Ripped at the Seams

by Nancy Krulik

  Ripped at the Seams

  NANCY KRULIK

  Ann Sullivan

  SIMON PULSE

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Ripped at the Seams

  How Not to Spend Your Senior Year

  BY CAMERON DOKEY

  Royally Jacked

  BY NIKI BURNHAM

  Ripped at the Seams

  BY NANCY KRULIK

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Simon Pulse edition June 2004

  Copyright © 2004 by Nancy Krulik

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster

  Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Designed by Ann Sullivan

  The text of this book was set in Garamond 3.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7

  Library of Congress Control Number 2003112912

  ISBN-13: 978-0-6898-6771-2

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-2068-2

  For Danny

  Ripped at the Seams

  One

  “I was abducted by aliens!”

  Sami Granger’s eyes flew open as the gray-haired woman in the lavender coat leaped in front of her and shouted tales of alien abduction right in her face.

  “It’s true, I tell you. They just swept me up into their force field and carried me into their spaceship. And once they had me on board, well, let me assure you …”

  Sami looked into the woman’s eyes. They were flying around her face, unfocused, crazed. Her hair was wild, too, tied in a bun in the back but teased into a high beehive on the top of her head. And from the smell of her, it seemed she hadn’t bathed in a while.

  The girl clutched her suitcase a little tighter and walked toward the exit. She picked up her step and tried to lose the woman behind one of the pillars that dotted the main hall at Port Authority Bus Terminal. But the deranged woman picked up her pace to match Sami’s and continued her tirade as they walked. “I was scared at first, of course. But I have to admit, once they started the examination, I calmed down. Aliens have a gentle touch—certainly more gentle than the doctors at that hospital I was a prisoner in.”

  Sami had no doubt what kind of hospital this woman meant. Probably that Bellevue Hospital mental ward her father had warned her about. “They let the crazies out during the day,” her dad had told her. “They take over the city. And then—if they can find their way back to the hospital—they crawl into their straitjackets at night.”

  At the time, Sami had figured that was just another of her father’s arguments against her going to New York. But listening to the woman next to her drone on and on, Mr. Granger’s tale of terror took on a sort of plausibility.

  She tried to turn her attention from the babbling woman, hoping that maybe, if she completely ignored her, the woman would just go away and tell her tale to some other unsuspecting person. So Sami stared straight ahead and focused on the group of girls in front of her.

  “I couldn’t eat another bite. I’m completely full,” Sami heard one of them say loudly.

  “Oh, come on, you have to share this with me. My mother said I had to eat something for breakfast, but I can’t possibly finish a whole apple,” her friend pleaded.

  “How are you supposed to dance on a full stomach?” the third girl in the trio asked.

  “I know. That’s why I need you two to share this with me.”

  The three girls were all dressed exactly alike, with their stiltlike muscular legs sheathed in pale pink tights under blue denim shorts. All three wore matching navy hooded sweatshirts, and each of them had her long hair fastened in a tight bun at the back of her head. They carried identical black bags as they walked quickly in short, measured steps, with their toes pointed slightly outward. Not one of them could have weighed more than ninety pounds.

  Sami laughed quietly to herself. She could hear her grandmother’s voice ringing in her head. “You could snap them like a wishbone,” she would say. Sami’s grandmother liked kids who ate—in her book, sharing an apple definitely wouldn’t have qualified as breakfast.

  “Darn baby bunheads,” the alien-abducted woman moaned to Sami as she watched them toss the mostly uneaten apple into the trash. “I could have eaten that.”

  When the woman walked over to the trash can and began to fish around for the apple or any other discarded food, Sami took advantage of her temporary distraction to hustle her way out of the bus terminal.

  As she opened the door and walked outside into the warm July morning, Sami gasped. Like Dorothy leaving her windblown cottage and entering Oz, she was overcome with the magical, colorful land she’d just entered. It was as though at that very moment she’d gone from a black-and-white existence to a brilliant Technicolor world full of sights, sounds, and smells that were beyond anything she’d ever imagined.

  Well, Sami, she thought. You’re not in Kansas anymore.

  Actually, she wasn’t in Elk Lake, Minnesota, anymore, but the sentiment was pretty much the same.

  New York City. Sami smiled brightly at three young African-American teens playing Caribbean tunes on huge yellow, red, and orange steel drums. The teens were dressed in bright yellow short-sleeved shirts. Their hair was tied in tight dreadlocks. One of them grinned with hope at Sami and tipped his head in the direction of a small jar on the ground. Sami reached into her pocket, pulled out two quarters, and dutifully dropped them into the jar.

  A few feet away from the drummers was a middle-aged Korean woman standing beside a large cart on which she’d stacked pieces of silver jewelry—small crosses, Stars of David, and five-sided pentagrams, all dangling from shimmering silver chains above rings that were shaped like skeletons and snakes. The woman sat quietly beside her stand, eating what looked to be some sort of dumplings. From time to time she would glance up, making sure that none of the passersby had made off with any of her jewelry.

  Sami turned her head toward the other side of Forty-second Street. Standing only a few feet away were two women carrying briefcases. One wore a simple black dress. The other wore a black silk summer suit. Each had elegant white pearls around her neck. The women had sneakers on their feet so they could walk to their offices, but it was obvious from the shoe-shaped bulges in their briefcases that they had dress shoes in tow. The women checked their watches frantically and then hurried out into the street. As they headed down Forty-second Street, these corporate types didn’t even seem to notice the drummers, the woman beside her silver stand, or the girl with big blue eyes who was watching them so intently.

  She wriggled her shoulder slightly under the weight of her pale blue suede fringed pocketbook. She put down her suitcase for a second, taking care to place it between her legs. She squeezed her calves together and held t
he suitcase tight—her father had been certain to warn her that there were thieves everywhere in New York City. She wouldn’t take her eyes off her suitcase for a moment.

  Sami reached into her pocketbook and pulled out the Guide to New York that her brother Al had given her along with some cash to get her started. During the long bus ride to New York (actually, it had been two buses over twenty-nine hours), Sami had mapped out a plan of action. If she was going to get work as a fashion designer, she was going to have to get down to business as quickly as possible.

  But first she would have to find a place to stay. Most of the hotel rooms listed in the Guide to New York were awfully expensive—$175 to $200 a night! But Sami had found a few that were cheaper. One, the Beresford Arms, cost far less—$65 for a small room. The guidebook described it as “a small haven for those on a budget, not far from the neon lights of Times Square” Sami thought it sounded perfect. After all, she was on a budget, and being just one person, a small room would be fine. And the name, the Beresford Arms, sounded very romantic, like a sophisticated New York version of an Italian pensione. Best of all, it was located at Forty-seventh Street and Tenth Avenue. Considering the Port Authority Bus Terminal was at Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue, it couldn’t be far. She checked the map in her guidebook and walked over.

  The Beresford Arms might have been a nice hotel at one time, but as Sami walked into the lobby, all her dreams of old New York sophistication went out the door. The hotel was just plain old, with peeling red paint on the walls, and worn, musty, stained furniture atop worn, imitation Persian area rugs. It smelled strange, like a combination of body odor and mothballs.

  But according to the sign above the counter, it was still $65 a night—quite possibly the cheapest in town.

  “Can I help you?” a wrinkled, balding man with leering eyes asked Sami. He smiled slightly as he looked her over from head to toe, his eyes stopping for a moment to study her chest.

  “I, um, I need a room,” Sami said, nervously curling a lock of her long, thick, hair around her finger.

  “For how long?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know,” Sami said. “It depends. I’m not sure….”

  “I mean, do you need it for a few hours, or the whole night?” the man asked.

  “A few hours?” Sami asked him, confused.

  “Well, some of the girls around here …” The man studied Sami’s makeupfree face, her burgundy and cream peasant blouse, and comfortably worn jeans. This was obviously not the attire his usual guests wore to work. “Nah, you’re not one of ’em,” he said finally.

  “One of who?” Sami asked.

  “One of the working girls,” he told her. “We get a bunch of them. But you …”

  Sami blushed. Somehow she knew that the term “working girls” wasn’t referring to the women with the briefcases she’d seen walking out of Port Authority. “Oh, no!” she gasped, her face turning red. “I just need a place to stay until I find a job designing …”

  The man laughed. “Relax, kiddo. It’s okay. I got a nice room fer ya. Quiet, and private. And the bed’s just been changed. All nice and clean.” He turned around and grabbed a key from the wall of small cubbyhole mailboxes behind him. “Room 217, just up the stairs and to the right,” he said. “I usually ask for the cash in advance, but you seem like a nice kid. I can trust ya. Just sign here.” He pointed to a line in a ledger book.

  She took the pen from the desk and nervously signed her name on the red line. “Thank you, um, Mr.—”

  “Just call me Bud,” he told her. “And if you need anything at all, just ask.”

  Sami hurried up the stairs and turned quickly toward the right. 211, 213, 215 … she breathed a sigh of relief as she placed the key into the door of room 217. Quickly she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, taking care to lock it tightly before she even dared breathe.

  “Oh, my!” the blue-eyed beauty exclaimed as she flipped on the light and took her first look at her new home. The guidebook had said the rooms were small, but that didn’t even begin to describe it. There was barely a foot of space between the door and the bed. And the only dresser in the room butted up against the foot of the bed, so that if she wanted to, Sami could literally unpack while sitting cross-legged on the threadbare floral bedspread that covered the lumpy mattress.

  “I told you to get out!” a woman’s voice rang out across the alleyway.

  “I will not!” a man’s gruff voice responded. “I’m the one payin’ for this dive, y’know!”

  Oh, brother. Bud had said the room was quiet. Obviously his definition of the word was different from hers. She climbed over the bed and closed the window. Within seconds, the smell of stale cigarettes and rancid air conditioning took over the room.

  Sami thought about unpacking her bag, but finally decided against it. With any luck at all she’d have a job before the week was out—a job that paid her enough money to find a decent place to live. Not unpacking her bag was her act of defiance—of showing that she had faith in herself. She’d be out of here before she knew it.

  Still, for now, the Beresford Arms was home. And despite its less than luxurious appearance, it was a home in New York City. The thought filled Sami with excitement—and more than a twinge of homesickness. This was the first time since she left Elk Lake that Sami had been without a stranger in a seat next to her to talk to. The loneliness was suddenly overwhelming.

  Quickly, she pulled out her prepaid cell phone and dialed a familiar number.

  “Hello,” a teenage girls voice answered.

  “Celia. It’s me, Sami!”

  “Sam! You made it! So, have you taken over the fashion industry yet?”

  Sami laughed. “Celia, I’ve only been here an hour.”

  “That’s fifty-five minutes longer than I thought it would take you,” Celia teased.

  Sami laughed. “Thanks for giving me five minutes.”

  “Well, you always were a slow starter.”

  The girls giggled together, just as they’d done for the past fifteen years.

  “So, is New York everything you thought it would be?” Celia asked.

  Sami looked around at the small, stifling room. “Well … its different from Elk Lake, that’s for sure.”

  “I’ll bet,” Celia agreed. “There are probably more people on your block than there are in our whole town.”

  “Probably,” Sami agreed. Then she asked quietly, “So, how’s my dad? Is he over my leaving yet?”

  “Oh, you know Mac, he’ll get used to the idea,” Celia quickly assured her.

  “I doubt it,” Sami replied. “You should’ve heard him the night before I left. He was going on and on about how everyone abandons him. I mean, he’s all alone now.”

  “I wouldn’t say he was alone,” Celia argued. “Al and I live a block away. Your aunt Rose lives across the street. And your grandmother is only in the next town.”

  “But I just keep picturing him sitting all alone in the living room, feeling abandoned by the women he loved.”

  Celia sighed. “It wasn’t your fault she left.”

  “I know,” Sami said slowly, remembering what it had felt like that cold December morning when she was just ten years old. She’d come downstairs to breakfast only to find the note her mother had left for her, explaining why she’d had to leave. They’d never heard from her again. “But it’s been hard for him all these years.”

  “I know,” Celia agreed. “But you can’t let that hold you back from what you want. I mean, is this your life or his?”

  “That’s not the point, Celia.”

  “It’s exactly the point, Sam,” Celia differed. “Your dad’s happy in Elk Lake. Hell, he’s only been to Minneapolis three times in his whole life, and that’s just seventy-five miles away. Mac’s an Elk Lake man—he likes being a big fish in a small pond. But you … Sami, you were suffocating in this place.”

  Sami thought about that. It was true. For as long as she could remember, she’d fe
lt as though Elk Lake were closing in on her. She couldn’t stand how everyone who came into her father’s coffee shop seemed to know her business. Especially after Celia had become pregnant with Sami’s brother’s baby. Tongues were sure wagging after that. It seemed like all anyone could talk about was how Celia was a girl in trouble, and that Al had better make an “honest woman” out of her.

  Which, of course, he had. A week ago, Al and Celia’d gotten married in a beautiful ceremony in the little church on the lake. Sami had designed the bridesmaids’ dresses—pretty strapless black cocktail dresses that had caused a new Elk Lake scandal. No one in that tiny town had ever asked their bridesmaids to wear basic black and pearls before. In Elk Lake, black was for funerals—a thought that made Sami laugh, considering just how many women she’d already passed on the five blocks between Port Authority and the hotel who were wearing black outfits to their offices. Despite the warm July weather, black seemed to be the color of choice for New York women.

  “So, where are you going to interview first?” Celia asked.

  “I was thinking of going over to the Bridal Building in about an hour,” Sami told her. “You know, that place we saw in the magazine that’s just floors and floors of wedding designer showrooms. I have the sketches from your dress and the bridemaids’ dresses. Then there are the designs I came up with for our prom dresses—I thought those could work as bridesmaid designs.”

  “The prom seems so long ago now,” Celia mused. “Everything’s changed.”

  Sami knew what she meant. Their senior prom had only taken place two months ago, but now everything was different. Celia and Al were married, and Sami was a thousand miles … a whole world … away.

  “Do they have a maternity wedding gown showroom?” Celia joked.

  Sami laughed, remembering how she’d had to change her design for Celia’s dress when, all of a sudden, at the end of her third month of pregnancy, Celia had suddenly begun to show. “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Sami said. “This is New York, after all. So how’s my brother?” she asked, changing the subject.