Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings (17 page)

“In my country, people have no homes. Every day, my dad buries someone who’s died of AIDS. They can’t grow food. Victoria doesn’t have a proper school to go to. Dad just teaches the kids sitting in a circle on the ground….”

Then she looks up at me. “How can I do a collection? That money could pay for twenty schools. How can I spend it?”

I say nothing. How
can
she? I’m just a girl with a taste for Astroturf skirts and cheap celebrity. What do I know?

She points to the silver sweater. It’s a hauntingly beautiful thing.

“Each time I make a piece, I feel so guilty. The beauty of it buzzes in my head until I get it out. I can’t help it. But to do so many … Amanda was telling me. Twelve outfits can mean fifty pieces. Dresses, jackets, skirts …” Her eyes glaze with tears. Her voice is a whisper. “You’re right. It’s too much.” Suddenly, she is loud and businesslike. “My father sent me here to learn and get good grades. He doesn’t want me to be a … flibbertigibbet. Laslo can do the collection. Will you tell Amanda?”

I picture telling Amanda. Laslo Wiggins
can’t
do the collection. Laslo is beige and he isn’t Crow. If she can’t do it, no one can.

I nod, but I can’t bring myself to say the words. I give it one last try.

“Look. You were so lucky. Everyone was safe. Your family are OK. Isn’t that fantastic? You’re free. And I can help you. So can Mum. So can Amanda.”

I can’t bear to think of all that talent put back in a box and subjected to The Three Bitches on a regular basis.

But her face hardens. In fact, she looks positively scary.

“Tell her,” she commands, giving me no flicker of hope.

The next day, she doesn’t appear after school. Nor the day after. The silver sweater remains unfinished. Her cell phone rings repeatedly in the empty workroom, unanswered, until the battery dies.

Great. Not only have I failed to get her to do the collection, I’ve managed to put her off doing anything fashion-related at all.

Inevitably, Amanda calls to check that everything’s OK.

“I can’t get ahold of Crow. She never answers that
phone. She’s been getting some great press recently. We’ve got some interesting sponsorship ideas to discuss. How’s she getting on?”

I take a breath. One. Two. Three.

“Fine.”

I can’t do it.

“Thank goodness. I was getting a bit worried. I haven’t seen any definitive sketches yet.” She pauses. “Can I pop round and see how it’s going?” There’s a pause while she checks her BlackBerry. “How about next Thursday?”

Another pause. More yoga breathing.
Tell her tell her
.

“I think she’s busy on Thursday. School thing. Saturday?”

Like two days will make all the difference.

I can hear the uncertainty in Amanda’s voice. “OK.” Pause. “Oh yes, and can she make the other meeting? It’s this Monday with the organizers. I texted her. We fixed it for the evening so it wouldn’t interfere with school. They want to talk marketing and venue and things. There’s quite a lot to do in advance.”

“Sure.” By now my voice is a squeak. “Actually, she said … she said would you mind if I go? It’s just, she’s busy … designing and everything. I do the admin and … stuff. Marketing. Venue. And things …”

My voice trails off.
Tell her tell her
. Why can’t I bear
to tell her? I realize that this is probably the closest I may ever get to a real, legit collection, and I just can’t spoil the dream. Not yet. Not quite yet.

I’ll go to the meeting on Monday and tell them face-to-face. That would be much better. Silly to try to do something so important over the phone. I’ll tell them and it will be over and that will be that. It’ll be fine.

Amanda agrees that I can go instead of Crow. Ever since we met, she’s sort of thought of me as Crow’s manager, anyway.

Later, after lots of begging via Instant Messenger, Edie agrees to skip chess club and come and keep me company. I’m going to need a hand to hold.

Chapter 25

O
ver the weekend, Edie comes by to help me with geography. I’m not entirely sure why I chose an elective in geography when I still get the Pacific Ocean confused with the Atlantic, but it seemed the least bad option at the time.

Edie’s been having no more luck with Crow than me. They’re still supposed to meet every Saturday for reading practice, but Edie says that Crow keeps blowing her off.

“When I do see her, I keep trying to tell her about the petition and suggesting publicity ideas, but she just shuts me out. It’s as if she doesn’t
want
to help.”

Then an extraordinary thing happens.

I’m busy trying to describe the impact of climate change in the Antarctic and I look over and EDIE IS SKETCHING OUT DESIGNS FOR A T-SHIRT.

“Have you gone MAD?” I ask. “Are you feeling OK?”

She looks up, totally guilty.

“Sorry. Got a bit distracted.”

“That’s MY job. What are they, anyway?”

She’s trying to put her hand over the page, but I pull the paper out from under her and have a look. She has the same level of drawing talent as me, but you can see roughly what she was aiming for. The T-shirts are pink, with a big heart in the middle and a slogan in the heart. She’s been trying out different slogans.

(It all comes back to literature for Edie in the end, but at least it’s progress.)

I give her my quizzical look. She waves a hand dismissively.

“They’re just ideas. For backstage T-shirts. For if we
did
do the collection. If Crow did it, I mean. I was thinking we could use the show to highlight the Invisible Children campaign. Make fashion do something useful. Designers do it all the time, you know.”

This is the equivalent of me telling Edie that Shakespeare wrote plays.

“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,” I say sarcastically. “Except for that Katharine Hamnett is famous for it. And Vivienne Westwood’s supporting prisoners at the moment: She sends models down the catwalk with signs and slogans on their underwear. And—”

“Stella McCartney’s very anti-leather.”

“I KNOW.”

Hello? My friend can be so annoying sometimes.

“All right. Didn’t mean to trespass into Nonie territory! But what do you think about this?”

She shows me the latest slogan idea. Inside the heart, the words say
LESS FASHION, MORE COMPASSION.

“It’s a bit rude,” I point out. “For a fashion show audience.”

“Well, they ought to try more. Anyway, it’s sort of ironic.”

She tries a few more, but that’s the one we end up coming back to.

“I might get a few T-shirts made, anyway, to sell on the website,” she says eventually. We’ve abandoned all pretense of doing geography by this point.

“You’re going to sell stuff?”

“Not exactly. There’s a company that does it for you and the money goes to your charity.”

I can’t believe it. EDIE is turning into a fashion supremo and I haven’t even got my tea-making job yet.

Sickening. Absolutely sickening.

Monday comes.

I’m in a room off Oxford Street. It’s dark outside, but the lights from all the shops and buses give the whole area a friendly orange glow. It’s an open-plan office, full
of desks and abandoned computers. Most people have gone home. The five people who’ve stayed—some of the organizers of London Fashion Week, and Amanda—are perched on various chairs and table corners in a relaxed sort of way, clutching mugs of office tea. They’re all looking as friendly and helpful as they possibly can. I’ve never been so terrified.

It’s as I sit down that I realize my first mistake.

I’ve been concentrating so hard on what to say at this meeting that I haven’t thought at all about what to wear. I’ve just thrown on the first things that looked vaguely clean in my closet, and looking around the room, it seems that power suits with pencil skirts are in this season. Electric-blue kilts, tartan tights, and raspberry-pink Arctic-cobweb wraps are not.

I cross my legs nervously, then cross them the other way. Thank goodness Edie’s beside me. She, of course, is in a neat stripy skirt and coordinating jacket and only needs white gloves to look perfect at a society wedding. She’s also silent, which is encouraging, given her track record.

I haven’t decided exactly when I’ll tell them. It seems a bit sudden to just blurt it out first thing. It’s probably best to wait for a gap in the conversation. Meanwhile, just for a few moments longer, I can live the dream.

After some polite questions about school, they get down to business. Arranging a fashion show is like a cross between putting on a school play and organizing a wedding, with the added complication that half the guests are there to write about it and the other half are hoping to buy something. Amanda’s done it before for Miss Teen stuff, and she’s offered to be Crow’s mentor and guide her through the process. Soon it becomes obvious that she will be
my
mentor, because there’s nothing Crow would hate more than worrying about seating arrangements and photographers. But actually, I realize, there’s nothing I would love more.

The strange thing is, when they start to explain how Fashion Week works, it all makes perfect sense. I’ve imagined doing a collection so many times and read about so many of the famous ones that I almost feel as if I’ve been there. We talk about fabric suppliers, embroiderers, themes, props, models, publicity, hair and makeup, producers, studio space for making the clothes…. The list goes on and on and I’m in heaven. Even the budget is really just a question of math, which is one of my best subjects. Sometimes they use vocab I don’t understand, but they’re happy to explain it. In fact, I notice them increasingly smiling as the meeting goes on, especially Amanda.

Several times, I catch sight of Edie’s leg jiggling and realize she’s trying to catch my attention. When she does, she gives me “the look.”

I know. I’m still waiting for the best moment to tell them. But I’m having too much fun. And then, of course, it gets too late and it would be simply embarrassing to round off our lovely chat by mentioning that, by the way, Crow won’t actually be
doing
a collection. I decide that it would be much better to break that news by phone, after all. Or maybe e-mail.

Edie jiggles until it starts to look as if she has a major problem with muscle control. As we’re ushered out of the room by smiling fashionistas, she is so busy giving me “the look” that she trips over the threshold and practically collapses into the landing, bashing her knee in the process. I ignore her and focus instead on shaking hands and making reassuring noises about staying in touch.

“There,” I say once we get outside, breathing in the sharp Oxford Street air. “I think that went pretty well.”

“Apart from one MINOR DETAIL,” Edie points out, rubbing her damaged knee.

“Apart from that, obviously,” I admit.

“So? When are you going to tell them?”

“Amanda’s booked to see Crow’s designs on Saturday. I’ll have to tell them by then.”

As I say the words, it’s as if Fate has decided for me. Either something will happen by then or we’ll get to Saturday and there won’t be any designs and it will be the most embarrassing day of my life. Either way, it’s five days away and not something to worry about now. I focus instead on catching Topshop before it closes.

“You know,” Edie concedes once we’re knee-deep in cute skirts and sequins, “for someone who comes across as a complete bimbo most of the time, you made a pretty good killer-businesswoman back there.”

I think she meant it as a compliment. At least, I’m pretty sure she did.

Chapter 26

O
n Wednesday, I walk in from school to a wall of sound. It’s coming from Harry’s room. He’s doing less drumming at the moment and more work as a DJ. You can practically see his room vibrate as he works on new mixes to get the party started. Mum, luckily, finds it all very “funky and artistically interesting,” so she doesn’t mind the decibels. Next-door neighbors aren’t so happy, but there’s not much they can do.

I decide to ask his advice on breaking the bad news to Amanda and the Fashion Week team. Of course, I’ve considered asking Mum about this. For a nanosecond. But it would involve explaining how I got so far into this mess and I don’t really feel like doing that right now. Not to Mum, anyway. Not until I’ve sorted things out a bit better.