Bead-Dazzled (24 page)

Emma loved that quote.

“Audrey’s coming?” Charlie asked.

“She’s going to be my good-luck charm,” Emma said.

“Is she lucky enough to find one woman in a city of eight million?” Charlie asked.

Emma stared at Audrey’s sly smile and her glistening pearl necklace. Audrey looked confident, and that made Emma confident, too. “I believe she is. I believe Audrey will make miracles happen.” She tucked the photo into the pocket of her parka and grabbed Charlie’s hand. “Come on! I bet Adja’s waiting for us at the movie theater.”

* * *

“She’s not here,” Charlie said.

Emma stood in the exact spot where they’d met Adja. As darkness began to fall, she scanned the block of old brownstones, restaurants, and modern high rises. Except for two old ladies buying tickets, the movie theater was quiet at five o’clock on a weekday in January. Cars and taxis inched toward the Queensboro Bridge. Delivery guys holding plastic bags bulging with take-out containers took to their bikes for early dinner deliveries. A man wearing huge earmuffs walked a fat beagle in an argyle sweater. Three girls with plaid Catholic-school skirts peeking out from their parkas texted as they made their way down the street. No vendor tables were set up anywhere on the block.

“The vendors must’ve been a weekend thing, when the movies were busy,” Charlie said.

Emma groaned. She’d felt so strongly that she’d find Adja here again. “Maybe she’ll come back tonight?” she asked, hopefully.

“I cannot stay here for the night.” Francesca stamped her knee-high leather boots to keep warm. Emma’s dad had insisted that she and Charlie bring a grown-up with them in their search. Emma wasn’t sure Francesca truly qualified, but she was willing to pay for the taxi. “We should go back.” Francesca raised her arm to hail a taxi.

“Not yet!” Emma refused to give up so fast. “Maybe a doorman or a restaurant owner knows Adja.”

They wandered up and down the street, asking everywhere about the beaded jewelry vendor. No one remembered her. No one remembered
any
of the vendors. All they remembered was what was being sold on the tables—fake brand-name handbags, screen-printed T-shirts, carved-stone rings, posters of NYC tourist sites. Adja was lost in a nameless, faceless blur of foreign street vendors.

“What now? She could be selling her jewelry anywhere in the city,” Emma finally said.

“Forget New York! She could’ve gone back to Africa,” Charlie pointed out. “She said it wasn’t working out too well for her here.”

“You’re not cheering me up, Charlie,” Emma complained, as they climbed into a taxi. “So much for Audrey Hepburn bringing me luck.”

“My grandpapa, he says always, ‘You make your own luck in this world,’” Francesca replied.

“I don’t know about making luck,” Emma replied, as they pulled up to the front door of her building. Francesca would ride crosstown with Charlie to his apartment. “I do know that, even though you all tell me I have no choice, I won’t get rid of the beads. And if that means that I have to work like crazy to sew every little bead on with my own fingers, then that’s what I’ll do—or at least, exhaust myself trying!”

“Bead-iful speech,” Charlie quipped.

“You’ll see, Calhoun,” Emma promised, as she stepped out and the taxi pulled away.

By nine o’clock that night, she was on a roll and not even tired. She’d finished the timeline research for the Western Civ project, raced through her other homework, and was now carefully hot-gluing beads onto a leather strip for a second cuff.

One at a time,
Emma sang to herself.
One at a time.

All the beading she needed to do was overwhelming, if she thought about it. So, she decided, she wouldn’t think about it. She’d tackle it one bead at a time and see how much she could get through.

She’d brought home the green glass beads and converted her desk into a workspace. Slowly, row-by-row, she positioned each bead using her mom’s eyebrow tweezers, securing the bead before the dot of glue dried. Emma hoped she could sneak the tweezers back into her mom’s bathroom before she was found out.

One at a time.

Holly called. Emma put her on speaker, so she could stay in bead-mode.

“You’re not going to believe who I just talked to about you,” Holly whispered.

“Where are you? Why are you talking like that?”

“At Brownie Points, in the bathroom. Clayton invited me so I—”

“That’s so cool! That means he likes you,” Emma said.

“Maybe. I don’t know. There was a basketball game at St. James and Downtown Day won, so everyone came for dessert to celebrate.”

“Everyone meaning Ivana and her hive?” Emma concentrated on lining up tiny glass beads.

“Well, yeah,”—Holly hesitated and Emma felt bad. She knew Holly still wasn’t comfortable being friends with her and Ivana, knowing that the two of them were never, ever going to be friends—“Jackson is here, too. We spoke.”

“About
me?
” Emma stopped beading.

“You’d be proud, Em. Lexie was cozying up to him—that girl has no shame—and I pushed my way between them.”

“You rule, Holls.”

“I asked him why he was at Laceland today. He said he came to see you then changed his mind when he realized what was what.”

“What’s that mean?”

“No idea. You may not like it, but he said he’s over you.”

“Oh.” Emma’s stomach dropped, as if on a roller coaster loop. A boy was dumping her, before they ever truly went out. How sad was that?

“He said that you weren’t into him and now he’s finally got the message. He made it sound like it was your fault. I told him he was wrong, totally wrong, but Em, you’ve got to come over here now. It’s only a few blocks from your place.”

“Now?”

“Yeah, now! If you don’t, Lexie will swoop in for good. She’s already circling her prey. Just tell your parents you need to go to the corner store for something.”

Emma peeled a piece of dried glue from her thumb and stared at the beads covering only a quarter of the leather strip. The pattern was her modern take on hieroglyphics, ancient Egyptian writing.

“Em, come on!” Holly cried. “You won’t get caught. Say it’s a meeting for your group project—your mom will buy that. I told Jackson I was calling you. If you don’t come, it will be the ultimate blow off.”

Emma imagined Jackson sitting there, waiting for her, his longish hair falling into his blue eyes. Jackson who drew comics. Jackson who stared at her like she was someone special. If she went, they’d share the Brownie Supreme—two spoons.

If she went, her designs would have no beads. She’d be giving up on making The Allegra Biscotti collection gasp-worthy.

It wasn’t really a choice. She liked Jackson, but she loved fashion. As much as it pained her, she couldn’t have a famous fashion line
and
a boyfriend.

Not now, at least.

“Listen, Holls. I’m not coming,” Emma told her best friend. “Maybe Jackson’s better off with Lexie. She’ll go to basketball games and whatever.”

“Are you sure? I can put him off a bit. Hint to him about what you’re really doing—”

“No!” Emma wished she could explain to Jackson why she was acting this way. But she couldn’t. Allegra was a secret.

Emma turned back to the beads.
One at a time.
This cuff was the crowning touch on her modern Egyptian eco-bead-dazzled collection. This cuff would make the fashion world talk about Allegra Biscotti.

One at a time.
That’s all she had time for right now.

THE SEARCH

E
mma pulled the comforter over her head and snuggled deeper into her pillow. Her father’s hand shook her shoulder. Still in a sleep fog, she heard his heavy footsteps cross her small bedroom and the window shade snap open. Bright light caused her to blink rapidly.

Something’s wrong, she realized instantly. The sun was never up when her alarm rang. When she slept through the alarm, Mom pounded on her door to get her to school. What was Dad doing here? Why was it daylight?

Emma bolted upright.

“Good morning,” her dad greeted. He ran his finger over the completed cuffs sitting on her desk. “These are beautiful, sweetie. Up late, huh?”

She nodded. She’d beaded a cuff marathon and finally finished at three o’clock in the morning.

“Mom decided to let you sleep in and miss first-period gym,” Dad explained. “She went off to school with Will. I am under strict orders to get you there for second period, so move it.”

“Maybe I don’t have to go—” Emma started. If she could stay home to work on the beading, maybe, just maybe she’d have a chance of finishing some of it.

“Oh, no! I promised your Mom she would see your smiling face at school today. I’ll take the subway downtown with you then circle back to Laceland. Do not get me in trouble,” he warned. “Quick, quick!”

Emma pulled on waist-high pants, a nearly-sheer long-sleeved tee, and a denim jacket she’d bought in the kids’ department and cut off the sleeves. She layered several chunky silver chains around her neck and pulled her hair into a fishtail braid, before she hurried out the door with her dad to walk the long blocks to the subway station on Lexington Avenue. Along the way, she told him to her plan to finishing all the sewing this afternoon.

“Hey, what’s with the detour?” Emma asked when Dad followed the overpowering smell of bacon up Third Avenue into a small storefront called
Kitchen Table
.

“Haven’t you ever heard that breakfast is the most important meal of that day?” He pointed to the hand-written menu on the chalkboard on the red-brick wall. The restaurant, with only one table and four stools, was no bigger than their own kitchen. But their kitchen never smelled of delicious, crispy bacon.

Emma grinned. “I have. Didn’t Mom feed you her famous morning protein shake?”

“This is not about me. You are a growing girl. You need energy to do well in school.”

“This could make me late, you know.”

“I’ll clear it with your mom. We have big days ahead of us. No excuse for hunger. Breakfast burritos to go?”

“Sounds good. Maybe we could take them to Laceland to eat?” Emma suggested.

“Good try! Though maybe we could sit here for a bit,” her dad said, as he approached the tiny counter, where a girl with short, spiky black hair took orders. A man who looked like a brother or a cousin worked the grill beside her. “Hey, Noah!” he called.

Emma wondered how often her dad sneaked in here.

As Dad gave their order and caught up with the grill guy, Emma’s eyes zeroed in on the bead-embroidered cuff the counter girl wore. Her breath caught in her throat.

I know that cuff,
Emma realized. She recognized the wave design in metallic gold, olive green, and shiny translucent blue.

“Where’d you buy that?” she asked.

The counter girl looked up from pouring Dad his coffee. “What?”

Only then did Emma notice she wore several woven metal bracelets, a long necklace with a clear crystal, and several silver earrings in both ears. “The beaded cuff. Did you buy it on the street?”

“Yeah, just yesterday morning. Awesome, right? This African woman had mad beaded stuff. Total talent. So much more original than that cookie-cutter stuff they sell at Bloomies. That’s where she was. Right outside the store before they opened.”