see me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Drea didn’t show up! And you’re taking her place!”
“In the fashion show?” I asked incredulously.
“No, on President Bush’s cabinet,” Gia deadpanned. “Yes! The fashion show! What else would I mean?”
“Drea didn’t tell you?” I asked. “She fired me this morning.”
“What is wrong with that girl? She better be dead because I’m going to kill her!” she ranted. “She can’t fire you! Only I have the authority to fire you! You are not fired!”
If Gia knew about our fight, would she feel differently?
“I need you in this right now.” Gia pointed to a fuzzy, cowl-neck dress in a deep-wine color. “It’s the last look we’ll send down the runway…”
“I can’t,” I objected.
“You can.”
“I can’t.”
“You will,” Gia insisted. “Or…”
“Or you’ll smother me with this mohair sweater dress and make it look like an accident?”
Gia broke out into a wide grin.
“Are you sure we aren’t related?” She squeezed my shoulders. “Come on, Cassie. You can do this.”
Gia was the only person who had come through for me this summer in the exact way she had promised. She offered me a job and delivered on it. No more and no less. This was my final responsibility as an employee of Bellarosa Boutique and I would not let her down.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“Mwah!” Gia air-kissed me so as not to wreck my makeup. “Mwah!”
I took the dress and slipped between a set of curtains comprising the makeshift changing room. I didn’t understand why it was so important to Gia for me to be a part of the fashion show when a seemingly endless stock of primping, preening Bellarosa cousins were already lined up and ready to hit the stage. Surely another one could have taken Drea’s place. Why me?
“Cassie Worthy! You look incredible!”
I turned to see Bethany Darling representing Surf*Snow* Skate in a wetsuit-style bikini. What swimwear had to do with back-to-school, I had no idea. But she and about half a dozen other barely dressed models were lined up to hit the runway anyway. The store’s owner made an executive decision to overrepresent surf in the fashion show, which would give the audience a lot more skin to ogle than snow or skate.
“Vicki told me the real story, that nothing happened between you and Slade,” Bethany said. “I should’ve known he was full of shit.”
There was nothing about her demeanor to give me reason to believe she was anything but 100 percent sincere about this. It would’ve been easier for her to pretend she hadn’t seen me, to let me go off to college without ever offering this apology I didn’t need, but appreciated anyway. A Beach Boys song erupted from the speakers, Surf*Snow*Skate’s music cue.
“That’s me! Gotta go!” And before she bounced away, she added, “We should hang out sometime!”
Why—with less than a week left in Pineville—was it suddenly so easy to get along with people I never cared about? And so difficult with anyone I did?
I couldn’t actually watch the fashion show from backstage. I could only hear the music and the crowd’s response to the various models—which, encouragingly, seemed to be entirely positive. Every single girl—and we were all girls, with the exception of Joey and Mikey and Pauly, resplendent in their Chess King rayons—exited ebulliently from the runway, gushing about how much fun they’d just had and how sad they were that it was already over.
“Waiting on … my feelings, feelings! Waiting on … my feelings, feelings!”
A female soul singer repeated these lines over and over again over a house groove. It was one of Drea’s favorites and Bellarosa Boutique’s cue.
“Waiting on … my feelings, feelings! Waiting on … my feelings, feelings!”
Bellarosa cousins surged in and out the curtains, entering and exiting, bringing me closer and closer to my sixty seconds in the spotlight. When it was my turn, I took to the stage doing a dead-on impression of Drea’s hip-swiveling strut I’d unwittingly committed to muscle memory.
“Waiting on … my feelings, feelings! Waiting on … my feelings, feelings!”
I stomped to the beat, all arrogance and attitude. Who needed stilettos? I was a fashion warrior in gold gladiator sandals, demanding—no, commanding—the audience’s full attention and getting it. I wish I could say time slowed down, but it didn’t. Before I could believe it, I was at the end of the runway, the turning point. I paused to slap my hand on a dipped hip—just like I’d seen Drea do a million times—when I was flattened by
a barbarian horde,
a stampede of horse-drawn chariots,
a starving