A Tangled Thread Read online

  On Saturday morning, Zoey woke up nervous. For once, though, it wasn’t about sewing or school! It was the day of the soccer state championships. Even though Zoey didn’t have to do anything that day other than watch the game, Kate would be playing, and she and her team had been training extra hard for weeks and weeks and weeks. And Zoey knew a little something about working extra hard for a few weeks! Not only that, she and Kate had been such good friends for so long that if one of them was having a big day, they both were. Zoey knew she’d be watching every pass and kick with her heart in her throat, hoping Kate’s team would win.

  Zoey ate a late breakfast with her brother and father, and was relieved when Libby came over to go with them to the game. Libby’s calm, sweet disposition made her the perfect companion.

  “I wish Priti could be here too,” Libby said wistfully as they arrived at the stadium.

  Zoey nodded. “I know. But her family is probably having a great time traveling around India right now. They have a whole week just to go sightseeing before the wedding! I wish my dad would take Marcus and me on a cool trip like that.”

  Libby smiled. “Me too. But we do have the trade show next weekend to look forward to . . .”

  Zoey clapped. “Yes! It’ll be the best day ever!”

  Mr. Webber, who was scouting the stands for good seats, motioned to Zoey and Libby to join him on a bench. They did quickly as the game was about to start. Zoey saw Kate on the field, and was, as always, struck by how different Kate seemed when she was on the field rather than off it.

  When the girls were alone, or at school, Kate was kind of quiet. She didn’t make loud jokes or call attention to herself. But when swimming or playing soccer or doing anything on a team, she seemed to come alive. She stood taller, appeared more confident, and seemed so sure of herself. It made Zoey happy to watch. She couldn’t wait to see Kate in the spaghetti dress, heading off to her dinner tomorrow night!

  “Woo-hooo! Go, Kate!” Zoey yelled.

  Kate looked up and waved, then quickly focused her eyes back on the field.

  Two girls faced off for the kickoff, and the game began. The two teams were well-matched, and it was a nail-biting game. Kate’s team did a great job getting the ball down the field, and Kate, who played left forward, had several opportunities to score. But the opposing team’s goalie was really amazing and managed to block nearly every shot.

  Zoey and Libby yelled themselves hoarse. Even Mr. Webber, who spent most of his time attending university-level games, was impressed with the level of playing and kept yelling for Kate and her team. Zoey knew that Mr. Webber thought of Kate as an almost-member of the family. She was sure he felt as nervous and excited for Kate’s team as she did.

  Finally, both teams managed to get on the board, and the score was 2–2, with only a minute left to play. Zoey and Libby were standing up, with the rest of the crowd in the stadium, chanting and yelling for their team. With only seconds left, someone passed the ball to Kate, who deftly dribbled the ball past opponents and raced to the goal. A girl from the other team stole the ball, and Kate charged her, sliding to regain control of the ball and kicking it, nearly upside down, to shoot right into the goal.

  The goalie lunged for it but missed. Kate scored the winning goal!

  The crowd went wild, and Libby, Zoey, and Mr. Webber jumped up and down and hugged one another. Then they rushed to the field to congratulate Kate on her amazing performance.

  But Kate, glowing from the rush of scoring the winning goal, was still lying on the field. As her friends and teammates approached her, Kate started to get up slowly. Mr. Webber was the first to get to Kate, and he held out his hand to give her a high five. But as soon as Kate raised her right arm to high-five him back, she cried out. Her cheeks went from pink to white, and Zoey knew immediately that Kate was in a lot of pain.

  “Uh-oh,” said Mr. Webber. “Easy, Kate, let’s get a look at that arm. If it’s injured, it’s going to start hurting more as your adrenalin wears off.”

  Mr. Webber flagged down the medical team, and they raced over to Kate. Mr. Webber made her lie back down, and the team checked her over carefully while Zoey, and Kate’s parents, who had just run onto the field as well, stood back and looked on anxiously.

  Zoey and Libby held hands and waited for the verdict.

  The medical team spoke quietly with Zoey’s dad; while beneath them, Kate sat, looking small and pale. Her arm had been wrapped and placed in a sling.

  The medical team went to Kate’s parents and began talking to them, and Mr. Webber came over to Libby and Zoey.

  “She’s okay,” he said quickly when he saw how worried the girls were. “It’s just a sprained elbow. It hurts a lot, but it’s going to heal up fine in a few weeks. She needs a lot of rest and can’t play any sports for the time being, but she’s okay.”

  Zoey breathed a huge sigh of relief. A sprain. That didn’t sound too terrible. She ducked low, so she could catch Kate’s eye as the medical team prepared to help her off the field and get her to the locker room for ice and elevation. Kate saw her and gave Zoey a brave smile and a wave with her good arm.

  Are you okay? Zoey mouthed.

  Kate nodded. We won! she mouthed back, managing a wide smile, despite the pain.

  Zoey knew then that Kate would be just fine. The Mackeys followed Kate and the medical team back to the locker room, and Mr. Webber suggested he take Zoey and Libby home. They could call Kate later that afternoon, after she’d had some rest and was feeling better.

  Zoey took a quick picture of the final scoreboard score with her phone, so she could send it to Kate later. She knew Kate liked to keep mementos from her games in an album, the way Zoey liked to take pictures of some of the outfits she came up with, so she wouldn’t forget them.

  “That was quite a game,” Zoey said to Libby as they left the stadium.

  “I’ll say. I didn’t know soccer was so . . . dangerous!” Libby replied.

  Zoey texted back and forth with Kate a few times later that day, until Mrs. Mackey took Kate’s phone away to force her to get some rest. Zoey ate dinner with her brother and father and tried not to worry about her friend. She almost wished she had some sewing to do to distract herself! She answered Etsy e-mails and checked in with Allie, who had sold several things during the week and was feeling really good about their pop-up store.

  Sunday morning, after Zoey was cleaning up her family’s regular pancake breakfast (secret ingredients: blueberries, and buttermilk steeped with rosemary!), the family’s home phone rang. Zoey ran to grab it, wondering who it could be.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Hi, Zoey. It’s Kate’s mom,” said Mrs. Mackey. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” Zoey answered, somewhat anxiously. Why was Mrs. Mackey, instead of Kate, calling her? Had something happened? “Is Kate all right?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Mackey. “Well, she’s upset about not being able to do anything athletic for a few weeks, but she is feeling better today and slept pretty well last night. That’s why I’m calling.”

  She paused, and Zoey waited, still not quite understanding why Mrs. Mackey had called her.

  “You see, I really want Kate to be able to attend the big dinner tonight, and she’s dying to wear the dress you made for her. But because it’s a T-shirt top, it needs to be pulled on over her head, and Kate can’t raise her arm at all right now! I checked her closet for something sleeveless to wear, but Kate refuses to wear anything but the beautiful dress you made for her.”

  Zoey felt flattered once again that Kate cared so much about the spaghetti dress. And she totally understood that after getting so excited to wear one particular outfit, Kate wouldn’t want to wear one of the dresses she had already worn—and that her mother had picked out—instead.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Mackey,” Zoey said. “I can fix the dress so Kate can put it on without hurting her arm.”

  “You can?” asked Mrs. Mackey. “But how?”

  Zoey didn’t
know that herself yet. But she knew her friend had scored the winning goal for her team’s state championship, and she deserved to wear the dress of her dreams to their team dinner!

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ll find a way,” she assured Kate’s mom. “I’ll come over now and say hi to Kate and pick up the dress. Okay?”

  Mrs. Mackey exhaled with relief. “Thank you, Zoey. You have always been so good to my Kate! Come on over, but she’s asleep right now so you might have to wait until later to talk to her. I won’t tell her yet that you’re going to try to fix the dress, just in case it doesn’t work out. And if it does, it’ll be a wonderful surprise!”

  Zoey agreed, and they hung up. As she ran upstairs to change out of her pajamas and race over to Kate’s, she thought how funny it was that on her self-proclaimed weekend of “no sewing,” here she was, planning a total redesign of a dress, and still without a working sewing machine!

  As she started up the street toward Kate’s house, her mind was buzzing with ideas on how to make the dress work.

  Kate was sleeping when Zoey arrived at the Mackey house, so Zoey returned home soon after she left, with Kate’s dress in tow. Zoey set herself up in the dining room, even though she’d be handsewing whatever changes she needed to make to the top of the dress. She liked having the space to spread out that the dining room table gave her, and she liked having her brother and father occasionally walk by to check in on her. One day, when she had her own fashion design office, she’d make sure it was either a shared space with other designers, or right next to some other offices, because seeing and talking to people while she worked gave her energy.

  Zoey studied the T-shirt top of the dress and thought hard. She could put in zipper up the back of the dress, but this style of dress really wouldn’t look right with a zipper. Not only that, it was awfully hard to do without a sewing machine. She debated taking off the sleeves and making the armholes bigger, more like a crew-neck tank top. She knew she had to make the armholes as large as possible, so Kate could get her swollen arm through. But a tank top with large armholes didn’t sound very fancy! And it didn’t really look that different from the tank tops Kate usually wore with shorts. She wanted this dress to feel special.

  She stared at the beautiful, spaghetti-like print on the skirt. And suddenly it hit her. Spaghetti straps! That would work perfectly! She could make them so that they buttoned on in the back, beneath the shirt fabric, where no one would see them. Kate could easily wiggle the dress on up from the floor, without moving her arm, and then have the straps button over her shoulders. Not only that, the amount of handsewing this change called for wouldn’t be that difficult at all!

  Zoey immediately set to work, thrilled she’d come up with something that worked with both the short amount of time she had and with the spirit of the dress Kate loved. She finished fairly quickly, and, feeling inspired, went to her room to retrieve some of the extra spaghetti fabric. After some strategizing, and turning the fabric leftovers this way and that, she figured out a way to turn it into a matching sling for Kate to wear, so that she wouldn’t have to clutter up her beautiful dress with that wretched hospital-blue sling she’d been given. The matching sling would be the icing on the cake! Or the meatball on the spaghetti!

  When both items were finished, Zoey hung the dress on a hanger and, feeling elated with what she’d been able to do in only an afternoon, left for Kate’s house.

  All of my speed-sewing lately has really paid off! she thought. I’m almost ready to be on my favorite design show, Fashion Showdown, as a contestant.

  Kate was surprised when Zoey arrived and handed her the remade dress. Kate’s eyes lit up, and despite looking slightly tired from her injury, Zoey could see she was really feeling much better.

  Mrs. Mackey came up to admire the design as well, and Kate tried it on. Mrs. Mackey helped button the new straps in the back and turned Kate around toward the mirror.

  “What do you think?” Zoey asked anxiously.

  Kate smiled so wide, Zoey could see her molars. “I actually like it even better than the original! And the matching sling cover is perfect. How’d you think of that?”

  Zoey shrugged, pleased she’d been able to come through for her friend. It had been a hectic and busy day of sewing, but, as usual, it was worth it when she saw the results.

  “Have a great time at the dinner tonight,” Zoey said. “Send me lots of pictures! I wish I could be there to clap for the team’s star player.”

  Kate blushed and kept admiring her dress in the mirror. “It’s going to be a great night!” she said.

  Mrs. Mackey patted her on the shoulder. “Spaghetti straps and a spaghetti pattern for a spaghetti dinner!” she said. “I really can’t imagine anything better.”

  CHAPTER 9

  On Top of Spaghetti

  Even the best designs don’t work out sometimes . . . like when your best friend sprains her ELBOW scoring the winning goal at the state championships (!) and she can’t lift her arm over her head to put on her new made-for-the-occasion Zoey Webber dress! As you can imagine, this created some problems! Kate was dying to wear the spaghetti dress I’d made, but its T-shirt top with no zipper meant she couldn’t put it on with her arm in a sling.

  Enter Plan B . . . I picked up the dress this morning and had to come up with a top that would work for Kate, ASAP. And after a LOT of thinking . . . and several “breakfast” cookies, as I’m calling them, I came up with the redesigned top, featuring spaghetti straps that button on in the back (hard to see in the sketch, but trust me—they’re really cool!). It was doable to handsew, and it looked totally AWESOME on Kate! I also made her a matching sling out of the skirt material. Phew! Crisis averted!

  And now for another type of Plan B (are you getting today’s theme?) . . . My friend-partner Allie Lovallo just texted me that our Etsy pop-up store is now officially SOLD OUT of all merchandise! What??? I can’t believe it! Especially since some of the items went to people we didn’t even know. (Ha-ha.) It’s great news, and I’m so happy that the pop-up shop was a success. But now customers are e-mailing us and asking for more items, and I haven’t had time to make any, not without my trusty sewing machine. . . . So what’s the Plan B for that??? Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments! My brain is all used up for the day!

  In the lunchroom at school on Monday, Zoey raced to her regular table, beating her friends there. She plopped her lunch down and opened up the bag, hoping to find something more exciting than the peanut butter and banana sandwich she’d packed that morning. For some reason, she felt like she wanted something different today, but she didn’t know what.

  Libby was next to appear, and then Kate in her spaghetti-print sling. Priti was still away, and lunch had not been nearly as fun since she’d left.

  “So,” Zoey asked Kate, “how was the big dinner last night? Did the dress work out okay?”

  “I saw the updated sketch on your blog last night!” Libby cut in. “I love the new straps. Kate, do you have a picture on your phone?”

  Kate was opening her lunch slowly, a wide, bashful smile creeping across her face. It looked like she had a secret, and it didn’t look like it had anything to do with the dress.

  “Kate, what is it?” asked Zoey. “Why aren’t you talking?”

  Kate’s cheeks went full-on red. “I won the Most Valuable Player award,” she said shyly. “And I had so, so, so much fun at the dinner! I didn’t even feel my elbow the whole night.”

  “Oh my gosh, Kate!” Zoey was so proud, she felt like she would burst. Of course Kate would win the MVP award! She couldn’t believe she hadn’t guessed it before. “That’s so great!”

  “I wish we could have been there,” Libby said. “We would have yelled and cheered so loud, we probably would have embarrassed you.”

  Kate nodded, laughing. “Yeah, you probably would have. But for once I might not have minded.”

  She pulled her phone out of her backpack and showed the girls a picture her mom had taken of
her holding the award after dinner. Kate looked beautiful and happy.

  Wow, Kate can really wear clothes! Zoey thought. She looks like a model in that dress. She didn’t say it out loud, because she knew it might make Kate feel awkward.

  Kate must have semi-read her mind, because she turned toward Zoey and said, “Zo, thank you so much for fixing the dress. I got compliments on it all night long! Even from our coach! And everyone loves my sling cover, too. Do you think you could . . .” She paused for second, looking uncertain. “Well, I hate to ask you to do more for me because you just helped me so much, but do you think you could make me a few more sling covers to go with some of my school clothes? I don’t want to let that ugly hospital one see the light of day ever again!”

  Zoey’s jaw dropped so low, it very nearly hit her knees. Had Kate been taken over by aliens? Had one successful outfit turned her into a fashionista?

  Whatever the reason, Zoey would run with it. “Of course,” she agreed. “I’ll get right on it! They hardly require any sewing at all. And you’re right—you can’t wear the same one every day. That would be boring.”

  Libby shook her head a few times. “Kate, I never thought you’d be concerned about matching. Did you hit your head on the field the other day too?”

  All three girls laughed, and Kate replied, “Maybe. Or maybe Zoey’s fashion sense is finally rubbing off on me! All I know is that I felt great in that dress last night, and I’m tired of blending in with the wallpaper. Especially the floral wallpaper!”

  “All righty, then!” said Zoey. “Get ready, because I might start making you more stuff . . . like maybe even some skirts . . .”

  Just then, as the girls were having a good time laughing and imagining Kate coming to school in girly outfits every day, Ivy, Shannon, and Bree strolled by on the way to their table. As usual, they had their ears open for anyone else enjoying themselves, so they could chime in and ruin it.