Glitter Girl
Authors: Toni Runkle
Copyright © 2013 by Toni Runkle and Stephen Webb
Cover and internal design © 2013 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover illustration © Katie Wood
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage an retrieval systemsâexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviewsâwithout permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Chapter 1: All That Glitters Comes via UPS
Chapter 2: As Chelsea Ambrose, Jr. VP, Likes It
Chapter 3: The Merry Maids of Wendell Willkie Junior High
Chapter 4: What Light from Yonder Laptop Breaks?
Chapter 5: Some are Born Great (Others Watch Greatness Drive Up in a Really Cool Pink Convertible)
Chapter 6: The Stuff That Glitter Girls Are Made Of
Chapter 7: Much Ado about Pink Tickets
Chapter 8: For Now Sits Expectation in the Air
Chapter 9: Canst Thou Bring Me to the Party?
Chapter 10: We Few, We Happy Few
Chapter 11: Kat's Influence: Like a Wreath of Radiant Fire
Chapter 12: The Course of True Love Runs through the White Oak Mall
Chapter 13: To Go or Not to Go, That Is the Question
Chapter 15: One May Smile and Smile, and Be a Villain
Chapter 16: The Winter of Kat's Discontent
Chapter 17: What's Done Cannot Be Undone
Chapter 18: The Readiness Is All (Plus a Really Kickin' Sound System)
Chapter 19: Get Thee to a High School Costume Shop on the Other Side of Town
Chapter 20: Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Crown
Chapter 21: To Thine Own Self Be True
Chapter 22: Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be (Unless You're in a Really Big Hurry)
Chapter 23: Friendship Is Constant in All Things
Chapter 24: All's Well That Ends Well
For Katrina and Julia, our daughters,
our inspiration, our joy.
All That Glitters Comes via UPS
There it was. In the middle of the Connors's living room. The Box. It had been shipped overnight from Los Angeles. Kat had to look at it twice before the reality sank in. It was her name all right: Ms. Katherine Connors, 5473 Jasmine Court, Carmel, Indiana. Her name looked funny there on the box, even though she'd seen it a million times before on papers, report cards, and the Christmas cards that she and her BFF Jules always sent to each other.
But this box was special.
This box was going to make her the first Glitter Girl in all of Indiana.
Maybe no one had heard of Glitter Girl yet, but that was about to change, and Kat was
how
that was going to happen.
Glitter Girl was a new line of products for teens and tweens. Kat hated that word, “tween.”
Who
invented
it?
she wondered. This company in California (Remoulet Worldwide, Inc., according to Kat's googling on the matter) was going to start selling these products next month. But before that, Remoulet Worldwide, Inc. wanted to get
everybody
excited about it.
That's where Kat Connors came in. And that's why the box ended up in the middle of her living room. Inside that box was simply
every
Glitter Girl product that any girl could ever want. Kat's hand reached closer to the box; she could only imagine what treasures were waiting inside.
“No, Kat,” she told herself, pulling her hand back. “You promised Mom you wouldn't touch the box until the sleepover tonight when Jules and everyone else is here.”
Kat told herself that, but it's hard to listen to yourself sometimes, especially with all that
stuff
sitting right in front of you. Lip gloss! In who knows how many different shades! And every cool other thing in the history of coolness! And they were giving it all to Kat. For free!
As her hand still hovered over the box, Kat thought about how and why this package came to her in the first place. And how she knew, just
knew,
that this box would change her life. Forever. Obviously, this was no ordinary box. Which made sense. Because Kat Connors was no ordinary girl. She was an Alpha Girl.
As Chelsea Ambrose, Jr. VP, Likes It
The new mint-green convertible shimmered in the LA sun as it pulled into the parking lot at Remoulet Worldwide, Inc. A perfectly pedicured toe peeked out of its open-toed sandal and stepped down on the gas pedal. The convertible found its way to a spot with a name on it: “Chelsea Ambrose, Junior Vice President.” That same Chelsea Ambrose took a deep breath before getting out of the car.
Today was the day that she was going to “wow” them. She was going to present her new marketing plan for Glitter Girl to the Remoulet board of directors. Glitter Girl was a new line of makeup, accessories, and style products aimed at the teen and tween market. (Chelsea loved that word, “tween.” Who invented it?) The board of directors at the company included a grand total of zero women, which was just fine with Chelsea. She was hired to bring a woman's touch to the marketing department, and bring it she would.
Chelsea's heels clicked as she crossed the lobby and got into the elevator alone. She adjusted the lapel of her jacket and checked her lipstick and makeup in the reflection of the elevator door. Perfect. Her smarts, ambition, and supermodel looks had gotten her this far; it wouldn't take much more to carry her over the finish line. She pressed “35” on the elevator button and started to ascend to the top floorâwhere all the big decisions got made, the place where she hoped to have a corner office very soon.
As Chelsea opened the door to the boardroom, she saw ten suits around the table.
“Gentlemen, good morning,” Chelsea said, giving them her best homecoming queen smile. “I know you're busy men, so I'll keep my presentation brief.”
“This better be good,” one of the suits said, already putting a tiny hole in Chelsea's confidence balloon. She recognized him as Gregory Remoulet, the CEO of the entire company. She'd walked by the huge painting of him in the lobby a thousand times. Still in shape and handsome at fifty-six, he was the son of the company founder and, from all the gossip around the water cooler, not a man to be trifled with.
Undaunted, Chelsea nodded to an assistant, who dimmed the lights. Chelsea clicked her laptop a few times, and PowerPoint presentation slides lit up the room as she began her sales pitch.
“How have companies launched products in the past?” she said, circling the room like a lioness moving in on a herd of defenseless gazelles. “They've spent millions of dollars on print ads, run commercials at the Super Bowl, and basically pummeled their brand into the consciousness of potential customers with blunt instruments. It was effective, but very expensive.”
“You're not kidding,” one of the nameless suits said. “Those Jessica Aguirre infomercials have cost us a bundle.” He was referring to the ad campaign for Remoulet's signature product, CleanSweep, a facial cream that absolutely positively removed all traces of acne from the teenage face. They had signed an exclusive contract with teen singer Jessica Aguirre to be the face of the campaign and had flooded the airwaves with infomercials and ads that were played constantly.
“It was a great campaign for its day. Mr. Remoulet, you and your team really put the company on the map in personal-care products,” Chelsea continued. “However, times have changed. Forget TV ads. These are the days of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, where one day you're singing a song in your jammies in your living room and the next you're selling out stadiums.
“This is what kids are into today. They don't want adults or even a celebrity to tell them what to buy. They look to their friends and classmates to confirm their style choices. To sell Glitter Girl, I propose we harness this, the teenage girl's most primal needâthe need for the approval of her peersâand combine it with the power of twenty-first-century technology.”
“And how exactly do we do that?” asked Remoulet, clearly intrigued.
“With something so innocent that nobody would expect it. We infiltrate the teenage slumber party! What could be more wholesome? These rites of passage have been going on forever, but no one has seen their potential as profit-generating mechanisms until now. We start by picking fifty girls to host fifty slumber parties on the same night, one in each state in the nation. We make sure everyone at the party is draped in Glitter Girl products, and by the time each girl gets back home to her computer the next morning, our campaign will be well on its way.”
“So that's it? A slumber party?” said one executive, clearly not yet on board.
“The parties are just the start,” replied Chelsea. “At the same time, we pit these fifty girls against each other by manufacturing the biggest popularity contest this country's ever seen! And at the end of it, we select one of them as the new Face of Glitter Girl. We design our print and broadcast campaign around her, this girl that we've plucked out of obscurity, and we announce it all on our website. They'll be falling over themselves to move our products. Before you know it, Glitter Girl will be on the lips of every girl in the country, and at a fraction of the cost of a huge marketing campaign.”
“But how are you going to choose these girls?” said Remoulet, looking over the figures in front of him in his marketing packet.
Chelsea smiled. “It's already been taken care of. If you look in the back of your marketing packet, you'll see names and bios of each of the fifty girls. We call them our âAlpha Girls.'”
“Alpha what?” said one of the suits.
“Alpha Girls,” Chelsea said, as she clicked her laptop again and a slideshow of the fifty girls began on the screen behind her. “Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and these are the first girls that other girls look to for guidance. Guidance on fashion, musicâ¦well, almost anything that matters to girls at this age. They're the most popular girls in school times ten! They are the trendsetters. They've got blogs with a nation of readers, Twitter feeds with thousands of followers, and they wield enormous influence over the girls in their community.
“Take this girl Kat Connors from Indiana,” said Chelsea, stopping the slide show on a close-up photo of Kat. “She keeps a style blog, and we've been secretly tracking her picks for six months. She's been ahead of the curve on almost every trend, including the unexpected resurgence of tartan plaid last April. Kat and these other girls are media-savvy instruments waiting to be played. We know from our research that once we get an Alpha Girl to start wearing and using our products, the rest of the pack, if you will, will follow along.”
“You make them sound like a bunch of animals,” said Remoulet.
“Not animals,” Chelsea said, “something far more dangerous when provokedâteenagers.”
“But how do you know this Connors girl and the other Alphas will even like our products?”
“Oh, trust me, there's no way they won't,” said Chelsea smiling slyly. “I'll see to it.”
“It all seems, I don't know, a little underhanded,” said Remoulet, looking at Kat's picture. “I like it!”
Chelsea wasn't quite sure how long the discussion among the executives lasted or even what was said. It was all a magnificent blur when she thought about it later, like how some brides describe their wedding day. But she did know they bought her plan hook, eyeliner, and proverbial sinker.
“It's settled then,” said Chelsea, packing up her laptop, “I'll go to Indiana to personally supervise the Connors girl, and we'll dispatch reps to each of the other states. We should have hard numbers within a week of the slumber parties.”
She noted, with great satisfaction, the jealous looks she saw around the table. The idea had been so simple and so awful that the other executives must have been surprised that their own devious brains hadn't cooked it up. But how could they have? They were men. They didn't know about girls and how they wantedânot wantedâ
ached
to fit in. But Chelsea knew and she figured out how to turn that ache into cold, hard cash. “Alpha Girls,” as Chelsea had called them, were the key. And Chelsea knew full well that it was Alpha Girls who ran the world.
And how did Chelsea know these Alpha Girls so well?
It takes one to know one.