“It often does, yeah,” Maggie says. “Any more questions for me? More coffee?”
“More coffee would be great,” Jordi says, and I agree despite that I’m not sure I should add even more caffeine to my body chemistry right now. I’ve learned that—with all the Splenda and cream—I actually like coffee a lot.
“So, I know this is boring, but if you two want to get started alphabetizing the stack of vendor invoices, that would be great. I’m going to my office for a while to get through some emails, but please come and get me if anything confuses you.”
“Like the alphabet?” I ask.
Maggie laughs, thank god, because it’s another question I probably shouldn’t have asked.
“Well, hopefully you’ve both got the alphabet down,” she says. “I’ll see you at lunchtime, okay?”
Maggie disappears into the office at the very back of the room, and I turn to look at Jordi.
“‘Like the alphabet?’” Jordi says with a raised eyebrow.
I wait for her to mock me, but her serious expression morphs into something else. Before I know it, she’s laughing, and I don’t think it’s at me. I join in.
“How should we do this?” I pick up the pile of invoices. “Just split it in half?”
“Works for me.” She reaches out to take half the papers. We crowd two chairs against the desk and sort through the invoices. I know we’re literally just putting things in alphabetical order—basically a job that smart kindergarteners could do—but there’s something satisfying about taking piles of chaos and making them orderly.
“Some of these are old,” Jordi says. “I hope they’re paid.”
“She said she wasn’t good with details,” I say.
“Are you finished?” she asks me.
“Almost. I think you’re faster at the alphabet than I am.”
“Cool, I’ll add that to my college applications.”
“Best at the alphabet,” I say.
She pokes my arm with her finger. “Fastest, not best. Get your application facts right, Abby.”
“Oh, sorry,” I say. “Maybe I’m bad with details, too.”
“Well, you didn’t know my name,” Jordi says, but then she smiles again. And I realize that having Jordi’s smile focused on me feels pretty special, too.
CHAPTER 2
I haven’t been into fashion my whole life, which probably isn’t possible anyway. (It’s not as though there are fashionable babies, unless babies have fashionable parents.) As a little kid, I didn’t care about what I or anyone else wore.
But one magical day when I was eleven years old, Mom took my older sister Rachel and me to the Galleria to buy a present for Dad for Father’s Day. Obviously, the day was supposed to be about Dad, but then I spotted a bright floral dress in the window of a store, and I became immediately obsessed. Mom wouldn’t get it for me that day—I think to make a point about caring about other people—but a few weeks later, she surprised me with it anyway.
So unfortunately the whole thing probably taught me to beg for dresses I was in love with, not to care about other people more than myself. After all, I grew up to be someone who can’t even remember the names of people I go to school with.
Oh my god, maybe my epic love story is with clothes and fashion and that’s why I’m doomed to never kiss a real person.
No, that can’t actually be a thing.
Anyway, it wasn’t just that first dress; I kept finding clothes I loved. More dresses, sweaters, and boots to wear during L.A.’s brief winter—skirts, shoes, tights, and jeans that looked and felt great. No, I wasn’t in love with clothes, but maybe I was in love with how clothes made me feel. I was designing how other people saw me, and that felt powerful. I told anyone who’d listen that I’d work in fashion someday, doing anything I could to be part of it.
But then it happened. I was one of the last girls in our class to get my period, and when I did, it was like my body got swapped out with another one. Nothing fit. I was excited to have boobs, but everything else? I felt too big, and I literally was too big for my old clothes. I had no idea where to even look for new outfits—and I didn’t want to, really, the thought depressed me—and skulking around in baggy stuff made me feel ugly. My future in fashion felt more than over; it felt like it never even had existed as a possibility.
And of course, this just had to be around the same time I was figuring out that I didn’t dream about kissing the boyband members Maliah did because we had different tastes in music. Because all of a sudden, I was dreaming about kissing girls.
It was a weird year.
I started spending way more time on Tumblr. There it didn’t seem to matter that only recently I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I became obsessed with one particular plus size fashion Tumblr because the girl who ran it was just a little older than I was and put together the kinds of outfits I used to wear, back when I was pre-period and skinnier than Maliah.
The only problem was that the clothes were expensive. And most of them were only available online, and my parents said I was not mature enough to be trusted with their credit card, much less my own. I started printing out all my favorite looks and taking them shopping with me. It turned out that knowing where and how to look meant I didn’t have to spend a million dollars putting outfits together, even if I was too big for a lot of the stores I used to shop at.
And I felt like myself again. My style defined me again, not my size.
But I also felt sort of selfish. Maybe there were other girls like me, or
