Free Bead-Dazzled by Olivia Bennett Page A

sketches. She was feeling super-positive. She had so many ideas. She knew she could make everything come together. “The collection will be awesome. There’s nothing I can’t do,” she bragged.
    * * *
    A half hour later she discovered the first thing she couldn’t do.
    Francesca pointed her fingernail, always polished in Mademoiselle pink, at the computer screen. “How do I answer this?”
    Emma scanned the request. Several months ago, Charlie had created an Allegra Biscotti website with a dedicated email address. Francesca’s main role was to act as the voice of Allegra on the telephone, but since the phone wasn’t ringing all that much she often helped out by cleaning out the junk mail.

    “It’s from a guy named Billy Perez. He’s Director of Publicity for Save the Earth,” Emma read aloud so Charlie could hear. “He wants a photo of Allegra for the Goin’ Green program, and he wants to take me, well, Allegra out to lunch.”
    “Why?” Charlie asked.
    “He says it’s a get-to-know-you meal, so he can write a piece for the program.” Emma tucked the stray strand of hair that was forever escaping from her ponytail behind her ear. “I don’t want to get-to-know Billy.”
    “And he doesn’t want to have a meet-and-greet with you either,” Charlie quipped. “He wants to dine with Allegra, the sleek and mysterious Italian designer.”
    “I can’t pretend to be Allegra, and I can’t give the guy a photo of Allegra,” Emma cried. “I mean, my school photo—forget framing, forget pinning to the fridge—my mom stuck the big one in a drawer and trashed the sheet of wallet-sized ones. And now I’m supposed to take a portrait and pass myself off as a glamorous, worldly woman?”
    “Do you think…” Charlie nodded his chin toward Francesca.
    Francesca would totally take a glam photo, but something about it felt wrong. “We’ve never made it out that Francesca is actually Allegra. We’ve only said she’s her trusty assistant. That’s it,” Emma countered.
    “One of my friends, perhaps, could take the photo,” Francesca suggested. “Marcella, she has bellissima face—”
    “No,” Emma jumped in. It wasn’t just Francesca taking the photo that felt wrong. It was anyone. Allegra was a made-up person, she knew that, but to Emma, Allegra wasn’t completely pretend or just a name. Allegra was her . Even though she couldn’t float her own photo as Allegra, that didn’t mean she wanted someone else filling the role.
    Her role.
    “We can’t pass off a real person as Allegra,” she told them. “Once the photo is out there, it’s out there forever. Nothing disappears. And then we have to keep using this same person. I mean, what if you go back to Italy, Francesca? Or what if your friend Marcella becomes famous herself for something totally different and then there’s this face out there for Allegra, but she also is in the paper for winning a mathematics prize?”
    “Marcella is no good at maths,” Francesca said.
    “Whatever, you get my point, right, Charlie?” Emma asked.
    Charlie nodded. “We started in the fictional. We’ve got to stay in the fictional.” He pulled the laptop toward him and began scrolling through different images. “I say we create Allegra.”
    “Create? Like some mad scientist?”
    “Sort of. We download a random pic of some lady from the Internet, and then I use photo software to play around with her features.” He clicked on the face of a woman in her late twenties with soft shoulder-length auburn hair, high cheekbones, and fuzzy eyebrows. “See, we change the shape of her eyebrows. Make them thinner and more arched. And darken her hair and make it longer. Not that long. Okay, fixed that. And angled at the ends. Then make her lips redder and her skin paler.”
    “It’s Cruella de Vil!” Emma shrieked.
    “Allegra is witchy,” Francesca agreed.

    “Okay, not my best work. I can do it better. Less harsh,” Charlie said. “Anyway, this way we’re not