After Helvetica went off to her meeting, Mrs. Scanlon gestured for us to gather around her. “Okay, girls, here’s the plan. I need to run up to editorial to check in with my team and go over a few quick items. Then I’ll show you around the office a little, and we’ll get you sitting in with some of the different departments. So for now, I’m going to introduce you to a few junior interns and let you hear from them about what it’s like to work here.”
Ivy caught my eye. “Dakota,” she mouthed, and I nodded.
“What are interns?” Tally asked.
Mrs. Scanlon was already walking down the hall in the direction Helvetica had gone, and we scrambled to catch up.
“Well, Tally, they’re people who need experience in the field. Being an intern is sort of like doing a training program. They have the opportunity to work for the magazine and learn the ropes of the business,” she told us. “Some of them are college students, but City Nation also has a junior intern program for younger people. We have several interns about your age who come in after school and sometimes during their vacations.”
“Oh, I want to be a City Nation intern!” Tally breathed.
“Tally, you could barely get yourself to one train,” Miko scolded. “Imagine trying to get to an office every day at the same time.”
“Every day at the same time?” Tally asked, looking genuinely surprised.
Miko laughed. “You better stick with acting,” she suggested.
Mrs. Scanlon had led us down the hall past a huge, open area filled with cubicles. One wall was lined with offices. We took a turn down a smaller hallway, and she stopped outside a door.
“Everyone here?” she asked, checking her watch. “Oh goodness, I didn’t realize how late it was. I really need to get upstairs. Let me quickly introduce you.”
We followed her into a windowless room lined with filing cabinets. There were four desks set up in a square formation. Each desk had a computer, a phone, and piles of files and papers. A guy who didn’t look much older than me sat at one desk. He had light brown hair and little round glasses, and he was squinting at the computer screen like his glasses weren’t helping much.
“Whit!” exclaimed Ivy. “What are you doing here?”
The guy with the glasses looked at Ivy, blinked a few times, then stood up so fast his chair shot backward.
“Ivy! No way!” he exclaimed, coming around his desk to give Ivy a hug. “Since when are you back in town?”
“Since now!” she told him. “I e-mailed you I was coming, but it bounced back.”
“New address. I just switched accounts,” he explained. “Sorry about that.”
Miko nudged me and raised her eyebrows in a questioning look. I shrugged. I had no idea who the guy was.
“Whit Clayton! Are you a junior intern this year?” asked Ivy’s mother.
“Yep,” Whit said, grinning at Mrs. Scanlon. “Mom said it would be good on my college applications, but I think she just wants someone to keep an eye on me after school.”
“Whit’s mother used to run our marketing department, before she left us to write novels. Please tell her I said hello, will you, Whit? I’ve got a meeting to get to, so I’m going to be rudely quick about this. Whit and Dakota, meet Paulina, Tally, and Miko, of 4 Girls magazine. Of course you both know Ivy—she can fill you in on the details. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Before we could even say good-bye, Mrs. Scanlon had hurried out the door. From what I’d seen so far, everyone seemed to be in a hurry at City Nation.
There was a momentary silence. That’s when I noticed the girl by the filing cabinet, obviously Dakota, staring at us. She was tall and willowy, with long blond hair and piercing hazel eyes. Her gaze settled on Ivy, who was staring back at her.
“So you know Ivy?” I asked Whit. I couldn’t wait to get Ivy alone to interrogate her about this guy. He was kind of adorable.
“Only since kindergarten,” Whit said. “On the first day of school, she threw up in my backpack and we both got sent to the nurse’s office.”
“Um, excuse me,” Ivy said, laughing. “You threw up in my bag.”
“Are you still sticking to that story? I am going to find that nurse and have her settle this once and for all. You were the hurler and my bag was the hurlee!” Whit insisted.
“So you’ve been arguing about this ever since?” I asked.
“That’s right,” Whit said. “And we probably will for the rest of our lives.”
Ivy looked a little embarrassed, but she smiled nonetheless. I glanced at Dakota, who was now scowling slightly. Even though it seemed like Dakota was the one who should have said hello, I was starting to feel rude not even acknowledging her.
“Were you in kindergarten with them, too, Dakota?” I asked.
“Yes, lucky me,” she said. “All the way through sixth grade, until she moved out to the sticks. It’s probably a good thing you did, Ivy. Seventh grade in the city is killer—though I’ve managed to stay on the honor roll.”
“What? Bixby Middle School must be easy because it’s not in Manhattan?” Ivy challenged.
Dakota shrugged. “You said it, not me. I mean, everything’s less intense outside of the city. There can’t be all that much to do there.”
“Oh, there’re tons of things to do! Actually, we publish our own magazine. It’s called 4 Girls. We’re doing a special issue about City Nation!” Tally told her. “We’re going to sit in on the cover shoot and interview him! Or her. We’re not exactly sure who the cover person is yet.”
“Yeah, I heard something about your little magazine,” Dakota said, making quotes with her fingers when she said magazine. “You call it 4 Girls? It sounds like a Girl Scouts newsletter. You’d need something much more sophisticated if you wanted it to fly in Manhattan.”
Tally’s mouth dropped open, and Whit quickly jumped to his feet.
“Don’t mind Dakota. She’s just in a bad mood because she’s been banned from the sample room for the day,” he said. He shot her a look that seemed to say “You can live without new shoes for one day.”
“The Louboutins are coming in, Whit,” Dakota said. “It’s not some random day.”
“Are they being interviewed?” I asked, hoping to start getting a feel for what was going on at City Nation today.
“Louboutins are shoes, Paulina,” Miko said. “And not just any shoes. They’re like the Rolls-Royce of shoes.”
“Exactly,” Dakota said, walking over to a spare desk and sitting down behind it. She gave Miko an appraising look. “If I was there when they arrived, I’d be practically the first girl in New York to see their newest line! Sometimes you even get to try them on.”
“Wow,” Miko said. “You’re really lucky to intern here. I’d do anything to see the new Louboutins before they come out.”
“Oh well,” Dakota said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I always make sure I’m in with the right people, so I can see the really cool stuff.”
“So what’s it like working here?” Miko asked, pulling up a metal folding chair and sitting down near Dakota’s desk. “I mean, I’ve heard the stories about how hard it is to get a job like this because everybody in the world wants to work here. And then how easy it is to get fired if you make the, uh…wrong person mad. Is all that stuff about Helvetica Grenier true? Like how she has this rare white tea flown in from India every week? Or that you’re not supposed to get on the elevator if she’s on it? Or that she has a full-time consultant whose only job is to choose what colors she’s going to wear?”
Dakota rolled her own chair around the desk, then she swiveled until she was facing Miko.
“You wouldn’t believe half of it,” she said.
Tally grabbed an empty chair, plopped down in it, then shoved off with both feet so the chair glided several feet in Dakota’s direction.
“What is the deal with the colors?” Tally asked. “I said Helvetica was wearing purple, and the receptionist practically had a cow.”
“That wasn’t purple. It was Caledonia Thistle,” Dakota said automatically, not looking at Tally.
Miko laughed. “Okay, but how do you know that? For all anyone knows it could be called Pastoral Plum or Fountain of Fuchsia.”
Dakota smiled. “Hah, that’s good. So here’s the thing with Helvetica’s outfits. Every day she wears a new color—everybody knows that part. She comes in every morning at nine on the nose except for Tuesdays. By 9:01, everyone at the entire magazine has gotten an e-mail with the name of the color. That’s when some people have to hide.”
“Hide?” I asked, looking at Whit. “Why?”
“Until they know if they’re wearing the same color,” Whit said.
I looked back and forth between Whit and Dakota, confused.
“Just listen, I’m explaining it,” Dakota said impatiently. “Okay, so say Helvetica comes in today in Caledonia Thistle, which is basically like light purple—lavender maybe. Anybody who’s wearing that color or something she might consider too close to that color has to take it off. Helvetica’s color of the day is hers, and nobody else is allowed to wear it.”
“Take it off?” Miko asked. “What if it’s, like, a shirt or something?”
Dakota laughed. “Then that person has problems. If they’re lucky, they might be able to borrow something from the sample room to wear. Otherwise, they’ve got to rush home or at the very least go over to Bloomingdale’s or something. People get insane over the color of the day.”
“But it gets even more complicated than that,” Whit added. “Sometimes people don’t think they’re wearing the same color as Helvetica, but she decides they are.”
“Whit, remember that one time? See, there was this marketing meeting last month in the morning,” Dakota said. “And the color of the day turned out to be Umbrian Sepia, which is basically kind of a reddish brown. So Helvetica walks into the conference room, and there’s this junior rep at the table wearing this jacket that was sort of rust colored.”
“I thought it was more of a deep pumpkin,” Whit said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Dakota said. “It was closer to russet, actually, didn’t you think?”
“Baked yam,” Whit suggested, and Dakota giggled, then shot Ivy a look. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as if she was trying to say “See how well Whit and I get along?” I had only known Dakota a few minutes, and I could already see what Ivy meant about how competitive she was.
“Anyway,” Dakota continued, “whatever color it was, Helvetica decided it belonged in the Umbrian Sepia family. So she just stood there, glaring at this girl who thought she was wearing orange and had no idea what the problem was.”
Whit was laughing, too. “And apparently the girl thought Helvetica was waiting for someone to take her coat,” Whit added. “So she gets up and tries to sort of help her out of this billion-dollar Italian-leather thing that’s the perfect shade of Umbrian Sepia, and Helvetica shouts…what was it again, Dakota?”
“‘Unhand that jacket!’” Dakota said, in what I realized was an extremely good imitation of the editor’s voice.
“Yeah, that’s it!” Whit agreed. “And the girl, who’s already totally terrified of Helvetica—because everyone is, because she’s Helvetica—just burst into tears, and finally one of the design guys pulled her outside and explained what the problem was.”
“He sent her home to change, and she never came back,” Dakota added. “Nobody ever saw her again.”
“She died?” Tally asked a little breathlessly.
Dakota shot her an impatient look. “Um, no. She quit.”
“Well, I would have died,” Tally declared. “Right then and there. Helvetica Grenier sounds terrifying.”
“Oh, she can be,” Whit said. “Rumor is if you do something to make her really angry, she picks up the phone and makes one call.”
“And…?” I finally asked.
Whit leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “And you’ll never work in publishing again. Or fashion. Or movies or TV. Or music. If she decides you’re out, then you are all the way out.”
I looked at Ivy, who nodded. “I’ve heard that, too,” she said. “But I don’t personally know of anybody it’s happened to. The reality is, Helvetica Grenier runs one of the most successful magazines in the country, and she takes her job very seriously. So you stay on your best behavior around her, and you hope you don’t mess anything up or do anything stupid.”
Somehow, all three of us ended up looking at Tally at the same time.
“What?” Tally asked.
“Just don’t ever get in the elevator if Helvetica’s in it, Tal,” I said.
“Which elevator?” Tally asked.
“Any elevator,” Ivy and Miko said simultaneously.
“I don’t know what the four of you are getting so stressed about,” Dakota said. “Helvetica Grenier deals with top-level stuff. You’re four kids from upstate nobody’s ever heard of who print some little girls’ newsletter for their friends. It’s not like you’re going to be running into Helvetica. She’s got more important things to do than deal with you four girls. And you wouldn’t be here at all if Ivy’s mother didn’t work here.”
“And you would still be here if your dad didn’t pull strings to get you an internship?” Ivy retorted. “You know nobody’s going to turn down the head of business operations when he wants a favor—”
“Knock, knock,” came a voice from the doorway.
Whit suddenly slid his feet off the desk and stood up, looking at the door.
A slim, dark-haired man was standing in the doorway, dressed in all black from head to toe. He was so small I might have mistaken him for a child, except for the little mustache and goatee he was sporting.
“Am I interrupting something?” he asked, his tone indicating that the answer had better be no.
“We were just going over some of the rules for our guests, Garamond,” Dakota said. “And making sure they know to stay out of Helvetica’s way.”
“Well, that’s not going to be possible,” Garamond said. “Because I’m supposed to bring them up to Helvetica’s office right now. Oh, Ivy Scanlon, there you are,” he said. “Don’t you look adorable. How’s the country treating you, darling?”
Ivy stood up. “It’s great. It’s so good to see you again, Garamond. It’s been a while.”
“You were just a fifth-grader the last time I saw you. But you still have that perfect peaches-and-cream complexion, just like your mother. Who I just spoke to, by the way. She wanted to make sure I escorted you to Helvetica’s office myself.”
“What does she want to see them for?” asked Dakota, putting her hands on her hips.
I was curious, too, since Helvetica had already introduced herself to us, but I wasn’t going to wait around asking about it. I followed Ivy to the door, with Miko and Tally right behind me.
As we left the office, Ivy shot a look over her shoulder at Dakota.
“Guess maybe we four girls are a little bit important after all!” she said to me, but from the look on Dakota’s face, I was pretty sure she’d overheard.