Glitter Girl (8 page)

“Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!”

Like on New Year's Eve in Times Square in New York City, the girls counted down along with the Glitter Girl clock as it made its way backward to 00:00:00. Then suddenly what seemed like a thousand little hands descended on the huge box and began ripping it apart. The ripping was so ferocious that it was hard to believe it came from dainty fourteen-year-old fingers painted in innocent pink, purple, and teal rather than a pack of jackals bringing down its prey. Those pretty little hands could do some serious damage, because within a minute the big box was totally gutted and dozens of smaller boxes were spilling out everywhere. It was like a mamma box had given birth to a giant litter of baby boxes!

Before you knew it, all those “baby” boxes were mercilessly ripped open and their contents revealed. Contents such as bedazzled hair accessories, shimmery eye makeup, body glitter, solar-powered key chains that flashed your name, rhinestone-encrusted flip-flops, super-cool sunglasses with mirrored lenses, leopard-print throw pillows with a secret compartment for a diary, and tankini swimsuits covered in the cutest little cherry print ever. Then of course there was a whole line of accessories from T-shirts to notebooks and pens that sported the words “Study? I'm Here to See My Friends” and nail polish that actually changed color depending on your mood!

And that wasn't even the coolest stuff. There was software that let you design your own line of clothing and then stage a totally fabulous virtual fashion show to the music of your choice (downloaded for a small fee, of course). There were MP3 players with an app that could figure out the star charts of you and up to five of your BFFs and then calculate the next ten years of your daily horoscope! There were flash drives in every animal print imaginable, as well as fuzzy slippers with a recordable chip that you could make say things like, “It's too early. Wake me when it's noon,” or, “Step aside. Fabulous coming through,” whenever you took a step.

Kat looked around at it all and proclaimed at the top of her lungs, “This is the most therocious night ever!” The girls all cheered.

• • •

Two hours later, the house looked like the aftermath of the most decadent Christmas morning ever. The girls, now in their pj's, sat amid a mountain of discarded packaging. Tufts of hot pink, white, and black marabou floated through the air like puffy snowflakes as the girls excitedly tried everything in sight.

“Cool! Awesome! Sweet!” were some of the words still heard as the girls tried out various items, sometimes even getting into a tug-of-war over them.

Kat sat cross-legged on the floor near the fireplace with her laptop across her knees. She'd promised her readers she would live blog the whole night, and she typed a mile a minute as the other girls pranced around in their new Glitter Gear. She was positively beaming over this stuff.

Guess what?

she wrote,

I feel confident that the forecast for this fall is sunny and warm, with a definite chance of glitter and a “cool” front moving in!

She loved weather analogies.

Chelsea Ambrose, who had been peeking over Kat's shoulder as she typed, walked around the room, surveying the frilly chaos she had created.

A feeding frenzy
, Chelsea thought as she watched it all with a self-satisfied smirk. She scanned the room and noted the hungry look in the eyes of this pack of girls. The look from which big sales are made. It was the look that they all had. All of them except…that Jules girl. Chelsea's smirk faded.

Jules sat at the center island eating off a picked-over snack tray, observing the madness from afar, not even tempted to pick up a single Glitter Girl item. It irked Chelsea. Who did this girl think she was, sitting there high up on her bar stool like she was above all this?

“Is there a problem?” asked Chelsea, sidling up next to Jules.

Not sure she was being spoken to, Jules looked up, surprised, dropping a glob of guacamole from her chip onto her white capris. But Chelsea was indeed looking straight at her.

“No,” said Jules, trying to wipe the guacamole off her pants and only making it worse.

“Then come and join the fun,” said Chelsea in a voice that was more threatening than inviting.

“No thanks. I–I'm not really into this kind of stuff,” said Jules as she wiped up the mess she'd made on herself.

“You're not into ‘this kind of stuff'?” Chelsea repeated quite loudly, sounding offended.

Suddenly the room went quiet as Jules realized that all eyes had turned to her. That included Kat, who had been blogging about the makeover Aly Washington was doing on Misty Wilkins using a triple palette of blue eye shadows (cerulean, cornflower, and a shade called mouthwash). Kat was having such a good time capturing the moment that she had forgotten all about Jules.

“Well, I'm sorry you find this all soooo boring,” said Chelsea pointedly.

There were a few snickers from around the room. Zoe sniffed haughtily and gave Kat an “I told you so” look. Kat didn't like where this was heading. She quickly set down her laptop and jumped in.

“Here, Jules. Try out this eye shadow Aly's using. It would look so good with your skin tone,” offered Kat, holding out the little container.

Unlike Kat, Jules was always on the verge of humiliation when she was the center of attention. She was already feeling really out of place at this ridiculous party. She wouldn't know what to do with three shades of eye shadow if her life depended on it. And now the whole room would know. So instead of admitting her true feelings, she relied on her usual defense mechanism, sarcasm.

“Yeah, maybe if I was a Smurf or one of the Na'vi on the planet Pandora,” she replied.

Tittering and whispers could be heard around the room. Even a barely audible “lame” that Kat was sure came from Zoe. Kat cringed in embarrassment. How could Jules do this to her? In front of Chelsea? When she knew how badly Kat wanted to be the Face of Glitter Girl!

“There's other stuff here I'm sure you'll like,” said Kat, trying to salvage the moment.

“Yes, Jules. Surely there's something here that would be interesting—even to a girl like you,” said Chelsea. More snickers from around the room.

A
girl
like
you?
This is exactly what Jules had been worried about. Not fitting in. And she was mad now that these stupid girls were laughing at her. And mad at herself that she had ever even wanted to come to this stupid party to begin with.

“I doubt it,” she said, digging in her heels.

“Oh you'll like this!” offered Darcy from the corner. As usual, she was completely oblivious to the tension that now filled the room. “It's so cool. Look, it's shaped like a pretty, little pink daisy pin but like, it's secretly a camera!”

Desperate to end the weirdness, Kat rushed over to Darcy and grabbed the pin, making a huge point to gush about it. “What? That's amazing! How does it work, Chelsea?”

Temporarily forgetting Jules, Chelsea came over and proudly explained, “Oh, this is fabulous. It's called a Slam Cam. It's a tiny covert video camera specifically for spying.”

“Ooooh!” went about eight of the girls simultaneously at the word “spying.”

Chelsea smiled and continued, “You can catch your friends and family in funny situations and post the videos on the Internet. Or let's say you and your friend are having an argument. You can secretly record it, and later when your friend denies saying something, which, let's admit, they
always
do…you just pop out the drive, put it in your computer, and bingo! She's busted!”

There were more “oohs” and “ahhs” around the room. Zoe proclaimed she absolutely
had
to have one. But then…

“That sounds creepy. Not to mention illegal.”

Kat turned. She couldn't believe it! Jules just refused to shut up!

“My mom's a—” Jules began.

“Yeah, we know. Your mom's a lawyer. But not everything's a major crime. Some things are just fun,” said Kat.

Jules was a little stung by her friend accusing her of not seeing the fun in things. But not all things were funny. Not to her. Suddenly she felt very defensive.

“Oh, come on. You have to admit…
this
is a major crime!” said Jules. She picked up an engineer's cap from a pile of Glitter Gear. It was pink-and-white plaid with rhinestones all around the band.

“Excuse me. But I'll have you know that our market research shows this hat will be the hottest next trend in teen wardrobe accessories,” said Chelsea.

“Well, as an actual teen, I can tell you it's lame,” said Jules. “Ask Kat. She'll tell you the same thing.”

Smiling, Jules looked at Kat, knowing full well that Kat did not do hats. Not ever, under any circumstances, nuh-uh. This Chelsea chick was in for a rude awakening.

“Kat?” Chelsea held the engineer's cap out to Kat to put on, daring her really.

Now all eyes were on Kat. She could not believe Jules, putting her on the spot like this. Knowing full well how she felt about hats.

Kat took the hat from Chelsea, hemmed and hawed a bit, and held it out in front of her as if it were one of her little cousin's dirty diapers. “It, uh, it's pretty sweet,” said Kat finally. And to Jules's amazement, Kat put on the hat. Kat! Who had never, not once, not in all the years Jules had known her, ever put on a hat.

Not even that one time at the new Aquatic Center for Ellie Boyle's fifth birthday party when it was like a hundred degrees. Her mom had said she had to wear a hat or she couldn't be in the sun, but Kat wouldn't budge. She sat underneath the picnic table the entire time and even sang “Happy Birthday” and ate her cake from under there, just to avoid wearing a silly birthday hat.

And now Kat was wearing a hat. She was, well, Kat in a hat! Chelsea gave Jules a pretty snotty look as looks go. Jules thought she would barf.

Jules looked around at the girls, most of them snickering at her. Except of course Darcy, who was on Kat's laptop trying to use the design program and failing miserably. She saw Zoe, who was staring at her guacamole-stained capris, whisper something to Misty, and they both cracked up.

Angry and upset, Jules grabbed her sleeping bag and headed to the front door.

“Jules! Wait. Where are you going?” asked Kat. Even if she was ticked at Jules, she didn't want her to leave.

“Home.”

“Don't forget your goodie bag, sweetie.” Chelsea shoved a bag in her hand and Jules could have sworn Chelsea was nudging her out the door.

Jules ran out of the living room. Kat hesitated a second and then went after her.

Kat caught up to Jules on the front porch of the house.

“Hey, stop. Don't be that way,” said Kat.

“What way? You mean be myself unlike some people I know?” Jules looked at the stupid hat Kat was still wearing.

Self-conscious, Kat pulled it off. “I'm just having fun. What's wrong with that?”

“If being a sell-out is your idea of fun, I don't want any part of it.” Jules stormed off.

Kat looked back into the house to see the rest of the partygoers crowding at the front window, watching the whole thing. She saw that Chelsea was watching too, looking her up and down. How much had she seen of that mess? Kat wondered if Chelsea was at that very moment striking her off the list of candidates to be the Face of Glitter Girl. Kat was angry at Jules for embarrassing her like this. She took a deep breath and stepped back into the house.

“I am sooo sorry for that whole scene,” said Kat, completely red-faced.

“I told you not to invite her,” said Zoe.

“I guess I should have left her off the list like we had planned in the first place,” Kat admitted, desperate to make things right in Chelsea's eyes.

“Then why
did
you invite her?” asked Chelsea in a penetrating way that made Kat feel like she'd better come up with a very good answer or else she was definitely not going to be the Face of Glitter Girl.

“Well, I don't know, I—uh—her brother was standing there—”

“Her brother
is
really cute,” added Zoe and several girls nodded, which empowered Kat and made her feel she was on the right track.

“Yeah. And I felt guilty. And, and I guess, I guess it was like a, you know, a pity invite!” said Kat.

There were murmurs of understanding from some of the girls. But it was Chelsea's reaction that concerned Kat.

Chelsea broke into a smile. She went over to Kat and put her arm around her.

“You have a good heart, sweetie, but you'll have to learn that in life, heart will only get you so far. Not everyone is Glitter Girl material. Now. Who wants some free lip gloss?”

The girls cheered and as they all started back to the family room, bubbly and talking and laughing, Kat was relieved the party was back on track. Still, she felt a pang of guilt deep inside and took a quick glance out the big picture window where she could see the light go on in Jules's room. When Kat finally rejoined her friends at the party, that guilt made it hard for her to appreciate the OMG! prettiest shade of gloss she had ever laid eyes on.

By midnight, Chelsea had gone back to her hotel and the party had become pretty much like every other slumber party—a few girls got sleepy and flopped on the sofa in front of the TV, where they were streaming a movie everybody had already seen a hundred times. A few others were gossiping about boys in the kitchen while they ate some leftover raw cookie dough that never quite made it into the oven. Some others were still sorting through the box of goodies from Glitter Girl, making sure they hadn't missed any treasure in their first frenzied rush.

Up in her room, Kat Connors was sitting on her bed, typing away at her laptop, updating her blog with some last-minute additions she hadn't been able to do during the party. She used her new Slam Cam to snap and upload some quick stills of the products from the box and was busy posting them to the blog with her comments on each one. Across the street, Jules's bedroom light had gone out a long time ago, and to be honest, while Kat had been a little bummed about what happened earlier, she decided not to give it a whole lot of thought. It was just Jules being Jules. Kat figured they'd be cool by the time school came around on Monday.

Before she left, Chelsea had given her some “ideas” for what other things to say on the blog about each product. Chelsea made it clear that Kat could write anything she wanted, but she also said there were certain things about the products that she wanted to make sure Kat “didn't forget” in all the excitement of the evening. Kat looked at the three pages of Chelsea's typed notes in front of her.

It was harmless enough stuff, she thought. Saying that one lip gloss was “sassy” or that the shades of nail polish were “everything a girl could ask for and more.” No, they weren't
exactly
her thoughts about the products, but it
was
pretty cool stuff. Besides, she was tired. And when you're tired, somebody else's words just seem easier to type than thinking of nouns and verbs and adjectives all your own.

She even gave a positive review to that sparkly engineer's hat Jules had thought was so hideous. Well, Kat thought the same thing, to be honest, and not just because she didn't like hats—it truly was atrocious. But Chelsea had been
sooo
nice the whole evening and given them so much stuff. She closed her blog with the announcement that all this Glitter Girl stuff would be available exclusively at the White Oak Mall the next day (Chelsea had rented out an empty jewelry boutique for just that purpose) and that if customers would mention Kat's blog, they'd get 10 percent off all their purchases.

Kat read over the blog entry one last time. Her dad had always drilled it into her that her grammar and spelling should be impeccable, even on the Internet. It all looked good. She wrinkled her nose a bit when she read the part about the engineer's hat but didn't change anything. It was all more or less how she felt…sort of. She clicked on Post and voilà!—her words were part of the information superhighway. Kat turned off the laptop and looked at the clock. 1:47 a.m. Not bad for a sleepover. She put her head on her pillow, and before the clock hit 1:48, she was asleep.

• • •

Kat's mom once told her about a shampoo commercial from when Trudy was a teenager, where the girl on the commercial says she loved the shampoo so much she would “tell two friends” about it, and then those girls would tell two other friends who would tell two more friends, and so on and so on, until the entire TV screen was full of girls who were all in love with the same shampoo. Well, Kat's blog was kind of like that shampoo commercial.

By the time she and the other slumber-party girls woke up on Sunday morning for Trudy's waffles with strawberry butter, the entire city around them was simply abuzz about Glitter Girl. And this was not just Willkie girls. Girls of every age from every nook and cranny of the city had been reading and forwarding Kat's blog and pestering their parents and squirming through church and waiting impatiently for the White Oak Mall to open at 10 a.m.

By nine, the crowd outside the mall was two hundred strong, and there was more jockeying for position at the front of the line than you'd see at the Kentucky Derby. The security guards and mall managers scratched their heads. But the girls just kept coming. By nine thirty, the line wound around the parking lot, and a few local cops had been called off their regular shifts to run traffic control at the entrance. At ten, when the doors finally
did
open, the crowd flowed into the mall like a hunting party of lionesses with the scent of fresh zebra in the air.

Outside the temporary Glitter Girl store, a barely rested Chelsea Ambrose stood smiling from ear to ear, watching the girls rush by with their mothers in tow. She couldn't believe her good fortune. The sleepover had gone well to be sure, aside from that little issue with the frumpy neighbor girl, but this turnout exceeded even her own high expectations. Numbers coming in from the other states were solid, but these were off the charts! She had always known Kat Connors was a good choice, but
this
! This was lightning in a bottle.

By noon, the entire Glitter Girl store had sold out. Everything had been snapped up by girls eager to be the first to sport Glitter Gear at school the next day. Chelsea walked through the empty store as a few of the temporary employees cleaned up. The place looked like Whoville on Christmas morning after the Grinch had tossed everything in his sled and headed back up Mount Crumpit. There was nothing left but bare walls and wire. But unlike the Whos in Kat's favorite Dr. Seuss book, Chelsea was not about to join hands with anyone in the town square and sing. Instead, Chelsea had already started counting the money.

Kat, who had all the Glitter Girl stuff she needed at the moment, was one of the few girls in town who didn't make the pilgrimage to the White Oak Mall to shop for Glitter Gear. She went for an entirely different reason—Jules. Her birthday was coming up, and Kat hadn't gotten her present yet. And considering what had gone down the night before, Kat wanted to make sure it was an extra nice one.

As Kat walked through the mall, she was amazed at the madness that was happening at the temporary Glitter Girl shop. It certainly was clear that Glitter Girl was a hit, just like Chelsea had said it would be. The vague thought of giving Jules a Glitter Girl gift card as a gag gift crossed Kat's mind for a moment, but she quickly shook it off. Now was not the time for jokes, especially not about Glitter Girl. In fact, she made a point of steering clear of the mayhem at the Glitter Girl store completely, for fear of seeming over-eager to Chelsea.

Instead, Kat wandered through Forever 21 and Target and Macy's, but she couldn't really find anything that seemed to say “Jules.” In fact, most of the stuff she saw practically screamed out “NOT JULES” instead. Kat decided to steer clear of the clothes, fashion, and beauty product sections of the other stores as well.

However, in the corner of the mall, there was a store Kat knew about, but just barely. The only reason it was on her radar was that it was on the way to that cart that sold cinnamon pretzels. It was a little store with a dingy sign: “McPhee & Sullivan, Independent Booksellers.” It had been there as long as the mall existed but Kat had never set foot in the place.

Now, she entered the store. It wasn't like one of those well-lit, well-organized bookstores where Kat and her mom would go to buy a book for Kat's dad to read on the plane. Instead, new and used books were piled to the ceiling in no particular order that Kat could decipher. An elderly man who looked a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge from
A
Christmas
Carol
sat on a stool behind the counter scribbling in a notebook. Kat nervously approached the ancient salesman.

“Excuse me,” Kat said, barely audible.

No reaction. A little louder this time. “Excuse me.”

The old man looked up at her, almost surprised to be seeing a customer, or at least a customer under the age of one hundred twelve.

“Well hello, young miss,” the salesman said, with an accent that sounded a little English or Irish or Scottish or something. Kat could never tell the difference. “Would you be wanting a book today?”

“Uh, yeah, I think so,” Kat replied. “I'm looking for a present for my friend. It's her birthday.”

“Would she be around your age then?” the bookseller inquired, setting down his notebook and wiping his hands on a pea-green apron that must have been as old as he was.

“Uh, yeah, we're the same age,” Kat replied. “I really want to give her something special. And she loves to read.” Saying that, Kat remembered when she and Jules used to devour books and have reading contests during the summer to see who could read the most pages in a week. That hadn't happened in a while. In fact, Kat could barely remember the last book she had picked up because she
wanted
to read it.

“How about one of the Harry Potters?” suggested the old man. “They're still quite popular with the young people.”

“I think she's got all of those.”

“All righty then, could you give me a wee bit of a hint so I can steer us in the right direction?”

“Well, she's in the Shakespeare Club at school,” Kat offered.

The old man's eyes lit up. “Shakespeare you say, the ever-lovin' Bard of Avon?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess,” said Kat, vaguely remembering Jules using that nickname for him.

“You are in luck, my good lady!” said the clerk. “For just this very day arrived in the store a very special shipment indeed. I haven't even put it out on the shelf yet.”

He reached under the counter and pulled out an enormous book.

“
The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare
,” said the salesman, reading the cover. “
The Complete Works, Annotated
and Illustrated
.”

It was practically as large as Kat's family Bible that her grandma gave her on her first communion day a few years ago. But it was even more beautiful, if that were possible. It was bound in deep scarlet leather, with pages that had gold around the edges. Kat paged through the book and looked at all the notes and illustrations. Scenes from each of the plays were in vivid color that made even Kat want to read them.

As Kat was busy being dazzled by the book, she thought of Jules's pile of dog-eared paperbacks that filled her bedroom. Or that discount
Collected
Works
Jules had bought used for $9.99 on eBay, and when it finally arrived, she had discovered there were markings all over the margins and some of the pages of
Hamlet
had been torn out. This would put them all to shame. This was the perfect gift on a birthday that really
needed
a perfect gift, especially after last night. Only how much could it be? This was not just a book; this was a work of art. Kat scanned the inside and outside cover looking for a price, but none was to be found.

She gulped, “Uh, how much is it?”

“Well, I haven't really priced it out yet,” the bookseller replied. “It just arrived today, you see.”

The old man could see Kat was doing calculations in her head and looking for an answer. “What might be your budget for this gift, young miss?”

“Uh, my mom said I could spend fifty dollars,” Kat said, knowing that such a treasure had to be more than that. “But,” she said, silently adding up all the other cash she had in her purse, “I could go as high as…seventy-five dollars?”

The old man looked sternly from Kat to the volume of Shakespeare on the counter, doing his own set of calculations in his head. “Well, lassie,” he said, “as luck would have it, this particular volume is exactly that, seventy-five dollars, tax included.”

“You're kidding!”

“No,” said the bookseller, sighing and seeming to be already calculating the loss he would be taking on the book, “I wouldn't kid about such a thing.”

Kat plunked down the seventy-five dollars, and as it turned out, she had $77.95 in her purse. She insisted the clerk accept all of it, which he did. The bookseller wrapped the book in some special brown paper and the transaction was complete.

Kat thanked the man about twelve times and then left the store, clutching the special parcel tightly. She was elated because she knew in her heart of hearts that Jules was so totally going to love this and think it was the best present ever. It wouldn't hurt, of course, that as a side benefit of such an amazing gift, any lingering bad feelings Jules had toward Kat would certainly instantly disappear.

As he watched her go, the old clerk shook his head. “Mr. Sullivan will surely have my head for this one, glory be.”

• • •

The next morning, Kat got up early to design the perfect combination of Glitter Girl stuff for her school debut. She had already chosen the nail polish, a color called Grape Jelly that went perfectly with the purple sleeveless blouse with the draped neckline that she'd been dying to wear to school since she'd seen it in the last edition of
Cosmo
Girl
. A little subtle lip gloss, some slingbacks, and a pair of skinny jeans, and she was ready to roll.

Before she grabbed her backpack and headed out of the house, she grabbed the engineer's cap and put it on. She looked at herself in the mirror. She wasn't in love with that hat, but Chelsea had
strongly
suggested she wear it. Besides, she couldn't very well give it a great review on her blog and then
not
show up with it on her head on Monday.
It's just this once
, she thought.

She hopped into the waiting Prius in the driveway, said hello to Jules's dad, and then came face-to-face with Jules.

“Hi,” Kat said, not really knowing what else to say. She was wishing today was Jules's birthday so she could give her the amazing present right now and all this awkwardness would be forgotten. Instead, Shakespeare was nowhere to be found, and Kat was left on her own in the back of the Prius. Jules looked over Kat's Glitter Gear as if she were looking at someone who had just refused to recycle a soda bottle.