Katie Starting from Scratch

by Coco Simon

  “You can totally win this,” Katie said, excited.

  “Totally,” Emma agreed, nodding.

  “It’s the perfect contest for you,” Alexis said. “Although I wonder how many people will be competing. Do you know how many subscribers the magazine has? Maybe we could estimate.”

  “I think maybe it’s better if you don’t think about the other competitors,” Emma suggested. “Just bring your amazing vision to life.”

  I nodded. “Exactly! On every fashion competition show I’ve watched, people get in trouble when they worry about what other people are doing.”

  “So can you do the sewing at your class in the city?” Katie asked.

  “That’s my plan,” I said. “This week, I’m here with Mom. I can spend the time sketching and figuring out what material I need. Then next weekend I’m at Dad’s, so I can work on the pattern there.”

  My parents are divorced, so every other weekend I take the train to New York City, where I used to live, and hang out with my dad. The rest of the time I live here in Maple Grove with my mom; my stepdad, Eddie; and Dan, my stepbrother. It used to be much more confusing, but we all figured it out, and now it just seems normal.

  Katie scrunched up her face. “I almost forgot. Will you be around the weekend of George’s Halloween party?”

  “Yes. And even if I wasn’t, I would ask Dad if I could go. I definitely don’t want to miss that.”

  Suddenly, George Martinez appeared at our lunch table.

  “So are you guys all going to dress up like cupcakes for my party?” he asked.

  Katie almost jumped out of her chair. “George! We were just talking about you. That is so weird.”

  George waggled his eyebrows. “Really! Were you talking about how cute I am?”

  Katie blushed, because she does think George is cute. Which is okay because he thinks Katie is cute, too. You can totally tell.

  “No,” she said. “We were talking about your party.”

  “And we are not going as cupcakes,” I said. “That would be ridiculous.” But I understood why George suggested it. My friends and I formed a cupcake club when we started middle school. We bake cupcakes for parties and other events. Everyone in school pretty much knows us as “the Cupcakers.”

  “Actually, it’s a pretty cool idea,” Katie said. “Although it might be kind of hard to go to the bathroom in a giant cupcake costume.”

  George laughed. “Yeah, right. But you’re all coming, right?”

  “Yes!” we all answered at once.

  “Good,” George said, and he headed back to his lunch table.

  “Everybody is going to that party,” Alexis said, leaning in toward us.

  “I know,” Emma said, her blue eyes shining. “The last time I went to a boy-girl party at somebody’s house, it was, like, first grade or something.”

  Katie nudged me. “Is Chris going?”

  Now it was my turn to blush. “I’m not sure,” I said. “He hasn’t texted me in a while.”

  Chris Howard is this boy in my grade who I’m pretty sure I like. He’s tall and cute, and he has braces like I do, only mine are the clear kind, and he has the shiny metal kind. But they don’t make him any less cute.

  Emma was frowning. “I haven’t thought about a costume yet. If we don’t go as cupcakes, what will we go as?”

  “If I didn’t have this contest, I would design fabulous costumes for all of us,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “No, the contest is way more important,” Katie said, and Emma and Alexis nodded in agreement.

  Then Alexis opened up her planner. “So, Cupcake Club meeting at your house, Mia? Saturday?”

  I nodded. “Mom and Eddie said fine. We could get pizza, or Eddie said he’d make spaghetti for us.”

  “Eddie’s spaghetti!” Katie sang out. “It’s delicious, and besides, it rhymes.”

  Alexis looked at the clock. “Ten minutes until the bell rings, and we haven’t eaten a bite.” She picked up her fork and dug into her salad.

  I picked up my turkey wrap in one hand and stared at the magazine page in my other hand.

  If I win this contest, it could change everything, I thought. I could go from middle schooler to fashion designer overnight!

  Spooky Sketches

  When I actually sat down to start sketching that night, creating my fantasy dress was way harder than I thought. What did it actually mean to make a “fantasy dress”? Should it be sophisticated, like something you’d wear to an art gallery opening, or runway-ready glamorous?

  And even though I had said that I didn’t want to worry about what other people might do, I was kind of worried. It was so hard to keep up with all the changing trends. Not that I wanted to follow them, but I knew I had to be ahead of them. My mom is a stylist, which means she helps pick out outfits and whole wardrobes for people. She helps magazines figure out which clothes to show, or she will help actresses with their wardrobes for a TV show or movie. She even styles “regular” people, too. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, Mom was always talking about “being on trend,” so I know it’s important.

  I opened up my laptop and started searching for the fall runway shows. My head was pretty much in Paris when Mom stepped in through the open doorway.

  “Mia, did you finish your homework?” she asked.

  “I just have one worksheet to do,” I said, quickly closing the window on my screen so Mom wouldn’t see the model in the slinky sequined gown. But she already had me figured out.

  “Honey, I know you’re excited about the contest, but school first, okay?”

  I sighed. “Yes.” I shut the laptop closed. But inside I was thinking, If I win that contest, school won’t matter! Which, okay, to be honest, deep down I knew wasn’t true, but it was still fun to dream.

  I quickly finished my homework and then went back online. There were so many trends: hot pants with blazers, retro-looking dresses, lots of leather and fake fur. How was I supposed to come up with the next big thing?

  As I flopped down onto my bed, Mom came back in.

  “Bedtime, Mia. Laptop off, please.”

  “I know,” I said, but I didn’t move. I was too depressed. Mom sat down next to me.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t know how designers do it,” I said. “How do you create something that nobody’s ever done before and that everybody wants?”

  Mom thought for a moment. She knows a lot of designers. “As a stylist, I listen to what my clients want and then try to find a designer who shares that same kind of style. Most designers have a specific style. The most successful ones have a style that appeals to a lot of people and that is wearable for a lot of people. I love leopard-print jumpsuits, but that is not something everyone can pull off.”

  I shuddered, imagining some of my friends’ moms wearing leopard-print jumpsuits. “Yeah, not a good look for normal everyday wear.”

  “Talk to your friends,” Mom suggested. “Find out what they would want in a fantasy dress. It may spark some ideas.”

  “That’s a great idea!” I said, jumping up. I rooted under my bed and pulled out some fashion magazines from the stack that has piled up under there. Then I stuffed them into my backpack. “I can ask them at our Cupcake meeting on Saturday. Oh by the way, they want Eddie to make his spaghetti.”

  Mom smiled. “He’ll be thrilled.”

  Mom said good night, and I got ready for bed. That night I dreamed I was walking down a runway, wearing my gym uniform, leopard-print boots, and a fake fur vest.

  I can’t believe I didn’t wake up screaming!

  Convincing my friends to help me out was easy. Well, I could tell that Katie wanted to give me a hard time. When I handed her some magazines to look through at lunch the next day, she looked at me like I was handing her a dirty sock.

  “So you want us to do what?” she asked.

  I handed her a purple marker. “Just look through it and circle the stuff you like. Stuff you might wear. You don’t have to do
it now—just bring it Saturday.”

  “Ooh, this is going to be fun!” Emma said.

  “Are you sure you want me to do this?” Katie asked. Her idea of dressing up is to wear a clean pair of jeans with her T-shirt and sneakers. But once in a while she lets me pick out clothes for her, and she looks totally adorable.

  “Yes, you,” I insisted.

  My friends didn’t disappoint me. Saturday at five o’clock, the house smelled like tomato sauce and garlic, and when the doorbell rang, my dogs, Tiki and Milkshake, started yapping like crazy. When I opened the door, Katie, Emma, and Alexis were standing there, carrying the magazines I had given them.

  They came inside, and Katie bent down to pet the dogs. They adore her.

  “Emma, how was your modeling thing?” I asked. She gets professional modeling gigs sometimes.

  “Another catalog,” Emma said. “Winter coats. And it felt like ninety degrees in the studio. Gross!”

  “Well, I got pretty sweaty during the race this morning,” Katie said.

  “Did your mom and Mr. Green run too?” I asked. Katie’s mom is dating a math teacher, Mr. Green, in our school. It’s really nice, but weird for Katie. Katie and her mom run, and Mr. Green does, too, so now they all run together sometimes.

  “Yes, and Emily too,” Katie said—Emily’s Mr. Green’s daughter—and grinned. “But I beat them all.”

  “So how do you want to do this?” Alexis asked. “Fashion first or cupcakes first?”

  “Let’s do fashion, then spaghetti, and then talk about cupcakes for dessert,” Katie suggested. “It’s, you know, fitting.”

  “Okay, let’s go to my room,” I said.

  I had cleaned up my room (well, I shoved a few things under the bed), but I keep it pretty clean because I have loved it ever since Eddie helped me redo it. The walls are turquoise, and Eddie and I painted over the old furniture a glossy white, with black trim. Mom helped me with the colors but mostly it was my design.

  I tossed some turquoise and fuchsia throw pillows from my bed to the floor.

  “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got,” I told my friends.

  “Me first!” Emma said, handing me a magazine. “I found tons of beautiful dresses in here.”

  I flipped through the pages. The dresses she had circled with the pink marker I gave her were—what else?—pink and fluffy, or they had floral prints.

  “These are so you,” I told her. “So, do you think ‘romantic’ would be a good way to describe your style? Or ‘sweet and flirty’?”

  Emma nodded. “Definitely,” she said, looking down at the white peasant top and pink skirt she was wearing.

  “Well, I didn’t circle anything with flowers,” Alexis said. She handed me back the stack of magazines I had given her, with the pages neatly flagged. “The ones I liked best looked nice, but they were practical, too.”

  Katie frowned. “You mean like uniforms?”

  “No, I mean—well, turn to page thirty-seven of that one,” Alexis said, pointing, and I quickly obeyed. “See that black dress? You can wear it to work during the day, and then you can dress it up and wear it to a party at night. It says it right here: ‘One dress, two different looks, pretty and practical!’ ”

  I nodded. “My mom’s clients love stuff like that.”

  Then I looked at Katie. “Sooooo . . .”

  Katie sighed and handed me the magazines. “Well, I didn’t find my fantasy dress. I found some stuff I wouldn’t mind wearing, though.”

  Looking through the pages, I saw that Katie circled a lot of pictures of models wearing jeans and shirts, or shorts and shirts. No surprise there.

  “Well, what would your fantasy dress look like?” I asked.

  “I was thinking about that,” Katie said. “I guess if I had a really special thing to go to, I would want something completely different and amazing. Like a dress with a rainbow swirl all around it, or maybe a silver space-looking dress with a hat that had spirals coming out of it.”

  Alexis laughed. “I could so see you in that!”

  “I tried to draw it, but it came out terrible,” Katie said.

  But I was already sketching. After a minute I held out my sketch pad to Katie.

  “Like this?” I asked.

  Katie looked at my drawing, which showed a sleeveless dress that was short in the front and long in the back. The hat on the figure I had drawn was a small cap topped with a twisting spiral, kind of like what DNA looks like.

  Katie’s brown eyes lit up. “That is awesome!”

  “I think it might be too . . . creative for this contest,” I said. “But it’s really fun. I will totally design that for you someday.”

  “You’d better!” Katie said.

  Then we heard Eddie’s voice call up the stairs. “Who wants some of Eddie’s spaghetti?”

  “Meeeee!” Katie yelled back, and she raced out of the room ahead of all of us.

  The spaghetti smelled delicious, but I could barely eat. My head was filled with ideas for the perfect dress. I was going to win this contest!

  Want more

  Cupcake Diaries

  Visit CupcakeDiariesBooks.com for the series trailer, excerpts, activities, and everything you need for throwing your own cupcake party!

  Coco Simon always dreamed of opening a cupcake bakery but was afraid she would eat all of the profits. When she’s not daydreaming about cupcakes, Coco edits children’s books and has written close to one hundred books for children, tweens, and young adults, which is a lot less than the number of cupcakes she’s eaten. Cupcake Diaries is the first time Coco has mixed her love of cupcakes with writing.

  LOOK FOR MORE CUPCAKE DIARIES AT YOUR FAVORITE STORE!

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  authors.simonandschuster.com/Coco-Simon

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

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  Text by Tracey West

  Chapter header illustrations by Maryam Choudhury

  Jacket design by Laura Roode

  Jacket illustrated by Abigail Halpin

  Jacket illustrations by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0471-6 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0472-3 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-0473-0 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Control Number 2014939568