My Little Phony - 13 (13 page)

“Point.” Alicia lifted her finger. “What’s wrong, Mass? Where’s your holiday cheer?”

“Under a tent in my walk-in closet,” Massie snapped. “Which is why we’re here to buy me a new wardrobe.”

She’d done the best she possibly could to transform yesterday’s outfit: She’d hiked up her pencil skirt into a mini and tied two pink hair ribbons around her waist to give the illusion of a belt. Then she’d folded her ecru cashmere shrug into a rosette, which was now pinned to her sleeveless blouse. Sure, she looked great. But it was a recycled outfit, and while it may have been good for the environment, it was bad for the soul.

As they entered Saks, her phone buzzed with a text from Landon.

Landon:
Did u get the cake?

She hit
IGNORE
. She couldn’t even begin to think about Landon until she bought a new outfit. She pulled three index cards out of her purse and handed them to her friends. “Here are your shopping lists. Any questions?”

Acceptable:
Wine, sapphire, bronze, gray (dark, not heather), eggplant, black, white, peach (but not too pink!), sage

Unacceptable:
Emerald, powder pink, dusty lavender, yellow, puke green

Acceptable:
Silk, tulle, linen, 100% cotton, sequins (bronze only).

Unacceptable:
Anything with a greater than 5% blend. Rayon, polyester, mesh, netting. ABSOLUTELY NO LYCRA!

Acceptable:
Mini, bubble, pockets (but not those big drapy ones that look like extra thighs).

Unacceptable:
A-line, anything below $50, anything below the knee (makes even the skinniest calves look fat).

Acceptable:
Skinny, wide-leg, zippered bottoms, anklet, flared.

Unacceptable:
Straight-leg, high-waisted, hip-ballooned, capri, pedal-pushers.

Acceptable:
If you don’t know by now what kind of shoes I like, then we have a problem.

Unacceptable:
Starts with K and rhymes with dead.

Dylan cleared her throat as she scanned her list. “Um, Massie? Are you sure you don’t want something with a little Lycra in it? It can be comfortable to stretch a little.” She placed her hand on a Tory Burch boot and stretched her hammy.

Massie narrowed her eyes at the redhead. “No more bending! Also, sumptuous fabrics are in,” she reminded her friends when they got to the contemporary designer section. “Think velvet and brocade.” She held up a thin Theory crocheted sweater and placed it under a shrunken Elizabeth and James velvet blazer the color of her horse Brownie’s mane. “You have fifteen minutes to browse. Text me the photos, avoid salespeople, and remember: NO LYCRA. Now, fan out!”

Dylan groaned, touching a black leather belt stitched with metallic silver thread. “I want to buy it all! Why did I spend my entire allowance?”

“Tell me about it,” Alicia and Kristen said at the same time.

Massie caught sight of a kidney bean–shaped chaise longue by the dressing room. It was a perfect periwinkle velvet—a cross between Landon’s eyes and a stormy ocean.

“Kristen,” she barked. “Go ask the salesgirl if that chaise comes in a dress.”

“But, Massie I don’t think—” Kristen said slowly.

“Nike!” Massie snapped.

“How can I just do it if—”

“Nike!” Massie snapped again.

Kristen turned in a huff to find a salesgirl. Massie shooed the other girls away and started flipping through a rack of Rebecca Beeson dresses. Usually shopping with the PC was one of her favorite things to do, but today it brought her all the joy of an eyebrow wax. She pawed through silk skirt
after shrunken blazer, feeling like a prisoner on death row. Only instead of picking her last meal, she had to pick her last outfit—the last outfit she would wear as Landon’s crush.

By the time she’d worked her way through Laundry, BCBG, and Twelfth Street by Cynthia Vincent, Dylan, Alicia, and Kristen had returned, staggering under piles of jewel-toned fabrics.

“They don’t have the couch in a dress,” Kristen said, her pointy chin resting atop a pair of dark wash Citizens. “But they do have it in a pillow.”

“Uch!” Massie stomped into the brightly lit dressing room and dropped her mound of clothes on a mushroom-shaped stool.

“Oof!” Dylan tripped over a fallen satin camisole. “Man down!”

“Gotcha!” Alicia dropped her armful of clothes to reach out and steady the redhead.

“A little privacy please,” Massie snapped, shutting the doors against her friends. She turned to take in her booty—there were shirts, blazers, jeans, and shoes of every color and shape. She quickly pulled off her recycled outfit, instantly feeling lighter.

“Ahhhh!” she sighed happily as she tried on a draped, charcoal gray Alexander Wang jersey dress. The belted midsection showed off her waist, and the skirt stopped just above her knees, hiding the worst of her scratch-welts. The soft-as-Bean’s-paws fabric soothed her itchy skin and reminded her of the true purpose of fashion: to make her look and feel great.

She came out of the dressing room with the strut of an alpha who’d never had to share a pillow with a cockroach
or an intimate lip kiss with her ex-crush’s grandparents. “Thoughts?”

Dylan, Kristen, and Alicia sat on the kidney bean. They all tilted their heads to the right.

“Beautiful.”

“Classy yet fun.”

“Ten!”

“Perfect.” Massie went back inside and grabbed the outfit she’d discarded on the floor, throwing it in the dressing room’s little metal trashcan with a satisfying
plunk
. “You know what?” she said over the door, pulling on a pair of black ribbed tights. “I’m just going to get all of it and try the rest on at home. Let’s go get lattes. On me!”

Massie emerged from the dressing room still in the Alexander Wang dress, her arms laden with some of her best friends: Calvin, Dolce, and Marc, to name a few. As she led the PC to the counter, the lavender-and-steam scent of new clothing filled her nostrils, reminding her that some things—like her impeccable fashion sense and her ability to stay on top no matter the horrific circumstances—never change.

“Oh, I have this Alice + Olivia dress too. I love it,” said the clerk as she rang everything up. Her name tag read
SHELLY
.

“Mmm,” Massie sniffed. Then she handed over her Saks card and ripped the tags out of the military-style Elie Tahari jacket she’d placed over her new dress.

Dylan picked up a pair of silver polka-dotted socks hanging next to the counter. “I don’t know how I feel about the whole socks-over-tights trend.”

Alicia rolled her eyes. “That’s because it’s
not
a trend. It’s a faux pas.”

Shelly swiped Massie’s silver card through her register. “Hm.” Two dents like quotation marks formed between her brows. “I’m sorry, miss, but it’s saying it’s denied. Do you have another card you’d like to use?”

Massie sighed. “Here.” She produced a Platinum AmEx. “Use this one instead.”

The clerk slid it through, slowly and deliberately. A moment passed, then she spoke again. “Sorry, miss, but this one is denied too.”

Alicia, Kristen, and Dylan fell silent. A line four-deep waited behind them.

“Maybe you’re doing it wrong.” Massie held her voice steady, but the word
denied
had sent 9.8-magnitude vibrations through her body. She handed over her Visa Black.

“Denied,” said the clerk again. The quotation-mark wrinkles on her brow had smoothed out, but she didn’t bother to hide the irritation in her voice.

“Try it again,” Massie demanded. A Coach-clad mother and her wavy-haired teenage daughter joined the end of the line.

“I’ve tried it six ways to Sunday,” said the clerk, as Coach Mom whispered, “What is that girl’s problem?” to her daughter.

“This is why elementary school children shouldn’t be allowed to shop alone,” Wavy Hair replied with an exaggerated eye-roll.

“Well, try it to Monday, then,” Massie insisted, resisting the urge to fan her pits with the card Shelly was trying to hand back to her.

Alicia tipped her head forward, her glossy black hair hiding her entire face. Dylan snapped on her sunglasses. Kristen traced a circle on the marble floor with her Puma-sneakered toe.

The clerk heaved a sigh but did as she was told. “Denied,” she announced loudly.

“Shhhh!” Massie pawed through her purse for her last card; an emergency MasterCard in Bean’s name. “I’m sure it’s just because my parents are on vacation, and the credit card companies want to make sure nothing is being stolen,” she said to the PC.

“That makes sense,” Dylan said, though her voice sounded unnaturally high. “That happened to me once when Merri-Lee went to Fiji.”

“Denied,” the clerk singsonged, like Massie’s credit card crisis was a musical number in an upcoming episode of
Glee.

“This is ridiculous!” Massie pulled out her iPhone and dialed her mother’s cell, just as the blond girl who Claire used to hang out with, the one from ADD—Carol? Cat? Cara?—joined the back of the line. A bead of sweat dropped from the back of Massie’s hairline and trickled down her back. “You’ve reached Kendra Block…”

“It’s Massie. Nine-one-one. Call me back.” Massie hung up the phone.

“What are you going to do?” Kristen asked, picking at the hem of her Free People henley.

“Well, one of you will have to pay for these until I figure this mistake out.”

Shelly made a
tsk-tsk
noise with her tongue. Two more people joined the line.

Gawd,
thought Massie. Why was everyone and their mother shopping on a Thursday night?

“I spent all my allowance on my snow-day shopping spree.” Dylan shrugged and took a few steps away from the counter.

“Remember?” Alicia shook her head. “I’m on ‘browse’ mode because of the promise I made to my parents. No shopping till January.”

“Don’t look at me,” Kristen frowned. “I’m poor.”

“Ehmagawd,” Massie breathed. Then she redialed her mother with one hand and tossed her hair with the other.

“You’ve reached…”

Massie hung up and dialed again.

“You’ve reached…”

“WHY AREN’T YOU PICKING UP?” Massie yelled into the phone. “Call me.” Redial.

“You’ve reached…”

“I know who I’ve reached!” Massie screamed.

“Echem.”
Shelly tapped her eggplant-polished nails on the granite countertop. “I’m going to need you to step aside so I can help these other costumers.” She gestured to the line behind Massie, which had grown to nine customers.

Massie put her hands on the counter and leaned forward until she was just inches from Shelly’s watery blue eyes. “Excuse me, but are you an iPhone on airplane mode?”

“No.”

“Then RING ME UP.”

Shelly placed a hand on the black phone in front of her. She picked it up and pressed a single red button. “Security,” the clerk whispered. “We may have a situation.”

Immediately, three guards clothed in gunmetal gray uniforms swarmed the counter.

“Miss, you’ll need to come with us.”

Massie felt like her entire body had been injected with Botox. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t open her mouth to form the flurry of angry words she wanted to hurl at the security guards. Instead, while the PC looked on, their hands clapped over their mouths, she just let the guards sweep her back to the dressing room, like they were the ocean and she was caught in a riptide.

One guard, a man with gray hair and crinkly green eyes, handed her the outfit she’d stuffed in the trash can.

“We’re prepared to let you off with a warning,” he said kindly, as though he were throwing her a life preserver. But all it did was remind her that she was drowning. And she had the sinking feeling that she hadn’t even hit rock bottom.

After school on Friday—and following a sledding date with Cam—a snow-covered Claire pushed through her blue-painted front door, Layne at her heels.