haired one walked directly to me and stood over my work. The thin strap of her dress revealed a tattoo of a sparrow on her shoulder. She sounded more curious than judgmental. She reached for my inspiration sketch. My muscles tensed. The gown wasn’t a secret, but I wasn’t a fan of grabby hands.
“Uh-huh.” I breathed out slowly as I cut the fabric along the chalk line. Amy’s machine whirred to life as she started the front-facing piece of her jacket.
“How’d you learn to do that?” The other girl asked. She wore enough eyeshadow to clear out a drugstore aisle.
“To sew?”
She nodded. Both girls looked at me with expectation.
“Uh, my abuela—my grandmother. I have her old sewing machine. Well, and I’m learning here.”
The spiky-haired girl pulled up a chair. “I’m Tess. I’m in the business block, but I really wish I was learning to sew. I feel kind of stupid being here and not knowing.”
Huh. Seeing Tess around in the student lounge, she seemed so confident. I figured she knew this stuff already.
The other sundress girl introduced herself as Avery. “I started doing makeup tutorials on YouTube when I was twelve. I’m obsessed. I want to start my own cosmetics line. Most people at school think that’s shallow, so I don’t really talk about it. Most of my real friends are from online.”
“She has three hundred thousand subscribers,” Tess said. “She’s the one who told me about the internship. So, can you tell me more about what you’re doing there?”
“Amy’s a lot better than I am,” I told her. “She had to pull my stitches. She asked if my satin was ruched and it totally wasn’t.” I laughed and realized Tess and Avery weren’t joining in. “You know, ruching? It looks all bunched up.”
Understanding crossed Tess’s expression. “Oh, right. I know the look, but not the name for it.”
While I worked, I pointed out anything noteworthy, and even if there wasn’t anything worth mentioning, either Tess or Avery came up with new questions to ask.
“You’re making me feel smart,” I joked as I stitched two pieces together. “My friend Maya always busts on me for staying home and sewing. When my abuelita comes home from the big house, she tells me my room looks like a fabric store blew up.”
Amy scooted a stool over to my worktable. “What’s a big house?”
I blinked. The Laurentis. I hadn’t explained my living situation to anyone here. Not even to Des. In fact, I’d made the comment the first day that my family employed a gardener from San Francisco, implying maybe I was the one who lived in a big house. Des hadn’t brought it up again, so maybe she’d forgotten.
“Um, just where she works,” I responded. “In a house—a big one—close to where we live.”
“That’s sweet how your parents let your grandma live with you. What does your dad do?” Avery asked.
“I live with my mom and grandma,” I answered. “Cool, Amy, that’s looking really good.” I pointed to the seams on her faux leather, hoping to change the subject.
Amy pushed her plastic-framed glasses on top of her head. “Your mom must have a really good job. You know, to afford private school.” She stopped. “Sorry, that’s none of my business.”
Right, because Amy believed I went to prep school and I’d never told her otherwise. It might seem weird if I let on we lived on another family’s property, in their employment. In my supposed boyfriend’s family’s employment. Back home, this never bothered me. It was the way we lived. Plenty of kids I knew from school had family in the service industry, and no one but Maya knew about my everlasting Ethan devotion.
“Child support, I bet,” Avery filled in. “My mom lives in a townhouse in SoHo and doesn’t pay a dime. Dad’s broke as a joke paying for us, but their split is his fault after he hooked up with my nanny.”
Everyone stared.
“Overshare? Sorry. Anyway, I get it.” She brushed aside her dark waves and returned to looking over my shoulder.
“We, uh, make a lot of sacrifices to keep me in a good school.” I coughed and focused on pinning the next section o
f muslin.
Tess glanced at the classroom clock. “Well, it’s been cool. We’re heading out for a while.”
We had only another ten minutes before we’d be kicked out of the workroom and sent to the dorms to sleep. I could only imagine where Tess and Avery would go off to in New York at this hour.
“They seem really nice,” Amy said after our two new buddies left. “Isn’t it amazing how we’re all sort of loners in our regular worlds, but we come here and we all seem to fit?”
“Yeah,” I said. I felt that way sometimes when I interacted with fashion fans on Instagram. We were each other’s people. I felt it even more here. After all, I didn’t wear Manolos, I just set high-contrast filters on pictures of them. The internship was all kids my age who were here to sharpen their talents. They wanted to create the next wave of fashion.
And I’d lied to them. I was lying to all of them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
While lying never got easier, avoiding topics that led to lying had. I became a pro at shifting conversations away from my family and home life or anything to do with relationships. I did this by focusing 190 percent on fashion design. In a pinch, dance movies. There was a dance movie scenario to solve every problem.
The internship scheduled us for a sightseeing harbor tour for Independence Day, giving us a day free from workshops. You’d think we were headed for fashion shoot. Everyone had on their version of summer: Des in an asymmetric top and fierce high-waisted shorts. The sundress girls in flowy layers and flower crowns, and Amy in a fitted red-, white-, and blue-striped jacket in the styling of a circus ringleader, with fancy piping on the lapels and tails that grazed against the back of her thighs. She paired this with blue fur boots, because, of course.
I wore my customary long skirt in the lightest material I owned with an I Heart NY Tshirt. I couldn’t resist.
Our group excitedly clambered aboard the boat, pausing to pose for selfies.
Dark blue reflected back from the water, different from Miami’s electric aqua waves. Crazy, in all this coastline, I didn’t see any beaches. No pale sand or palm trees. Only buildings and more buildings, sleek and tall mixed with old and brown, all of them crammed together taking up every inch of space. The view from the boat made the city feel more manageable. Like the steel and brick contained the chaos and packaged it up all pretty. If I’d stayed back in Miami, I would have missed this. Out on the water with the whole city on display, this was the moment I wanted to capture.
I took out my phone and snapped pictures of everyone’s outfits, since we looked so fab and all. Amy shaded her hand over her eyes to see the phone’s screen. “Amelia, you should post these to your fashion Instagram!”
Desiree peeked over her shoulder. “Which fashion Instagram?”
Amy whipped around, her mouth hanging open in an exaggerated gasp. “You haven’t seen Amelia’s account? Eleven thousand followers!”
“What?” Desiree’s attention snapped to me. I filled in the words she wasn’t saying: Why didn’t you tell me?
“It’s nothing.” I slipped my phone into the zip pocket of my new not-actually Kate Spade cross-body handbag. (In hindsight, it had seemed strange the guy selling purses in Times Square had also been taking falafel orders.)
“It’s not nothing!” Amy turned to Desiree. “I think Amelia should use her platform to show off her own designs. In fact, check this out.” She reversed her phone’s screen to face us. She took in a breath, holding it with pursed lips and an anxious expression.
My pulse raced. “Is that me?”
Her exhale burst out and ended in an excited squeal. “You’re today’s Insta post on my new style account! The first few pics I posted yesterday to build up a backlog. See—the NYFI sign, our sewing room, and you know, obligatory selfie. Then you! I love your skirt today.”
Before I could stop myself, I tapped the screen. Sure enough—she’d tagged me: RunwayGirl12. Now my account was referenced in her picture of me. My identity open for anyone to find.
I strained a smile and swiveled toward the boat’s railing. She’d meant well. She was trying to do me a favor. I squinted at the distant mint-green figure across the water—The Statue of Liberty. I could squish it between my fingers it was so far off.
Desiree joined me by the railing. She picked at the chipped red paint, a shade or two off from her nail polish. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. Amy’s picture of you is cute.”
She phrased her comment more like a question. Why would you be embarrassed? I wasn’t. It was more how Amy kept insisting I post about my own clothes, and my own life, and then had done it for me. Lots of style bloggers featured themselves with outfit of the day selfies (#ootd). That wasn’t me. In the same way I worked behind a machine making clothes, I worked at showcasing the best of fashion. I wasn’t the fashion myself.
And you hold other girls’ purses.
Okay, voice in my head. You are totally not welcome here.
Memories of Ethan’s prom pictures crept in like humidity rising from subway stairs. I rubbed at my arms, feeling phantom prickers.
Amy squeezed between Des and me at the railing. “You’re not mad, are you? About the picture? Please say you’re not mad.”
I didn’t want to argue. “It’s fine.”
For the rest of the harbor cruise, I couldn’t help thinking over why my mood had turned so sour after seeing Amy’s picture of me. No wonder nothing had happened with Ethan. Even back home, I hid in shadowed doorways and from behind my bedroom curtains. I was always around but not in full view. I was the unworn rack of samples at a fashion shoot. Backup dancer number seven behind the main cast. I made my life about blending, and it had worked. I’d blended too well. The closest I’d come to being with Ethan came in the form of lies to my friends.
After the boat tour, the group headed to Central Park to pick up lunch from a lineup of food trucks near the park.
“I’m going to need you to snap out of your funk,” Desiree said while we waited in line for gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches.
I also wanted to snap out of my funk. Who wanted to be in a funk besides Parliament-Funkadelic? (By far the funniest record Abuelita owned, which she broke out once a year during a closet-cleaning binge.)
As soon as we settled into a grassy area with our food, drinks, piles of napkins, and purses safely arranged around us, Des’s phone buzzed. Her eyes lit up at the sight of the screen. “It’s my boyfriend. We keep missing each other because of the time difference.” She hopped up and walked a few paces off for privacy.
I pulled out my own phone from the pocket in my purse. The words “Ethan Calling” were definitely not highlighted on the caller ID. Those words had never touched my phone’s screen.
I called Abuelita.
“Happy Fourth of July, Mila!” she answered on the second ring. “How is the big city today?”
I filled her in on draping techniques, amazing Thai food takeout, and my bruised fingertips from insufficient thimble usage. “How’s Mami? I’ve barely heard from her.”
“Aye, she was moping around when you first left. I told her to get out and do something. She hasn’t called you?”
“Mostly texts.” Wombat’s barking carried over in the background and someone called after him.
“Hello, Mr. Liam!” Abuelita said as if Liam were on my end of the phone instead of hers.
“Liam is back from his computers camp,” she explained. Then, muted voices. “Oh, I am sorry. It is called a tech camp.” She emphasized the consonants. More talking in the background. “Would you like to tell Amelia yourself? I don’t think I can explain.”
Silence followed. “Abuelita?” I held the phone away from my face, checking the screen to see whether the connection had dropped.
“Uh … ,” a flat male voice stated.
I smacked my hand to my forehead. Really? She actually, for real, put Liam on the phone? For the next few seconds I heard only static and light breathing.
“So uh, hey,” I s
aid. This had to be a first. I was talking to Liam Laurenti on the phone when I’d barely had anything to say to him in person, ever.
“Right,” Liam said, clearly being prodded by Abuelita. “The Tech Intensive. That’s where I went. Students came from all over the country to explore visionary technology.”
“Wow,” I said as Des returned and sat next to me.
Liam went on for another twenty seconds about modding games and syntax and coding. “Anyway, whatever. Hope you’re having a good summer.”
A good summer. That was the kind of thing people wrote in yearbooks when they didn’t have anything else to say. “You too,” I said to be polite, because dang it all, the Blanco family taught me manners.
“Who was that?” Des asked after I ended the call.
“Oh, just checking in with my abuela.” I drained the rest of my bottled water before reaching for my soda.
“Wasn’t that a guy’s voice? I thought I heard something about video games. Wait.” Her sandwich paused midair on the way to her mouth. She readjusted the crinkling paper wrapping to grasp the greasy cheese bread in one hand. “Was that Ethan? Are you two working things out?”
“Oh, um.” My brain sorted through options. Des thought Ethan and I were broken up, which was the best option. Fewer lies. If I said the call had been with Ethan, then she’d want to know what we talked about, and who called who. That led to more lies. How about the truth? “That was Ethan’s brother. His twin. You know, from the picture.”
“Hmm. Is he doing Ethan’s dirty work? Trying to talk you into getting back with his brother? That’s kinda low.” Des sipped her drink, shaking her head.
“Yeah, it was a little weird.” I reached for my own sandwich and took a big healthy bite. Full mouth, no lies, can’t lose.
Des tilted her head as though in thought. “Didn’t you say you called your grandmother? How’d your boyfriend’s brother get on the phone if you called her?”
I couldn’t chew forever. “It was because … of the pool. Ethan’s brother works as a pool boy on the side. I called her and he was there to fix the pool.”
Alterations Page 6