I don’t know how long I laid on my favorite blanket, feeling miserable and hopeless, but Mom eventually came knocking. She settled on the end of my bed and I sat up to take my punishment like an adult.
It took her a while to start. “So tell me everything.”
“How much do you know?” I asked carefully.
“I want to hear everything,” she replied. “In your words, not from someone else.”
I took a deep breath and did just that. I started with the fashion design competition and how that brought Jane and I closer together. I told her about Every Girl Inc and what we were trying to achieve by making clothes for girls that weren’t models.
The only part I left out was the events of the current day and how all our profits were tied up in clothes that couldn’t even be used. I’d save that particular disappointment for another time.
Mom didn’t talk throughout it all. Which was the scariest thing out of everything.
“So that’s Every Girl Inc,” I finished. “Jane and I are totally committed to it. Which probably won’t count for anything if we’re investigated.”
Mom stared at her hands for a while before finally looking at me. “I’m proud of you, Truly.”
Wait… what?
“You are?”
She nodded. “For as long as you could talk you’ve wanted to be a fashion designer. I wish you’d waited until you were older, and I wish you had told me what you were doing, but it shows a great deal of determination and ambition in what you’ve done. Not many people would pursue their dream so… voraciously.”
“So you’re not angry?” Was that too much to hope for? After hearing her little speech, I was starting to feel a lot better.
“I’m angry.” And there went that idea. “But I’m more concerned about why you felt the need to hide this from me. Why did you do it, Truly?”
“I was going to tell you.”
“When? What were you waiting for?”
I felt the tears pool in my eyes. I guess while we were baring our souls, I might as well tell the truth. “I didn’t want to let you down if I failed. I was waiting for the business to be a huge success so you had a reason to be proud of me.”
Mom reached over and pulled me into a huge, all-consuming hug. It felt warm and safe there. “Honey, I’m always going to be proud of you. Just trying makes me proud. You could never let me down.”
Then the tears really started. Not just about finally coming clean and it being okay, but for everything else that had happened. For not being able to design anymore, for all the terrible, useless clothes we now had, for all the unfilled orders, and for the secret being out. It was all just one huge mess.
And I didn’t know how to fix it.
Okay, it was now time to panic.
I didn’t sleep at all that evening. I tossed and turned all night, only managing to tangle myself up in the sheets. The last thing I felt like doing was going to school. But I managed to get up, get dressed, and get out the door.
Jane wasn’t waiting for me at my locker. I caught a glimpse of her at her own and she gave me a wave, but it felt like something had changed. Like maybe we wouldn’t be friends anymore if we didn’t have Every Girl Inc. Holly had called her with the news so she knew about our secret being out.
Maybe we were done.
I think that thought hurt the most. I’d never had a friend like Jane before and maybe I wouldn’t again. That sucked. Like, majorly sucked.
“Hey, Truly,” Hayley said as she leaned against the locker beside mine, blocking my view of Jane.
“Hayles, hi.”
“I heard your little business is over. What a shame.” She rolled her eyes, not one trace of sympathy in her voice.
I eyed her suspiciously. “Where did you hear that?”
“It’s all over the news. They’re calling it the fraud of the year. Can you believe they found out?”
Slamming my locker closed, I wanted to storm off. But I wouldn’t give Hayley the satisfaction. “They were tipped off, apparently. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Hayley laughed and flipped her hair. I really wanted to cut that hair off. All of it. Right down to her scalp. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tee.”
It didn’t take half a university degree to work out who had spoken to the business council about us. So much for trusting my friends – or former friends – to hold onto my secret for me.
The bell interrupted my raging fury as I hurried to class. Perhaps some learning would distract me from my problems for a while.
Ha! As if.
I sat in English class while the teacher rattled on about something. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t listening much. As long as I didn’t get picked on to answer a question, I would survive the period.
There was, however, one thing hugely distracting. Chace sat diagonally across from me. I could only see the back of his head and a small part of his face, but it was enough to brighten my otherwise cloudy day.
He really was gorgeous. His ear was absolutely the right size, his nose perfectly pert, and when that cheek dimpled it was like a rainbow appeared in front of me.
Was it getting hot in here?
Before I realized what I was doing, my hand was drawing on my English notebook. One smooth line turned into a shirt – a man’s shirt. That article of clothing was then accompanied by a pair of trousers.
Oh my God. I was designing.
Completely oblivious to everything going on around me, I was totally immersed in the sketch. With a few tweaks, the man’s outfit turned into a woman’s. With a little tailoring, it would have looked perfect in our collection.
I flipped the page of my notebook quickly. I couldn’t control my hand. It was like the moment the floodgates opened, they didn’t want to be reeled in again.
Blouses, dresses, pants, skirts, shorts, jackets, they all flowed from my hand like they were trapped inside me all this time. I couldn’t stop.
Chace has been right, I did need a muse. I bet he never thought he would be that person.
I had just finished designing a new T-shirt when it hit me like a load of bricks.
I knew how to fix the clothes.
CHAPTER 10
There were twenty minutes left of class. That was far too long. My brilliant idea could not wait. My hand shot up in the air. “Uh, Mr. Hanson, I need to go to the nurse’s office. I’m about to throw up.”
He knew I was lying. We both knew it but we had to play the game anyway. He sighed. “Go then.”
Packing up my things, I left before he could change his mind. I was on a mission in the corridors. I hurried through the maze of classrooms to the science building. Jane was sitting in the front row of her Biology class – typical.
I waved at her through the doors but she didn’t see me. The time for being quiet was over. I knocked to get the teacher’s attention. “Sir, the principal has asked for Jane Davis to go to his office. Now. Like, immediately.”
I don’t think Jane’s teacher really believed me either. But he wasn’t going to call me out as a liar in front of the whole class. “Fine. Jane, you’d better go.”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure if Jane was actually going to come with me. She hesitated, staring at me like I had suddenly grown two heads.
Oh, come on, cutting class wasn’t a big deal. At least to me, anyway. It was probably a deadly sin for someone like Jane.
Finally, Jane started moving. She slowly packed away her things as her face flushed red with embarrassment. She probably wasn’t used to having the whole class staring at her. I, on the other hand, was quite used to it.
She joined me and I pulled her down the corridor for some privacy. “I know how to fix the clothes.”
“You pulled me out of class to tell me that? It couldn’t wait until lunchtime?” Jane was angry. Dammit, what was wrong with people lately?
“No, it couldn’t. We need to go to your house right now and fix the clothes. If we start now, we can fill th
e orders without anyone ever knowing how much we stuffed up.”
Doubt was written all over her. From the tightness in her jaw to the arms that twitched across her chest. “How? How can we fix them?”
“Will you just trust me? I have to show you.”
“We can’t leave school.”
Oh my God. It was giving me a headache just having the conversation. I pulled out my English book and showed her the sketches. “I can design again. Will you please just trust me?”
She took the book and flicked through the pages. Her eyes were growing wider with each turn. “These are fantastic. Did you really do these now?”
“Yep. So now, can we go? Clearly I’m not learning anything in class anyway.”
She grabbed my wrist and started pulling me along. “Let’s go. We’re wasting time.”
Wow. Jane cutting class. She really was desperate.
We snuck off the school grounds without anyone noticing. Jane drove like a manic nana all the way to her house. We didn’t need to sneak through her mansion, her staff wouldn’t report back to her parents.
Up in her room, I picked out a few of the ruined pieces of clothing and spread them out over Jane’s desk. Her eagle-eyes watched every one of my deliberate movements.
“Yeah, it’s going to work,” I muttered, more to myself than anyone else. I had worried it might have been all in my hopeful mind, but it wasn’t.
It would work and I would make sure of it.
“What’s going to work?” Jane asked, sighing. She still didn’t have much faith in me.
And I guess I really did need to explain.
“Okay, so this is what we’re going to do. Yes, they’re wrong and the sewing is stuffed. So what we do is make them all a size smaller. We can re-use the same material and cut off the ruined areas. By making them smaller, we’ll have enough material for the complete product without starting from scratch.”
Jane took the shirt I was examining and repeated what I just did. Looking at the clothes in a new light – with hope included – she could see the same alterations as I could. It wasn’t about starting over, it was about thinking outside of the box.
She finally set the shirt down again, ready to deliver her verdict. “That will work.”
Thank God for that.
“If you give me the patterns, I’ll cut them out while you sew,” I said. “Deal?”
“Deal.”
Jane pulled out all the patterns we needed and we got straight to work. If the orders weren’t posted first thing tomorrow morning, we would officially have failed to deliver them on time. We were only a brand new business, everything hinged on our reputation and we would never recover from disappointing our customers.
It was going to be a long night.
Nothing made us more determined than the thought of our business failing. It wouldn’t be just Every Girl Inc, but our futures too. I had to be a fashion designer, it was who I was, and I wasn’t ready to walk away from my dream yet.
Jane didn’t want to be a sewer for the rest of her life, but she did want to be a businesswoman. She relished in running Every Girl Inc as much as I enjoyed the designing. Unless the company became a successful multi-national conglomerate, she wouldn’t be ready to walk away either.
After six hours of cutting, piecing out the clothes, and packaging the final products, my fingers were sore and my body ached. Jane was still hunched over the sewing machine, running the fabric through the machine faster than I had ever seen before. I didn’t have to worry about her quality, I knew every piece would be perfect.
A soft tapping at the door broke our rhythm. Looking up for the first time in ages, the sun had already gone down. When was the last time we’d eaten? I really hoped our visitor came with food.
“Come in,” Jane said after glancing my way. She had forgotten there was an outside world that existed too.
Beau tentatively opened the door, peeking in. “Hey. Your butler said I could come up.”
“He’s not a butler,” Jane replied quickly, embarrassed about the reference. “He’s our housekeeper. What are you doing here?”
He took his chances and took a few more steps into the room, his eyes looking everywhere. I did the same thing when I first saw Jane’s room. It was mind-boggling huge – the size of an apartment in my building.
Beau settled next to the sewing machine, leaning on the table. “You guys disappeared from school this morning. I thought something might have happened, figured you might need some help. Sorry I couldn’t get here quicker.”
Jane and I exchanged a guilty glance because neither of us was going to confess the mess we were in. Especially not to Beau – he thought we knew what we were doing. I wasn’t planning on correcting him.
“We’re just filling the orders due tomorrow,” I said, considering my partner was currently a little tongue-tied. “You can help put together the packages, if you like.”
“Sure.” I showed Beau how to print off the mail labels and then triple check the order before bundling them up and sealing the parcel.
It wasn’t exactly rocket science.
As we settled into silence again and the only sound was the whirring of the sewing machine, I nudged Beau with my shoulder and pointedly looked at Jane. I was trying to give him the all clear to ask her out. Now was as good a time as any, especially when he was helping us out. Maybe she would agree just out of gratitude.
Beau shook his head so I kept on doing it. Each time, his eyes grew wide as fear gripped him.
Oh puh-lease.
“Hey Jane,” I started, earning myself another terrified look from the guy. “Beau wants to know whether you’ll go out on a date with him. He says he wants to take you to the movies and then grab something to eat afterwards. Or possibly the other way around. I think he’s a really nice guy and you’ll have fun. So, what do you think?”
I’m pretty sure Beau’s heart stopped beating right about then as he went into panic mode. Crimson crept up his neck and covered his face. Oh well, someone had to do it. Otherwise I would be putting up with his puppy dog eyes forever.
Jane didn’t turn around, she didn’t even stop sewing. “I think that would be okay.”
“Excellent. He will text you the details before Saturday,” I finished, staying cool about it.
Meanwhile, Beau almost had a meltdown. His smile was so wide as he mouthed “Thank you” that I knew I had done the right thing.
Later on, I would give him a good talking to about treating Jane like she deserved to be treated. I would end the talk with a threat to inflict some serious damage to him if he hurt her.
For now, we got back to work like nothing had changed. Except, I’m pretty sure both Beau and Jane worked a little happier. Truth be told, I did too.
Beau left about ten o’clock after his mother called threatening to come and drag him out if he didn’t get home immediately. It was at that time that I called my own mother and told her I was staying at Jane’s for the night. She seemed to believe me.
Jane and I continued to work. We didn’t finish everything until after two o’clock in the morning. We crashed on the couch, surrounded by parcels to post.
“That’s all of them, right?” I moaned.
She checked the orders list. “Yep. Every single one of them.”
“We did it.”
A slow smile spread across her face. “We certainly did.”
“We’re going to overcome every problem we have.” It wasn’t only a statement, but a promise too. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for Every Girl Inc.
Jane held up her fist, I bumped it. After everything, we slept with a well deserved rest.
It was my phone that woke me up. It was daylight and we were still sprawled on the couch. I fished around for my phone, still half-asleep.
“Hello?” I mumbled. I rubbed at my face, trying to wake up a little more so I could have a cohesive conversation if I needed to.
“Truly, there are a bunch of men in my apartment,” Holly said
, her voice way higher than it normally was.
“Why are you telling me this?” Her private life really should stay private.
“They’re from the business council. They are taking all our records. They’re going to close down Every Girl Inc. We’ve been charged with fashion fraud.”
That certainly woke me up.
Fashion Faux Pas
CHAPTER 1
According to my teachers, my mother, my school principal, and pretty much everyone else who knew me, I didn’t respect authority figures.
If you were to read my report card, it would say this several times over. It was kind of really true. I didn’t like being told what to do and I wasn’t afraid of telling the person where they could put their orders.
But not today.
My business partner, Jane, and I were called to appear before the fashion council. Holly, the woman pretending to own our business, was also summoned. We sat in a row across from the five council members who scowled at us at any chance they got.
If we were up against any other council in the world, I probably wouldn’t care. I would sit back, cross my arms, and set my face to an infuriating blank stare. Words would escape my lips that weren’t polite and I wouldn’t listen to anything they had to say.
But here? In front of the fashion council?
I was terrified.
There was nothing I wanted more in the world than to be a fashion designer. Jane and I were doing really well too with our business, Every Girl Inc. Until our big secret was discovered, anyway. Because we were only sixteen, Holly was pretending to be the designer while we worked in the background.
We were committing fashion fraud and we got caught.
End of story, really.
The five people – two men and three women – sitting across from us were going to decide our fate. If they closed us down, my record would always be marred. Nobody would want to hire me as a fashion designer if I was involved in such a scandal.
“Tell me what happened,” the man in the middle ordered.
I was sitting between Holly and Jane. Both wore looks akin to startled rabbits. I guessed it was up to me. “Jane and I wanted to start our own fashion business but we were too young. So Holly agreed to do it for us if we did all the work.”
Fashion Fraud Collection Page 14
