Fairest of Them All

by Sarah Darer Littman

  “Well, now that you’ve all had a chance to learn a bit about one another,” Mr. Dunn says, clapping his hands, “to your worktables.”

  We spread around the room. I pick a worktable near the edge of the room, because I figure there will be fewer distractions. But then Jesse chooses the table in front of me. So much for that theory.

  “Everyone ready?” Arthur Dunn asks.

  “I was born ready,” Pez calls out.

  “Well, then—I shall give you the challenge,” he says.

  With great ceremony, he takes a pair of gold-rimmed glasses out of his pocket and places them on the end of his nose. Then he takes an envelope out of the inner breast pocket of his jacket and opens it. My heart is thumping with anticipation. I can’t wait to hear what our first challenge is.

  Mr. Dunn clears his throat. “This challenge is called Home Is Where the Heart Is. Your models are currently entering the room. . . .” He claps his hands and the workroom door opens. The first thing I see is an elderly man in a fleece with ASPCA on it, and I can’t help hoping I don’t get him as my model, even though I feel bad for thinking that. But then I realize he’s holding a leash, walking an adorable shaggy mutt. He’s followed by a woman with bright-pink hair and lots of piercings, and she’s walking a pit bull.

  “These delightful doggies are in the ASPCA shelter and are up for adoption,” Arthur Dunn says. “Your challenge is to create an outfit that captures their personality and will make them irresistible to someone wanting to offer a forever home. You have four hours to complete the challenge, starting from . . . now.”

  “Ohmigosh, look at them!” Pez exclaims. “I hope I get the pit bull.”

  She doesn’t. Mia does, which I can’t help thinking is a match made in heaven. Pez gets a retriever-husky mix called Banjo. I get a little Jack Russell terrier named Flash. Jesse gets a Chihuahua named Cuddlecakes.

  “Can we switch?” he asks Pez. “This is a chick dog.”

  “He’s actually a male,” the dog’s handler says.

  “With a name like Cuddlecakes? Anyway, I mean it’s the kind of dog a girl carries around in a bag while they’re wearing matching outfits,” Jesse says, making it clear that this is not a good thing.

  “All the more reason for you to design something for Cuddlecakes, Macho Man,” Pez says as she starts taking Banjo’s measurements.

  Jesse turns to me. “How about it? You want to trade?”

  I look into his blue eyes and almost open my mouth to say yes. But then Flash licks my hand and I remember that I need to keep my eyes on the prize. The prize I want to win.

  “Nah. Flash and I have already bonded.”

  He turns back to poor Cuddlecakes, muttering, “This is so lame.”

  That’s his problem. My problem is how to win this challenge.

  “C’mon, Flash, let’s do it,” I say to my new furry friend. “I’m going to make you fashion for your forever home.”

  He wags his tail and looks so cute I wish that I could take him home, but (a) explaining him to my parents would require even more lies and (b) Mozart likes being king of our castle and I don’t think he’d be down with sharing his crown.

  I grab a pad and a pencil and start sketching ideas. At first I’m thinking something to do with hearts because of the name of the challenge, but that’s too obvious. If I’m going to win this competition, I can’t think the way everyone else would.

  That’s when I remember that Jack Russells are English dogs, originally bred for foxhunting. I decide to make Flash a country-squire outfit—like if he were Lord or Earl Something-or-Other on one of those shows on Masterpiece Theatre. If I have enough time, I’ll make him a deerstalker hat, too.

  I sketch a design as quickly as I can, then figure out the pieces for the pattern and how to apply the measurements. Before I make the pattern, I go over to the shelves stacked with bolts of different fabrics, praying that there is something tweedy-looking, but not too thick, because otherwise it’s going to be hard to work with on a small dog. I can’t find green country tweed, but there’s a brown-and-black one that I figure is the closest I’m going to get.

  “Plus the brown will match your coloring,” I tell Flash.

  “You realize he doesn’t understand you,” Jesse says.

  Jesse might be totally cute, but he’s clearly not a dog person, which is major points against him.

  “That’s what you think,” I tell him, and as if to prove me right, Flash licks my nose.

  There’s a big digital clock on the wall at the front of the room counting down the time left. Between the sketches and picking the material, I’ve already lost twenty minutes. Time to pick up the pace.

  Making a bespoke tweed jacket for a small animal isn’t as easy as it sounds—especially when you catch a glimpse of the huge digital clock ticking down each second every time you look up. I get the body and the lining sewn together, but then I have to sew the arms. Or is it the legs? The forepaws? Meanwhile, my model has been taken around the block for a pee break, so I can’t even try it on him for size. Trying to press the seams into the tiny armholes with the nose of an iron is interesting. It’s definitely easier with human clothes. But I finally manage to get the sleeves sewn and the jacket hemmed. By then, Flash is back, so I have him try it on.

  He’s not the most cooperative model in the world, squirming like an eel, which makes it hard to get his legs in the arms of the jacket. But I finally wrangle him into it. It’s a little loose, and I want a tailored look, so I carefully pin where I have to take it in. But the sides hang down and he’s trying to get it off, so I need something to fasten it under his belly. Elastic would be the easiest thing, but that probably wouldn’t go over well with the judges. So I decide to make a strap with a button. Flash is getting antsy and I’m getting hungry. My stomach growls every time the cameraman comes in for a close-up and the soundman moves the mic near me. I can see it now—the sound of my hungry tummy is going to be caught and potentially broadcast on TV for all of fashion-forward America to hear.

  Do I take the time to grab a sandwich from the craft-services setup off camera? We’re not allowed to eat at our worktables, so eating takes away time from finishing. Decisions, decisions!

  I look over at the craft table. Half the contestants are eating. I could just grab a banana and keep going. Ready, set, go!

  My cameraman follows me.

  “Can you not film me stuffing my face with banana?” I beg him.

  He looks at the sound guy. “They told us to film everything.”

  “You’re NOT coming if I go to the bathroom, that’s for sure,” I say. “There are laws about that.”

  “Of course not!” he says. And with a shrug, he switches off the camera.

  Victory!

  I grab a banana, peel it, and start feeding it into my mouth in chunks. My goal is to ingest the banana fuel in under a minute and thirty seconds so I can finish making the strap and start on the deerstalker, which is small and fiddly and is going to take time, but I’m pretty sure will make the outfit and impress the judges.

  Forty seconds and I’m only a third of the way through. I have to chew faster. Can I eat without swallowing—or will that make me choke? I try it with a small piece—and manage to partially choke myself, costing myself twenty seconds in coughing.

  “You okay?” Lazlo asks, patting me on the back.

  “Yeah,” I gasp. “Just went down the wrong way.”

  Liah hands me a full bottle of water. She’s already unscrewed the lid for me. “Here, have a sip.”

  “Thanks,” I say, glancing at the clock as I drink. I’m up to two minutes and twenty seconds. Why are they helping me, and how come they’re so calm about wasting time on eating?

  “Take it easy,” Hugh says. He withdraws his gold pocket watch, rather than look at the perfectly huge digital clock on the wall. “We’ve still got one hour and fourteen minutes.”

  I almost start choking again. I still have so much to do!

  “Thanks
for your help,” I say, looking around at their concerned and surprisingly friendly faces. Don’t they understand that we’re supposed to be competing against one another? What about “All’s fair in love and war”?

  “Guess I better get back to work,” I tell them.

  Mike, my cameraman, switches the thing back on. I’m starting to hate that red eye watching my every move, and that furry mic hanging about my head listening for every word of self-doubt.

  It takes me twenty minutes to make and affix the strap. I should try on the thing to double-check the button is in the right place, but I don’t have time. I have to get started on the deerstalker, because getting the ear holes in the right place is going to be fiddly, especially with El Squirmo as my model.

  “I hope you’re going to cooperate, buddy,” I tell Flash. “This is really important to me.”

  Meanwhile, Jesse is cursing at Cuddlecakes, much to Pez’s amusement.

  “We’re going to have to bleep that out,” the sound guy says.

  I cut out the pieces for the deerstalker but realize there’s no way I can use the machine to sew them together. They’re just too small. I’m going to have to hand sew it all.

  I find thread, but my needle has disappeared.

  “Where’s my needle? I need a needle!” I fret, searching all over the table and then crawling around on the floor. I can tell the cameraman is zooming in on my increasingly panicked face, especially when I sit back on my heels and see that I’ve got only half an hour left to sew this stupid hat that is supposed to be my pièce de résistance.

  “There’s one right here,” Pez says, pointing to the corner of my table.

  I stand up, and sure enough, there’s a needle lying where I could have sworn I looked less than a minute ago and there was none. Stress must be making me crazy.

  “Thanks, Pez,” I say, wiping my face with my sleeve.

  My hands are shaking and it takes me three tries to thread the needle. Twenty-six minutes left. It’s got a strange sheen, but I figure it’s probably just sweat from my clammy fingers.

  I’ve got to get this hat together. I sew the crown first, trying it on Flash’s head to see where to leave holes for his ears. The clock seems to be ticking down more quickly as we get closer to the finish—or maybe it’s because my heart is beating faster from adrenaline. Brim. Check. Ten minutes left to do the earflaps and chin elastic, which wasn’t my original plan, but I’ve got to compromise to finish on time.

  “You have five more minutes,” Arthur Dunn warns us, as if I haven’t been checking the clock every thirty seconds.

  I’m in a cold sweat as I finish sewing on the earflaps.

  I rethread the needle and check the clock.

  Two minutes to go.

  I can make it.

  I’m going to make it.

  I can win this.

  And I’ve done this entire challenge without pricking my finger.

  I’m putting the final stitch in the elastic and the needle sticks in the fabric. I pull hard, and . . . oh no! I can’t.

  Not this.

  Not now.

  I’ve pricked my finger.

  It’s just a fairy story, I tell myself. Nothing is going to happen.

  Blood wells from my fingertip.

  I feel dizzy, like I’m going to faint.

  I can’t faint now. Not with thirty seconds left.

  Leaning on the worktable for balance, I find the scissors and cut the thread. The needle falls to the table, but I’m too dizzy to worry about that.

  What I do is take the hat and put it on Flash’s head, making sure his ears peep out from the ear holes.

  He looks adorable, but the floor beneath him is moving in waves.

  “And . . . TIME. Step away from your model,” Arthur Dunn says.

  As I take a step back from Flash, I see spots in front of my eyes, and then everything goes black.

  Chapter Seven

  THE FIRST THING I SEE when I come to is the red eye of the TV camera.

  “Fie the r’d eye,” I mumble.

  “What was that?” asks Scott, one of the cameramen, who happens to be a volunteer EMT. His fingers are on my wrist, taking my pulse.

  “How are you feeling?” Arthur Dunn asks. “You certainly upped the drama for this episode. Well done.”

  He acts like I did it on purpose.

  Scott asks me if I’m still dizzy. I’m not, but when I open my mouth to say no, what comes out is “Nay.”

  “Quit horsing around. This is serious,” Scott says, but with a grin so I know he’s joking.

  The problem is, I’m not. I don’t know why weird things keep coming out of my mouth when I try to speak normally.

  “Did you eat anything for lunch?” Arthur Dunn asks. He checks his pocket watch. I feel bad because I’m holding everyone up.

  When I say, “I had a little something for lunch,” what comes out is “I hadst a dram t’ consume f’r dinner.”

  What is going on here? Did I hit my head when I fell? Is this some strange side effect of a concussion?

  “The poor girl is talking gibberish because she hasn’t had enough to eat,” Arthur Dunn says. “Someone get her a doughnut. One of the extra-sugary ones.”

  I sit with my head between my legs, trying to figure out what’s going on, until someone thrusts a jelly doughnut into my hand. I take a bite, because I’m not sure what else to do, and maybe they’re right—maybe I did pass out because all I ate was a banana. I don’t remember feeling hungry, though. I remember thinking I had to finish my outfit and then I pricked my finger and blood and then . . .

  Dizziness hits again and I close my eyes.

  “Take another bite,” Arthur urges. “You need some sugar in your system.”

  I do as he says and hit the jelly jackpot. The sugar tastes so good, I take another bite and another, until I’ve inhaled the entire doughnut, and then I lick my fingers before remembering that I’m on camera.

  It’s probably too much to hope for that they’ll edit that part out, right?

  Arthur looks at the clock and then back at me.

  “The judges are waiting. Do you feel sufficiently recovered to present?”

  I just nod my head in case I speak any more gibberish.

  “Great! Let’s get moving,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Call the dog handlers to the runway, and I’ll bring the contestants down.”

  Manuel and Liah give me a hand up.

  “That was crazy,” Liah says. “You just went over like a tree in a forest.”

  “Yeah, and we were all here to see it, so it definitely happened and made a sound,” Manuel adds.

  “Definitely livened things up,” Pez says. “Everyone fer-eeeaked out.”

  I smile and slip into the bathroom to get a minute by myself before I go meet my canine supermodel backstage. I can’t splash my face with water because that would ruin my makeup, but as I’m washing my hands, I look in the mirror and ask my reflection, “Why am I talking like this?” Except what comes out of my mouth is “Wherefore doth I speaketh liketh this?”

  My reflection doesn’t have any answers. Now I’m even more nervous about going in front of the judges.

  When I get backstage, I check to make sure that Flash hasn’t left any traces of poop on his tweed jacket, and readjust his deerstalker to a jaunty angle.

  Since Flash is a dog, I figure I can try out the speech thing on him without consequence before I have to speak in front of the judges. I try saying he looks like an English dog.

  But here’s what comes out of my mouth: “Behold thee, English dog.”

  Flash wags his tail anyway. For dogs, it’s all about tone, I guess. But what are the judges going to think if I sound like I walked out of a Shakespeare play when I answer questions?

  “Good dog, Flash,” I say, patting his head, except what comes out is “Thou art a valorous hound.”

  I sound so strange. Why is this happening? The judges are going to think I’m a pretentious poser. My tim
e on Teen Couture is going to end practically before it’s begun—and I have no idea why.

  Bob Adams gives us numbers—the order in which we’ll go down the runway and talk to the judges about our creations. I’m number seven. That’s supposed to be lucky. There are seven days in the week, seven colors in the rainbow, seven seas, seven continents, seven spots on a ladybug, and seven notes in a musical scale. There are seven hills in Rome, and there were seven dwarfs in the tale of Snow White, Rosie White Charming’s mom.

  On the other hand, if you break a mirror, you get seven years of bad luck.

  I’m going with the good-luck version, because I need all I can get right now.

  Marissa goes first, with a smush-nosed Pekinese, Wen-Yi. She’s made her a little pink tutu with pink slippers. The Peke doesn’t look amused. The judges aren’t wildly impressed, either.

  Mallory Anderson, who hosts Red Carpet Fashion, observes: “It’s overwhelming to have so much tulle on a small, fluffy dog.”

  “The hair bows overshadow her little face,” Josie McGillicuddy, designer of the hottest line of teen accessories, adds. “Accessories shouldn’t overwhelm the wearer.”

  “It looks rushed,” Bailey Haberli, the editor of TeenLook says. “The gathering around the waistband is uneven. I know you’re under time pressure in this competition, but you can’t sacrifice the look.”

  Marissa starts crying when she comes offstage. I give her arm a squeeze of encouragement but can’t help wondering if she’s going to be the one who goes home.

  Manuel’s second. His dog, Brutus, is a cross between a boxer and a bulldog, and Manuel has made an Apollo Creed outfit, with stars-and-stripes shorts and a top hat. The judges seem more amused by that getup.

  “I can see that on the red carpet,” Mallory Anderson says. “Work it, Brutus!”