CHAPTER 1

 

 

I don’t know what they expected of me. Seriously. If they asked me to make a cushion in the stupid home economics class, they should have been more specific. Apparently it had to be square. Apparently it had to be beige. And apparently it wasn’t supposed to have any sequins.

My star-shaped neon pink sparkly cushion was outside the box, I admit. But at least it had flare. It had color and personality. Unlike every other beige square cushion in the class.

“Truly Winx, when you are going to learn to follow instructions?” the teacher, Mrs. Swayze, asked me. It took a moment for me to work out she was really waiting for an answer. Apparently it wasn’t rhetorical.

“I guess it’s going to take a while longer,” I replied, not even trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I was going to pay for that later.

Mrs. Swayze sighed so deeply I was pretty certain she was going to run out of breath and keel over. “Miss Winx, just… never mind.” She moved on to the next desk. Color me stunned. Mrs. Swayze must have been losing her touch, normally I would have landed in detention for that comment.

I watched in awestruck silence as she made her way around the room. Finally, she ended up in the front row. She examined the cushion of Jane Davis, otherwise known as Plain Jane. Which described her cushion perfectly. It was as square as it was bland.

“Miss Davis, this is perfect,” Mrs. Swayze exclaimed happily as she inspected the colorless lump. “The stitching is superb, so neat and straight. Another A+ is headed your way.”

She returned the cushion as Jane beamed with pride. I hated her. Just because she followed the instructions down to the minutest detail, handed her project in on time, and sucked up to the teacher, she got the good grade.

I looked at my sparkly number. Sure, the seams might not be straight and some of the sequins had already fallen off, but it was pretty. In fact, it was outright gorgeous. It deserved an A+ too, no matter what Mrs. Swayze or anyone else thought.

When the bell rang, I picked up my cushion and shoved it into my backpack. I would have carried it, but the sequins really were falling off everywhere. Unless I wanted to make a trail to my locker, the thing had to be contained.

As I was leaving the home economics room, a poster on the billboard caught my eye. It was new. I knew that because I had spent countless hours staring at the board while Mrs. Swayze went on about drop stitches or something like that.

The poster was for a fashion design competition. The first prize was a thousand dollars and a chance to intern at one of the biggest fashion houses in the city. Both things I could have done with.

I tore down the poster before Mrs. Swayze could see and shoved it into my bag. I didn’t want anyone else knowing about the competition and thinking they were going to enter. I had to make sure I had all the chances I could get.

I hurried for my locker, fleeing the scene of the crime as quickly as I could. It wouldn’t take long for old Mrs. Swayze to put two and two together. Somehow, she always came up with Truly Winx as the answer.

“Hey, Truly,” my best friend, Hayley, said as I hurried by. “Where’s the fire?”

I stopped, unsure what she meant. “What fire?”

She rolled her eyes, I still didn’t know what she meant. If there was a fire somewhere, I probably needed to evacuate or something. “What’s with the hurry?”

Oh, I got it. Fire, hurrying, right. “Just keen to get away from old Swayze, that’s all.”

“Well, meet me in the cafeteria, I have so much to tell you about the weekend. I am going to blow your mind.” I shook my head as Hayley walked backwards until she was out of sight.

News of the weekend would have to wait. I made it to my locker and unwrinkled the poster inside so nobody else could see it.

The competition was to design and create a dress. But not just any dress, one so outstanding that it could really be worn by an actual supermodel. The judges were going to consider creativity, fabric use, the fit, and the quality. That was a lot of things.

It had been my dream forever to be a fashion designer. It was literally all I wanted to do since I could remember getting dressed. I lived and breathed fashion, I had to win this competition.

I just had to.

So creativity was easy, I already had a sketchbook full of designs. Fabric use was a little trickier. I had a limited budget. And by limited I mean no budget. I’d have to raid the charity stores for something I might be able to reuse.

The fit I could do. I always made my clothes fit me, so it couldn’t be any harder sizing up someone else. That only left quality. As Mrs. Swayze was so quick to point out, my sewing quality sucked. Me and straight lines did not go together.

If I was going to win that competition, I had to find a way to make sure I had all four points covered off. But it would take me a decade to get better at sewing. I always just assumed when I was a designer I would have a whole warehouse of seamstresses to make the clothes. Why get good at something when others would do it for me?

It had seemed like a great plan. Now, I was starting to see the error of my ways. So that’s why we were supposed to listen to our teachers. Huh. Who would have thought?

I closed my locker and leaned against it, trying to figure out what I was going to do. There had to be some way I could massively improve my skills. I would sew a million beige cushions if that’s what it would take. But there was just no time.

My eyes fell on a group of girls sitting in the courtyard outside, eating their lunch. But it wasn’t them I lingered on. Plain Jane was eating her sandwich by herself just beside them.

A thought was starting to form. Yep, definitely a thought. I knew exactly how I could win that competition.