Katie Starting from Scratch (14 page)

“Honey, I know you're excited about the contest, but school first, okay?”

I sighed. “Yes.” I shut the laptop closed. But inside I was thinking,
If I win that contest, school won't matter!
Which, okay, to be honest, deep down I knew wasn't true, but it was still fun to dream.

I quickly finished my homework and then went back online. There were so many trends: hot pants with blazers, retro-looking dresses, lots of leather and fake fur. How was I supposed to come up with the
next
big thing?

As I flopped down onto my bed, Mom came back in.

“Bedtime, Mia. Laptop off, please.”

“I know,” I said, but I didn't move. I was too depressed. Mom sat down next to me.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“I don't know how designers do it,” I said. “How do you create something that nobody's ever done before and that everybody wants?”

Mom thought for a moment. She knows a lot of designers. “As a stylist, I listen to what my clients want and then try to find a designer who shares that same kind of style. Most designers have a specific style. The most successful ones have a style that appeals to a lot of people and that is wearable for a lot of people. I love leopard-print jumpsuits, but that is not something everyone can pull off.”

I shuddered, imagining some of my friends' moms wearing leopard-print jumpsuits. “Yeah, not a good look for normal everyday wear.”

“Talk to your friends,” Mom suggested. “Find out what they would want in a fantasy dress. It may spark some ideas.”

“That's a great idea!” I said, jumping up. I rooted under my bed and pulled out some fashion magazines from the stack that has piled up under there. Then I stuffed them into my backpack. “I can ask them at our Cupcake meeting on Saturday. Oh by
the way, they want Eddie to make his spaghetti.”

Mom smiled. “He'll be thrilled.”

Mom said good night, and I got ready for bed. That night I dreamed I was walking down a runway, wearing my gym uniform, leopard-print boots, and a fake fur vest.

I can't believe I didn't wake up screaming!

Convincing my friends to help me out was easy. Well, I could tell that Katie
wanted
to give me a hard time. When I handed her some magazines to look through at lunch the next day, she looked at me like I was handing her a dirty sock.

“So you want us to do what?” she asked.

I handed her a purple marker. “Just look through it and circle the stuff you like. Stuff you might wear. You don't have to do it now—just bring it Saturday.”

“Ooh, this is going to be fun!” Emma said.

“Are you sure you want
me
to do this?” Katie asked. Her idea of dressing up is to wear a clean pair of jeans with her T-shirt and sneakers. But once in a while she lets me pick out clothes for her, and she looks totally adorable.

“Yes,
you
,” I insisted.

My friends didn't disappoint me. Saturday at five o'clock, the house smelled like tomato sauce
and garlic, and when the doorbell rang, my dogs, Tiki and Milkshake, started yapping like crazy. When I opened the door, Katie, Emma, and Alexis were standing there, carrying the magazines I had given them.

They came inside, and Katie bent down to pet the dogs. They adore her.

“Emma, how was your modeling thing?” I asked. She gets professional modeling gigs sometimes.

“Another catalog,” Emma said. “Winter coats. And it felt like ninety degrees in the studio. Gross!”

“Well, I got pretty sweaty during the race this morning,” Katie said.

“Did your mom and Mr. Green run too?” I asked. Katie's mom is dating a math teacher, Mr. Green, in our school. It's really nice, but weird for Katie. Katie and her mom run, and Mr. Green does, too, so now they all run together sometimes.

“Yes, and Emily too,” Katie said—Emily's Mr. Green's daughter—and grinned. “But I beat them all.”

“So how do you want to do this?” Alexis asked. “Fashion first or cupcakes first?”

“Let's do fashion, then spaghetti, and then talk about cupcakes for dessert,” Katie suggested. “It's, you know, fitting.”

“Okay, let's go to my room,” I said.

I had cleaned up my room (well, I shoved a few things under the bed), but I keep it pretty clean because I have loved it ever since Eddie helped me redo it. The walls are turquoise, and Eddie and I painted over the old furniture a glossy white, with black trim. Mom helped me with the colors but mostly it was my design.

I tossed some turquoise and fuchsia throw pillows from my bed to the floor.

“Okay, let's see what you've got,” I told my friends.

“Me first!” Emma said, handing me a magazine. “I found tons of beautiful dresses in here.”

I flipped through the pages. The dresses she had circled with the pink marker I gave her were—what else?—pink and fluffy, or they had floral prints.

“These are so
you
,” I told her. “So, do you think ‘romantic' would be a good way to describe your style? Or ‘sweet and flirty'?”

Emma nodded. “Definitely,” she said, looking down at the white peasant top and pink skirt she was wearing.

“Well, I didn't circle anything with flowers,” Alexis said. She handed me back the stack of magazines I had given her, with the pages neatly flagged.
“The ones I liked best looked nice, but they were practical, too.”

Katie frowned. “You mean like uniforms?”

“No, I mean—well, turn to page thirty-seven of that one,” Alexis said, pointing, and I quickly obeyed. “See that black dress? You can wear it to work during the day, and then you can dress it up and wear it to a party at night. It says it right here: ‘One dress, two different looks, pretty and practical!' ”

I nodded. “My mom's clients love stuff like that.”

Then I looked at Katie. “Sooooo . . .”

Katie sighed and handed me the magazines. “Well, I didn't find my fantasy dress. I found some stuff I wouldn't mind wearing, though.”

Looking through the pages, I saw that Katie circled a lot of pictures of models wearing jeans and shirts, or shorts and shirts. No surprise there.

“Well, what would your fantasy dress look like?” I asked.

“I was thinking about that,” Katie said. “I guess if I had a really special thing to go to, I would want something completely different and amazing. Like a dress with a rainbow swirl all around it, or maybe a silver space-looking dress with a hat that had spirals coming out of it.”

Alexis laughed. “I could so see you in that!”

“I tried to draw it, but it came out terrible,” Katie said.

But I was already sketching. After a minute I held out my sketch pad to Katie.

“Like this?” I asked.

Katie looked at my drawing, which showed a sleeveless dress that was short in the front and long in the back. The hat on the figure I had drawn was a small cap topped with a twisting spiral, kind of like what DNA looks like.

Katie's brown eyes lit up. “That is awesome!”

“I think it might be too . . . creative for this contest,” I said. “But it's really fun. I will totally design that for you someday.”

“You'd better!” Katie said.

Then we heard Eddie's voice call up the stairs. “Who wants some of Eddie's spaghetti?”

“Meeeee!” Katie yelled back, and she raced out of the room ahead of all of us.

The spaghetti smelled delicious, but I could barely eat. My head was filled with ideas for the perfect dress. I was going to win this contest!

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