Material Girls (7 page)

She looked for Constantine. Her brother was in the middle of a breathless clump of sevens, his face stoic.
Please, GameTech or Arcadia,
she thought.
Or even Cathode. Come on.

“Good luck, Jayden!” a woman screamed from the bleachers. A chorus of shushes reprimanded her.

The clock turned 3:00.

For a few eternal seconds, nothing happened.

Then, about half the seventh-graders' Unums began humming and vibrating in the vast silence like a swarm of angry bees. Lighting up, they began flashing a pattern of green, purple, and pink. Unblinking, the seventh-graders stared at the small screens until . . .

A collective gasp, as the sevens received their industries.

A second, quieter gasp for the organizations. Ivy looked for Constantine, but a tall girl in front of him was blocking his face from view.

Finally, the seventh-graders' roles flashed on the screens.

Whoops of joy, wails of disappointment, tears, screams of “I
got
it!” filled the front of the arena. The seventh-graders battered into one another in their attempts to hug their friends and jump off chairs to run to their parents. Behind them, the sixth-graders watched the mayhem jealously. Celebrations in the bleachers exploded like fireworks as good news was passed upward.

But where was Constantine? Ivy searched the swarming mob for her brother. At last she saw him. Standing by the rail in front of the stage. Shaking his Unum, pressing its buttons.

It was neither humming nor flashing. Even from the stage, she could see that its screen was black.

Constantine looked up at her and began to cry silently.

While George stayed in the car with Constantine, Ivy and her mother ran into the house to pop the balloons that filled the kitchen. From the refrigerator, which was stuffed with celebratory dishes covered in foil, Christina withdrew a cake with
Congratulations Constantine!
scrawled on its surface in orange icing. She held it out to Ivy.

“Trash?” she asked. “It's a crushed walnut cake.”

“You made it, right?” Ivy asked, sticking a fork into a yellow balloon. “Just scrape off the writing.”

“After you—I never thought he would be an Adequate. Never,” her mother mumbled, extracting a butter knife from a kitchen drawer. “The poor thing. It's going to be fine, of course. Your father and I were Adequates and we did just fine.”

Ivy nodded.

“Don't talk about work, Evangeline,” Christina said, as she shaved off the top layer of frosting. “Not until he's in bed tonight.”

“Of course not. I'm not an idiot.” She took off her orbital hat and deposited it on the kitchen countertop. The green granite was a new addition, she noticed. Its quartz chips sparkled under the blinking lights.

By the time he entered the house, Constantine had stopped crying. He wanted to go straight to his room, but George insisted that he sit at the kitchen table with the family. As he pulled out his chair, Ivy quickly picked up one of the overlooked balloon skins at his feet and balled it in her fist.

Sitting next to Constantine, she listened as her parents talked about the disappointment they'd felt when they didn't get tapped by one of the creative industries. Her mother described not wanting to get out of bed for a week. “But even though it seems as if the world has ended, it hasn't,” Christina said, shaking her head firmly. “You can still carve out a respectable life. Look at me. Everything worked out. I fell in love and had two beautiful children.”

“You're a mother,” Constantine said after a pause. “It's different for girls. There's not as much . . . shame. Especially if you turn one of your kids into
Ivy Wilde
.”

Ivy wondered if she should say something in the silence that followed, but her mother spoke first. “Our fine president is an Adequate. And he is a man.”

“Right, like I want to be president. Fun. Bills and budgets. I hate math.” He groaned and rolled his head back. “Can I go now?”

“No.” Their father took over. He admitted to Constantine that the film industry's rejection still stung. This had always been obvious to Ivy; every time her family had gone to the movies, her father emerged looking a little dazed and sad. But he described how, slowly, chemical research became the thing he knew he was meant to do. Ivy remembered yawning at these speeches growing up; his work had sounded so boring, so pointless. As she listened to her father now, his work didn't sound any less boring. But she realized that, in a kind of twisted way, George was talking about chemistry the same way she talked—and thought—about performing.

“I know the Adequate industries don't pay as well, but you can live a full life,” George said. “A lot of my friends have found personal satisfaction as researchers, reporters, teachers, doctors—”

“George, face it.” Constantine exploded. “You sit in a lab all day doing feeble experiments that nobody cares about. I wanted to work on video games that
everyone
would play. It's completely different. And excuse me, a
reporter?
That'll be fun, writing about all the stuff going on in the creative industries. Maybe I can do an article on my sister, the star.” He laughed spitefully. “Or a teacher. That's the best. I'll watch class after class of sevens get tapped. Perfect.”

Before George could reply, Constantine stood up. “Eva, come look at my Tap page,” he demanded. “Maybe you can tell me what went wrong.”

Shrugging at her parents, Ivy followed him into the bedroom and watched as he turned on his Tabula. He got up from his desk chair and she sat down in it.

As an ominous chord played, the name
Constantine
Vassiliotis
swelled toward her on the screen. At the crescendo, the red letters burst into pieces and crumbled away, revealing Constantine's Tap homepage. She navigated around it. He'd had 1,158 hits, which was a better than average number. But only about half had rated him a “Trendsetter” or above. There were the usual stills of the video game characters he liked, with blurbs about what her brother thought made them and their weapons appealing, powerful, cutting-edge. She watched his videos, most of which were unrelenting montages of explosions from recent games. He'd picked good ones, and set them to great music, but . . .

“Where's your original content?” she asked, clicking through his files. “Did you come up with new game ideas?”

Constantine shrugged. He lay on the bottom bed of his bunk, his legs crossed on the comforter, combat boots still on his feet. “Didn't think I needed them. I sorta ran out of time.”

Ran out of time? This was Tap. Nobody did any homework in seventh grade; even the teachers basically understood that the first half of the year was for creating Tap pages. Some of Ivy's teachers had even let her work on hers during class.

“Will spent months animating original stuff last year and he got overlooked,” Constantine said. “So I didn't bother. I wanted to be on GameTech's court eventually, anyway. Judging.” He punched the wall. “I can't
believe
I'm an Adequate.”

“But . . .” Ivy bit her tongue. Calling her brother lazy, saying he hadn't done enough, wouldn't help anything. “You're right,” she said, nodding. “It's completely unfair. Your site rocks. I'm sorry.”

Constantine snorted. “I can't believe I have to go to school on Monday. I'd rather die.”

“Don't say that. You know George and Christina will be on watch for the next month.”

Constantine rolled his eyes. “You're the one with Skip McBrody's career. Make sure
you
don't have a little”—he put two fingers to his temple and flicked his thumb—“
accident.
”

Ivy frowned. Since she'd been tapped, no one in her family had ever mentioned Skip's suicide directly. “Thanks, Constantine. That's kind of sick, you know.”

The two sat in silence. “So . . . do you want to talk about the Tap some more?” Ivy asked at last.

“No offense, Eva, but I can't really talk to you about it. You have no idea how it feels.”

She looked at his face, the dull eyes, the nostrils still faintly pink. “You're right,” she said. She reached into her pocket for her placidophilus tin and shook it. It was full. She removed a single pill, put it in her pocket, and stuck the tin in the top drawer of his desk, closing it softly. “Those will help.”

Constantine stared at the drawer. “Thanks,” he whispered. “Go tell everyone I'm fine. Good luck with the album release.” He grabbed a comic book from his nightstand. “Maybe I'll write an article about you someday.”

Ivy walked out, leaving the door to her brother's room open.

I was getting used
to life in the basement.

I was getting used to copying models out of magazines. I made some pathetic first attempts where my people looked like gingerbread men—these I stuffed into my briefcase before anyone could see. But I kept at it, praying that my old technique would come back. After a few days, my people looked more lifelike and less like something Karen would bake for dessert.

Dido would look over my shoulder every so often. “Elongate the torso and the limbs. Here.” She would take my pencil and make some changes. “Your designs will look more flattering.” I practiced willingly. It helped to concentrate on tiny tasks and not think about the grand dive my life had taken.

“Now work on close-ups of clothing,” Dido later advised me. “Sifters and selectors like when you include a detailed view as well as a garment on a body. Well, you remember.” I did.

I was getting used to the way a selector stepped out of the elevator every day around eleven a.m. and handed a stack of drawings to Godfrey. He ruffled through them and handed them off to Winnie, who distributed them with a warm smile and a shoulder pat. My second day on the job, Randall had one of his sketches selected.

“Congratulations,” I said, looking at the drawing in his hand. It showed shoes whose high heels forked like the tail of a swallow. They were definitely original, but I wasn't sure I would have approved them as a judge. They didn't really fit into any of the major trends right now. Still, I liked their sleekness.

Randall didn't smile as he stood up. “I never get my hopes up,” he said. He left to visit Garment Construction on the second floor and oversee the building of his shoe.

When he returned to the basement two days later, he sat down and shook his head sadly. “Sorry,” I mumbled at him, and gnawed the inside of my cheek. I'd rejected designs all the time as a judge. I'd felt sympathy for drafters who'd had to leave the room with rejections, but the truth was, I hadn't thought about them as much more than creators of flawed garments. I hadn't thought about them as people. I watched Randall grab a piece of paper and sigh as he began a fresh sketch.

I was getting used to dropping my signed, finished sketches into the gray bins and my day's pile of scratch paper into the green bins on the way to the elevator. Winnie told me that Torro sent its paper waste to a processing plant a few blocks away and bought back its own recycled reams. “Isn't it great to work for such an environmentally friendly company?” she chirruped.

I began to think it wasn't natural to be so perky all the time.

I was getting used to my mother kneading her forehead at dinner. Karen would describe her embarrassing encounters with the other mothers she'd run into that day, to whom she had been forced to reveal my current title at Torro-LeBlanc.

“And everyone asks why you just don't quit altogether. Emma quit Belladonna last year. She and Lorraine have started to look a little seedy, I'll give you that, but they're taking a cruise together this November. A mother-daughter trip. Doesn't that sound like fun?”

I stared at my plate of food and shrugged. “It's sort of fun to be drawing again,” I muttered. It was—I had to admit it. I had gotten into the habit of bringing a short pile of paper home each day in case I got an idea while I was sitting in front of the television after dinner. Sometimes the shows inspired me. I could build off the featured trends—add sleeves, or change a hem length, or create a purse that would match a dress some character was wearing. I rolled my eyes one night when I saw one of the Carlottas from
Clone Valley
stomp across the screen in Tess Peterson's yeti boots. That was one trend I wouldn't touch.

“That's the spirit, honey,” said my father heartily. Karen shot him a chilly stare. It was in moments like these that I really, really wished my parents had been able to have more than one child. From his nervous budgeting at the kitchen table these days, Walter probably wished the same thing. I felt bad for him—and for my mother. But I didn't see how quitting could help anything.

Fortunately, I had Braxton. He had been totally decent through the whole debacle. The day after I'd been demoted, he bought me the sweetest teddy bear with a satin bow. Although Sabrina no longer joined us, we still rode into work together almost every day. On weekends, we vegged at his place—him playing Larceny IX and me sketching clothes while we ate his mom's latest seven-layer-dip experiment. Braxton told me he'd support me if I stayed on as a drafter or if I quit, either way. It was hard, though, to hear him talk about the court battles at Denominator. I missed my own battles with the Torro judges, even the ones that ended in defeat.

I couldn't get used to the nasty basement coffee, though. After I finished my latte from home each day, I got by without a refill.

It came as a huge surprise to me that Vivienne was the best artist among our little group. I was sure her sketches would be picked frequently—if she actually sketched clothing. Half the time she drew random objects, or did a portrait of someone at the table. Sometimes she didn't draw but filled her paper with words. Her writing was so cramped and she hunched over the sheet so secretively that I never saw what she wrote.