Her phone buzzed. It was a message from Zuri Parker, another scholarship finalist, who worked with photography. Zuri had been standing on the opposite side of the wine station when the incident happened. I saw what she did, the message said. I have a video. Are you okay? Amara stared at the words. She typed and erased three answers before finally sending, I'm making a new version. Please don't post the video. Zuri replied immediately: I won't. But if you need someone to tell the truth, I'm here.
The words steadied Amara in a way she had not expected. Celeste had used an audience to make her feel powerless. Here was another person from that same room offering to be a witness instead of a spectator. Amara sent Zuri a photograph of the paper-petal design. A minute later, Zuri replied with a row of astonished faces and a message that made Amara laugh for the first time all night: Girl, you are making a whole garden.
When Amara returned to the cutting table, Simone was holding Loretta's old notebook open to a page near the back. There was a sketch of a gown with flowers falling diagonally from the shoulder to the hem, accompanied by a note in small blue handwriting. “Your grandmother wrote this when she was teaching you,” Simone said. Amara leaned closer. The words were simple: When cloth is marked, don't be ashamed of the mark. Decide what the mark will mean. Amara traced the sentence without touching the paper. She had never noticed it before.
“Grandma would've hated seeing them laugh at me,” she whispered.
“She would,” Simone said. “Then she would've pulled out her scissors.”
The two of them smiled. There was no promise that tomorrow would be easy, no guarantee that the committee would choose Amara, and no way to take back the moment in the ballroom. But the girl who had fled that room no longer felt quite like the girl standing beside the table. She picked up her needle and began stitching the largest crimson flower over the center of the stain.
The work gathered speed after that. Josephine sewed the supporting panels beneath the bodice while Simone finished shaping the smaller petals. Amara attached each large flower by hand, anchoring it through the new support fabric so the original satin would not carry all the weight. She used Loretta's gold thread sparingly, making tiny lines from the center of each blossom and a few glimmering stitches along the curling stems. When the red sequins caught the lamplight, they looked like drops of dew. The ugly streaks had become shadows beneath the petals, giving the flowers a depth that flat cloth could never have achieved.
At three thirty, they lifted the dress from the table and held it upright. For the first time, Amara could see the whole design. Crimson blossoms swept across the bodice and spilled down one side of the cream skirt, growing smaller toward the hem. The shape felt deliberate, as though a rose garden had sprung from the cloth and begun climbing toward the light. Amara studied it for several seconds before she smiled. Then she noticed that the heavy flowers pulled the waist slightly sideways. She swallowed her disappointment and pointed it out herself.