Bead-Dazzled

by Olivia Bennett

  “No photo. At least not now.” Emma sighed, exasperated.

  “When?” Francesca asked.

  “I don’t know when.” Couldn’t they understand that every mark of her pencil and every stitch of thread were tied to her?

  “E-mail the guy back,” Charlie instructed Francesca. “Say Ms. Biscotti is in someplace like Milan, so she’s not available for lunch. Apologize and all that. About the photo, well, push him off. Say you’re searching out a photo for him to use.” His pale eyes brightened. “We could pretend Allegra has a fear of being photographed.”

  “That’s a whole lot of pretending,” Emma replied. All of a sudden, the enormity of this fashion show and bringing Allegra out in front of so many influential people hit her. She felt like a little girl playing dress up in her mother’s heels. “How long can I really get away with being a secret, undercover fashion designer?”

  “If you play it right, a long time,” Charlie said confidently.

  Emma hoped she was playing it right. The rules to this game were getting a lot more complicated than she could’ve ever imagined.

  CHAPTER 6

  IN LIVING COLOR

  “Stop, Emma!” her mom cried on Saturday morning, pointing to the face of the Chinese diplomat.

  Emma had already slashed small triangles from his cheek with her scissors.

  “It’s old,” Emma explained, holding up the magazine. “From the recycling bin.”

  “Yeah okay, I read that one.” Joan Rose nodded at the magazine’s cover. She had a thing about reading her newspapers and magazine from cover to cover before Emma destroyed them. “That poor man was tortured for being a spy. Though it looks as if you’ve done a job of his face, too.”

  “This strip here”—Emma pointed to a triangle missing from his eyebrow down to his neck—“it has his dark pupil, his tan skin, and the burgundy of his tie. It’s going to make an awesome bead. Very Burberry-like.”

  Dotting the tip of the paper triangle with glue, Emma expertly wrapped it around a toothpick. She sealed the end then slid the colorful paper bead off the stick and onto the top of the pile growing beside her orange juice glass.

  “Whatcha making now?” Will slumped on the chair next to her. His mouth bulged with toast that he’d smeared with raspberry jelly.

  “Swallow much?” Emma rolled her eyes. Her little brother could be so gross.

  Will stuck out his tongue, giving her a clear view of his partially-chewed breakfast. Then he let the jelly dribble from the corner of his mouth. “I’m like a vampire,” he announced.

  “Gross! Mom!” Emma cried.

  “William, manners!” Her mom squinted through rectangular-frames of her glasses. They both knew that squint. That squint meant she was annoyed. That squint meant don’t push it.

  Her mom turned back to the batter she was stirring in a red ceramic bowl. She added cinnamon, took a taste then added more. Mom was on a muffin kick. Last week was blueberry-peach. Today’s had something to do with bananas.

  Will flicked one of her paper beads with his fingers, sending it sailing. It bounced off the refrigerator. “Goal!” he crowed. Grinning mischievously, he reached for another bead.

  “Stop it, brat!” Emma swatted his pudgy fingers. “I need that for my necklace.” Emma wore one stand of colorful paper beads around her neck. From a distance, their jewel tones made them look like expensive enamel cloisonné beads. She planned on making three more strands. Each strand would be slightly longer than the other. The four strands of colorful paper beads cascading down the front of a simple black sweater would look amazing.

  Will backed away from the bead pile. Instead, he spooned more jelly into his mouth then tried to squeeze it out through his teeth. A blob slid down his chin, landing on the front of his white Giants’ jersey.

  “Look what you did!” Her mom jabbed her wooden spoon toward the crimson spot.

  Emma wasn’t sure why her mom sounded so surprised. Will was forever staining his clothes with his meal. His shirts were tinted orange from tomato sauce, dotted with brown from chocolate ice cream, and streaked yellow from mustard. Long ago, Mom had learned to buy the white grape juice. Purple juice and Will was a fabric disaster.

  A fabric disaster! That’s what I need, Emma realized. She leaned closer, watching as the tiny threads of the white fabric absorbed the berries’ color. Perfect!

  She hurried to her bedroom and grabbed one of the swatches of rescued fabric from her night table.

  “Mom, do you think I could dye this fabric?” She waved the square of thick, white cotton.

  Her mom furrowed her brow, confused. She was the last person, besides Will, whom Emma sought for fashion advice. Her look was more Bohemian librarian. “Aren’t you always dying stuff with that toxic Rit dye?”

  “But that’s just it,” Emma said. “I want my whole collection to be eco-conscious and upcycled. I don’t want to go out and buy chemicals. I want to keep it natural. Like Will’s jelly stain. You know all about food and ingredients. There must be stuff from the kitchen I can use to dye fabric.”

  Mom finally put down her mixing bowl. “Definitely. Thousands of years ago, all dyes came from natural substances.” She began rummaging through the pantry. “We can whip up eco-friendly dyes right here.”

  “When the caveman sat on a berry bush, he made the first red loincloth,” Will offered.

  “You’re probably right,” Emma said, surprising her brother by agreeing with him. “Since people started wearing clothes, they’ve always looked for ways to make them prettier.”

  “Most dyes came from plants or animals,” Mom added.

  “Spices, too, right?” Emma thought about all the interesting effects she could create.

  “I vote you try red onion skins, beets, kale, and the spice turmeric.” Mom lined ingredients along the counter.

  “And raspberries!” Will called.

  “What about coffee?” Emma peered into her mom’s mug. The dark brown dregs had gathered at the bottom.

  “Worth a go,” Mom agreed. “You won’t know what colors you’ll achieve until you do some tests.” She pushed a section of her limp, brown hair behind her ear then turned her attention back to filling her muffin tins. “Did you know the Aztecs of Mexico taught the Spanish how to make red dye by crushing insects called cochineals?”

  “No, but for my Western Civ project I read that Cleopatra had to have 20,000 snails soaked for ten days to make just one ounce of purple dye for her royal clothing.”

  “I’m impressed.” Emma’s mom liked when she spouted facts from school. It probably gave her hope that her students were telling their parents the stuff she taught.

  “Awesome! Are you really going to crush bugs?” Will asked.

  “No way. Food stuff only.” Emma felt a surge of excitement. She could transform her fabric from water-stained drab to technicolor fab.

  She stood to examine the purple-red beets and the leafy green kale. She wasn’t a fan of either when they appeared on her plate. She held the swollen root of the beet to her nose. It smelled faintly of soil. The bitter kale looked like spinach. She rubbed its dark blue-green leaves against the square of white fabric.

  Nothing.

  How was she going to get the color from these whole, raw vegetables to seep into an entire bolt of fabric?

  Emma watched her Mom effortlessly spoon the batter into the muffin tins. No drips on the side. No licking of fingers. No spilled ingredients on the counter. Her mom was good in the kitchen. Emma could create a ball gown from a bed sheet, but she had no clue how to get juice from an orange, let alone squeeze color from the papery skins of an onion.

  “Mom,” Emma started hesitantly. “Are you busy today?”

  “Of course, I’m busy,” Mom snapped. “I have to do the laundry. Will, take off that shirt. I need to pre-treat it”—she called down the hall where Will had retreated to the video games in his bedroom—“then I have fifty essays on The Scarlet Letter to grade.”

  Okay, she’d g
one about that the wrong way.

  “Do you think you’d have time to help me figure out how to make natural dyes work?” Emma paused. Mom hadn’t ever been a big fan of her new fashion business. She complained it took Emma’s attention away from school. “I could start my homework now and wait until you’re ready.”

  Joan Rose raised her eyebrows beneath the green frames of her glasses. “Homework on a Saturday morning? You must really need my help.”

  “I do. If that’s okay.”

  Her mom surveyed the ingredients on the counter. “This could be fun. You and me.” She tried to disguise her interest, but Emma knew she had her hooked. Mom loved the kitchen and anything educational, and she’d never been asked by Emma to help with Allegra. Fashion, or at least the business side, was the bond that connected Emma and her Dad. Not her mom.

  “You and me and Charlie, too.” Emma said. “Okay?”

  Her mom quickly agreed. Emma called Charlie and pleaded with him to swing by Laceland. Her dad was in the office catching up on filing—and trading in kale for Kit-Kats. He’d let Charlie in, cut several yards of the salvaged fabrics, and pay for a taxi to her apartment.

  Emma helped scrub the kitchen, so the remains from breakfast didn’t end up on the runway. She left her mom in a flurry of research on her laptop. In the time it’d take Emma to throw on sweats and an old T-shirt from a school field day, her mom would know everything about kitchen-to-couture dying.

  Emma’s phone buzzed from the pile of patchwork pillows piled on her bed that she’d sewn from her favorite too-small T-shirts. The first text was from Jackson: Movie tonite?

  A minute later, Holly texted: Clayton & Jackson goin 2 movie. Asked me!!!! And u!!!!

  When Emma hadn’t answered, Holly had added: We need 2 go! Please!!!!! Say YES!!!!

  Four more texts followed from Holly, all searching for a response. Emma grinned. Holly had been crushing on Clayton for months now, but since that one time they’d all gone to pizza and the movies together, Clayton hadn’t really texted or talked to her. Holly was convinced that Clayton wasn’t into her, that Clayton had asked her as a favor to Jackson.

  Emma wondered who cooked this second movie up. Did Jackson strong-arm Clayton into it—or did Clayton like Holly?

  Yes, Emma texted to both Jackson and Holly. She didn’t care why. She wanted to see Jackson. Sit next to him in the dark movie theater. Share popcorn. Hold hands. He was so much taller than she was—his hand would totally cover hers. She knew he’d have warm hands. Not sweaty, just warm and confident….

  “Delivery!” Charlie’s raspy voice interrupted her daydream.

  “In the kitchen!” her mother called down the hall to the front door.

  “That’s what you chose to wear to die fabric?” Emma burst into laughter when she saw Charlie in their small kitchen.

  Charlie looked down at his tan skinny cords and worn, white Oxford cloth shirt. “What of it?”

  “Think of this like finger painting.” Emma pointed to the food piled on the counter. “Or a food fight. Your nice, clean clothing won’t look like that for long.”

  “Ah, you still don’t get me. I observe, organize, and supervise. I do not get dirty.” Charlie moved closer to the stove. “What’s cooking, Mrs. R?” Every burner had a pot of water boiling on it. He watched as she poured salt into two and white vinegar into the others.

  “In order for the natural dyes to adhere to the fabric, we need a fixative,” she explained.

  “What’s that?” Emma asked.

  “A fixative opens up the fabric and allows the color to soak in. It makes the color permanent, so it won’t wash out. Salt is a fixative for berry dyes. Vinegar works for plant dyes.” She handed Emma elbow-high rubber dishwashing gloves. “We’ll do tests to see what colors hold best.”

  Emma cut squares of the fabric and handed them to her mom, who dropped one in each pot. “They need to simmer for an hour to absorb the fixative.”

  While the fabric cooked, they chopped onion skins and kale, ground coffee beans, smashed berries, and diced and boiled beets. Charlie perched on a stool by the counter, ate one of her mom’s muffins, and told bad jokes. After wringing out the fabric and rinsing it under cold water, they boiled each ingredient in a pot with fresh water and added the fabric square.

  “I see color!” Emma peered into the pot of bubbling beets. “Yummy pink.”

  “The longer you soak the fabric,” Mom said, “the darker the color. Turmeric will give you a blazing gold if we leave it overnight or a bright sunflower shade if we take it out in an hour.” She held up the canister of the yellow spice she used when she made Emma’s favorite—Palak Paneer—a creamy spinach dish.

  “I know raspberries go pink, but what about the others?” Charlie asked.

  “My guess is that the beets, given the chance, will turn the fabric a pretty deep red. The kale should be a moss green; the red onion skins will be a muddy brown; and the coffee could go soft beige or a little brown.”

  “I could wrap the fabric with twine for a tie-dye effect. Maybe I could even paint on the color? Brushstrokes could add a sense of movement to the fabric.” Emma reached into her schoolbag, still on the kitchen floor where she’d dumped it yesterday after school, and pulled out a metal box of her favorite color pencils. Sixty-four shades. On a clean sheet in her sketchbook she played with color.

  Raspberry and deep red. Mossy green and turmeric gold. Shades of brown from deep and earthy to pale sand.

  She heard Charlie and her mom chatter about some new off-Broadway play, but she stopped making sense of their words. Charlie was so much better at talking with her mom about cultural stuff than she was—not that she really tried. The hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the kitschy Swiss cuckoo clock her aunt had given them went silent. She listened to the colors. Let them talk to her.

  The right colors, the right shades and hues, when combined in certain ways spoke to her. It was musical, almost. A melody formed when the tones were just right. A clanging when they felt disjointed. If she concentrated hard enough, Emma could hear color. Understand how the pigments best fit together to tell a story.

  Soon she had her palette. She knew the shade of red she wanted from the beets, the earthy green, and the sparkle of yellow from the turmeric, along with the soft complement of buff from the coffee grinds.

  “Em, your phone won’t shut up.” Charlie lifted it from where she’d left it on the table. “It’s Holly. She wants to come over.”

  “Tell her yes and stop reading my texts.” Emma poked the fabric swimming in the simmering coffee mixture with a spoon, eyeing the barely-there brown color.

  Charlie ignored her. He always treated her phone like an extension of his own. “What’s this about movies tonight?”

  “God, you’re nosy! I’m going with Holly.” Emma turned to her mom. “Is that okay?”

  “Fine. Will is sleeping over at Henry’s. Your Dad and I are going out for an early dinner with the Peckmans.” She glanced at Aunt Melissa’s clock. “Wow, it’s late. You’re going to the theater right by here?”

  Emma wasn’t sure where they were going. “Definitely.” She’d have to talk to Holly about that.

  “I need to take a shower and grade some papers. Lunch has come and gone but grab something, okay? Are you fine finishing up here?”

  “Totally fine.” She thanked her mom for her help. “When Holly comes over, can we use the tub to dye the big sheets of fabric? I’ll lay something on the floor and scrub everything after.”

  “Just keep it clean,” her mom warned. “There are also some plastic storage bins in the front closet. You can empty and use them.”

  “I see Boy Wonder is going, too,” Charlie said once her mom left the kitchen. “Are you and Jackson like a thing?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. We aren’t a thing. We’re going to the movies. With Holly and Clayton. You should come, too,” Emma insisted.

  “Oh, right. Like I’d fit in. They’ll be talking sports stat
s and three-point shots and I’ll be debating the director’s camera angle and the title sequence graphics. It’ll never work.” Charlie continued to scroll through her messages. “It’ll never work for you either. You two don’t fit.”

  “You don’t even know Jackson.” Emma reached for her phone.

  “I’ve seen him enough at school. Believe me. I’ve got his timeline down.”

  “I bet you didn’t know he has an artsy side. He draws.” Was she not supposed to tell Charlie about Jackson’s art? He kept it secret from his sporty friends, but Charlie was different. “Comic stuff. Oh, don’t give me that superior look. He’s good. He’s much deeper than Clayton and those other guys.”

  “So he uses a fork when he eats?”

  “Give it a rest.” Emma sighed. Most of the time, she found Charlie’s condescending attitude amusing. Not today. He didn’t have many friends at Downtown Day. He liked to think he was more sophisticated and above them all, but Emma saw that he didn’t try. She was trying. Or at least she was trying with Jackson. “I like him, so you should, too.”

  “That’s how it works? Like a math problem. If A equals B and A equals C, then B equals C?”

  “Exactly! Come to the movies. Be friends with Jackson.” She noted Charlie’s grimace. “At least try. For me.”

  “Em, I’m here on a Saturday soaking fabric in beets—for you. Don’t push your luck.” Charlie grabbed the pile of folded fabric. “You get the pots. Time for a bath.”

  Holly appeared just as they’d filled the tub with the shocking-red beet juice. Emma had strained the chunks from the liquid before transferring it—she didn’t want globs of the vegetable attached to her cloth.

  “What’s with the big duffle?” Emma asked. “You sleeping over?”

  “Or staying for the month?” Charlie added, eying her oversized paisley-print bag.

  “Options,” Holly explained. “I need the right outfit for the movies. I pretty much brought my whole closet.”