Chương 20: Chapter Nineteen

Sunday October, 30 Kate showed up first thing in the morning with a cat carrier, two pumpkin spice lattes and a bag of pastries between her teeth.

"Mmmrmffmfmmmfmfmmmm."

"What was that?"

"Mmrmrmmffmmm" She tried to talk, the bag clenched too tightly in her mouth to be understandable. I stepped aside, taking the lattes from her.

"Good morning to you too." She set the bag and the cat down before toeing the door closed behind her.

"No time for pleasantries! We have work to do." She surveyed my apartment with a frown.

"Where's the fabric? And the supplies? Please don't tell me you forgot supplies."

"I did not forget the supplies. Who do you think I am?" Chaos slowly tiptoed out of his crate and began to sniff around the apartment. He'd been over before but was acting really weird.

"Hey Kate, why is Chaos walking like that?" He was crouched low to the ground and slinking across the floor hiding behind furniture as he went.

"Oh, he's been acting weird the last couple of days. I think he can tell I'm stressed." I led Kate over to the spare bedroom.

"I didn't forget." I had set up a makeshift crafting station on my old bed, which I'd moved into here, and my old desk, which I'd also moved into here. There was fabric in various colors, scissors, thread, and a brand new sewing machine that I'd gotten on Friday along with enough fabric to outfit the entire cast of a children's play. Kate's eyebrows shot up.

"Samantha Marion. Did you actually learn how to sew?"

"Does watching 20 hours of youtube tutorials count?"

"This is really cool, Sam. Thank you. I needed this." She turned to look at me.

"Who are you, and what have you done with my workaholic hermit best friend?"

"Maybe I'm turning over a new leaf. New job, new hobbies, new me."

"Uh-huh and a new credit card too by the looks of it." Kate was pawing through the fabrics.

"Okay, so Malikai is absolutely dreamy. That narrator."

"I know right? The narrator gets all gruff and breathy when he's being dark and broody. I have listened to it thr–" I quickly tried not to admit I was on my third listen.

"Three times?" She made a tsking noise.

"Girl, we need to get you laid."

"Come with me Aurora," Kate said doing her best impression (it was so bad) of Kai's sexy growl.

"Let me show you my kingdom." I burst out laughing and threw a bundle of yarn at her.

"That's awful. That's the worst impression I ever heard."

"You love it." She held up the yarn.

"Wait, yarn?" I shrugged. She grabbed a silky deep burgundy fabric from the pile and holding it up against herself.

"This will work for Celeste right?"

"Oh I think so. Since she's a light fae she basically is overly optimistic, glowing, and practically radiates sun. Everyone gravitates toward her other than Malikai and the Sun king Careon. But she genuinely cares about Aurora even when she's walking a different path."

"Exactly, she's the Glinda to Aurora's Elphaba."

"Yep.

"They seemed to be drifting apart in this book. That's kind of sad."

"It's bittersweet. They both want the other to be happy. Sometimes I want to scream, 'JUST TELL HER WHAT'S GOING ON.' You know?"

"Yeah. I hate when stuff like that happens in books or TV. Such a copout."

"Well I refuse to let us be sad on Halloween."

"We're getting glow ups, and we're going to look amazing and we're going to get you a date to Thanksgiving!" I held up my hands mimicking waving pompoms and very dryly said, "Yayyy…" Chaos spent the morning staring at me from on top of my bookshelf. More than once a feeling came over me; a feeling of being watched. Every time I would try to catch him in the act he would yawn and go back to sleep. Weird. Now, I was getting paranoid. The next three hours were a disaster. A glorious coffee-fueled disaster.

"Sam. No. Sam, you cannot put a zipper there."

"Why not? It's functional." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"It's on the bodice! You are not making a sexy mechanic outfit!"

"Maybe she always wanted to be a sexy mechanic fae princess. You don't know her life."

"You are ridiculous." Kate said as she threw a pin cushion at me. I laughed and dodged. In the process I knocked over my cup of coffee. The beautiful burgundy fabric I was working on caught the spill and a dark stain spread across the middle of what was supposed to be Celete's cape.

"Oh no." Kate's hands flew to her mouth.

"Oh no, no, no."

"It's fine," I said quickly. Grabbing the fabric.

"I can fix it."

"How? That's dark espresso on this material; it'll never come out."

"Just grab me paper towels and the spray bottle from the bathroom." She ran out of the room to gather the supplies I'd sent her after. The code shimmered into view. All of the now familiar patterns overlaying the fabric. The coffee stood apart. A disruption in the code seeping into the color symbols and changing them. I concentrated and began to slowly change the darkening symbols back to the burgundy. I made sure not to remove the stain completely.

When Kate came back I dabbed up the remainder of the stain and sprayed the clear water on it switching back and forth between the two until the paper towels came away clear.

"See?" I held up the fabric, "Barely noticeable. And I think it'll be even less noticeable once it dries." Kate squinted at it.

"How did you do that?"

"I drink a lot of coffee and am a certified klutz so I've learned a trick or two." This was entirely true. I'd blotted coffee out of more clothes than I cared to admit. I didn't usually get to use super powers to completely remove the stain, but I was able to convince myself this wasn't lying. Kate shook her head slowly, "Sometimes I forget how weirdly competent you are."

"Uhhhh, I'll take that as a compliment."

"Weirdly competent is your superpower like mine is being able to tell what people are feeling." I opened my mouth to tell her. This was the perfect segue. Instead I let out a strained laugh.

"Exactly. What a pair we make." By mid-afternoon we had something resembling costumes. We'd taken a dress I'd picked up at the thrift store and modified it beyond recognition. It was now a golden flowing dress with a deep burgundy cape. The cape was completely stain free thanks to another subtle adjustment to the code while Kate was distracted. And to top it off Kate had crafted a crown of wire and crystals. My Aurora costume was–eluding me.

"The problem is," I said staring "that Aurora looks different in each book. She starts out in simple earth tones and commoner dresses, and then she's dressed in clothes from the Dawn King's court, or clothes from the Shadow King's court. At the end of the fourth book she was basically wearing liquid midnight and a scowl that could knock someone dead."

"So, which Aurora are you going for?"

"Well, the hot one obviously." Kate snorted.

"They're all hot. The character has a reverse harem thing going, that doesn't happen to ugly characters."

"That's pretty shallow of you." She slapped me.

"Knock it off." I stuck my tongue out, and held up two pieces of fabric, 'Which one, the deep navy or the black with purple undertones?"

"Let's go with the liquid midnight," she said pointing at the black dress then began studying me.

"What?"

"You need something that makes your eyes pop and you boobs… cleavage is not optional. This is Halloween."

"I don't know if Aurora is a cleavage kind of–""She literally seduces the shadow fae king. She is absolutely a cleavage kind of girl." Kate stood up brushing the fabric scraps onto the floor.

"Okay, hold still. Let's see what we're working with. Go try this on." I slid the black dress over my head and nervously walked over to Kate. She grabbed the dark purple-black fabric and started draping it across my shoulders and pinning it as she went. I stood there like her awkward mannequin, doing my best not to move or be embarrassed.

"The problem," Kate muttered around a mouthful of pins, "is that you are always hiding in boxy clothes. You seem to have no sense of how to dress your figure."

"I like boxy clothes. They're comfy." She shot me a look.

"They're camouflage you mean. You hide." She tugged the fabric tighter across my chest and suddenly I felt very exposed.

"See!" She exclaimed.

"You've got great curves. I don't know why you don't ever let me help you show them off."

"Maybe I don't want to show them off."

"Maybe you're scared." I didn't have a response to that and shifted uncomfortably. Kate's eyes met mine in the mirror that I was standing in front of. Her expression softened.

"I'm sorry, Sam. That wasn't cool. I didn't mean it that way."

"It's fine."

"It's just," she sighed, stepping back to survey her work.

"You've been different lately. Since you got fired it's almost as if you've become more confident. But like, you don't need me anymore. I don't know. I can't explain it. It's like you're becoming someone new and I can't keep up." The words hit hard. Much harder than I expected. I thought about the code shimmering all around us, the powers I'd been hiding, the evidence of Greg's wrongdoings sitting on an external drive in my desk drawer. All of the things I wasn't telling her.

"I'm still me," I said quietly.

"I"m just… figuring things out."

"I know. I know." Kate squeezed my shoulder.

"And I'm here for it. Just don't disappear on me, okay? I already had one close friend ghost me. I can't have you ghost me too." I realized that she was talking about Jessica, the name I'd seen on Greg's spreadsheet. Our friend who vanished without explanation.

"You won't lose me." I promised.

"I… have to–""Hey, hold still. I need to make sure that you look like you could destroy a man with a glance." We erupted into laughter and I promptly forgot that I was once again trying to tell her the biggest, craziest thing I would ever–could ever confess to. I'd been practicing on fabric all week and had made some progress. Every time Kate looked away I was able to smooth things out that wouldn't lay flat. I deepened the colors and slowly began to nip fabric in some places and let it out in others.

I lengthened the hem so that it pooled dramatically on the floor. As we worked every change was small and unnoticeable in a vacuum but together the dress was amazing.

"Sam." Kate's voice startled me, "What did you do to the dress?" I froze, "What? What do you mean?

"It looks different. Is this really the same dress we started with?"

"Heh, yeah I guess it does, doesn't it? Maybe we missed our calling." Kate didn't look entirely convinced.

"Okay, well. Let's keep it up then. These are actually starting to look amazing." Permission granted.