All the Way (12 page)

When we walked in, a really hip young guy with dread-locks introduced himself.

“I'm Steven,” he said, glancing around to see which one of us was in charge.

“I'm Carmen,” I said, shaking hands. “I talked to you on the phone.”

“You're the costume designer?” he said, quickly checking out my look. I'd put on a pair of striped vintage pants and a tight white dress shirt today, just for kicks. It either gave me a really cool, edgy, creative-flair type of vibe, or it made me look like a cross-dresser. Depending on your point of view.

“Yup,” I said. “We're doing
Guys and Dolls
.”

“Cool,” Steven said. “Well, come this way, and I'll show you around. You and the cast can prowl around and see what you want to use. Feel free to try on whatever you want—just put the clothes back on the right rack when you're done, please. We have them organized by theme. Sort of.”

He laughed at his own statement. (I guess because it was an exaggeration; it turned out that the clothes weren't as organized as you might think.) Then he led us into a huge, open warehouse space that was filled with row after row, rack after rack, of vintage clothing. Along one wall were some very basic dressing rooms, with tacky curtains that barely covered your knees.

“Oh, wow, this is amazing!” Ariel said, taking it all in.

My mouth fell open, too, I have to admit. I'd never seen so many costumes in one place in my life.

“Wow,” Jacob said. “Awesome!”

“Do you believe this?” I said to Emily, who was the only person who hadn't rushed off to start picking through the costumes and trying things on.

“It's pretty amazing,” she said. “But face it, they have a lot of this same stuff at Goodwill. Here it's costumes. There it's just dirty old clothes.”

“Vintage,” I corrected her, but I laughed at her point.

I walked up and down the rows, taking it all in. The stuff was organized into categories—women's, men's, and children's clothes—and sort of divided into types. On the men's side, there were suits from every decade since 1910, plus a few Victorian things: capes, breeches, velvet knee pants, and stuff like that. There were whole boxes full of boots, a huge umbrella stand full of canes and swords, and two huge shelves with men's hats in every shape, size, and color you could imagine.

On the women's side there were ball gowns, cocktail dresses, bathing suits, flapper dresses, bloomers, pantaloons, pajamas, and blouses, sweaters, and skirts from every decade for the past hundred years. One entire rack was just stuff with sequins on it.

“Wow,” I said, grabbing a silver sequined V-neck dress off the rack. “Emily, what do you think? Prom night?”

She laughed. “Try it on.”

Why not?
I thought. I deserved to have a little fun, too.

A bunch of other people had arrived, including Natalie and Tyler, who walked in together, damn it. Tyler was roaming around with a huge Godfather-style fedora on his head, pretending to smoke a cigar.

“Oh, what the hell,” I said, slipping into a dressing room.

I tugged on the stupid curtain, hoping it would stay closed while I changed, and wondered who was watching me take off my shoes and socks.

But from the sound of things, no one was watching. Everyone was having too much fun running wild, trying on clothes (mostly the girls) and launching into spontaneous sword fights (mostly the guys).

I wish there were a mirror in here,
I thought as I zipped up the silver dress. What if it looked terrible on me?

But I guess it didn't, because the minute I stepped out of the dressing room, Tyler stopped doing his Brando impersonation and stared at me. He whistled one of those old-school wolf whistles. Corny, but everyone was hamming it up right then.

“Very hot,” he said, nodding his approval.

So he likes the shiny stuff,
I thought. I made a mental note:
Make sure you put something glittery on your prom dress, Carmen
.

“Yeah, that's a keeper,” he said. “You should rent it just to wear to the cast party.”

Cast party? Oooh, cool. Another perk I hadn't known about.

“You like?” I said, turning around and modeling it for him. Okay, I was milking it. But can you blame me?

“Very hot,” he repeated, staring at the low-cut neckline.

Mental note #2:
He likes low-cut necklines.
Duh. “How's this?” Jacob asked me, coming over to model a crazy zoot suit he'd found, with wide purple and black stripes.

“Perfect!” I said. “But your shoes are all wrong. You need something more outrageous. Do they have any spats?”

“Spats?” He sort of spat the word, like he thought that's what it meant.

“They're these white leather things that go over your shoes,” I explained. I'd seen them in movies from the '40s and '50s.

“I'll go see,” Jacob said, and hauled himself off to rummage through the box of shoes.

I noticed that a lot of people were still trying on totally inappropriate stuff: baseball uniforms, French maid costumes, and Dracula capes. Except that we were running out of time. The costume house closed at 5:30.

“Okay, people,” I said, yelling to be heard above all the racket. “You've got ten minutes to pick out something you really want to wear for the play, plus bring me an alternate. If I don't like either one, then I'll pick something.”

I roamed around, still wearing the slinky silver sequined thing, helping people choose the right stuff. Becca was easy: as Miss Adelaide, she needed a cheesy, flashy cocktail dress, ridiculously spiky high heels, and a little purse she could carry her handkerchiefs in, since she was always sniffling.

The other Hot Box girls were easy, too—they just needed lots of flash and glam. I decided to dress them all in various shades of blue. For their Hot Box Club number, they were going to wear black bathing suits—which I'd tweak and dress up somehow or other—with fishnet stockings and heels. It was supposed to be sort of a Playboy bunny type costume.

Then Ariel pulled me aside. “I want to wear that,” she said, pointing at the dress I had on. “Remember—you promised.”

Oh, yeah. I
had
promised that she'd be the hottest chorus girl onstage, after Miss Adelaide.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Try it on, and if it fits, I'll give you blue accessories. I'll find silver ones for the other Hot Box girls. It'll work.”

“Thanks!” Ariel was psyched.

I slipped out of the dress and then got back to work. It took me a while to get the guys' costumes right. They all wanted to wear stuff that made them look like studs, but some of them were supposed to be comic characters, so I had to add goofy touches.

“Change the hat, and you're good,” I told Marky Jeffers, who was trying to get away with wearing a bowler hat. Marky always had to be different.

Finally, it was time to deal with Natalie. The whole time I'd been working with everyone else, she'd been trying on slinky satin dresses, and she'd found a gorgeous sexy black thing that was perfect for the big night in Havana—plus it made her look really hot.

Most of the time, she had to wear a stuffy, stiff, starched wool suit, though, since Sergeant Sarah Brown was a Mission Band lady. So the slinky black dress was really important to her.

Emily came up to me and handed me a really ugly maroon dress with tattered lace trim and so many flounces, it could practically stand up by itself. “Here, make her wear this one,” Emily whispered. “She'll die.”

“Should I?” I whispered, torn between doing the right thing and making Natalie's life miserable.

“She deserves it,” Emily said. “She's been flirting with Tyler like crazy, and I heard her tell him he ought to be careful around you, or he might get a disease.”

God. She was a piece of work, wasn't she?

“Natalie?” I said, walking toward her with the hideous maroon dress. “Let's see how this one works on you. It's more appropriate to the period of the play.”

Which was true, although everyone knew that was really just a bullshit cover-up for my real motivations.

The place got quiet, and everyone sort of pretended not to stare, but they were all watching to see what was going to happen next. I could feel Tyler staring at me, too.

“But the black dress looks perfect on her,” Samantha Bekins argued. She was one of Molly's and Natalie's B-list friends. “It's awesome.”

“I know. I just want to try all the options,” I said in a very authoritative voice.

Natalie took the dress and ducked into a changing room to try it on. Her face was tense, and I knew she was feeling it, knowing it was payback time.

When she came out, the place got even quieter, if that's possible.

It took Natalie a moment to find the mirror so she could see for herself just how bad she looked. The armholes gaped open, the neckline was odd, and the flounces all around the skirt made her look like what no girl ever wants to look: fat.

Plus it was dingy and worn-looking. If Sergeant Sarah Brown got dressed up in
this
for her big night in Havana, Sky Masterson would probably have hopped a plane back to the States and left her there.

Natalie's face twisted into an image of self-loathing when she saw herself.

“You want me to wear
this
?” she said.

Everyone waited for my answer, waiting to see just how much of a bitch I could be to her in return.

I only had to think about it for a second.

“No way,” I said, shaking my head. “Yuk! Take it off.”

I mean, come on. I took my job as costume designer way too seriously to make her wear something as ugly as that. I wanted the show to be good, and it wouldn't be good if the costumes sucked.

“Really?” Natalie's eyes bulged open, she was so surprised.

“Seriously,” I said. “It's hideous! I mean, don't you think so? Wear the black dress; it's perfect for you. Just like Samantha said.”

“Thanks,” Natalie said, clearly shocked that I wasn't going to make her pay for the way she'd treated me.

Instantly the tension in the room disappeared, and I heard other people talking about me quietly, saying nice things. Becca came up to me and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “You're doing a great job, Carmen. I just totally admire how you're handling this.”

“Thanks.” I smiled, feeling proud. “We need to shorten the skirt on that dress, by the way. Miss Adelaide would be showing more leg, don't you think?”

“Yeah.” She grinned and twirled, loving her costume.

“What about me?” Tyler said. “Can I show more leg, too?” I laughed and marched over to the men's suits to help him find a costume. “Sure, but you're going to have to shave them first,” I joked.

“Ouch,” he said. “The price of fame.”

I rummaged through the suits until I found the perfect thing.

“How about this?” I said, grabbing a green tweed suit with flashy lapels. “We could put a red carnation in your buttonhole. And you'll need a silver walking stick to fiddle with. It'll give you something to do with your hands onstage.”

“You
are
good at this.” Tyler gave me an admiring smile. “Really, Becca's right. You've not only got great taste and style, you're good at ruling us with an iron hand, which is what actors need. Otherwise, you know us theatrical types—we'll take over.”

“Thanks!”

“Anyway, I like a girl who knows what she wants and can get it.”

“Yeah, she knows what she wants and can get it, all right,” I heard someone mutter behind my back, and then a few people laughed.

Okay, not
everyone
was being so nice. But Tyler was.

“So you want to catch a movie, maybe, on Saturday night?” he said, twirling his silver walking stick. Then he tapped me on the nose with it. “I promised you a rain check, you know.”

Instinctively, I glanced over my shoulder to see if Natalie was standing there, watching and waiting to tell him he couldn't date me because he had to polish her shoes for the play, or something. But she was still in the dressing room, putting on her regular clothes.

“Okay.” I cocked my head. “Are you sure you can make it?”

“Definitely,” he said. “We're rehearsing all day on Saturday, but Mr. Richards said we'd be done by five. I'll pick you up at seven, okay?”

“I'll be ready!” I said, beaming at him.

Wow, I thought. Things were working out. Maybe the last few weeks of school weren't going to be a disaster after all.

 

 

 

“Are you
sure
it doesn't make me look fat?” Emily moaned as she tugged at the bottom of the skimpy little knit top I'd finally persuaded her to try on.

The two of us had been shopping since noon, working hard on Emily's wardrobe makeover. Now it was nearly four o'clock. We'd been to the Gap, Abercrombie, and my favorite place, Marlowe's—a cute little boutique with great original stuff you couldn't get anywhere else—and Emily had tried on about twenty sweaters.

Each time, she'd picked out a large or medium, and I had to force her to try on the ones that really fit her, which were usually small. And each time, when she had the small one on, she'd ask the same question: did it make her look fat?

“You're not fat!” I told her for the umpteenth time that day. “Where did you ever get the idea that you were?”