Red(51)

“Cheers.” As she stuffed the fry into her mouth, Felicity realized she hadn’t thought about Brent and Gabby since she had gotten into Jonathan’s car. She was warm and happy and surrounded by delicious food smells, and she suddenly felt intensely grateful. “Hey, thanks for this,” she said. “I was having a really awful night before you showed up.”

“Thanks for coming with me. My night wasn’t going so well, either.”

“Why didn’t you ask someone to prom who you actually wanted to go with? Your sister will have her own proms.”

Jonathan played with his cuff link, suddenly unable to meet Felicity’s eyes. “Well … the girl I really wanted to ask was—um—indisposed, I guess.”

Of course. A wave of sympathy swept through her. She’d had to give up her boyfriend for one important night, but it would be infinitely worse to be in Jonathan’s place, pining for someone who was all the way across the ocean. “That sucks. But I guess it’s kind of hard to get to prom if you live on the other side of the world, right?”

Jonathan looked up, confused. “The other side of … what? What are you talking about?”

“Well, I mean, she’s all the way in Capri, right?”

“Who is?”

“Lucia. Isn’t that who—I mean, I thought …” Felicity let the sentence hang in the air, half finished.

Jonathan burst out laughing. “Lucia? Wow, no. Where’d you get that idea? Lucia’s my best friend. She used to live across the street from me until her mom got a research grant to go to Italy. I would never— It’s not like that at all.”

“Oh.” Felicity thought back on that day in the art studio, when he had looked so tenderly at his portrait of Lucia, as if he missed her more than anything. But of course you’d feel that way about your best friend. Jonathan had said nothing to imply that he liked her in any other way. Felicity had fabricated their entire romance. The realization sent a curious sensation through her, as if her heart were levitating.

“But then, who—” she started.

Jonathan shook his head and smiled. “Don’t worry about it. So, the pageant’s really soon, right? You must be excited.”

Felicity reflexively plastered on her “I love competing” smile, but as she opened her mouth to give her usual cheerful answer, she realized she didn’t have to lie right now. Jonathan had opened up to her about personal things, and he deserved the same level of forthrightness. She let the fake smile fade. “Honestly? Not really.”

“How come? A lot of people think you’re going to win. Jacob Sinclair from my math class set up this website where you can place bets on the contestants, and I heard that after Madison, the most money is on you.”

Felicity stabbed at her shake with her straw. “Oh great. Now I feel like a racehorse.”

“But at least you’re a winning racehorse, right?”

“I guess.” She shrugged. “Pageants just aren’t my thing. When I’m up there competing, it just doesn’t … it doesn’t feel like me, you know? It’s all just acting.”

Jonathan nodded encouragingly, and she relaxed a little. Now that she had finally found a safe place to express herself, her words came spilling out like water from a broken dam. She told Jonathan about how her mom was obsessed with the pageant and had been pressuring her to win since preschool. She told him about the vomit-inducing Ella-Mae Finch song. She told him she had never really cared about competing and wished she could escape the life her mom had planned for her. Saying it all out loud for the first time made her feel like a helium balloon whose string had been cut, soaring dizzyingly upward.

“I totally get it,” Jonathan said when she was finished. “You want your own life, not a rerun of hers. But she can’t make you do the pageant. Why don’t you just quit?”

“I can’t. She’d never forgive me. Plus, there’s a huge prize if you win, and I could really use the money.”

Jonathan regarded her carefully as he chewed, his head cocked slightly to the side. “Hey, I don’t know anything about pageants or anything, so feel free to ignore me. But what would happen if you just, you know, competed like yourself? If you didn’t pretend to be someone else, or suck up to the judges, or use that horrible music? Could you just … act like you?”

Felicity shook her head. “That’s not really how it works. The pageant’s not about who you are, it’s about how well you can play the game. I just have to suck it up and deal. It’ll all be over in a week.”

“Well, you know better than I do. I just think—I mean, you’re an original person. You drive a bright green car with peace signs on it, and you make the most amazing art, and you don’t always do what people expect you to do. Otherwise you’d be at prom, not here. It’s just—” He shrugged. “I think you’d probably do really well either way.”

“Thanks,” Felicity said. Somehow, hearing him say that meant more to her than all the times her mom had told her that her routine looked perfect, all the times Brent had told her she was hot. An unexpected lump rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard. “Hey, don’t tell anyone what I said, okay? It’s better if people think I’m excited about competing.”

“What, you don’t want me to write a feature story for journalism about your secret pageant aversion?” Jonathan smiled and offered her the last waffle fry. “I can see the headline now: ‘Tiaras Hold No Sparkle For Beauty Pageant Hopeful.’ ”