Chapter One
HATTIE
When you really love something, you get to notice all the little details about it that most people miss.
This spool of 50wt Italian cotton thread. It deserves its own spotlight. The paprika color alone might as well be singing an aria.
I draw out the tail and rub its silkiness between my thumb and index finger and sigh.
Quality thread. Was there ever a love so pure?
Slotting the spool onto the horizontal pin first, I slip on the pin cap and weave the thread around the tension disk. Then I angle the thread tail through the eyehole of my 15J bobbin.
As quietly as possible, I press the little plastic disk down onto the bobbin winder and then notch it into position.
I flip the power switch on my Singer 7228 and get a little thrill when the needle buzzes awake and centers itself.
But this.
This is my favorite part.
The part when I press the foot pedal and the bobbin winder whirs to life. The hum of the machine touches everything. My desk. The floor. The pedal under my foot. My lips and fingertips.
The paprika thread blurs as it cycles up and down the spinning bobbin. I watch, mesmerized.
Time stops. And even better than that, my mind stops too.
As if?—
“Hattie! Is that your sewing machine?!”
Mom is screeching.
Right outside my bedroom door.
My foot springs off the pedal.
I don’t answer. Answering isn’t required.
“Are you dressed yet? We’re leaving in FIVE MINUTES.”
I glance at my bedside clock and shake my head. We are leaving in fifteen minutes. Mom always lies about what time we’re leaving.
“Did you hear me? FIVE MINUTES.”
Is she serious? Of course, I heard her. The astronauts on the Space Station heard her.
Looking down at my body, I sigh again. But not the same way I sighed in ecstasy when I rolled the paprika Aurifil thread between my fingers.
I am wrapped up in my bamboo silk robe. Dressed, yes, but not in the scratchy, tulle skater dress with the cap sleeves that pinch my arm fat and the waist that could double as a tourniquet.
I open my mouth to answer Mom, but she’s yelling again.
“Did you hear me, Harriet? Are you dressed?”
Because yelling hurts worse to do it than to hear it, I get up and march to my shut and locked bedroom door, leaning close to the sill.
“Yes,” I state evenly. “I am dressed.”
