The Allegra Biscotti Collection

by Olivia Bennett

  Emma flopped down on the chair, which was still warm from Marjorie’s body heat. She waited for the phone to start ringing, but not a single call came in. She was already bored. She could start her homework or…she could text Holly. Just to say hi. And to ask how things were going. Things like Jackson maybe.

  “Why is nothing right? Why?” Isaac Muñoz leaned over the side counter of the desk, waving several sheets of paper. “I need the originals of these purchase orders. Nothing is matching up. Nothing! The Chantilly lace is in the Shetland lace box.

  “Where’s Marjorie?” Isaac demanded when he finally noticed Emma, not Marjorie, sitting behind the desk. He was wearing tight jeans and an even tighter white tee.

  “In search of decent-tasting caffeine,” Emma explained calmly. Emma was used to Isaac’s hysterics. The warehouse manager only operated at one speed: overdrive. Ever since her dad had laid off staff and Isaac had had to do two or three other jobs on top of his original duties, he had been even more tightly wound than usual. But Isaac somehow managed to keep Laceland chugging along— almost single-handedly—so everyone just sort of dealt with his freak-outs.

  “Well, I need help. Now. You’re drafted. Let’s go, Rose Junior.”

  Emma pressed a button to forward the office phone directly to voice mail and followed Isaac back toward the freight elevator.

  “Isaac!” Emma gasped. “There must be a million boxes of lace here!”

  “Unloading boxes is good for your health,” Isaac said. “Makes you strong.” He rested his portable speaker on the windowsill and pressed play. The deep voice of a guy rapping in both Spanish and English against a funky electronic back-beat filled the air.

  With long, smooth movements, Isaac ran his X-Acto knife along the tape seams on the first box—lengthwise and then crosswise—and then moved on to the next one.

  “Grab the packing lists, and check to make sure everything we ordered is inside,” he instructed.

  Emma redid the elastic on her ponytail and pulled the sheet of paper from the box. “First up, amigo, organza lace.”

  Two hours and twenty-five boxes of lace later, Emma wound her way toward the back of the warehouse and around some tall filing cabinets her dad had used to create a wall. She slipped into her favorite place. Her design studio.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly as fancy as the word “studio” made it sound, but it was totally her space, and she loved it. A thrill ran up her spine every time she walked in. She turned on the huge industrial light above her high, extra-wide metal worktable, illuminating a half-dozen vintage cookie tins full of her tiny treasures—fabric flower pins, crushed velvet ribbons, metallic sequins, and buttons in every color of the rainbow in all different shapes she’d been collecting since she was a little girl—along with her beloved Faber Castell colored-pencil set and a small stack of new unlined sketch pads bound in colorful fabrics that she picked up all over the city, from quirky little shops in Chinatown to art-supply stores.

  Her eight-foot-high inspiration wall towered above the other side of the table. It was a much bigger version of the inside of her locker at school. The wall was plastered with magazine clippings—outrageously out-there editorial fashion spreads; printouts of her favorite pieces from the fashion shows in New York, Paris, Milan, and London that she had seen online; swatches of fabrics; sketches of designs she planned to make; and on-the-go snapshots of street fashion.

  Off to the side sat her most prized possession—an old Singer sewing machine. For Emma’s fourteenth birthday last spring, Grandma Grace, who had taught Emma everything she knew about sewing, surprised Emma by giving her granddaughter her beloved machine. It was still in its original console, which Emma loved because it meant the base of the sewing machine was flush with the table it sat in, giving her a flat surface to sew on. The Singer was so much better than the eBay bargain machine she’d been using for years. Emma promised to take good care of it and use it often.

  She perched on the rickety wood stool and looked next to the table at the three dress forms she had been lucky enough to salvage on 37th Street over the past few months. It would’ve taken her years to save up to buy just one new dress form since they cost five hundred dollars or more.

  Right now, all three were modeling dresses Emma had made with the juiciest accordion silk fabric she’d stumbled onto at a tiny Indian import shop on 36th Street. The colors had been so intense they practically screamed at her from the window, even though they were just draped in a heap over a folding chair. She bought bolts of deep, ripe raspberry; a rich pineapple yellow; and a tangy mango orange.

  For the dresses, she had kept the lines simple with flirty, uneven skirts that dipped and rose in different places. A halter top for the raspberry, a racer-back tank for the orange one. And she’d done a simple boat-neck tank for the yellow. She’d made wonderful, whimsical sashes out of the silk fabric scraps, woven together and tied in a casual way that made them look like flower petals.

  Emma stood and circled the dresses, eyeing them from various angles. She loved the way even the horrible fluorescent overhead light shimmered on the fabric. The halter and racer-back tops were great. But the boat neck felt a bit too tailored for the fabric. Emma picked up a tiny remnant of the orange accordion silk and twisted it into a flower. She held it around the neckline and then pinched the right shoulder of the dress, making it just a bit asymmetrical. She pinned the flower onto the gathered shoulder and stood back to examine the new line of it and the little spray of orange against the yellow.

  She tried to imagine how the dress would look when worn by someone—someone on a date, someone celebrating a happy occasion, someone confident and worldly. How would the dress look moving? Dancing? Twirling?

  When Emma finally hung a finished piece on the rolling rack against the back wall, it was no longer simply an item of clothing. It was the beginning of a story that would unfold when someone put it on for the very first time. A story that would change and grow each time the piece was worn. Oh the secrets, she thought, that clothes could tell!

  “That’s potent,” a guy’s voice said from behind her.

  Such a Charlie Calhoun word—potent. Emma turned and caught her friend eyeing her latest creation with almost as much attention as she gave her own work. “Do you really like it?”

  “Do I ever say anything I don’t mean?” Charlie didn’t wait for an answer. “I like the shape and the material. Those colors look really cool together. I like how the yellow one is uneven. Makes it edgier.”

  Emma couldn’t help but smile. She knew Charlie was always totally honest with her—for better or worse. He never played down his opinions, which she appreciated even when the Truth According to Charlie may not have been exactly what she wanted to hear or when she wanted to hear it.

  At Amber Vigeant’s twelfth birthday party, Charlie had told Emma—right in front of cute Mike Sheehan—that Emma had something gross hanging out of her nose. Beyond mortifying. And yes, Mike’s laughter, as she ran to find a tissue, rang in her ears for weeks, but Emma reasoned it was better than spending the night talking to Mike with boogers on display.

  Not all kids at Downtown Day shared her view about Charlie’s truth-telling. A lot of people thought Charlie was rude. But Holly and Emma liked that he was so bold. They usually found it funny.

  “What are you doing here?” Emma asked, as if she didn’t already know.

  “I don’t feel like going home yet.” Charlie was her only friend who ever visited her at Laceland. He actually liked it there, more than being at home with his kind of crazy mom who gave acting lessons in their tiny apartment when she wasn’t auditioning for parts in Broadway shows. Holly kept promising to come by but never did. Emma was beginning to realize a lace warehouse didn’t hold the same allure as shopping or seeing a movie with Ivana. Or being in the park with cute boys.

  Charlie pushed his blue-tinted sunglasses up onto his white-blond hair. He showed up in a new pair of shades every day—each one cooler than the last. He r
eached for the bolt of blackwatch plaid fabric on the table. “Making kilts next?”

  Emma shrugged. “Doubtful, but you never know. It was on the bargain rack at Allure Fabrics. You wouldn’t wear a kilt if I made you one, would you?”

  Charlie wiggled his blond eyebrows. “I might. I do have awesome legs.”

  She laughed. “I bet you do.”

  “Emma.” Her dad peered around the file-cabinet blockade and nodded in Charlie’s direction. He was as used to Charlie being around the warehouse as Emma was. “Charlie, I need to pull Emma away. She’s got to earn some of that money I’m paying her.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Emma protested. “I have definitely earned every penny today! I just spent two hours unpacking boxes with Isaac. And I have the lace lint all over me to prove it!”

  “True,” her father agreed, leaning his elbow on top of one of the filing cabinets. It was kind of funny that her dad sold delicate lace—people were always shocked by that when they first met him. He was so tall and broad that he looked like he belonged on a football field.

  “But, Cookie,” Noah said, using the nickname he had called Emma since before she could hold a pencil in her hand, “you’ll like this. Customers.” His green eyes twinkled.

  “Really? People? We never get people,” Emma joked, though she had to admit her curiosity was definitely piqued. For the most part, no one needed to come to Laceland. Her dad had sales reps who traveled to manufacturing companies, selling them the lace they used to trim thousands of identical dresses and tablecloths and whatnots.

  “I’ll hang here,” Charlie offered, his iPod headphones already in his ears.

  Emma followed Noah down the hall. “Who’s the customer?”

  “You’ll have to see for yourself. You’re in for quite a surprise.”

  Chapter 2

  So Tahitian Sunset

  Emma entered the well-lit but rarely used showroom, and her eyes immediately fixated on the unrolled bolt of lace on the glass display table. A light shone up from under the table, illuminating the exquisite petal-thin white design. The floral pattern was extremely detailed. This lace was gorgeous, so much nicer than any of the lace they usually had in the warehouse. It must be a special order, Emma thought, totally intrigued. It looks handmade and crazy expensive.

  “It’s so pretty!” Emma exclaimed, before realizing that there were two people in the room with their heads bent over the other side of the table.

  “It is, isn’t it? I told you to trust me, Paige. People will melt with envy when they see your dress. Complete and total meltdown,” gushed a short woman with caramel-colored skin, cropped black hair that grazed her jawline at a sharp angle, and cat’s-eye glasses. She wore a twill trench coat with silver metallic threads shot through it to give the material a subtle sheen. The nontraditional fabric was Emma’s tip-off that the coat must be a designer piece. She couldn’t help but wonder who had made it.

  The cat’s-eye-glasses woman nodded encouragingly at the woman circling the display table, who was intently analyzing the lace from every angle. That woman, Paige, was also striking but in a very different way. Tall and elegant, with peachy-pink skin and long, black hair twisted and pinned up in that perfect-yet-messy style that Emma could never get quite right with her hair even after a zillion tries.

  Paige bit her glossed mauve lip and finally let out a breath. “It’s good. The bodice will be amazing in this lace, right?”

  The petite woman nodded furiously. “One hundred percent. By the time I’m done with it, it’ll be perfect. To-die-for gorgeous. They’ll be tripping all over themselves to get a photograph of you in this dress.”

  Paige smiled slightly. “I just have to see it all myself. To be sure,” she explained to Emma and her dad.

  “Of course,” Noah agreed. “It’s your wedding. Most important dress of your life.”

  “Everyone thinks I’ve become a whacked-out, micromanaging bridezilla—even more of a perfectionist than usual, which is all very possible,” Paige confessed, smoothing the front of her slim-cut, gray knit minidress, which Emma thought was gasp-worthy. “But they’ll be positively vicious when I walk down the aisle. Everyone will want to find something wrong with my dress. You know they will, Lara.”

  “They’ll have to look elsewhere,” said the smaller woman, whom Emma now realized must be Paige’s wedding dress designer. “Your choices are spectacular. They always are.”

  “If they weren’t, Madison wouldn’t be the fashion bible, now would it?” Noah said, grinning warmly.

  Wait…what did Dad just say? Emma wondered. Why did he just bring up Madison? It had always been Emma’s favorite fashion magazine, because it was the only one that truly focused on designers and their clothes. No silly articles about preventing wrinkles and choosing vacation spots or throwing flawless dinner parties. Noah knew that his designing daughter totally loved Madison.

  “Oh, I’m late,” Paige suddenly announced, as her eyes darted to the wall clock above Noah’s head. “I’ve got to get back to the office. If anyone there knew I snuck out on personal business…” She grimaced, crossed her eyes, and made a slashing-of-her-neck motion with her forefinger. “Lara, can you figure out how they should get the lace to you? I desperately need to find a ladies’ room before I leave. It could take forever to get a cab at this hour.”

  “I’ll take care of that with Ms. Suarte,” Noah said. “This is Emma. She’ll show you where to go, Ms. Young.”

  Oh. My. God! Paige is Paige Young? She is the senior fashion editor at Madison! This was big. It was like a rock star appearing at a school chorus rehearsal. Or the President of the United States showing up at a student council meeting. And on top of that, Paige Young’s dress designer was Lara Suarte.

  Emma remembered reading an article in Madison about her. She had recently become the go-to wedding-dress designer for Hollywood celebrities. So not only was Emma in the presence of a real fashion designer for the very first time, but also she was about to lead one of the most influential up-and-coming fashion editors to the bathroom!

  “You okay, Em?” Noah asked, putting his large paw-hand on her shoulder.

  “I kind of have to go now, if you don’t mind,” Paige pleaded, shifting from one slender stiletto heel to the other. “I just had a ginormous latte.”

  “S-sure,” Emma stammered. She gestured for the fashion editor to follow her down Laceland’s long narrow hall to the bathroom, which was at the far end of the warehouse.

  The two walked in silence. The only sound was Paige’s heels clicking on the bare wooden floors. Emma could barely speak, so she pointed at the ladies’ room door and turned on the light for her, since the switch was inconveniently located outside the bathroom behind some shelves. Paige waved her thanks and shut the door behind her.

  Emma leaned against the wall to wait. She hadn’t said more than two words since Paige arrived. How can I get Paige to remember me? Emma wondered. I need to find something semi-intelligent to say before she’s gone, so I can make some kind of impression—as something other than the lint-covered girl who once walked her to the bathroom. But what?

  Emma knew that Paige Young could make or break a fashion career. And even though Emma had many years of school and training ahead of her, Paige could be editor-in-chief of Madison by the time she was ready to show her designs. She couldn’t let this moment pass her by. If only her brain would start working…

  They walked back to the showroom in silence. Emma felt her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity evaporating with every click of Paige Young’s stilettos. She ran through and rejected possibilities.

  I design clothes. Who cares?

  I want to be a fashion designer when I grow up. Could I sound any more like a pre-couture five-year-old?

  I love clothes. Duh. Who doesn’t?

  As they reached the reception area, Emma turned in an attempt to form words. She figured even a lame “nice meeting you” was better than being mute-girl. But Paige wasn’t there. She wasn’t any
where!

  Oh, no, Emma thought. I lost the fashion editor!

  Emma raced back down the hall and into the dim warehouse. She retraced her steps to the bathroom, but Paige was nowhere to be found. Emma looked over toward her work space. It was the only area in the back of the warehouse that was lit up. Could Paige have thought that’s where the showroom was? Emma wondered. She hurried around the filing-cabinet wall. There was Paige! Emma breathed a sigh of relief.

  Until she saw her standing by the three dress forms and staring at Emma’s three sorbet-colored dresses.

  Paige reached out and touched the fabric of each dress with a light, practiced touch.

  Emma’s heart began to pound so loudly she was almost positive that Paige could hear it. Charlie looked up and took off his headphones. Emma shot him a “please-keep-quiet” look. By some miracle, he seemed to get the message.

  “Love!” Paige exclaimed. “They’re so…Tahitian Sunset!”

  Had Paige Young just used the word “love” about Emma’s dresses?

  Before Emma knew what was happening, Paige whipped out her digital camera from her oversized black leather bag and started snapping away.

  “Who designed these dresses?” Paige asked without turning around.

  Uh-oh. Now what? Emma couldn’t tell her she was the designer. Paige would probably laugh, or worse, pat Emma on the head and give her some lukewarm encouragement. And Paige clearly was up on all the latest work by real designers—after all, that was her job—so if Emma told her the dresses were made by someone famous she would most likely know Emma was lying. Besides, how would Emma explain why these pieces were in the back corner of this random lace warehouse?