By the time the final bell rang, Emma was beyond desperate to escape school and Holly and get to Laceland. She grasped the twenty-dollar bill her mom had slipped her in the hall for a cab. Even her mother knew the importance of an extra fifteen minutes today. Scrambling to shove the right notebooks in her bag at her locker, Emma checked her phone. A text from Paige—no surprise there.
Ms. B: Sending a messenger @ 5pm sharp 2 pick up 3 pieces from ur collection. Model fitting is @ 6. Pls confirm they’ll b ready. No margin 4 error. Ciao, PY
“No margin for error,” Emma repeated, as she sprinted out the front doors. Wonderful. The last twenty-four hours had been nothing but a study in mess-ups. Her vest was messed up, and now her friendship with Holly was completely messed up. She definitely did not want to add to that growing list.
If the messenger is coming at five o’clock, that only gives me a little more than two hours, she figured. She still needed to check everything—make sure all the loose threads were snipped off and every button was secure— and sew in the Allegra Biscotti labels that she had embroidered with hot-pink thread at home. Plus she had to steam out all of the wrinkles.
She knew she had to get creative and make that corset dress work, because there was no extra time to start over. What she was going to do, she still had no clear idea. Her fingers clenched into fists. This dress could end her dream. She tried to take deep breaths, to push away the suffocating stress so she could create.
Sitting in the backseat of the taxi that blessedly was zipping up Sixth Avenue despite the traffic, Emma psyched herself up. This was the final push. Paint splatters or no paint splatters, she would finish what she started and make it great. Emma typed quickly:
Ms. Young, Everything will be ready 4 pickup @ 5. Thanks, Allegra Biscotti
“How’s it going?” Charlie asked, poking his head into Emma’s studio a little while later.
Emma spritzed steam from the handheld steamer near Charlie’s face, blasting him with the warm, moist air.
“Not so good, huh?” He blocked his face from another blast of heat.
“Let’s be honest here, Charlie. I’m panicking, and I need to focus.” Emma turned her attention back to the high, dramatic collar of the dress. Charlie was great but just not now. She had turned Marjorie away earlier, too.
“I’m not even here. Ignore me.” He wandered around the room, eyeing each of Emma’s finished pieces.
“I will.” Emma inspected the zipper running along the back of the dress. She slowly moved it along its tiny tracks, double-checking its grip.
“I heard you and Holls had quite the scene in the hall today—”
“Not now.” Emma warned him. What had happened with Holly was too raw, too painful to analyze now. She needed to finish being Allegra first. Then at home quietly, when she was ready, she could figure out what had gone so horribly wrong between her and Holly.
After a couple of minutes Charlie said, “Hey, Em, does this lining go all the way around inside?”
She looked up. He was standing by her worktable, the paint-splattered vest in front of him. “Yeah, why?”
“I had an idea. Do you think you could, like, flip it inside out?”
Emma had turned her attention to the dress form now wearing the not-great-enough corset dress. While she still thought of the other dress forms as her “girls,” this one seemed more like the hanger-on girl. The girl who worked so hard to fit in with the others, yet everyone else could see that she just didn’t have that special something to jell with the group.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I mean, the lining is really cool. I actually always liked it better than the outside fabric. So I was thinking: what if you reversed it and made that the outside?”
Dropping the steamer on the table, Emma hurried over to Charlie’s side. She reached for the vest and gently flipped it inside out. She held it away from her body and studied it. It wasn’t how she’d originally pictured it at all… but it totally worked.
Now the gorgeous swirly silk lining was on the outside, and the gray silk-jersey fabric peeked out along the edges, as if it had been intended as a border all along. The slit pockets, which she and Marjorie had luckily taken such care to sew, still had their desired effect.
All she had to do was sew the buttons onto the new front, trim the pocket with bits of the gray fabric to counteract the softness of the lining, and add an Allegra Biscotti label to the new inside. No one would ever see the white paint splatters hidden inside.
A huge grin spread from ear to ear as she stripped the never-loved corset dress off the dress form and replaced it with the vest. She stepped back and eyed the three pieces of her original vision together. The printed vest still worked perfectly with the party dress and the structured coat. She raised her arms above her head in triumph.
“Yes! Yes! Charlie! You’re a genius!”
For once, Charlie was more modest than usual. “Yes, I am, but you’d probably planned on making it reversible the whole time.”
“No, I didn’t!” Emma laughed. “I didn’t! But who knows… maybe
She eyed the clock. She really had to hurry now to get those buttons on. When she grabbed the tin box off her worktable, she giggled.
“What?” Charlie asked.
Emma held up the box that once had contained biscotti cookies—the very same one that had given Emma the idea for Allegra’s last name just three weeks earlier—and shook it. The buttons clanked around inside.
“That has to be a good sign, right?”
“Definitely,” Charlie agreed.
He watched as she made the alterations and adjustments to the vest. As she snipped the final threads, he reached behind the filing cabinet and pulled out a large shopping bag. “Here you go.”
Inside were three canvas garment bags with the Allegra Biscotti logo that Emma had designed in the upper- left corner of each of them. Emma hugged them to her chest.
“I love them. They’re perfect.”
“I asked my mom for some of the garment bags she uses to protect her costumes from all those musicals and heat-sealed your logo onto them,” Charlie explained. “I thought they’d make everything look more professional and official. Much better than those lame dry-cleaner bags you were going to use.”
“Brilliant, as usual.” Emma smiled at her friend, and now her partner. “Thank you.”
A few minutes later, Marjorie stuck her head into Emma’s work space.
“Ready, honey? The messenger from
Her dad hurried in, too, not wanting to miss the big moment.
The sensationally cut, sparkly dress with a teasing slit showing a hint of watercolor silk; the fabulously dramatic charcoal jacquard overcoat with its brilliant-striped, pleated lining (and perfect box pleat!); and the dash- of-color vest with gray edges practically danced on their hangers, as if they, too, were eager for their big debut.
Emma zipped up the final bag and turned to Marjorie. “Ready as I’ll ever be!”
“I’ll take these up front for you, Ms. Biscotti,” Marjorie said. She lifted the three garment bags off the garment rack, whisking away Emma’s very first collection to face the scrutiny of fashion’s top editors.
Emma sunk down onto the stool, her whole body tingling. This was the most exciting, terrifying, satisfying, exhilarating, joyful, and proud moment of her entire life.
