Olivia Bennett: The Allegra Biscotti Collection

Right now, all three were modeling dresses Emma had made with the juiciest accordion silk fabric she’d stumbled onto at a tiny Indian import shop on 36th Street. The colors had been so intense they practically screamed at her from the window, even though they were just draped in a heap over a folding chair. She bought bolts of deep, ripe raspberry; a rich pineapple yellow; and a tangy mango orange.

For the dresses, she had kept the lines simple with flirty, uneven skirts that dipped and rose in different places. A halter top for the raspberry, a racer-back tank for the orange one. And she’d done a simple boat-neck tank for the yellow. She’d made wonderful, whimsical sashes out of the silk fabric scraps, woven together and tied in a casual way that made them look like flower petals.

Emma stood and circled the dresses, eyeing them from various angles. She loved the way even the horrible fluorescent overhead light shimmered on the fabric. The halter and racer-back tops were great. But the boat neck felt a bit too tailored for the fabric. Emma picked up a tiny remnant of the orange accordion silk and twisted it into a flower. She held it around the neckline and then pinched the right shoulder of the dress, making it just a bit asymmetrical. She pinned the flower onto the gathered shoulder and stood back to examine the new line of it and the little spray of orange against the yellow.

She tried to imagine how the dress would look when worn by someone—someone on a date, someone celebrating a happy occasion, someone confident and worldly. How would the dress look moving? Dancing? Twirling?

When Emma finally hung a finished piece on the rolling rack against the back wall, it was no longer simply an item of clothing. It was the beginning of a story that would unfold when someone put it on for the very first time. A story that would change and grow each time the piece was worn. Oh the secrets, she thought, that clothes could tell!

“That’s potent,” a guy’s voice said from behind her.

Such a Charlie Calhoun word— potent . Emma turned and caught her friend eyeing her latest creation with almost as much attention as she gave her own work. “Do you really like it?”

“Do I ever say anything I don’t mean?” Charlie didn’t wait for an answer. “I like the shape and the material. Those colors look really cool together. I like how the yellow one is uneven. Makes it edgier.”

Emma couldn’t help but smile. She knew Charlie was always totally honest with her—for better or worse. He never played down his opinions, which she appreciated even when the Truth According to Charlie may not have been exactly what she wanted to hear or when she wanted to hear it.

At Amber Vigeant’s twelfth birthday party, Charlie had told Emma—right in front of cute Mike Sheehan—that Emma had something gross hanging out of her nose. Beyond mortifying. And yes, Mike’s laughter, as she ran to find a tissue, rang in her ears for weeks, but Emma reasoned it was better than spending the night talking to Mike with boogers on display.

Not all kids at Downtown Day shared her view about Charlie’s truth-telling. A lot of people thought Charlie was rude. But Holly and Emma liked that he was so bold. They usually found it funny.

“What are you doing here?” Emma asked, as if she didn’t already know.

“I don’t feel like going home yet.” Charlie was her only friend who ever visited her at Laceland. He actually liked it there, more than being at home with his kind of crazy mom who gave acting lessons in their tiny apartment when she wasn’t auditioning for parts in Broadway shows. Holly kept promising to come by but never did. Emma was beginning to realize a lace warehouse didn’t hold the same allure as shopping or seeing a movie with Ivana. Or being in the park with cute boys.

Charlie pushed his blue-tinted sunglasses up onto his white-blond hair. He showed up in a new pair of shades every day—each one cooler than the last. He reached for the bolt of blackwatch plaid fabric on the table. “Making kilts next?”

Emma shrugged. “Doubtful, but you never know. It was on the bargain rack at Allure Fabrics. You wouldn’t wear a kilt if I made you one, would you?”

Charlie wiggled his blond eyebrows. “I might. I do have awesome legs.”

She laughed. “I bet you do.”

“Emma.” Her dad peered around the file-cabinet blockade and nodded in Charlie’s direction. He was as used to Charlie being around the warehouse as Emma was. “Charlie, I need to pull Emma away. She’s got to earn some of that money I’m paying her.”

“You can’t be serious,” Emma protested. “I have definitely earned every penny today! I just spent two hours unpacking boxes with Isaac. And I have the lace lint all over me to prove it!”

“True,” her father agreed, leaning his elbow on top of one of the filing cabinets. It was kind of funny that her dad sold delicate lace—people were always shocked by that when they first met him. He was so tall and broad that he looked like he belonged on a football field.

“But, Cookie,” Noah said, using the nickname he had called Emma since before she could hold a pencil in her hand, “you’ll like this. Customers.” His green eyes twinkled.

“Really? People? We never get people,” Emma joked, though she had to admit her curiosity was definitely piqued. For the most part, no one needed to come to Laceland. Her dad had sales reps who traveled to manufacturing companies, selling them the lace they used to trim thousands of identical dresses and tablecloths and whatnots.

“I’ll hang here,” Charlie offered, his iPod headphones already in his ears.

Emma followed Noah down the hall. “Who’s the customer?”

“You’ll have to see for yourself. You’re in for quite a surprise.”

Emma entered the well-lit but rarely used showroom, and her eyes immediately fixated on the unrolled bolt of lace on the glass display table. A light shone up from under the table, illuminating the exquisite petal-thin white design. The floral pattern was extremely detailed. This lace was gorgeous, so much nicer than any of the lace they usually had in the warehouse. It must be a special order, Emma thought, totally intrigued. It looks handmade and crazy expensive.

“It’s so pretty!” Emma exclaimed, before realizing that there were two people in the room with their heads bent over the other side of the table.

“It is, isn’t it? I told you to trust me, Paige. People will melt with envy when they see your dress. Complete and total meltdown,” gushed a short woman with caramel-colored skin, cropped black hair that grazed her jawline at a sharp angle, and cat’s-eye glasses. She wore a twill trench coat with silver metallic threads shot through it to give the material a subtle sheen. The nontraditional fabric was Emma’s tip-off that the coat must be a designer piece. She couldn’t help but wonder who had made it.

The cat’s-eye-glasses woman nodded encouragingly at the woman circling the display table, who was intently analyzing the lace from every angle. That woman, Paige, was also striking but in a very different way. Tall and elegant, with peachy-pink skin and long, black hair twisted and pinned up in that perfect-yet-messy style that Emma could never get quite right with her hair even after a zillion tries.