Material Girls (18 page)

“No,” I said. “I'm a . . .” I paused. “It's for a garment design. For an environmental fashion . . . project.”

I was expecting more questions, but Basil just nodded enthusiastically.

Finding the newspapers took longer than it should have because according to a mandate from the
Times
's legal department, Basil was the only one allowed to climb the wheeled staircase to the upper shelves. He creaked up the steps so slowly I thought I would scream. He did, however, manage to remember a few other important headlines my search had missed, including the devastating oil spill that had rocked the country. It had happened before I was born, but Karen remembered it. I was able to look up the exact date on my Unum.

During one of Basil's slow climbs, my gaze drifted toward a headline on top of a stack at eye level:

economy reviving: president credits new strategist

There was a photograph of two men shaking hands. One was former president Wilcox—or was it Branbury?—I could never get them straight. The other was the first chairman, whose name, Rose, I did remember from school. Chairman Rose wore an easy smile, while the president's face was more serious.

We'd been taught that every organization was overseen by Silents—chief among them the chairman, who advised the president. The chairman didn't seem to do much, but he had the power to overrule the president on economic decisions. At least, I was pretty sure that was how it worked.

Reading a few lines of the article confirmed my general ideas. Apparently, adding children to the workforce had rescued the country from a long recession.

“Chairman Rose's vision for youth trendsetting has proven effective beyond our highest expectations,” the president was quoted as saying. “We are indebted to the newly termed ‘creative industries.' Harnessing the rapid shifts in tween and teen preferences has invigorated consumer spending. Let them be corporate models, and let us honor their contributions.”

I read on. “Our nation's parents are already ferociously invested in their children's interests and development—admirably so. We must push this investment as far as we are able. Let us continue to add our sons and daughters—those who prove to be the most creative, the most ambitious, and the most talented—to the workforce. And let us support their pursuits at home with generous hearts. It is the next, natural step.

“I urge the chairman's critics to cease their protests. We greet the dawn of a new era, where the fountain of youth sustains us all.”

“Marla! Look, February third! The day you got tapped,” Karen announced, sneezing as she held up a newspaper. “I think I have the front page under the mattress at home, but do you want an extra copy?”

The paper had an ordinary headline about train repairs. Still, there it was, a souvenir from the day my life's path had turned and I had entered the fashion hive of Torro-LeBlanc. I glanced back at the other paper at eye level. Had I not been tapped . . . had there not even been industries that tapped at all . . . it was odd to think about what my life might be like today. Would I still be in school, like the Adequates? Would I be miserable? Or, not knowing what I was missing, would I be happy?

“I think I'm good here,” I said, raising the stacked papers in my arms. I reached up to steady Basil as he descended the last few steps with a newspaper under his elbow, his three other limbs wobbling.

The following day, at the paper plant, I helped Vaughn pump a slurry of old paper and mulberry pulp onto a large screen mat that was gently vibrating. Vaughn explained that the mulberry would give the paper a texture closer to cloth and improve durability. At his command, I sprinkled the dried flowers on the slurry and gently added the newsprint headlines and articles. As the moisture drained away, I watched the fibers settle and interlock into a giant sheet. The plant workers took the sheet and passed it through huge rollers, dried it, and treated it to be flexible and water-resistant. It was returned to us in a cardboard tube, and Vaughn said he'd take it back to Garment Construction. Although he offered to split the cost with me, I paid for the processing myself. I was sure I still had way more in savings from my time on the court than Vaughn did—and he was already helping me so much.

After work the next day, Vaughn unrolled the paper-cloth onto a worktable. Its slight translucency made the natural fibers visible. The newsprint was blurred, but words from the headlines popped out here and there. The freckling of red flowers brightened the look. I took one corner between my fingers. It had a surprising flexibility, somewhere between tissue paper and silk.

“It came out nice, didn't it?” said Vaughn. Speechless, I hugged him.

Looking at my sketches, he traced the pattern for a wrap shirt, kimono style but with long bell sleeves, and cut out the pieces expertly. He accessed Ivy's measurements from the Torro-LeBlanc database and tailored the shirt on the dress form accordingly. With a wrap style, he said, we had some wiggle room anyway.

Soon, Vaughn and I had put the finishing touches on both pieces. Together, we combed the embellishments room scraps bin and found a coiled strand of silk green leaves attached to a twisted velvet cord. I was pretty sure it was supposed to represent an ivy vine—if not, the likeness was close enough. We made a crown out of the silk plant.

“What do you think?” I asked, draping the crown over the neck of the headless dummy and stepping back to admire the full effect. The long skirt shimmered like leaves in the rain, and the combination of newsprint and flowers gave the top a hard-soft tension. The red accents in each garment drew the eye up and down. There were times on the court when I hadn't been sure about a look . . . but I was sure about this one. Both pieces looked beautiful and comfortable. I would wear the outfit myself. I hoped Ivy would.

“Am I late?” A patternmaker with blond hair and a freckled face was walking toward us from the accessories wing.

Vaughn looked sheepish. “Marla, this is Neely Syms, the patternmaker I told you about. Neely . . . knows what we're doing.”

“I forced it out of him,” Neely said with a grin. “Ivy Wilde. Super prime.” She opened one of the two white bags she was holding and pulled out the floral lapel pin made from the recycled plastic. Its green and white petals, melted and distorted, sparkled like sea glass in the overhead light. As I had requested, the tip of each petal had been rimmed in metallic gold paint, adding to the shine. Neely pinned the flower on the garment's shoulder and held up the second bag.

“I made you an extra,” she grinned.

“Thank you. I love it.”

“No problem. I dig your aesthetic. Do you know about zero-waste manufacturing?”

I shook my head.

“It's when you incorporate every piece cut from a length of fabric into the design of a garment.”

“Wow,” I said, imagining the strategic cutting necessary to pull something like that off. The scraps bin would be practically empty.

“Yeah. I've tried to get Torro to try it, but they won't listen to me.”

“They're not good at listening, are they,” I said quietly. The three of us stood, looking at the completed design.

“They might hear this, though,” said Vaughn.

When everything was ready and packed gently into a garment box, I wrote the appropriate addresses on the package and mailed it. I felt light-shouldered walking home from the post office. I took out my Unum and selected Ivy's number. “On its way,” I spoke into the device.
“
Top is repulped paper and flowers. Bottom is discarded fabric scraps. Pin was plastic bottles. All recycled. Hope you like it.”
I pressed Send.

A message from Ivy appeared the next day.
Got it. Love it. Thanks. Plan to wear it on
Hot with Hyman
. This Saturday, three p.m.

At Torro, we talked about what to do. Randall said he would stay home with his children and watch the show there. I considered inviting everyone over to my apartment but decided against it. When Dido had come over, Karen had been happy I'd made a friend—or she'd tried to act it, at least—but I wasn't sure how she'd feel about a living room full of drafters. Especially guy drafters. It wasn't worth the questions. In the end, we decided to meet at Felix's place. He lived in one of the apartments for tapped employees whose families lived far away.

That Saturday afternoon, I joined Dido and Kevin in Felix's common room. Felix introduced us to his roommate, Mike, who barely said hello before beating a swift retreat down the hall. From the looks of things, the common room was common to several bedrooms on the floor. It was pretty spare—there was industrial-looking furniture, a table, and a television. The linoleum had a layer of sticky crud on it that I tried to ignore. I sat down on a stained love seat. After tossing each of us a small bag of pretzels, Felix sat down next to me. It wasn't intentional—it couldn't have been—but then again, there was a perfectly good armchair next to us that no one was using. I could feel that place inside me, the little box in which I had sealed up all the pain from Braxton, open a crack.

Felix switched on the television.

Claiming she felt cold,
Ivy kept her long shale coat on while she waited in the
Hot with Hyman
greenroom on the second floor of the Pop Beat studios. Hilarie knew what she had on underneath. No one else did.

Fatima, busy with her Unum near the sandwich table, distractedly called to Ivy to get ready. Ivy looked up at the giant broadcast screen over the door. The digital timer beneath it indicated that she had one minute until her live segment on the special Saturday edition of the show. Her stomach contracted. She hoped she wasn't going to throw up.

She had chewed a couple of placidophilus pills on the way over this morning, but she refused the tin Hilarie held out to her now. No matter how nervous she was, she needed a clear mind to make this work. No slurring or stumbling over her words. A flawless performance.

“Don't worry. Everyone will love it,” Hilarie whispered, squeezing her hand. The chains from her torture garments rattled.

Aiko stood up from the couch, lazily swinging the spiked shoes by their straps. Ivy had worn them into the studio and promptly removed them, slipping into ballet flats. To deflect suspicion, she'd put the gag on; it was now hanging around her neck.

“Here you go,” said Aiko, placing them by her feet. “Don't worry—it's only for a little while.”

“Fifteen seconds,” a crew member in a red corset announced. Ivy drew in her breath and began unbuttoning her coat.

From her own jacket pocket, Hilarie withdrew a pair of scissors and snipped the gag from around Ivy's neck. She pulled the crown of silk leaves from her other pocket and fixed it on Ivy's head, fluffing her hair beneath it. Ivy peeled off the shale coat and unrolled her skirt band so that the hem fell fully to her ankles. She smoothed her delicate new top.

“
What
in the
world—
?” Fatima's bellow made her jump. Ivy turned quickly to see the shock and fury contorting her publicist's face. Madison's mouth was hanging open as well.

“You're on, Miss Wilde,” murmured the wide-eyed crewmember.

Ivy glanced sympathetically at Hilarie, knowing the interrogation would begin as soon as she left, and opened the door to the studio stage.

The lights were warm, the crowd on its feet and screaming. Unums filled the air, snapping her picture. Everywhere Ivy looked she saw gags, woven hair, chains, all the accoutrements of the torture trend. She waved, forcing her smile to last past the moment when the crowd's reaction shifted, when they began to realize she wasn't wearing torture, wasn't wearing anything sexy or provocative or Wilde in the old way.

Kressley Hyman hugged her like an old friend. He was his usual self: tanned, with dyed-blond hair and unnaturally white teeth. Publicly he listed his age at seventeen, but Ivy knew this had to be a lie. He'd had this gig for six years, and he'd definitely started after puberty. That forehead had to have some Creas­erase injections in it. Ivy swallowed as she realized he was wearing a slashed leather jacket and studded jeans from the torture line.

“Good to see you, girl,” Kressley began.

“It's always good to be here, Kressley,” she said, mustering her enthusiasm.

“First things first. I've got to ask what we're all wondering.” He pulled her arm up by the hem of her sleeve. “
What's up
with the new rags?”

Ivy felt Kressley and the studio crowd holding their collective breath. If she didn't pull this off, one, two, ten of them would begin to snicker, hisses of “obsoloser” and “crustaceous” would collide in midair, and her career would come tumbling down like a castle of blocks. But, for this moment at least, she was still Ivy Wilde. She could see Kressley and the crowd waiting for the explanation, waiting to be told why what she was wearing was something they all needed to own. Just like Millbrook, just like everywhere. She straightened up and fluttered her skirt so it shimmered.

“I refuse to wear torture anymore,” she said, staring into the faces of the girls in the audience, their corsets cinched tight. “It's twisted and painful. I'm making a different choice.” She hoped Felix was listening.

She took a breath and continued the speech she and Hilarie had gone over. “It's time for a new kind of ‘wildness.'” Her voice trembled only slightly. “If you don't care about the environment by now, you're a huge obsoloser. What I'm wearing is all recycled. This pin used to be a plastic bottle.” She looked down; the colored plastic and gold shimmered obediently under the studio lights. “Isn't it gorgeous?” To her relief, Kressley nodded. She could feel the crowd warming, examining the clothes, snapping more pictures with their Unums. One girl in the front row pulled her gag out of her mouth with a hooked finger and massaged her jaw.