Bead-Dazzled (4 page)

Five stops later, Emma got off at 34
^th
Street and 7
^th
Avenue. She slowed her pace as she walked north. The air smelled like pungent curried chicken from a nearby food cart. Emma loved it here in the Garment District. It was where the magic happened. Outside, the streets were crowded with double-parked trucks and handcarts. Ground-level stores sold ribbons and buttons and discounted cheap-looking clothes. But upstairs, high inside the century-old cavernous buildings, fashion came to life. Fabrics were designed and sent to dye houses. Materials from all over the world were bought and sold. Ideas were sketched in workrooms, draped then sewn into couture. Models were fitted in finery to be sent down runways. Fashion editors and department store buyers held meetings to decide what the world would be wearing a year from now.

She dodged the rolling racks that crowded the sidewalk of West 37
^th
Street. Her phone buzzed.

Where r u????? I am standing by your locker!

Emma cringed. She stopped outside the grey limestone building that housed Noah Rose’s wholesale lace business along with a pattern-maker, an umbrella company, and several fabric importers.

Totally my fault. @ Laceland,
Emma texted back.

U forgot me?

Never,
Emma assured Charlie.

Then what?

There was no way around it.
I 4got. Sorry!!!! Come up here. K?

Maybe I’m busy. Ever think of that?

C u later.
Emma knew Charlie would show. He always did. He hated to do homework in his small apartment where his mom gave singing lessons to overly dramatic actresses who dreamed of Broadway.

She took the rickety elevator up eleven floors then walked down the windowless hallway and into the reception area.

“Yes. Isaac already said he would look for more in the back.” Marjorie Kornbluth tapped her coral-polished nails against the reception desk and flipped through the latest issue of
People
as she spoke on the phone. “Honey, this is the third time you’ve called today. I’m going to need a coffee transfusion if you’re going to keep at it. Isaac knows what you need.” Marjorie gazed up through her false eyelashes and rolled her eyes at Emma. “Yes, yes, I will remind him. Thank you, too.”

She forcefully returned the phone’s receiver to the base and shook her head. “Does Reena really think under-ordering is the same as having a lace crisis?” Her silvery-blond hair stayed put, shellacked into place by decades of hairspray. “No one has patience anymore.”

“Reena’s company makes curtains, right?” Emma asked. “A curtain without lace is like Mary-Kate without Ashley.”

“Like Dolce without Gabbana,” Marjorie played along.

“Like Tim Gunn without Heidi Klum.”

“That doesn’t work.” Marjorie waved her hand. “Not a fashion design team.”

“Should I go find Isaac?” Emma asked. Isaac Munoz was the warehouse manager.

“He’s at lunch.” Marjorie flipped another page of the magazine. She’d been in the fashion business for nearly fifty years. Extinction of the silkworm or contamination of the world’s cotton crop were the only disasters deemed worthy of her crisis control. “So’s your dad. Quiet day today, except for Reena. Go be Allegra.”

“Thanks! You are the truly the Ruler of Ruffles.”

Marjorie was completely in on her Allegra secret.

When Emma first started designing as Allegra, Marjorie had shocked then saved her with her own secret. Who knew that her dad’s cranky seventy-year-old receptionist was a sewing whiz and had tailored clothes for years at Bergdorf’s? Emma had been in the midst of a meltdown at the machine, and Marjorie had magically appeared and stitched the fabric—and her fraying nerves—back together. From then on, Marjorie had been her sewing fairy godmother—The Queen of Seams, The Ruler of Running Stitches, The Princess of Pleats. Emma thought up a new name each week.

Emma wound her way through the warehouse toward the far back corner to her design studio.

Okay, it wasn’t really a studio. It wasn’t even a room, because technically a room needed four walls and her corner only had two. But the area had everything she needed: a large worktable for measuring and cutting fabric, three dress forms she’d scavenged off the street to drape and shape her designs, her enormous inspiration board filled with swatches, clippings, and photographs, and, most of all, her trusty Singer sewing machine. The old machine had been Grandma Grace’s before she moved to Florida. Every Allegra Biscotti piece had been crafted by its needle.

Her phone buzzed again as she perched on one of the wooden stools by the table.

U r not gonna believe this!
Holly texted.

First Charlie then Holly. What was up?

????
Emma texted back.

Got home & mom checking email & I peeked @ screen. Look @ link!
Emma waited while the site uploaded onto her phone.

The Save the Earth home page appeared. Lots of blues and greens and logo of a spinning globe. The first paragraph was their mission statement, explaining why conservation was vitally important. Holly can’t really want me to read this, Emma thought. Then she spotted the box on the left side of the page. The heading:
Goin’ Green Update!
flashed in an animated font. Underneath were the words:
New Designers Added.
She scanned the list of names.
C. Leveille
—Emma had done the holiday pop-up shop with her. She worked with retro Southern floral fabrics designed in a very sleek, almost severe, way.
Remini & Young
—Emma had no idea who they were.
Allegra Biscotti.

Allegra Biscotti.

Emma stared at the page.

Her hand shook slightly as she pressed Refresh. There must be something wrong with the page. Or her eyes.

The site appeared.

Allegra Biscotti was still on the list.

She
was on the list!

She thought back to New Year’s Eve last week. Sure, she had wished for it, but really, it had been more of a self-motivating speech—an if-you-work-hard-this-will-happen deal. She’d never expected the fashion gods to perform so fast.

Is this a joke?
Emma texted.

No.

Do not mess w/ me! R u sure?

Totally! Swear on Coco!

Emma bit her lip. Swearing on Coco Chanel was their secret way of saying they were being 100% honest. Coco Chanel was Emma’s fashion idol. Holly knew that you didn’t mess with Coco.

“I need a Hazmat suit to get through that cloud of toxic perfume!” Charlie exclaimed. He tossed his bulging school bag by one of the dress forms. “Marjorie really has to lay off the scents.”

“It’s not so bad.” Emma associated the smell of Marjorie’s Shalimar perfume with Laceland. “I need you to see something.”

“No, first I need to tell you something. I’ve been trying all day—”

“My thing is more important.” Emma held out her phone.

“You’re wrong there.” Charlie refused to walk over. He crossed his arms and leaned against the filing cabinets that acted as a wall.

“Mine shows that there’s…” She still wasn’t sure what. “A higher power.”

“Mine shows the power of Charlie.” He titled his head, as if cueing a drum roll. “I got Allegra Biscotti on the list.”

“What list?’

“Allegra Biscotti is now listed as one of the designers at the—”

“Goin’ Green benefit,” Emma finished. She pushed the screen directly under his nose. “Holy sent me the link.”

“Way to shred a surprise.” Charlie pouted, but he couldn’t hold back his lopsided grin.

“So let me get this right. You got Allegra to be a part of the benefit?”

“Of course.” Charlie continued to grin proudly. “Who’d you think it was?”

“The fashion gods,” she admitted sheepishly.

“I told you I deserve to be worshipped,” he joked. Or at least, she thought he was joking.

“What happened?” Emma asked.

“See it turns out—”

“Wait, I’m dialing Holly and putting her on speaker. She needs to hear, too.”

“My mom’s friend, Trevor Menand, who’s the set designer for the new touring company of
Wicked,
was over on Sunday,” Charlie began again. “I overheard him telling my mom that he’s doing the décor for the benefit. Em, you may be good at spotting trends, but I can sniff out opportunity, especially when it’s sitting right in front of me.”

“So you asked him and he said yes?”

“As if it were that easy! No, Trevor passed me onto some woman who I had to smooth talk like you can’t believe. But I did it! I got Allegra onto the list of featured designers.”

Emma wrapped her arms around Charlie. “You are the best! Absolutely the best! Totally amazing!”

“True, true.” He pulled away. “Just so you know, Allegra Biscotti is in the way back corner. A real minor spot.”

“Who cares? Allegra Biscotti is part of it all. She’s listed with C. Leveille and Glipin Faust and Sebastian Crile!”

“Not sure who those all are, but I’m guessing from your jumping they’re cool designers.” Charlie perched on the stool. “The deal is that all the money you take from orders that night goes directly to the Save the Earth Fund.”

“I’m good with that. I believe in what they do.” Emma’s mind was spinning. “I can show some of the dresses I used in the pop-up shop and maybe even the Tahitian Sunset collection I did for
Madison
.”

“Yeah, well…no. You have to show original clothes that fit in with their Goin’ Green theme,” Charlie explained

“I need to design and sew all new outfits?” Emma felt her heart beat quicken. “And this benefit’s on February seventh? That’s in less than five weeks!”

“You can do it, Em. You love a challenge,” Holly called through the phone’s speaker.

That was true. She’d had to work fast on all her other Allegra designs and they came out great. “Okay, and I can get Francesca to work the booth at the benefit, you know, be the representative for Allegra Biscotti. Everyone loves her Italian accent.”

“About that, there’s one more thing. A wee bit of info.” Charlie shrugged sheepishly. “Tiny, really.”

“How small?” Emma asked suspiciously.

“It’s all relative, isn’t it?” Charlie stalled.

Emma tapped the toe of her boots.

“The clothes need to be shown,” Charlie said quickly, as if saying it faster would ease the shock. “Each designer has to produce his or her own mini runway show.”

“What?” Emma shrieked.

“You know, a runway show. Where models wearing your clothes strut down a catwalk with music and visual effects.”

“I know what a runway show is.” Emma heard her voice squeak. “You expect me to mount a full original fashion show?
Me
?”

“Yeah. I promised you would. Or Allegra Biscotti would.”

Emma closed her eyes. What had Charlie gotten her into?

REUSE, RECYCLE

“T
here’s no way. No way,” Emma shook her head. “I can’t do a professional fashion show. You’ve got to back out of it.”

“Absolutely not!” Charlie cried. “Em, do you realize what I had to do to get you in? Think about it. I’m some teen kid. Okay, I’m an extraordinary one, but still, it wasn’t easy, even for me.”

“And you think doing a fashion show is easy?” Emma’s voice still sounded unnaturally high.

“I never said that.” Charlie placed both palms on the table and locked eyes with her. “You said you wanted this. Really wanted this. I made it happen. And not on my own. I had to show them pictures of your designs, tell them about all your successes so far. You did all that. You can’t chicken out now that it’s hard.”

“You like a challenge,” Holly reminded her through the speaker.

“I’d like it better if it were easy,” Emma said.

“Pretending to be a sophisticated high-couture fashion designer who is at least ten years older than you and comes from Italy is never going to be easy. Face it.” Charlie had no problem giving it to her straight. “But it is fun, right?”

“Right,” Emma agreed. “But what if this is too much too soon?”

“Then you fail. Allegra Biscotti goes bust. She moves to a villa in the Alps and is never heard from again and in five years, Emma Rose emerges as a fresh, never-before-seen designer.” Charlie had it all figured out. “If you fail, it’s still a win-win.”

“I’m not going to fail.” Emma hated that word.

“I’ll help,” Holly offered.

“Me, too. I can organize the whole thing,” Charlie said.

“We could pull this off,” she said hesitantly. Emma had never been to any of the high-profile Fashion Week shows, but she’d streamed them on her computer. She knew that, most of all, a fashion show hinged on the clothes coming down the runaway. That she could do. That’s what she wanted to do.

Charlie reached for a pen and a piece of scrap paper. “I’ll start a list. First up, Holls, can you find cool fashion shows on YouTube? I kind of need a visual, so I know what’s what.”

“You’ve
never
seen a fashion show?” Holly asked.

“Why would I?” Charlie asked.