Ellen was a quiet child; average in just about every way. Her shoulder length brown hair wasn’t curly but it wasn’t straight either. She had a pleasant smile and a cute freckled. An all around nice girl were the words most people used when they were describing her.
          Ellen had this funny habit of disappearing for hour on end into her closet. No one ever really could figure out what she did in there. Her sister was sure she had a fat journal full of plumy secrets hidden in there somewhere behind the shoes. Her parents figured she was simply wasting time behind the whitewashed door and would frequently shout her name from the kitchen. “Ellen?! What are you doing?!”
          There would be a short silence and then her quiet voice would reply, “Nothing!”. This reply usually got her a trip to the dishwasher that needed emptying or something annoyingly useful like that.
          Ellen’s closet was her castle; a fantasy place where she could change into a princess or a wide eyed searcher with the shrug of a sweater or the zip of a zipper. Outside of her closet haven, she told herself that clothes were purely a materialistic pleasure that have no “real” value. Something that only shallow people really cared about.
          The hours in the half darkness in front of the full length mirror did something to our Ellen though. “Confessions of a Shopaholic” was no longer a comedy to this average girl. She knew what Rebecca Bloomwood was talking about when she talked about the thrill that cashmere sweaters give you when you run your fingers over them.
          It was a quiet afternoon in November and Ellen was in her closet. She had a snowy white scarf draped over her shoulders and a dark wash denim jacket over one shoulder. Today’s look was “chic cowgirl” and the country pop on the radio was playing just a little bit too loud for her mother’s taste. In the safety of the crowded closet Elllen danced in front of her mirror and practiced her runway walk; silently mouthing the words of the song on the other side of the door.
          She jumped at the pounding knock on the door. “What on earth are you doing in there, Ellen?” Her mom asked. The girl grimaced and knit her eye brows together, trying to think of a response other than “I’m playing dress-up.”
          “Nothing?!” She said with questioning in her voice.
          “You have to be doing something…” Ellen started scrambling around under her shelf of skirts. She stuffed the heels she had been wearing with her jeans under a box and started struggling with the knot in her scarf. Her head banged into the bottom shelf of her clothes rack with a thud.
          “Ouch!” She listened for a minute to see if her mother was still standing there. “I’m, uhhh, organizing my shoes!”
          “Pffft, she probably keeps a Frankenstien monster in there and she’s running tests on it right now.” she heard her brother say from the next room. Ellen stifled a giggle; if they only knew. Only yesterday she’d had her white trench coat and black beret on for the French doctor look.
          “Seriously, Honey. I need you to come out right now.” Her mom said through the door. Ellen felt like falling through the floor. Her scarf was messed up and her crazy side ponytail was totally out of character. She sighed and wished that “fashion” had never been invented. The secret life in the closet would be discovered and she would be mocked for life.
          The door bumped open and for a minute she just stood there with chewing off what remained of her red lipstick.
          “Playing dress-up?” came the question. She nodded miserably. What had possessed her in the first place to take up these closet capers? Her mother sighed and then giggled quietly. Ellen jerked her gaze up. “You shouldn’t tie your scarf like that,” Her mom reached out and smoothed the cotton knot. “All the magazines say you should do it like this now.”
          Oh horrors! Her mother was a closet fashionista too. What was the world coming to? Ellen grinned mischievously and stuffed her hands in her pockets.
          “There wasn’t enough scarf to do it the right way…”
          “Fiddle faddle” Was the reply. “The scarf in my closet is plenty long enough. Let’s go try it.”
          Oh gosh, goodbye closet!