I pull my knees into my chest. “You don’t have to answer a broken front door.”
He reaches back behind me and turns the knob. The door swings wide open. “No excuse now.”
“Yeah.” I point to his neck. “What’s up with the necklace?”
He pulls the chain out from under his T-shirt to reveal a small medallion. “Saint Anthony,” he says. “Supposed to help you find lost things.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know.” He tucks the necklace back behind his collar. “I think maybe I found it. But then some days I think it found me.”
I nod. There’s some kind of peace that comes with knowing that for every person who is waiting to be found, there’s someone out there searching.
“Willowdean?”
“Yeah?”
He stands and reaches for his toolbox. “You look like an insurance adjuster.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
I wake up to find that Mom has slid a copy of the paper beneath my door. I unfold it and find my face there, right in the middle of the crease. The headline reads: CLOVER CITY’S MISS TEEN BLUE BONNET: PUTTING NAMES WITH FACES. The entire front page is tiled with our head shots from the previous day. Beneath our pictures are our names, ages, favorite foods, and our definitions of Clover City in one word.
I’m guessing my mom wasn’t given a first look at this before it went to print. But, either way, there I am. My not-smiling face.
At rehearsal, we all sit in the auditorium for a long time while waiting for the lighting to be perfected. Miranda Solomon, God’s gift to Clover City community theater, turns around in her seat and explains to me, El, Hannah, Amanda, and Millie that half of final rehearsals is always spent sitting around, waiting for the techies to get it right. She shrugs. “That’s the biz.”
When she gets up to go to the bathroom, El turns to me with her shoulders hunched up and her voice high. “That’s the biz.”
Callie sits a few rows behind us with another girl I recognize from Sweet 16. I’m actively trying not to look smug, but it’s not easy.
Other than that, things are alarmingly quiet. Pageants are the perfect recipe for drama. You have to look perfect. You have to be perfect. And on top of being perfect, you have to be the best at being perfect. The nerves here are almost palpable. Especially Millie’s. She bounces her legs so hard that I can feel the vibrations three seats down.
Ellen turns into me. “So are you really doing those magic tricks? I love you, but those were pretty sketch.”
“Well, it’s not like I really have an option now.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess if you cared about getting DQ’d, you don’t.”
The thought of doing something completely different hadn’t even occurred to me. “I don’t even really have anything I could do.”
She sits for a minute, lost in thought, as she chews on her hair. Then she gasps, and whispers in my ear. It only takes three words for the idea to take me. She leans back, waiting for my response.
I can picture it so perfectly. There’s so no way I’m winning this thing, so I might as well go out in a blaze of glory. “I could even—”
“Millie Amethyst Michalchuk!” a voice from the back of the theater crows.
The vibrations I’ve felt for the last half hour stop as Millie’s entire body freezes.
I crane my neck to see her mom storming at the top of the aisle. Her dad isn’t far behind.
I whip around and elbow Hannah in the gut. “What is going on?” I whisper-yell at her.
Millie squeezes past each of us to meet her mom in the aisle. She holds her chin out straight, inhaling and exhaling measured breaths.
It takes a second for Hannah’s eyes to adjust. “Oh,” she says, and sort of laughs into her fist.
“Oh what?”
“I lied,” she says. “I definitely lied.”
Everyone’s watching now. Including the tech guys.