fourteen

MARCH 7

Fashion is like a terrible disease transmitted through the eyes. My poor orbs were being exposed to so much fashion design that I was starting to have the same reaction I get when I see a really good painting, an interesting building, or a cool sculpture. It’s this clenched feeling around my heart, like somebody’s squeezing it. My hair stands on end. Who am I kidding? My hair always stands on end.

Even more baffling was the fact that Tesla, definitely not the type of girl who would normally pay attention to a guy like me, kept texting. It was messing me up.

In the positive column, I found the name of the style of clothing I would make if I ever get a model. It turns out that some designers specialize in “deconstructed” fashion, which is when the clothes are a mess, with the seams all shitty and unfinished and nothing fits properly. Deconstruction is apparently some big movement in art and philosophy and literature inspired by a sadistic French philosopher called Jacques Derrida, who expressed himself in the most complicated way possible so no one completely understands what he was getting at, even now. I know this because I tried reading the Wiki entry.

As a deconstructionist, I could send my model down the runway wearing a golf bag and clown shoes, and if anyone asked me to explain, I’d just say something about Issey Miyake’s 1994 collection or every second collection by Rei Kawakubo, especially the one she did with the big stuffed lumps sewn onto random parts of the clothes. Genius.

Having figured out my approach, I started looking for a model. After hinting around the subject for a while and not getting anywhere, I reluctantly broke down and asked B if she’d do it. She told me to never ask her something like that again, and she was only just sort of joking.

I called Booker and asked him if his new sort-of girlfriend, Destiny, would like to be my model. He said he’d check, and three minutes later he turned me down on Destiny’s behalf. Apparently she had “other things to do” that day, even though I hadn’t told Booker what day the show was.

It was a pickle and a conundrum, as my gramps likes to say. During my shift at the Salad Stop after school, I thought about whom I should ask to wear my ugly clothes. I considered the problem as I served twelve kinds of organic salads to customers who should have been eating something that was not salad. I thought about it as I wiped down counters and put the expired greens and mixed salads into the organics compost bin right before closing time.

The doorbell chimed, and I cursed under my breath. Last-minute salad customers are an offense in God’s eyes.

I swiped my hands down my green canvas uniform apron with the pattern of cascading lettuce leaves. The apron made me feel this borderline despair that was actually sort of invigorating. What would John Galliano or Valentino say about my life and my uniform? Nothing positive, I bet.

Four girls, all around ten years old, waited at the counter. Well, three stood at the counter. A fourth stood a few feet behind them, looking like she didn’t know what the hell was going on.

“We’re just closing up,” I said.

“It’s 5:55.” A white girl with blue eyes and long, straight brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail pointed at the sign with our hours.

I sighed. What were preteens doing eating salad? Shouldn’t they be eating Pizza Pockets or something like that? What was the world coming to? Was no one safe from salad?

“Yeah, okay, what can I get you?”

“I would like an apple-cider-marinated kale salad with walnuts and apples. Hold the pomegranate seeds. I think I might be allergic,” said the brown-haired girl.

“You’re not allergic,” said the girl next to her. She had olive skin, a wide mouth, and strong features that would make her either super striking or homely in the next few years. Right now she was walking a fine line, and puberty would push her over it. “You’re just not adventurous.”

The strong-featured girl, all chin and nose and cheek, but mostly chin, looked at me. “I’ll take her pomegranate seeds,” she said.

“Me too,” said the third, a ponytailed Asian girl. She had a pretty face and a gentle expression.

I waited for the one standing behind them to place her order.

“What about you?” I asked when she didn’t speak up.

“She’s not ordering with us,” said the strong-featured girl. I decided she was not going to be attractive when she got older.

The girl with the brown hair turned and spoke over her shoulder to the fourth girl. “That’s right, Esther. Don’t try copying us by ordering the walnut and kale salad. With or without the pomegranate seeds.”

“Exactly. You’ve been copying us all day. And we’re really getting sick of it,” said the girl whose kind and pretty face was apparently a front for an unkind and unpretty personality.

The little brats were bullying the kid right in front of me. Like I didn’t exist. Like I wouldn’t react. I don’t know why that irritated me so much, but it did.

The girl standing behind them had wild dark curls and large eyes with dark smudges under them, like she didn’t get enough sleep or was sick. She pursed her lips but didn’t speak.

“We don’t have any pomegranate seeds,” I said. “Something wrong with the crop this year.”

For the two hundredth time I wished the boss would take the seeds off the menu. Who puts a seasonal item on a permanent menu, anyway? Only someone who takes a lot of steroids and was continually giving himself mini-strokes at the gym due to overexertion.

I thought about telling the mean girls that nobody likes assholes, even young ones, but I didn’t have the energy.

“Okay, so you’re not all together?” I said. “You want to order separately?”

The brown-haired girl put her arm around the shoulders of the girls on either side of her, turning them into a single mean-girl organism. “Just us.”

“Your mom said for you to buy salads for all of us,” said the fourth girl in a quiet voice.

“Just because you don’t have any money doesn’t mean you get to sponge off my family,” said the first girl, who was clearly headed for fame and fortune as the sociopathic CEO of a Fortune 500 chemical company.

“She said—”

“Whatever, Esther. Just order after we’re gone so we don’t have to hear your voice anymore.”

These were the scariest kids who’d ever come through the Salad Stop, and that’s saying something, given that all we have here is salad.

After the ringleader paid for three salads, I told them that I’d be with them in a moment. I grabbed three corn-fiber biodegradable takeout containers and slipped into the back and out the back door. I glanced around quickly to make sure no one was watching, then used tongs to scoop up three bunches of greens, food of the damned, out of the compost bin, and slopped them into the containers.

I carried the containers to the front of the shop, and then added the bare minimum of fixings, minus the pomegranate seeds.

I’d have done worse, but they were just kids, even if they were terrible people.

“Here you go,” I said, handing each of the three girls a container. Kale is so fibrous that hardly anyone can tell if it’s fresh or not. “Enjoy, now.”

They each grinned at me. The one with all the features batted her eyes.

“Bye, now!” they said, then giggled and swaggered out in their matching Hunter boots, like they’d just vanquished an entire army of Marvel arch-villains. The door opened and closed, and the doorbell sounded a tropical birdcall, which is exactly the kind of thing that causes morale to soar among Salad Stop employees.

I looked at the girl who wasn’t allowed to copy the salad order of other girls.

“Sorry about the wait. What can I get you?”

“Nothing.” She gazed at the ceiling as though inspecting it for spiders, and I realized she probably had no money to order one of our god-awful, soul-destroying salads.

“No shirt, no shoes, no money, no problem. It’s on me. What’ll you have?”

She looked down, as though she didn’t want me to see her surprise. When she looked up, there was a very small smile on her face. “I think I’d like exactly what they had,” she said, so deadpan, I laughed out loud.

“Good for you,” I said. “That’s the up-yours spirit!”

With a bit of a spring in my step I went to the fridge behind me and pulled out the stuff to make her a marinated kale salad, with extra walnuts because fuck it. She deserved them.

“That’s not where you got their salads,” said the girl.

“Cor-rect.”

A grin had spread across her face. It was sort of a funny face. Hypermobile. Like an old-school comedienne.

I pushed her salad container, stuffed to bursting, across the glass countertop.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Bon appétit!”

She turned to leave the shop but hesitated at the front door.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“They’re still out there.”

“Can I ask what exactly you’re doing hanging out with such nasty girls?”

“Dahlia’s mom is taking me out for her Moms Make the Difference volunteer commitment. We went to Cathedral Grove to look at the trees.”

“Really.”

“The trees were huge. But I already knew that. Quite a few people have taken me to see trees.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because everyone thinks disadvantaged kids need more trees.”

“Oh,” I said. I felt a little stab of shame. I totally would have taken a poor kid to see trees. Of course, I was and still am a fairly poor kid, and trees are free.

“My foster mom already shows me lots of trees. She bought me all new clothes for this trip.”

“Oh yeah?”

I peered over the counter and saw that Esther wore the same outfit as the other three. A hoodie, patterned tights. On her feet she wore the same fancy rubber boots as the other girls.

“As soon as Dahlia and Morgan and Brittney saw me they said I was copying them.”

“I’ve seen lots of other girls in wearing those kinds of clothes,” I said, trying to make her feel better.

“I don’t even like this outfit very much,” she said, lifting her chin a bit. “Even if it is comfortable.”

“What kind of clothes do you like?” I asked.

She squinted suspiciously, like I’d said something creepy.

“I don’t really know. Maybe sports clothes? Sometimes, I wear my brother’s basketball jersey. But it smells like sweat no matter how many times my foster mom washes it.”

I thought for a second. Processing. “So are you interested in clothes?” I asked, an idea dawning in the dustiest reaches of my brain.

She crinkled her nose suspiciously.

“I’m not stranger-dangering you. I’m in this, uh, competition. A fashion competition. We have to design an outfit for someone. To win a scholarship to art school.”

“You can use a kid as your model?” she said.

“Why not?”

“What would I have to do?” she asked.

“Tell me about what you like to wear. Then I guess I’d measure you and then make you something to wear in this fashion show. Do you think new clothes would make a difference? You know, in dealing with them?” Outside in the parking lot, the other three girls were getting into a shiny sport-utility vehicle.

“I don’t know,” she said. “They’re all obsessed with modeling and stuff like that.”

“Well, what say we make you a model first?”

“That,” she said, all serious faced, “would put sand in their eye.” She was obviously repeating something she’d heard an adult say, the way I repeat things my gramps says. I got a huge kick out of the small, hilariously sinister smile on her face.

“Here. I’ll give you my number. Give it to your mom.”

“Foster mom,” she corrected.

“Right. I’ll explain the project to her. The fashion show is in May, so we have some time.”

I wrote my cell number and scribbled a note on the back of a Salad Stop card: Dear Esther’s Foster Mom: Please call about Esther taking part in a fashion competition.

I didn’t want there to be any confusion about why I was giving my number to a kid. Be just my luck to get arrested as a creeper while I was trying to cheat my way into a private school.

Outside someone honked the horn.

A lean lady in exercise clothes bustled out of the Liquor Depot with two bags full of booze.

“Thanks,” said Esther. And she walked out the door in the new clothes that had failed her completely.

John Thomas-Smith’s Increasingly Pointless Argument against Fashion and Fashion People

“Crinoline fires” killed 3,000 women between the late 1850s and late 1860s in England. Women would lose sense of their circumference, step too close to a fire grate, then flames would be fanned by oxygen circulating under their skirts. . . .

—ANN KINGSTON, “DEADLY VICTORIAN FASHIONS”