I nudged her playfully. “No, silly. College. Where do you want to go, what do you want to study?”
“Oh. Well, art. Nor sure about college, though.”
“My aunt Pat’s partner works at a small museum in the city,” I said. “She’s an art historian. And Aunt Pat teaches art history.”
“Really?” Beneath her fall of hair, Taryn’s eyes lit up. “That’s so cool. I want to do art, not teach or work in a museum, but just to be around it all the time…”
“Maybe we can visit her sometime,” I said. “Doesn’t your mom ever go to the city?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Sure, sometimes. But she likes to keep me on a tight leash. All the dangers and temptations of the city, don’t you know.”
“But we’d be safe with Aunt Pat,” I said. “I’ll text her and ask when might be a good time.”
I was full of Doritos and soda. I’d eaten more this evening than I had in the last three days, and most of it had been crap. I looked at the clock. “Jeez, it’s six a.m.”
“We have to leave for church in three hours,” she said.
I groaned. “I completely forgot about that. I’d so been looking forward to sleeping in. I’m exhausted, but I don’t know if I can sleep. It’s probably not worth it.”
“We still haven’t seen the Veronica Mars movie,” she said.
“You’re on.”
Doritos and sodas and another bag of M&M’s went with us.
By the time the movie was over, I felt bloated, gross, and headachy, and had barely enough time to get ready. My hair was a mess because it had only half dried before I’d fallen asleep the second time. It wasn’t as bad as last night, but still. Normally I’d shower again, but we were running too late for that.
I eased the snarls out of it, ran a brush through it, and pulled it up in a loose chignon. I raced through my normal daily makeup: foundation, mascara, tinted lip gloss. I made an attempt at under-eye concealer, but those puffy dark circles were stubborn. They’d need cucumber slices, and a regular application of retinol serum, neither of which I had time for now.
Mrs. Wentworth noticed. She didn’t say anything, but I’d gotten used to her sharp perusal of me—makeup, posture, everything. The only time she didn’t seem disapproving was when I grabbed some fruit and coffee for breakfast. I wasn’t really hungry, but an orange sounded good after all the junk food, and coffee just sounded good.
The day was overcast—the air was heavy and I guessed it was going to rain later—and I was glad I’d worn slacks and a sweater. I’d reminded Taryn to bring a sweater, too. She’d said she was glad one of us had been awake enough to have half a brain working.
During the service, Taryn’s thigh pressing against mine took on a whole new meaning. We communicated with subtle touches: the pastor would say something and I would lift my heel, the flex of my muscles enough to tell her I was amused, and she’d ever so slightly nudge me. Maybe we were just punchy because we were so damned tired, but everything seemed funny, like a continuous series of inside jokes. I was so afraid one of us would start laughing, and then the other would, and we wouldn’t be able to stop.
The rain didn’t come fast enough to get us out of standing around on the lawn while everyone chatted with everyone else after the service. Reverend Davison made a point of coming over to me.
“Miss Moss! I heard you did a fantastic job at the county pageant last night.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Second runner-up.”
As the words left my mouth, Mrs. Wentworth stepped up next to him. I tensed. We hadn’t talked about pageant yet today. We hadn’t talked about it at all since she’d ripped me a new one in the car last night.
“Annabelle put on a fine performance,” Mrs. Wentworth said, putting a hand on my shoulder and squeezing. “Her monologue was perfect, and she looked just stunning in her evening gown. So poised.”
I looked at her, stunned. She was smiling at Reverend Davison like a proud mother. Where was this praise last night? Maybe she just had to get all the bad stuff out before she forgot anything—so I’d know what I had to work on.
Or maybe—and I felt bad for thinking this, but there it was—she was lying to Reverend Davison. Putting on a good face. She didn’t want to admit that she’d failed in making me a viable pageant candidate.
I mean, it would’ve helped my mental state a heck of a lot if she’d said anything nice afterwards, especially before she’d launched into the litany of my failures.
“That’s wonderful. I was praying for you,” Reverend Davison said.
“Uh, thank you.” I was pretty sure God wasn’t wasting His time on the outcome of teen pageants. I certainly hoped He wasn’t. He had far more important things to worry about.
“It’s good that Annabelle has support from the church,” Mrs. Wentworth said. “Thank you, Reverend.”
The nagging terror that my poor performance meant Mrs. Wentworth wouldn’t want to sponsor me anymore continued to make my stomach churn. If she gave me a chance, I’d promise to work even harder for the next pageant.
I wasn’t brave enough to ask her in the car on the way home. I dutifully answered her when she asked what I’d liked about the service (when the pastor talked about the difference between listening and hearing), but other than that and Taryn’s response, the ride home was in silence.
In the back seat, I leaned my head against the window, closed my tired eyes, and tried not to think about anything at all.
Seventeen
Lunch was similarly quiet. Taryn rarely spoke at meals anyway, and the main topic between Mrs. Wentworth and me was always pageant-related.
While Taryn and I were cleaning up the lunch dishes, she asked if I had anything planned now.
I grinned. With her mother out of the way, we felt comfortable talking again. I didn’t know how Mrs. Wentworth would feel about our friendship. She had to know we’d been hanging out to watch movies and whatnot.
“I’m going to take a bath,” I said. “I have a personal goal of using up all the hot water in the house.”
She snorted. “It’s the sauna for me.”
“See you later, then?”
“Sure.”
I filled my bathtub with steaming hot water, Epsom salts, and enormous bubbles. Once I was happily settled, I grabbed my phone and called Aunt Pat.
“Sweetie! I’m so proud of you! I loved the picture you tweeted, and I saw some other ones online, too,” she said. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there.”
“It’s okay. I wished you could have seen it, but I understand.” I gave her all the details, tripping over my words in my happiness to have someone to share it with. “I’ll have more lead time for the next one,” I finished.
“Oh! There’s a next one?”
“There will be,” I said firmly. “I just don’t know when yet.”
I’d already decided not to tell her about how angry Mrs. Wentworth had gotten with me, or even where I’d fallen short. She’d comfort me, and that would make me cry, and I was done with crying right now.
I told her a little more about the experience, and then let her talk about what was going on with her.
I closed my eyes for a moment, and almost drifted off. I jerked back to alertness, realizing I’d missed a few words of what Aunt Pat had just said. I got the gist of it, though. She’d been talking about her partner, Rhea, and a new exhibit she’d curated as part of a fundraiser being held at the museum.
“That reminds me,” I said. “I need a charity.”
“You need a charity for what?”
I laughed, realizing I should’ve explained first. “Pageant contestants are expected to give back to the community and are judged in part by their charity work. I’ve been volunteering at the local animal shelter, but that’s only good for smaller pageants. The further I go, the more global the charity needs to be.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, laughing with me. “Well, there are so many worthwhile charities to support.”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “I can’t decide. There are so many.”
“I think you should narrow it down to causes that are meaningful to you, that you feel passionate about. That way, the passion will show in your voice when you talk about it.”
“I’m passionate about a lot of them,” I said mournfully. “The world sucks right now.”
“Oh honey, I know. Don’t let it get you down,” she said quickly. “You’re already making the world better. Think about the shelter you’re supporting.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I know.”
“How about women in STEM?” she suggested. “Programs to support girls who are interested in math and science.”
“Ooh.” I rolled that around in my head. “I like it, but… I’m not sure how to say it. I’m not sure it’s…crunchy enough.”
She laughed. “Crunchy?”
“It’s important, but it’s not as…as immediate as some other problems. Like women’s issues. Abortion rights, that sort of thing. But abortion might be too dicey. A lot of pageant people are kinda traditional.”
“Got it,” she said. “The MeToo movement, maybe?”
A thought popped into my tired brain, waking me up a little. “Or maybe LGBT rights.”
“That sounds like a great idea! It’s personal and, as you say, crunchy.”
When I started to wonder if I was gay, Aunt Pat was the first person I talked to, even before my parents. Not that I was worried that my parents would be upset—I knew their views—but because Aunt Pat would understand in a way they wouldn’t.
She’d told me how she’d known from the get-go. She didn’t understand when my mom, two years older, started talking about boys; Aunt Pat was trying to figure out what it meant to be more than friends with girls. Whereas Rhea didn’t figure it out until college, when she had what she assumed was the clichéd lesbian fling every girl had in college. She figured out pretty quickly it wasn’t just an experimental phase.
“It’s not too divisive, though?” she added.
My initial ooh! was fading as I remember Mrs. Wentworth’s bigotry. But also her insistence that a pageant girl be…pious wasn’t the right word, but I couldn’t remember exactly now. Not too edgy, that was for sure.
“It might be. I’ll have to do some research,” I said. “But you’ve been a great help, Aunt Pat. Thanks for talking me through it.”
We chatted a bit more, and then she had to go. I laid my head against the pad on the back of the tub and closed my eyes, thinking about our conversation.
LGBT rights. Tolerance. Education.
I could throw myself behind that one-hundred percent.
Unfortunately, I knew Mrs. Wentworth wouldn’t feel the same. I wondered if there was some way I could test the waters without being too obvious. Right now, I didn’t even know where I stood with Mrs. Wentworth. Had she forgiven me for not being perfect and winning? Or had that, I suddenly wondered, been a show for the pastor?
I bit my lip. Maybe Mrs. Wentworth had given up on me altogether, deciding I wasn’t pageant material after all.
I took a deep breath. I was exhausted, and that meant it was too easy for my thoughts to go down negative paths. No sense worrying about this until I knew for sure.
After all, worrying, I could hear Mrs. Wentworth say, causes wrinkles.
My bathwater was heading towards tepid, the bubbles were gone, and my fingers were wrinkly. I pulled the plug and stood, wrapping myself in one of the enormous soft towels before stepping out.
I grabbed a tube of cucumber-and-mint body lotion and smoothed the fragrant lotion into my legs, my mind whirling.
When my brain wasn’t full of pageant prep, my thoughts drifted to Taryn. Slowly, I was starting to think about our friendship, and whether a deeper level was possible. I had no idea how she felt, though, and I didn’t want to destroy what we had.
I knew one thing for certain: waking up with Taryn in the no-recriminations-zone blanket fort had been the happiest I’d felt since…since the accident.
Maybe I was just grateful for her being kind after my meltdown.
It wasn’t as if I wanted to jump her bones. But this morning I started to feel something for her that I didn’t feel with my other friends.
It was seeing another side of her: the compassion she’d shown for me. I’d finally seen behind the walls she’d put up around herself.
One big problem: I had no idea if Taryn was gay. How did you broach that subject with someone? The world was set up for heterosexuals—boys expressed interest in dating girls, girls expressed interest in dating boys, because generally boys liked girls and girls liked boys.
I finished moisturizing my arms, and sat at the makeup table to use a different cream on my face.
I stared at my face in the mirror. Other than the circles under my eyes from lack of sleep, I didn’t look any different. I still looked like me.
So why did I feel like I’d become an entirely different person?
Drowsy from the hot water and still suffering the effects of what had essentially been an all-nighter, I crawled into my bed naked. I had the presence of mind to set an alarm, otherwise I might have slept all day. Mrs. Wentworth would no doubt call me slothful.
I did go for a run on the treadmill before supper, though. Partly to work off the junk food, partly because it had become habit, and partly to clear my head. Running either helped me think, or it helped me not think.
In this case, I cranked the music loud and didn’t think.
My calves protested at first, needing to be stretched after being in heels for so long, but soon they warmed up. I didn’t push myself too hard, not knowing what the next week would bring.
I didn’t want to think about that, either.
For dinner, I wore the khakis Mrs. Wentworth had purchased for me before I arrived along with a sleeveless red knit top. Unsurprisingly, the pants fit perfectly, no longer digging in to my waist. Even though I didn’t yet have the biceps I was working for, I felt good in the shirt.
Taryn shot me a quick smile while her mother’s back was turned. I smiled back, ducking my head as Mrs. Wentworth brought a bowl to the table.
I smelled tomato and basil and garlic. My stomach rumbled. Spaghetti!
Well, spaghetti sauce, anyway. With spiralized zucchini, ground turkey, and a salad on the side.
I found I didn’t care. I was ravenous. I was careful not to eat too fast, and of course twirling anything on a fork covered with red sauce is always a crapshoot. If I dotted myself with sauce, at least my shirt was almost the same color.
But Mrs. Wentworth would notice, and frown.
If I was lucky, all she would do was frown.
I wasn’t feeling very lucky.
Lost in my own thoughts, I jumped when she spoke.
“Did I hear you down in the workout room?”
I blotted my mouth with a napkin. “Yes, I did three miles on the treadmill.”
“Good for you,” she said, and my eyes widened at her praise. “I was going to let you take the day off and get started again tomorrow, but I’m glad to see you take initiative. We’ll have Carlos in tomorrow to start your new routine.”
My breath caught. I hadn’t destroyed everything with my appalling interview and poor judgment.
“Do we…do we have a specific goal in mind?” I asked. “I mean, another pageant to work towards?”
“I’m trying to decide which one will be most beneficial to you,” she said.
“I’d love to see the list,” I said.
She looked at me, eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Then she said, “That’s a fine idea. Of course you should have input.”
The way she said it, I was pretty sure my input wouldn’t change her decision, but I was still glad I could be involved. Looking at the different options would get me even more motivated to work hard.
I hadn’t realized how afraid I’d been that Mrs. Wentworth had given up on me—that I’d blown my one and only chance—until just now.
; Relieved and excited, I glanced at Taryn. She concentrated on twirling zoodles on her fork, not looking at either of us. Of course—she didn’t care about our conversation. My excitement plummeted.
Despite my nap and my head-clearing run, my emotions were still a roller coaster. No, one of those rides that whips you around, and you have no idea what’s coming next.
I’d been so happy that Taryn and I were finally opening up to each other, finally becoming friends. (I refused to think beyond that, because there was too much I didn’t know.) I’d seen her kindness, her compassion beneath her shield of hair and loose clothes and “whatevers.” I’d thought she’d seen beyond whatever she’d assumed about me.
To lose that would devastate me. I knew that, and now I had something else to be terrified about.
“Hey Taryn, want to watch a movie later?” I asked.
She glanced up. “Sure.”
I turned back to Mrs. Wentworth. “What time is Carlos coming tomorrow? Other than that and volunteering at the shelter, is there anything else on the agenda?”
Her lips compressed. “I had to wait and observe and analyze your performance before I could put together a list of things to work on and a schedule. I’ll have that finalized once we have a date for the next pageant.”
Oof. My elation faded even more.
“Anything that will improve my performance for next time,” I said as cheerfully as I could muster.
“That goes without saying,” she said, not acknowledging my attempt at positivity. “Obviously, one focus will be your interview and presentation. You must be prepared for any question, no excuses.”
“I understand,” I said, my voice quiet. I poked at my salad, the red sauce acidic in my throat.
I would work harder. I would nail this.
I’d do anything to win.
Eighteen
Taryn and I sat on the gooshy brown leather U-shaped sofa in our TV room. She had the remote, and was paging through the options on Netflix. It wasn’t that we were arguing about what to watch; it was more that nothing sounded appealing to either of us.
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