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“A woman like me?”
She pointed at my hands with her scissors. “You may be wearing mismatched shoes, but those nails have never done a hard day’s work,Miss Fairweather. I know a two-hundred-dollar manicure when I see one.”
A hard day’s work?I tried not to smile at how much she sounded like a disapproving great-aunt. “Okay, so yes. Manicures are my weakness.” I held my nails up to the light, admiring the shimmery glitter in the polish. “It costs that much if you don’t want to have to get them done every week.”
“Quality is expensive.” She held up the pink bolt of fabric, and I noticed something. It was attached to what looked like a scrap of a waistband, and at the other end, a collar. I pulled the yellow fabric off the bed and realized that mine was also not just fabric.
It was clothing, a girl’s dress, and when I found the discreet label sewn into the collar and recognized the designer’s name, I felt dizzy all of a sudden. “Sevartina? These are couture.” I’d never even dreamed of buying a dress by Sevartina, but my mom had always wanted one. They started at thirty thousand dollars. “We’re destroying Sevartina dresses?”
The room filled with gleeful laughter, and I blinked at the tiny demon who was snipping again. Cutting her clothing into tiny scraps.
And having fun doing it. My heart was still racing, but for the first time, Sylvia was truly smiling. And she sounded like a real twelve-year-old when she said, “It’s actually the best therapy I’ve ever tried. And I’ve done a lot.”
“Sylvia. Are these your clothes? Not old clothes, but… the ones you’re meant to wear this week?” A high-pitched giggle escaped when she nodded. Her eyes slid up to my face, more than slightly nervous. I set down my scissors and groaned. “What are you going to wear now?”
“I’m not going to dinner,” she stated. “I’ve decided to go on a hunger strike.” She inhaled, but there was a little hiccup in it. “Maybe then Mom will wake up and listen to me.” Her lip quivered as she attacked the fabric more ferociously.
“What is it you’re trying to get her to see?” I asked quietly.
“That the jerk she’s marrying isn’t a nice man.”
Something in her voice had the hairs on my body standing on end. “Sylvia. Has he done something to you? Has he touched you, or hurt you…” I had the scissors gripped in my fist like a knife before I was done asking the question.
She slumped down, her shoulders rounding. “No. But he told me after he marries Mom, he’s going to make sure I get the ‘best education possible.’ Which, according to him, is some boarding school in Austria. He’s good at making it sound like he cares. But he just wants me gone.”
“If you tell your mom—” I began, but she cut me off. Her eyes were shimmering with tears.
“My mom hasn’t listened to me for two years.” Her breathing hitched again. “When I try to tell her how bad things are… when I tried to talk to her about Alphonse, she said to act happy, and I’ll be happier. But that’s not how it works.”
“No, it’s not,” I agreed, thinking of all the times my own dad had said things very much the same.
We both went quiet. I set down the dress I’d been ruining and walked over to her closet, opening it and pushing through her racks of clothing. Every remaining dress was similar to the ones we’d cut up: pastel-colored, made of fabric that felt amazing but would ruin if even a drop of sauce splashed on it, and… none of them were fun.
“Who picked these out for you?”
“My personal shopper,” she said, her voice grim. “She hates me.” I couldn’t disagree. I peeked through the rest and noted there weren’t even any play clothes, or tennis shoes.
“Where did the black clothes come from?”
“I traded my phone to a girl on my swim team for them.”
“What about the Doc Martens?”
“Uncle G. For my birthday.”
“Hmmm.” I tapped my chin, thinking. “So, if I don’t get you dressed for dinner, I’ll be fired. And I need the money from this job.”
She rolled her eyes dramatically. “No you don’t, Miss Manicure.”
“Shows what you know. I really, really do need the money.” I started combing through the racks, looking for anything that she might want to wear. Nothing. “Right, stand up.” She hesitated, but after a minute did as I asked.“You’re only an inch shorter than me,” I said aloud. “It’s not fair.”
“You have boobs,” she replied with a shrug. “Life’s not fair, is it?”
“You’re not wrong.” I handed her a pair of silver flats I found in the bottom of the closet. “Take these and come with me, Miss Ennui. We don’t have much time.”
“For what?” I loved that the flat, dull look in her dark eyes was gone.
I winked at her as I grabbed the sewing basket off the bed. “To become the kind of ‘Mad Girls’ the original Sylvia would approve of.”
