Violetta Craft's Arc

Chapter 30 of 65

Six weeks after the tailor tapped her shoulder line, Violetta lifted the finished dress from the studio table and held it up to the light. Eighteen hand-covered buttons ran from collarbone to underarm, each one the same matte purple as the silk-wool. The placket sat flat. The neckline sat right. She had stitched the last button at two in the morning while Elowen slept against Jordie's chest on the couch. She hung the dress on a padded form and did not touch it again until showcase day. Jordie drove her to the campus gym with the dress zipped inside a garment bag across the back seat. Lymber followed in her own car with Paul, Missy, and Elowen strapped in her carrier. Violetta carried the bag through the side door and past the folding tables where other juniors steamed hems and pinned last stitches. She found her rack, hung the bag, and unzipped it. The dress looked exactly as it had in the studio. That was the first time all week her hands stopped shaking. She changed in the locker room and walked out onto the taped runway. The gym lights washed everything flat, which was what she wanted. The dress needed no help. She walked the length, turned at the mark, and walked back. The judges wrote without looking up. Violetta kept her face still and stepped off the platform. Missy waved from the third row. Paul held Elowen against his shoulder. Lymber pressed both hands to her mouth. The judges took twenty minutes. Violetta stood by the rack and did not sit down. When the head judge read the third-place name, it was not hers. When she read the second-place name, it was not hers either. Violetta felt the drop in her stomach before she understood it. Then the head judge said her name for first, and Jordie made a sound behind her that was half laugh, half something else. She walked up to accept the ribbon and the envelope. The envelope held a check for two thousand dollars. The head judge said the placket was the strongest single detail in the junior field. Violetta thanked her and stepped down. Lymber was already crying. Paul shifted Elowen to his other arm and shook Violetta's hand like she was a stranger he respected. Missy touched the ribbon with one finger. Jordie kissed the side of her head and did not say anything, which was the right thing. In the parking lot she sat in the passenger seat with the check flat on her knee and the ribbon in her lap. Two thousand dollars would cover the studio rent for a year, or a better machine, or the entry fee and materials for the senior showcase she had walked away from eight months ago. She folded the check into her wallet. The junior ribbon was hers. The senior title was not, and now she had the money to try for it.