Bead-Dazzled (10 page)

Once again, Emma had no idea. This many beads would cost lots of money, of which she had very little. Wasn’t it enough that she had spent all night sketching these amazing outfits that she would soon have to cut, drape, fit, and sew? It was like asking a famous chef to also grow the vegetables and slaughter the animals for a five-star meal!

“I’ll deal with the beads second,” she decided. “First I need to make the fabric work. Maybe by then the bead fairy will appear.”

“Yes, and she’ll ride in on a unicorn,” Charlie added, “along with mermaid models and a fairy band.”

“That would be so beautiful,” Francesca crooned.

Charlie rolled his eyes. Francesca never got his sarcasm. They’d often debated if it was the language gap or just a natural lack of intelligence. Either way, she was clueless.

“I will do this without magic spells,” Emma insisted, gathering up her many sketches. She was feeling super-positive. She had so many ideas. She knew she could make everything come together. “The collection will be awesome. There’s nothing I can’t do,” she bragged.

* * *

A half hour later she discovered the first thing she couldn’t do.

Francesca pointed her fingernail, always polished in Mademoiselle pink, at the computer screen. “How do I answer this?”

Emma scanned the request. Several months ago, Charlie had created an Allegra Biscotti website with a dedicated email address. Francesca’s main role was to act as the voice of Allegra on the telephone, but since the phone wasn’t ringing all that much she often helped out by cleaning out the junk mail.

“It’s from a guy named Billy Perez. He’s Director of Publicity for Save the Earth,” Emma read aloud so Charlie could hear. “He wants a photo of Allegra for the Goin’ Green program, and he wants to take me, well, Allegra out to lunch.”

“Why?” Charlie asked.

“He says it’s a get-to-know-you meal, so he can write a piece for the program.” Emma tucked the stray strand of hair that was forever escaping from her ponytail behind her ear. “I don’t want to get-to-know Billy.”

“And he doesn’t want to have a meet-and-greet with you either,” Charlie quipped. “He wants to dine with Allegra, the sleek and mysterious Italian designer.”

“I can’t pretend to be Allegra, and I can’t give the guy a photo of Allegra,” Emma cried. “I mean, my school photo—forget framing, forget pinning to the fridge—my mom stuck the big one in a drawer and trashed the sheet of wallet-sized ones. And now I’m supposed to take a portrait and pass myself off as a glamorous, worldly woman?”

“Do you think…” Charlie nodded his chin toward Francesca.

Francesca would totally take a glam photo, but something about it felt wrong. “We’ve never made it out that Francesca is actually Allegra. We’ve only said she’s her trusty assistant. That’s it,” Emma countered.

“One of my friends, perhaps, could take the photo,” Francesca suggested. “Marcella, she has
bellissima
face—”

“No,” Emma jumped in. It wasn’t just Francesca taking the photo that felt wrong. It was anyone. Allegra was a made-up person, she knew that, but to Emma, Allegra wasn’t completely pretend or just a name. Allegra was
her
. Even though she couldn’t float her own photo as Allegra, that didn’t mean she wanted someone else filling the role.

Her
role.

“We can’t pass off a real person as Allegra,” she told them. “Once the photo is out there, it’s out there forever. Nothing disappears. And then we have to keep using this same person. I mean, what if you go back to Italy, Francesca? Or what if your friend Marcella becomes famous herself for something totally different and then there’s this face out there for Allegra, but she also is in the paper for winning a mathematics prize?”

“Marcella is no good at maths,” Francesca said.

“Whatever, you get my point, right, Charlie?” Emma asked.

Charlie nodded. “We started in the fictional. We’ve got to stay in the fictional.” He pulled the laptop toward him and began scrolling through different images. “I say we create Allegra.”

“Create? Like some mad scientist?”

“Sort of. We download a random pic of some lady from the Internet, and then I use photo software to play around with her features.” He clicked on the face of a woman in her late twenties with soft shoulder-length auburn hair, high cheekbones, and fuzzy eyebrows. “See, we change the shape of her eyebrows. Make them thinner and more arched. And darken her hair and make it longer. Not that long. Okay, fixed that. And angled at the ends. Then make her lips redder and her skin paler.”

“It’s Cruella de Vil!” Emma shrieked.

“Allegra is witchy,” Francesca agreed.

“Okay, not my best work. I can do it better. Less harsh,” Charlie said. “Anyway, this way we’re not stealing the photo of some woman we don’t know.”

Emma stared at the fantasy woman with the piercing eyes and scornful brows on the screen. “There has to be a better way.”

“Em, I can do this on the computer,” Charlie began. “Just let me—”

“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.

IN LIVING COLOR

“S
top, 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.”