The Time-Traveling Fashionista (3 page)

It seemed to be just an ordinary Thursday.

“I’m afraid Kip isn’t going to ask! What is he waiting for?” Brooke said with a groan from the other end of the phone line.
“I mean the dance is in, like,
less
than a week.”

Louise could picture Brooke in her bedroom, painting her toenails while watching television and balancing her math book on
her lap. She always had to be doing at least three things at once. Louise heard sitcom laughter in the background.

“He’ll ask,” Louise assured her. “But what about me? At least you have two prospects.” She twirled the tangled, red phone
cord around her index and middle fingers.

Mrs. Lambert was convinced that talking on a cell phone would immediately result in brain cancer, so her parents had a private
phone line installed in Louise’s room. Her phone was shaped like an oversized pair of lips, a replica of something she had
seen in a cheesy eighties movie that she had bought on eBay.

“I bet Todd Berkowitz will ask you,” Brooke teased.

Louise rolled her eyes. Todd was, well, Todd. First of all, he was as tall as Louise, in other words, not very tall. Kind
of pimply, although this year Louise noticed he seemed to find the right dose of Proactiv. He was always wearing a hoodie
and jeans that were ten sizes too big, and he rode his beloved skateboard constantly, even in the school hallways, much to
the annoyance of the teachers. Louise was pretty sure Todd had a major crush on her for the past year and that everyone knew
it. She was both kind of excited and totally embarrassed at the same time, since he was the first guy she knew of who liked
her. She supposed he was slightly cute, at least compared to the other guys at her middle school. But compared with the movie
stars she idolized, Todd fell pretty short—literally.

He wasn’t at all who Louise dreamed would be her date to the dance or her first kiss. In the movies in her head, she imagined
someone taller, with broader shoulders, more classically handsome and rugged, and, well, kind of in black-and-white. Like
James Dean in the old film
Rebel Without a Cause.
The reality of her life was totally disappointing in comparison.

She walked over to her goldfish, Marlon, and dropped a few orange flakes into the glass bowl. That was about as close as she
was going to get to Marlon Brando, perhaps the greatest movie actor of all time, star of such classics as
On the Waterfront
and
A Streetcar Named Desire.
A goldfish.
When she thought about it, she realized the films she watched with her mom sometimes seemed more real to her than her actual
life.

“Can we please change the subject?” Louise asked in response. “It’s too disturbing.”

“Lou, you are so dramatic. Wait, what am I going to do about Kip?”

Louise shook her head. Talk about drama. “So do you know the answer to number six?”

That night Louise dreamed she was at the dance. She knew it was the seventh-grade semiformal, but nothing looked quite right.
The gymnasium had turned into a grand ballroom, and all the faces of the people dancing were weirdly familiar but also strangely
different at the same time. They kind of looked like her friends, but they weren’t. Suddenly Louise realized she must be at
the wrong party. Just then she saw a guy in a black hooded sweatshirt ride past her on a skateboard. She ran after him, calling
Todd’s name, thinking he’d be able to show her where to go, but he didn’t turn around. It was like she wasn’t even there.

Louise bolted upright in bed. She looked over at her clock radio: the red glowing lights spelled out 2:20
AM
. Why was she having so much anxiety about this dance? Who was she kidding? All she could think about was the dance! She tossed
and turned for the rest of the night. Louise had slept for only
five hours when her alarm woke her at 7:17 that morning for another school day.

Louise rolled out of bed. She changed out of her soft, cotton, oversized Gap nightshirt into her favorite, vintage, lavender
cashmere sweater, with only one tiny moth hole on the elbow, her perfectly broken-in Levi’s, and neon pink Converse sneakers.
She pulled her hair tightly back in an elastic-secured bun, not letting any curls escape.

She snapped another Polaroid, labeled it
April 15,
and watched the gray film slowly dissolve into focus. Nothing. No changes, except for two dark rings under her eyes that
gave her face a haunted expression. The day had hardly begun, and she was already exhausted.

Like every morning, she ripped off a page on her daily Virgo horoscope calendar hoping for some exciting predictions: “You
will embark on an interesting voyage. Stay true to yourself and enjoy the adventure!”—maybe she’d get asked out on her voyage
to school? The bus would be arriving in twenty minutes.

“Good morning, dear,” Mrs. Lambert cheerfully greeted Louise, in a tone that was remarkably chipper for that time of day.

Louise’s mom insisted that her daughter eat breakfast each morning, and she was vigorously stirring a clad-iron pot on the
stove with a wooden spoon when Louise shuffled into the
stately old kitchen. Louise was never hungry at 7:30
AM
, and each bite of oatmeal was its own special torture.

“Morning,” she mumbled as she took her seat at the breakfast nook and began to absentmindedly poke at her fruit plate with
a fork. Her father was already at the table, dressed in his pressed Brooks Brothers suit and striped tie, drinking coffee
and reading the
New York Times
. If you looked up “lawyer” in the dictionary, there was probably a picture of Robert Lambert, with his neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper
hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He just looked the part.

“Good morning, chicken,” he said, glancing up briefly from his paper. Louise had no idea how that nickname started, but somehow,
to her bewilderment, it stuck.

“Eating breakfast every day is good for your memory,” Mrs. Lambert explained yet again as she noticed Louise gagging on a
piece of cantaloupe. “They’ve done studies.” Mrs. Lambert liked to justify all her unjustified rules with “they’ve done studies.”
Who “they” were Louise had no idea, and she was pretty sure her mother didn’t, either.

“I know, I know,” Louise said. “With all the breakfasts I’ve eaten by now, I’ll be remembering things that have never even
happened.” She moaned audibly, not sure how she was going to manage another bite.

“Don’t be smart with me, young lady,” Mrs. Lambert retorted, a little smile cracking through her tough façade.
“Okay, good enough,” she decided, wiping her hands on her apron. “Go get your books. You don’t want to miss the bus again.”

Louise sat at the table for another moment, too full and sleepy to move.

“And if your memory is so sharp,” her mother continued, “you will recall my taxi rates have gone up. I now charge ten dollars
for a school drop.”

Her daughter bolted from the kitchen.

“Class, do you know what day it is today?” Miss Morris asked the sea of expressionless faces. Miss Morris had been teaching
at Fairview Junior High for eons; even Louise’s father had suffered through her history classes. Everyone was pretty sure
that she hadn’t changed her lesson plans since then. She was a tiny old lady with legs as thin as Number Two pencils and a
tight white bun that never a stray hair escaped from.

“Anyone?” she asked in a tone that revealed she had given up hope of her students answering her years ago.

Silence.
Click. Click. Click.
Louise never realized how loud these institutional school clocks actually were until she had Miss Morris for history.

“Today is exactly one year from
the one-hundredth anniversary
of the RMS
Titanic
disaster.” Miss Morris paused for a dramatic moment, or to catch her breath, and waited for some reaction. She was wearing
a steel gray, boiled-wool dress that looked
extremely itchy and hot for this time of year. Apparently Miss Morris’s wardrobe was not affected by the change of seasons.

Click. Click. Click.

She was probably old enough to have been on the
Titanic
herself, Louise thought, already bored. Miss Morris had an uncanny ability to make even the most interesting subject matter
as dull as a Lambert meatloaf recipe.

“Can anyone tell me anything about the
Titanic
?”

“The movie blew,” Billy Robertson said from his seat at the back of the classroom. Miss Morris ignored him, or perhaps didn’t
hear. Louise could never be sure, but Miss Morris never reacted to Billy’s sarcastic remarks.

“The
Titanic
was by far the most luxurious ship to ever cross the ocean,” the white-bunned teacher began in her monotone, though by the
somewhat sparkly look in her otherwise cloudy brown eyes, she seemed to at least be entertaining herself. “She was the largest
passenger steamship in the world at the time of her sinking.”

Louise looked around at the rest of her fidgety classmates. Mostly everyone had already tuned out, so she focused her attention
on sketching fantasy dress designs in her loose-leaf notebook. This came to be a problem before every test when she’d open
her notepad, praying that miraculously there would be some actual notes, and would inevitably find a sketchbook
that would be useful only to someone studying for an entrance exam at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

What were they wearing on the Titanic?
Louise wondered, and without overthinking, she let her wrist relax and started drawing what she imagined was the fashion
at the time. She sketched a long, softly draped ankle-length skirt with a high, empire waist and intricate lace detailing.
The skirt was wide at the hips and got narrower toward the feet. She drew a pair of high, slightly curved heels with straps
crisscrossing at the ankles, peeking out of the hem. A beautiful lace blouse with a modest neckline sat below a hat with a
wide, face-shadowing brim so she didn’t have to draw the facial features. Louise wasn’t sure where she got the idea or how
historically accurate it was, but on closer examination, she smiled, satisfied with how it turned out.

She was abruptly awoken from her dress-designing daydream when the bell rang and announced the end of another forgettable
history class.