Starlet Scarlett

Chapter 1 - 'You owe me.'

"Keep your heels, head and standards high."

    -Coco Chanel



I've always been a fan of getting dressed up. Girls who say they love sweatpants and hoodies and hate heels and dresses honestly haven't lived - to me, looking good makes me feel good. Then again, they probably don't have an aunt who designs clothes for a living, so it'd probably be a little hard for them to fund it. Realistically, I think I have enough clothes to wear a completely different outfit everyday for at least a year and a half.

But anyway, that's not the point. The point is, I like getting dressed up. Which is a bonus I guess, because I have to get dressed up a lot. My parents are... successful, to say the least, and so social gatherings are a regular thing. And with the paparazzi stationed almost permanently outside of your house, you kind of have to look your best. One time I stayed over at my friend Jess's house and went home wearing a pair of baggy sweatpants and a hoodie, and the paparazzi swooped down and got a good few unflattering pictures of me. That was fun. Yeah, not really.

Right now I'm wrapped in my towel trying to decide whether to wear a blue or cream dress for tonight. I have dirty blonde hair and so those colors are ones which compliment me most. I sift through my closet which is bursting with clothes and pick out the two possible dresses. The blue one's a little creased though and I'm pretty sure there's a picture of me wearing it in a magazine somewhere, so I put it back and lay the cream dress on my bed.

My makeup and hair doesn't take me too long, I'm so used to doing it now that I'm pretty quick at it. My hair is just past shoulder length and it's quite wavy. Not like my mom's, hers is curly and really light blonde. I've seen pictures of her when she was my age and she was stunning - still is, in fact. Age has only made her more beautiful, her eyes crinkled from a life smiling and tanned skin mostly unwrinkled. And her blue eyes are still as bright.

Then there's my dad. I guess I take after him more. He has dark hair and what were once ice blue eyes, have now turned to grey. I have his exact eyes. They're not blue, although some days they do have flecks of the color. Most of the time, though, they're pretty plain. And whereas dad has black hair, which is now greying a little, I have dirty blonde. It started off pretty dark brown at birth but the sun has lightened it quite a bit and so now it's got a lot of highlights.

My younger sisters, Juliet and Harper, have our father's hair. Black and curly. Although we all have pretty similar faces, I wouldn't say we look even a bit similar. People say that our family look nothing alike, but you can still tell that we're all related. There are a grand total of seven in our family. There's me, mom, dad, Juliet, Harper, Fisher and Jacob. After five kids, I have no idea how mom still manages to have such a great figure.

I'm the oldest at seventeen and I suppose I'm basically the face of our family - after my parents, of course. Fisher is just a year younger than me, but he's not that into the whole posh social scene so he prefers staying home. After him came Jacob, who's fourteen, and then there's Juliet who's seven. The youngest of us is Harper who is four. The boys take after mom, with blonde hair and blue eyes, my sisters take after dad, with dark hair and blue eyes, and I guess I'm a mix of them both.

I take out my hairdryer and blast my hair until it's dried, parting it as usual down the middle. Then making a start on my makeup, I decide on a smoky brown eye look with fake eyelashes. My face is pretty spot-free and so I don't really have anything to cover up, but I put on foundation anyway, dusting my face with powder, bronzer and blush. I dither over my lipstick choice for a moment before settling on a peach color, and I swipe it onto my lips. I have a pretty sharp cupid's bow and my lips are full, so I have a lot to cover.

When I'm done I slip into my dress. It's a strapless cream piece which gets tighter at the waist and then reaches down to my knees. The skirt is choppy, with ruffles of soft fabric and netting. It's one of my favourites, so I've been saving it. That's the thing about regularly attending these social functions - I can't be photographed wearing the same thing twice. It's so stupid. The paparazzi will genuinely put together a four-page spread if they catch me wearing the same outfit twice, eating fatty foods, or god forbid if I'm wearing sweatpants.