“Actually,” adds Amanda, “she told you to shove a pageant sash up your piggy ass.”
I told Millie that I wanted to let this fly under the radar, but with these two, I might as well take a front-page ad out in the Clover City Tribune. I’m not doing this to be some kind of Joan of Fat Girls or whatever. I’m doing this for Lucy. And for me. I’m ready to go back to being the version of myself I was before Bo. I’m entering this pageant because there’s no reason I shouldn’t. I’m doing this because I want to cross the line between me and the rest of the world. Not be someone’s savior.
I shake my head. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“All my favorite things start as bad ideas,” says Millie.
“Millie, people are cruel,” I tell her. “I know that. And so does Amanda, I’m sure.”
Amanda nods. “Haters gonna hate.”
“But doing this pageant is the ultimate KICK ME sign on your back. You don’t need my permission, but I don’t want to be responsible for that.”
Millie’s shoulders slump.
Ellen kicks her toe in the dirt. “They should do it. If Millie and Amanda want to enter the pageant with you, they should. Viva la revolution and all that.”
“No,” I say. “Y’all should go home.”
Amanda shrugs and starts to walk off, but Millie stays put, silently asking for an appeal.
Ellen grabs my hand and squeezes it tight.
I sigh. “Registration for the revolution is two hundred bucks.”
Inside, the community center sounds like the gymnasium during girls’ phys ed. High-pitched conversations bounce off the ceiling, echoing and multiplying until the voices of twenty sound like the screeches of a hundred.
Cliques of girls sit at round tables with white tablecloths, the same ones my mother ironed in our living room last night. The legacy girls with mothers and sisters who have been crowned. Athletes trying to beef up their college résumés. The cheer table, which consists of anyone who does anything at a football game that doesn’t include a ball. And the theater and the choir girls, of course. All of them wear dresses. Like, Easter dresses. Precious little garden dresses with matching cardigans. While we are wearing nothing more than jeans and T-shirts.
I turn back to Amanda and Millie and try to give them an encouraging smile that doesn’t say I-have-no-clue-what-I’m-doing-I-feel-like-I’m-naked.
El squeezes my hand. “Let’s do this.”
We weave in and out of tables and as we draw to the front, a silence sprinkles over the room, until the voices are nothing more than a low buzz of questions.
At the registration table sit two former pageant queens, Judith Clawson and Mallory Buckley. Only former winners are invited to participate as members of the planning committee. Judith is at least twenty years Mallory’s senior, but both their smiles are as glittering white as the crown brooches on their cardigans.
“Hi. I’m here for registration.”
Both women smile with their lips closed. Judith whispers into Mallory’s ear, who then stands and says, “Pardon me.”
Judith examines my application. “You’ll need to get your talent approved by the first week of November.”
“Right. Of course.”
Her eyes travel between the form and me as she reads over my weight and height. “I’ll need your mother’s signature, dear.”
“Willowdean.” As if on cue, my mother grips my elbow as Mallory rushes past her to reclaim her spot.
Mom pulls me off to the side and through a set of French doors. I watch through the glass as Amanda and Millie hand in their applications. I have this urge to go back in there and stand with them, like I’ve somehow abandoned them.
Ellen stands behind them and flashes me the thumbs-up.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Her voice is a harsh whisper.
I stand up straighter with my fists dug into my hips. “I’m registering as a contestant.”
“This isn’t some joke.”
“Do you see me laughing?”
“And who are those other young ladies with you?”