Olivia Bennett - The Allegra Biscotti Collection

She wasn’t going to any party tonight. She was grounded. And she certainly wasn’t crazy enough to prance over to her dad and ask him to change his mind.

She fingered the long strip of sequined material she’d cut out for the belt. She turned it back and forth, amazed by the patterns of light that played off its shimmery surface. At every angle, the color changed.

She didn’t feel like leaving right now anyway, she realized. Even though the possibility of getting together with Jackson made her lungs forget how to take in air. What she wanted to do, most of all, was sew. She was so close to seeing the dreams from her sketch pad become real. There was no putting the brakes on now. Especially not for a Halloween party.

Holls: So sorry! U wldnt believe what happened 2day—

Emma groaned and deleted the message. This wasn’t the kind of thing you texted. It made her sound like she didn’t care. After everything that had happened between them, Holly would think her not showing meant she didn’t want to be friends.

She needed to talk to Holly face-to-face. She tucked her phone away. It would be better to beg Holly for forgiveness tomorrow. As for Jackson, well, she could only pray to the God of Coco that this hadn’t been her one and only chance.

But Sunday morning Holly wouldn’t answer her cell or respond to Emma’s emails. Emma kept count. Three calls directly to voice mail, four unanswered texts, and two emails sent into the netherworld. Holly obviously wanted nothing to do with her.

Emma had gotten up early that morning to tackle the mountain of homework. Her mother kept walking into the living room with the excuse of needing this book off the shelf or that folder from the desk, so Emma had no choice but to plow through. By lunchtime, she was almost caught up—or at least closer than she had been in two weeks. She tried Holly again. Silence. Total freeze-out.

Then, after lunch, disaster struck.

Emma and her father rode up to Laceland in the empty elevator. The ancient building was eerily silent on a Sunday. Emma’s fingers itched to feel the hum of the machine under them again. She was so close now. Almost done. She practically sprinted to the front door, hopping from one foot to the other as she waited for her father to unlock it.

“It’s open,” he said. “Leo—you know, the building maintenance guy—is here with his team to do some repair work. But they shouldn’t be in your way at all.”

Emma pushed through the door and raced straight back to her work space. She froze, blinking several times. And screamed.

She couldn’t believe her eyes. Paint!

White paint…splattered everywhere.

A dirty canvas tarp was draped haphazardly on her worktable. The floor of her studio was littered with cans of open paint, metal trays, and wood mixing sticks. And on her dress forms…oh, God…she couldn’t bear to look.

“No! No! Please no!” Emma screamed. “Dad! Come quick!”

Her father burst in. “What’s wrong?”

She pointed with a shaking hand at one of the dress forms. Her vest. Her beautiful, smooth cotton-sateen gray vest with the silk aquatic-watercolor-design lining had two huge white paint splatters. “They ruined it!” Tears sprung to her eyes.

“I don’t understand it.” Her father stared, horrified. “They weren’t supposed to be back here at all!” He balled his fists, his anger apparent. “Where is Leo? Leo! I paid him to supervise the painters just so something like this wouldn’t happen. Leo!” He took a deep breath. “Are the other two pieces all right?”

Emma slowly walked over to the other two dress forms. She had left all three of her girls, as she had taken to calling them, here last night dressed in her nearly finished creations and looking beautiful. She had said a special good night to each one almost the same way her dad used to do when he tucked her in when she was younger. Wishing each one dreams as sweet as cotton candy. And now…now…

She examined the fabric as if under a microscope. She nodded slowly. The other two were unharmed. The third, oh God. She scrunched her eyes closed.

“I’m so, so sorry, Cookie,” Noah said, shaking his head. “This is awful. Leo has never let me down before.”

“What am I going to do?” Emma choked, as she tried to pick a glob of paint off the outside of the vest with her fingernail. But the paint was already dry. Even if she could scrape off the top layer, the fabric had already absorbed most of it.

“Is there any way you could send two pieces instead?”

“I can’t. I promised—Allegra promised, whoever promised—Paige three pieces. Three, not two!” Emma gulped. “And if I don’t deliver all three on time, she’s going to find a designer to replace me. I’ll be ruined before I ever get started.”

Emma sunk to the floor, her legs too shaky to support her.

Now what?

Sunday passed in a blur. Charlie was summoned, of course. Her father screamed at Leo and his painters. Leo apologized profusely. But, really, what good did that do? The damage was done.

Charlie analyzed the situation from every angle. There was no question that two was not three, and three was what Paige wanted. Charlie advocated the quality-versus-quantity argument for a while. But Emma was no fool. Paige wanted it all—three new pieces, all to-die-for amazing. And Allegra had to deliver.

“So what about you just make another vest, identical to this one?” Charlie suggested. “Shouldn’t it be easier the second time around?”

“If it were that simple, don’t you think I would be working on it already?” Emma shot back. “It’s Sunday. Allure is closed, and I don’t have enough of the outer fabric or the lining fabric left over to start again. And even if I raced to Allure right after school tomorrow and bought more fabric, there’s no way I’d be able to finish it in a couple of hours.”

“Okay, skip school. Problem solved.” Charlie crossed his arms, satisfied with his solution.

“Problem not solved. I promised my parents I was going to school tomorrow. I have to go.” Emma ran her fingers nervously through her hair. She couldn’t battle her mother now about missing school, on top of everything else. “Next idea?”

After a bout of tears and four big Reese’s peanut-butter cups, Emma finally decided she would turn in her two new pieces along with the off-white linen corset dress she had made the previous summer. The dress didn’t fit into her collection, but it was done, which, at this point, was a huge plus. Emma analyzed the dress. If she could include some of the lining material—Charlie crawled on the floor, gathering the useable scraps left over from the vest—and weave strips of it into the corset and maybe have some peeking out ever so slightly from the hem of the dress, the dress might not look like an afterthought. She hoped.

Emma felt as if she were in an action movie. Instead of running for her life, she was sewing at manic speed. She stitched as fast as she could without sacrificing the level of construction. She polished the other dress and the jacket until she felt they were perfect.

Then she tackled the corset dress, incorporating the lining fabric in what she hoped was an innovative design. During the entire afternoon, she could barely look at her ruined vest, still displayed on the dress form. Except for the finishing touches—and maybe a little extra work on the corset dress— Emma finished by Sunday night.