Like Mother, Like Daughter (Part 2 of 3) (Patreon)

Marissa and Ashley were sitting on Ashley’s bed. Ashley said, “You are paying him for his time and material at a minimum.”

“I was planning to pay for the dress. I wasn’t really going to blackmail him.”

“How nice.”

Aaron was sitting in his sister’s desk chair, holding his sketch pad. “$25 dollars plus materials.”

“Done.”

“You should have started higher,” Ashley said.

“I don’t know what dresses cost.”

Aaron had handed Marissa the sketch pad.

She flipped through it and said, “I was hoping for something mermaid with the top you put on that dress a few weeks ago, the red one. I brought this material because I didn’t know what kind of fabrics you had.”

Ashley got up and got a dress from her closet. “This dress?”

“Yeah, if it were tight through here and didn’t have this ruffle. It would be perfect for me.”

“I’m also not use to making clothes for someone your shape.”

“You have big boobs, he means,” Ashley said.

“How did you learn to make dresses for your sister?”

Aaron looked at Ashley.

“Do you know what that is?” Ashley said, pointing to the disk on the floor in the corner of her room.

“Should I?”

“Probably not. It’s probably a niche product.” Ashley tapped the controls with her feet and stepped onto the disk. A few seconds later, she was a mannequin.

“Your sister is the mannequin on your channel?”

“Yes. I usually fit the dress to her right on the disk. It’s the only way I know how to make a dress.”

“So, I have to be a mannequin to get a dress from you.”

“Essentially.” Aaron got up. “She’s about to turn back to normal. I’m going to leave. She’ll explain how to pose on the disk so I can make a dress for you.”

“Why are you leaving?”

“She’ll explain.”

He stepped out of the room and retrieved his tailor’s chalk, pin cushion, and scissors from his room. He was waiting outside his sister’s door when he heard Marissa say:

“I have to be naked?”

There was a bit of laughing from Ashley and some more muttering from both of them.

Ashley opened the door for Aaron to come it. Marissa was standing up straight in a neutral pose on the mannequin disk. She was completely nude and made of plastic.

“She didn’t have to take off her underwear.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Aaron spent the next hour draping and pinning and carefully removing excess material until the mannequin’s body was wearing a dress. Granted, the dress had no zipper and there was excess material shooting off of it various directions.

“What do you think?” He said.

“I wish it were my dress,” Ashley said. “But, it wouldn’t fit me right. Now what?”

“Now, I take a photo and get her out of the dress. That’s going to be a bit tricky since it’s only held together with pins and there’s no zipper.”

He took several photos before he undid the pins that were pretending to be a zipper. The dress came off the mannequin easily. Then, he started to put her back into her own clothes.

“You might want to let her do that herself.”

“You never seem to mind.”

“We use to bathe together when we were little kids. She’s not your sister.”

“Fine.” Aaron left the room with the dress. He returned a few moments later. As soon as he entered, Marissa wanted to see the pics.

“Even unfinished it looks amazing.”

“Sign this.” Aaron said handing her a piece of paper.

“What is it?”

“A model release form. I want to use the pics on my channel and I’m getting your permission. I won’t show your head, just like all the pics of Ashley.”

“Oh, okay.” She signed to form. “Standing still like that was great. I feel energized. Do you use that thing often?”

“I do,” Ashley said. “Mom has one. She’s be doing it for years now. I received my own for my birthday.”

“I have to get a zipper for the dress. I’ll need $10 for that and thread.”

“You don’t already have thread?”

“Not in a color that won’t clash or stand out against this fabric. Mom should be able to take me to the store tomorrow. I had a zipper but it won’t look good with the fabric your brought. Maybe Monday it’ll be ready. Ashley will tell you Monday at school.”

“That fast? Awesome.”

* * *

On Marissa’s recommendation, especially because he was a perfect gentleman during the process, several girls in Ashley’s high school requested dresses from Aaron through the rest of the school year, including a prom dress for a junior. By summer break, he was charging over one hundred dollars a dress, plus materials. When his parents found out, they were impressed. His father was particularly impressed when he found out Aaron was collecting model release forms. Aaron said they were in the terms of service for a couple of the places hosting his blogs. Ashley was shocked he read the terms of service.

Toward the end of his Freshman year in high school, Aaron was in his room sewing a prom dress he was making for a senior when his mother called him. He found his mother in the kitchen, she was talking to a woman on her cell phone. They were on speaker:

“… should do him some good,” an unfamiliar voice said.

“Oh, he’s here. Aaron, I’m on the phone with an old friend of mine. She wants to buy some of your dresses.”

“I don’t have any dresses lying around.”

“Well, that’s the idea she would sell your dresses on consignment.”

“Teenagers buy my dresses because they are tailored.”

“That wouldn’t change. You would work over the summer at her store as a tailor.”

“Aaron?” said the woman on the speaker. “My seamstress is a lovely old woman who wants to retire. She could teach you a lot about tailoring that you will probably never learn from videos on the Internet. It was her idea that I reach out to you. She saw your channel online.”

“I don’t know if my techniques would work with certain tools.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s been using a Mannequin Disk 2000 to do fittings,” Mom said.

Ashley entered the room.

“You mean he turns the women to mannequins to do the fitting.”

“Yes,” Mom and Aaron said.

“That’s brilliant! But, wouldn’t you prefer to know the right way to do a fitting? Learning from someone with nearly fifty years experience?”

“That sounds like a good idea,” he said. “I have one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“If she wants it, you also hire my sister.”

“Hire me for what?”

“I called my friend Priscilla Barnes,” Mom said. “She owns a boutique shop in the mall where she wants to sell Aaron’s clothing on consignment. Part of the deal would be Aaron apprenticing to the store’s seamstress. Her name is Angela, right?”

“Yes, Angie’s been working for me since my first store. So, Ashley would be a sales associate?”

“No, I was thinking she would work in merchandise display.”

“I don’t need someone for that. I design the window displays.”

“I didn’t mean she would design the displays.”

Ashley figured out what Aaron was saying, “Yes, yes, yes. He means I would be a mannequin in the displays.”

“Ashley, you can’t…” Mom said.

“Please, please, please? When summer starts I could spends days in a store window. It would be so cool.”

“She’s inherited you love of being plastic, hasn’t she?”

“She has it worse than me. She says it’s pointless when the mannequin isn’t showing off clothes. That’s how Aaron started making clothes.”

“It is pointless,” Ashley said. “Mom relaxes using the disk but she just stands there looking frumpy. Would it kill you to have your arms akimbo or raised, your feet not parallel?”

“I suppose it wouldn’t.”

“If you are okay with it, I would be happy to add Ashley to my mannequin inventory over the summer, provided Aaron also works here and makes me a few dresses.”

“Yes, yes. Please, Mom?”

“Aaron?” Mom said.

“It’s a deal.”

“Fabulous,” Priscilla said. “When can you start?”

“I can start this weekend,” Aaron said. “School isn’t over till mid-June.”

That weekend, Aaron started his apprenticeship. Angela found his lack of training refreshing since he did things his own way. He would observe when Angela did a fitting. And if there was time, he would design new dresses. Being only fourteen, he could not work many hours a day. At home, he continued to do commissions for kids at school.

As soon as summer started, Ashley was taken to the store as a mannequin and setup in the store window. Aaron would start doing dresses faster at home. He would have the buyer turn into a mannequin and leave them that way while he sewed the dress. Some repeat buyers would be good with staying a mannequin a day or two just to get the dress faster.

Meanwhile, the first couple weeks Ashley was on display, her mother would pick her up and bring her home one day a week, insisting she needed to spend time among the living. But, she got busy at work at the end of June and by mid-July Ashley was no longer coming home.

This allowed Aaron to leave his clients in her room when he was not working on their clothes. It was mid-July when Jeremy came over. As he came up the stairs to Aaron’s room he stopped dead in his tracks by Ashley’s bedroom door.

“Is that Carrie Folkmar in your sister’s room?”

Aaron opened the door to her room wider and stepped in. “Carrie, my friend Jeremy says, ‘Hello.’ Jeremy, do you also want to say hello to Tina Poulsen, Jenny Brimmer, and Quinlen Tupper?” There were three other mannequins standing in Ashley’s bedroom.

“Hi, girls,” Jeremy said. “Why are they here?”

“I’m making dresses for them.” Aaron turned out the lights and closed the door behind him. They continued walking to his room.

“I still can’t believe you have these girls who turn into mannequins so you can make them dresses. You are so lucky.”

“I guess. Do you want to play LizardOrb Alpha or Merc Squadron?”

* * *

Ashley was in a good mood for weeks as school started in the fall. When asked about her summer, she would just call it heavenly. She also had a new wardrobe as Ms Barnes had paid her in clothes and shoes for her time spent as a mannequin.

Aaron’s sophomore year at high school was unusual. He was popular with several of the upperclassmen who owned dressed designed by him. That gave him the respect of the other upperclassmen. It was fairly public that he made clothes in his spare time. His channel had popped the one hundred thousand follower bubble in October and there was a small celebration for him at lunch the next day.

He most enjoyed making prom gowns and was doing one each week. One of the girls convinced her boyfriend to get a custom tuxedo from Aaron. Aaron warned them he had never done menswear. He still managed to make a custom colored tuxedo that complemented the gown he made for the lady. When the fall dance happened, they were the talk of the gathering.

Toward the end of his sophomore year, Aaron was at his locker when Heather Lindz tapped on his shoulder. “Oh, hi, Heather,” he said. “Is there a problem with your dress.” She was wearing the outfit he had made her earlier that week.

“No, no. It’s fabulous,” she said. “I was wondering if you like to go see a movie with me on Saturday.”

“Um, sure. Do you want to meet at the mall?”

“That works. I’ll text the time and place. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” She stood there a second too long before turning and walking away.

Jeremy appeared in front of Aaron suddenly and said, “You have a date?”

“I have a date,” Aaron said. “How do you know?”

“I watched the whole thing. I guess this dress making thing is finally paying off.”

“I never thought about it that way.”

“I know. You’re an artist. Well, some girls find that attractive apparently.”

“Who knew?”