Chosen by Jessica Burkhart Page B

center of the kitchen table. Becca’s was Gingerbread Spice. And
     mine was Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride—it tasted best with actual sugar in it.
    Now, even though our house was warm, tea had become a total obsession. All
     of my friends and family knew to get me tea whenever they saw a unique flavor. It was
     like a game for them to find a kind I hadn’t tried. I even kept a tea journal and
     recorded each kind I tasted, and I rated them from +to. Sometimes tea was
     so bad it needed a negative star. In my bedroom on my bookcase, I had books about tea,
     and I’d learned interesting facts about it—like the history of the leaves,
     how to make a perfect cup, and where to find the most exotic teas.
    I had tea for all occasions: pulling all-nighters (Vanilla Black
     Twinings), calming down before bed (chamomile Bigelow), rainy days (Perfectly Pear White
     Celestial Seasonings), cold weather (Winter Spice Twinings), bad days (Sugar Cookie
     Sleigh Ride Celestial Seasonings—it was still my favorite), and sick days
     (Peppermint Celestial Seasonings).
    It was Saturday night, so I wanted something spiked with caffeine and
     cooling since it was warm out.
    I moved boxes of Tazo, Celestial Seasonings, Twinings,
     and Harney & Sons until I found what I wanted—Organic Green Tea With Mint.
    Très
     parfait . Caffeinated and cooling. Ooh la la!
    I took the pyramid-shaped tea bag out of the larger zipped bag and got up
     when the teapot started to whistle. Ana and Brielle loved to tease me about my tea
     habit. They thought it was weird that I had to use a stove-top teakettle for tea and
     called me a snob—pushing the tips of their noses in the air and lifting their
     chins when I wouldn’t use a microwave to heat water just because it was faster. I
     had tried to explain that there was something about the ritual of boiling the water on
     the stove that I liked, but they only rolled their eyes.
    I picked out my favorite homework teacup—a powder blue one with a
     small, delicate daisy painted on it. It had a matching saucer and tiny stirring spoon. I
     took my cup of steaming tea upstairs and placed it on my bedside table, beside the
     magazines I was reading before I went to bed. I had a mix of everything—fashion,
     gossip, and horses.
    I opened the double doors to my closet and flipped up the light switch. My
     closet was the most embarrassing example of my inner neat freak. My clothes were
     arranged by color, even down to shades within the same colorcategory. I’d always loved clothes, but most of my shopping had been limited to online
     purchases that Dad and I quickly added to various carts while I traveled on an insanely
     busy show circuit. Back then, I’d had practically zero time to go to actual
     stores. But in Brooklyn, Mom and I could never resist the local boutiques or making
     special trips to the bigger stores in Manhattan like Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf,
     or—on a very special occasion—Barneys.
    Now that I’d taken a break from showing, I’d spent a lot of
     time doing things I’d never had time for when I was younger—even simple
     things like exploring my neighborhood, shopping with my friends in actual stores, where
     I could actually try on clothes, and going to free concerts in the park.
    I took in each section. The black and white sections, which were adjacent
     to each other, I thought of as my “Audrey Hepburn sections” because she wore
     a lot of those two simple colors and made them look stunning. The section I thought of
     as the “sister section” was all shades of purple (Becca’s favorite
     color) and blue (my favorite color). I selected an outfit for tonight while my tea
     cooled. I took my time, running my fingers over all of the different fabrics and cuts,
     each item hanging from a silk ivory hanger adorned by a tiny ribbon-bow where the base
     of the hook was.
    I started at the Audrey Hepburn section