Who What Wear

by Olivia Bennett

No, forget that. She knew the answer. Allegra was a secret. How was she supposed to explain having two cell phones if someone like Holly noticed?

  “Hey! Watch it!”

  Emma glanced up just in time to avoid running into a pair of nannies pushing matching double strollers. “Um, sorry,” she mumbled, darting around the strollers while four sets of wide baby eyes stared at her with fascination.

  The Allegra phone kept buzz, buzz, buzzing! Who was on the phone? Could she be missing the biggest fashion opportunity of her career?

  Emma frantically yanked her world history textbook out of the bag and dropped it to the sidewalk at her feet. It crashed against the concrete, sounding like a gunshot and causing at least two of the babies that had just passed to wail.

  The nannies threw Emma dirty looks as they pushed the strollers away faster.

  “I just remembered,” Charlie shouted through the phone she still held awkwardly to her ear by her shoulder. “I never set the Allegra phone to voice mail.”

  “Yeah, I kind of figured that out after the eleventh ring,” Emma said. “I’m calling you back.” She shoved ‘ ~ her phone in the fleece-lined pocket of her vintage faux-leopard coat. The coat had been one of her favorite thrift-shop finds. The perfect leopard print, a body-skimming cut, and just-right mid-thigh length. But Emma was always freezing, so she had found an old powder-blue fleece and used it to line the body to make it winter warm. She’d used the extra fleece to line the pockets—one of which was now keeping the Charlie phone warm while she searched for her other cell.

  She pulled more stuff out of her bag. The pink smocked dress. Her sketchbook. Some jewel-toned fabric scraps she’d rescued from the free bin at her favorite fabric shop, Allure. A half-finished set of math problems. An interesting brocade fan she’d picked up in Chinatown. A handful of rhinestone pins shaped like bugs. Suddenly all Holly’s teasing about Emma keeping her whole life in the messenger bag didn’t seem so funny—or make Emma feel so professional.

  Finally her hand closed on the cool metal of Allegra’s phone. She snatched it from the bottom of the bag. “Hello?” she said breathlessly, as a young boy glided by on a skateboard, staring curiously at the pile of random stuff at her feet. “Uh, Allegra Biscotti’s office?”

  “Emma?” a voice barked out. “That you?”

  Emma gulped, feeling a familiar rush of nerves. “Hi, Paige. Yes, it’s me. So you got the new phone number I texted you, huh? That’s good. I—”

  “Listen, I don’t have much time—I’m already five minutes late for a production meeting,” Paige interrupted, talking at warp speed. “But I wanted to touch base with you before I go in. You probably already heard that Madison is going to be sponsoring a totally exclusive pop-up shop here in the city next month, right?”

  “Um, no?” Emma felt slightly stupid. Sometimes Paige seemed to forget she was only fourteen and still fairly new to the fashion world.

  “It’s going to be huge, huge, huge,” Paige said. “The shop will only be open for one weekend—and will only feature clothing from up-and-coming designers.” She barked out a laugh. “The press is already eating it up.”

  “Sounds cool.” Emma wasn’t sure why Paige was in a rush to tell her all this if she was running so late. She could hear the echo of Paige’s stilettos click-clacking double-time down a hallway.

  Emma’s bag suddenly slipped off her shoulder, and she automatically grabbed at it, almost dropping the phone. Catching it just in time, she shifted it to her other ear and missed part of whatever Paige said next.

  “...schedule is tight, and there isn’t a minute to lose, but it’ll all be worth it,” Paige was saying. “This is going to be huge for Allegra! As in gigantic! No, bigger than that!”

  Emma stared blindly out at the traffic passing on Lexington Avenue as she tried to follow what Paige was saying. “Um, what is?” she asked tentatively.

  “Are you deaf?” Paige sounded impatient. “My boss just agreed that Allegra Biscotti’s holiday line is going to be featured in our Choice New Designers pop-up shop. You’ll be one of the ten designers featured. This is it, Emma. Make-it-or-break-it time for Allegra Biscotti. You’re going to be a star!”

  WHO’S WHO AND WHAT’S WHAT

  Emma was still absorbing the details of her conversation with Paige. She’d have to come up with six items to hang on the Allegra Biscotti rack at the Madison pop-up shop. Her mind was already spinning with possibilities when she reached the heavy wooden door to Tome.

  “You’re not going to believe this!” Emma cried as she squeezed into the cramped seating area in the back of the store where Charlie was holed up. “Allegra’s going to be a star!”

  Charlie sat at a wobbly old library table in the corner. He’d been bent over his laptop, but he spun around at the sound of her voice. Propped atop his head, half-hidden in his spiky white-blond hair, was a pair of mirrored wraparounds straight out of a cheesy eighties music video. He had tons of shades and wore a different pair every day. The rest of his outfit stuck closer to the current century. Worn-out Levi’s and a kung-fu tee over a long-sleeved waffle thermal. “Huh?” he said.

  “I just talked to Paige,” Emma said, slinging her messenger bag onto the table, which shivered in protest. “You’re never going to believe what she told me!”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that.” Charlie reached for the energy-drink can by his elbow and took a swig. “Allegra’s going to be a star. So what else is new?”

  Emma grabbed a chair and flopped down onto it, sending up a puff of dust that made her sneeze. “No, listen, I’m serious! This is big news. Madison magazine is doing a pop-up shop next month,” she began.

  “A pop-what what? Is that one of your weird fashion terms?”

  “It means a temporary store where they can show off new designs to important store buyers and get publicity and stuff.” Emma leaned forward. “This one’s going to be in this totally cool old building in SoHo. It’ll only be open for one weekend.”

  “Oh.” Charlie’s gaze was already wandering back to his laptop. “So this is a shopping thing. Listen, which font do you think we should use for the—”

  “Charlie!” Emma leaned across the table, grabbed his shoulders, and shook him. “Focus, okay? It’s not a shopping thing. It’s an Allegra thing. Paige just told me that Allegra Biscotti is going to be one of only ten new designers featured in their totally exclusive pop-up shop!”

  “What?” That got Charlie’s attention. “Hold on. You mean your clothes are going to be in some fancy, big-time Madison thingy?”

  Emma grinned. “Yeah. Some fancy, big-time Madison thingy that’s going to be covered in every fashion magazine from here to Tokyo!”

  Charlie leaped to his feet so fast he almost knocked over his drink. “Spectacular!” His voice echoed through the quiet store. “Emma, that’s amazing! Happy dance!”

  He stood up and started wiggling his legs and flapping his arms. Emma giggled and joined in, tossing both hands over her head and shimmying her hips. An old man at the next table peered at them over the tops of his bifocals and smiled while a college-aged girl looked at them like they were crazy.

  “Everything okay back here, kids?”

  Emma looked over her shoulder. Mr. Baum, the owner of the bookshop, peeked at them over a tall stack of oversized art books. He was dressed in his usual uniform of baggy khakis and a message T-shirt. Today the message was: “Question Authority.”

  “Sorry, Mr. B,” Charlie said. “Um, we were just leaving.”

  Soon the two of them were perched on a bench in a tiny neighborhood park. Several teenage boys played basketball nearby. Emma barely noticed them as she repeated everything Paige had told her. Charlie had told her not to leave out one word.

  “The shop will showcase small collections by new designers,” she said.

  “Which ones?” Charlie asked. “Besides you, I mean.”

  “Not sure. Paige was in kind of a hurry, so I didn’t get all the details.” Emma bit her lip. Paige
always flustered her. She could never think straight when she was talking with the fashion editor. Suddenly, Emma realized that maybe she should have asked some questions. Or maybe not. With Paige, it was hard to know. “She’ll probably write about it on her blog. But I do know I’ll need to create some holiday looks—fast.”

  “You can do it.” Charlie didn’t sound worried at all. “Paige must think so, too, or she wouldn’t have talked them into including you. And she’s a pro, right? She knows nobody’s hotter than Allegra Biscotti. You can tell just by looking at Allegra’s hot new website.”

  “I almost forgot. How’s that going?”

  “See for yourself.” Charlie pulled his laptop out of his bag, flipped it open, and hit a key.

  Emma had chosen colors, borders, and fonts the previous afternoon, but she had left the rest up to Charlie. She couldn’t believe what he’d done.

  “Do you like it?” Charlie sounded uncharacteristically uncertain for a second.

  “Are you kidding? I love it!” Emma leaned closer for a better look. “Oh wow, is that my wall?”

  She pointed to a photo image that formed the background of the navigation box on the left-hand side of the home page. It showed her inspiration wall, the eight-foot-high space above the worktable in her studio. The wall was an ever-changing mosaic of interesting images and ideas—magazine clippings, fabric swatches, photos of outrageous outfits, and sketches of new ideas.

  And that wasn’t all. Charlie had incorporated a bunch of other images onto the home page, too. Photos of Allegra’s clothes. Some of Emma’s latest sketches. And more. It was a busy, funky design that somehow managed to be cool and fun at the same time.

  “Allegra’s bio is here.” Charlie hit a link. “I fiddled with it a little. See what you think. Once we nail that down, we’ll be almost ready to go live.”

  Emma scanned the bio, which she and Charlie had written during study hall the day before. They’d invented an entire backstory for Allegra Biscotti—born in Milan, designed her first dress at age eight, traveled the world doing exotic things and having exciting adventures—

  “Wait a sec,” Emma said. “I don’t remember this part about Allegra working as a bullfighter in Spain.”

  Charlie grinned. “Brilliant, right?”

  “Bullfighting seems kind of, you know, mean to the bulls,” Emma said. “Plus, Allegra doesn’t have time for stuff like that. She’s all about the clothes. And bullfighters’ uniforms are all gold-braid this, red-cape that. Kind of tacky.”

  “Aw, come on. Where’s your spirit of adventure?”

  “Not in the bull pen.”

  Charlie shrugged and obeyed, deleting the reference and quickly cleaning up the spacing. “There,” he said. “Happy now?”

  “Ecstatic.” Emma was already scanning the list of links. She recognized most of them: Madison’s home page, Paige’s style blog, and various other fashion sites. “Hold on,” she said. “What’s the American Society for Extraterrestrial Communication?”

  “Just what it sounds like. They have a really cool site. Thought it made ours seem more compelling.”

  Emma laughed. Compelling was such a Charlie Calhoun word. “Sorry, got to veto that one, too,” she said. “Besides, I don’t think Paige will go for it.”

  “Who’s in charge here? Paige or Allegra?” Charlie protested.

  “Well…Allegra doesn’t like it either.”

  Emma’s silver sneakers carried her up the steps and through the front doors of Downtown Day on autopilot Monday morning. Her only focus was on getting to her locker so she could get her latest idea down on paper.

  Emma’s mind was always teeming with design ideas. But since finding out about the pop-up shop, her mind had gone into hyperdrive. Everywhere she looked, she found inspiration for new pieces. Colorful graffiti on the scaffolding of the building down the block from her. A subway rider’s handmade patchwork bag. These totally cool European tourists, two girls probably in their twenties, wearing super-short smock dresses with colored fishnets over tights and puffy down vests.

  “Hi, Em!”

  Emma glanced up and saw Holly waving to her from their side by side lockers. That normally wouldn’t be a problem. Even though Holly didn’t know about Allegra, she was used to Emma’s fashion obsession and wouldn’t think twice if Emma grabbed her sketchbook and started drawing before she even said, “Good morning.”

  The problem was that Holly wasn’t alone. Ivana was there, too.

  Of course.

  Emma wanted to stop, to run away somewhere private where she could sketch without risking any snooty comments from Ivana and her friends. But it was too late. She was only a few feet away, and they’d seen her already.

  “Em, you totally should have come to Narcissia the other day!” Holly exclaimed, snapping her gum. Double strawberry today, by the smell of it. “Lexie must have tried on every outfit in the store.”

  “Some of them twice.” Ivana leaned against the wall of lockers, playing with the bluntly trimmed ends of her flat-ironed auburn hair.

  “Oh.” Emma wasn’t sure how they expected her to respond. She felt that way a lot when Ivana and the Bees were around.

  Or even Ivana and some of her Bees. Lexie wasn’t there, but Kayla Levine and Shannon O’Malley were in close orbit around Planet Ivana, as usual.

  “Totally.” Kayla blinked at Emma. Her lashes were so thickly coated in indigo-colored mascara that Emma was surprised she could move them. Kayla’s mother had started her own cosmetics company called Beautylicious, and Kayla liked to advertise the entire product line on her own face. Usually all at once.

  “But it was worth it,” Shannon reminded the others, tugging self-consciously at the hem of her way-too-short skirt, a black mini that Emma was fairly sure she’d borrowed from Ivana. “She ended up with a totally cute outfit.”

  Emma wasn’t biting. She didn’t want to hear about the cute outfit that Lexie wore to impress Jackson.

  “Hmm.” Emma bent over to open her locker so the others wouldn’t see her expression. All of these girls spent serious money on their clothes but never really wore anything interesting. It never seemed to occur to them that they were actually allowed to put together outfits that didn’t come straight out of a display window or a catalog.

  Emma’s outfit didn’t cost very much, but it was creative and totally Emma. Over super-comfortable, worn-out, and slightly stretchy jeans, she wore a long-sleeved red cotton jersey T-shirt under a striped sweater-vest that had been her father’s pullover before it was destroyed by moths in his closet. Emma had simply washed and machine-dried it to shrink it and then cut off the moth-eaten sleeves. She loved that it was still a bit roomy and frayed around the sleeves where she’d cut them.

  By the time Emma straightened up again, Ivana was staring off down the hall. “Here she comes,” she announced.

  Following her gaze, Emma saw Lexie slinking down the hall in jeans that were so tight they could have been tights, wearing Jackson on her arm like the latest designer accessory.

  “Shh,” Holly said with a giggle. “We don’t want Jackson to know we spent hours helping her shop for their date.”

  “What up, girls?” Lexie said when she reached them. “Did you hear the news?”

  “What news?” Ivana squinted suspiciously at Lexie. She liked to be the first one in school to know everything.

  Lexie tossed her smooth, almost-black hair over one shoulder. As she did, she released Jackson’s arm. He slouched over and leaned against the locker next to Emma’s.

  “Hey,” he muttered, nodding to Emma.

  Emma’s throat suddenly went dry. “Um, hey,” she mumbled.

  She was only vaguely aware that Lexie was talking again. Something about blah-blah-blah Rylan Sinclare’s Sweet Sixteen party blah-blah-blah. Emma didn’t catch the details, and she didn’t really care. She was way too aware of Jackson standing there. Was he looking at her with those deep blue eyes of his? She didn’t dare glance over to find out.

>   Then she snapped out of it—a little, at least—when Holly let out an ear-piercing squeal. “OMG!” Holly cried. “Emma and I totally ran into Rylan over the weekend. She was in my apartment!”

  “Whoa, really?” Kayla sounded impressed, and Shannon’s eyes widened.

  But Ivana just shrugged. “Oh right, your sister is, like, in Rylan’s crowd, right?” she said. “That’s cool. So what’s the real deal with this party?”

  “No clue,” Holly admitted. “Even Jennifer doesn’t know where the party’s going to be yet. It’s, like, some huge secret. But don’t worry. When I find out anything, you guys will be the first to know.”

  Emma tuned out again. Jackson was still there, just inches away. So close that she could reach out and run her fingers through his wavy brown hair. If she was the type of girl who did that sort of thing. Which she so totally wasn’t.

  She gulped as he leaned even closer. For one crazy second she imagined he wanted to run his hands through her hair and wished desperately that she’d left it loose and flowing around her shoulders instead of pulled back in its usual ponytail. Then she came back to her senses—sort of, anyway—and realized he didn’t care about her hair. He was looking into her open locker.

  “Cool door,” he said.

  “Oh, thanks?” Emma glanced at the interior of her locker door as if seeing it for the first time. It was like a miniature version of the inspiration wall in her studio. The only permanent part was a photo of her fashion idol, Coco Chanel. All around Coco floated a constantly changing mishmash of photos, clippings, scraps, and sketches held in place by magnets Emma had covered in a rainbow of cool fabrics.

  Jackson pointed to a photo Emma had printed out in black and white. “I like that,” he said.

  “Thanks.” She wasn’t sure where this conversation was going. Or if they were even having a conversation. Not that it mattered. It was just weird to have him actually notice something of hers.

  “It took me a second to figure out what it is. It’s that archway leading between the middle-school and high-school halves of the building, right?” Jackson asked. “It looks totally different in close-up. Pretty cool.”