Red(59)
“If you hate it here so much, why don’t you just leave?” Felicity shouted, forgetting to keep her voice down. “Go to boarding school or something. Nobody’s forcing you to live here! Nobody wants you to live here!”
“You think my mom has the money to send me to boarding school? I have three little sisters, and my dad’s been unemployed for two years! If we could afford boarding school, trust me, I’d be out of here in a hot second. But at this point, the internship at the Tribune is my fastest ticket out of this hellhole. So if I have to take you down to get it, Felicity, I will take you down. You’re just another shallow redheaded clone, and there are plenty more to take your place when you fall.”
Felicity was afraid she would start clawing at Gabby’s eyes if she spent one more second with her in that oppressively stuffy closet. So she pushed her way out and stumbled down the hall to the stairs, gulping deep breaths of dust-free air. She dashed into the bathroom and was horrified by her red-faced, wild-eyed, sweaty reflection in the mirror. She looked like a hunted animal. No one should be allowed to debase her like this. She was finished being ordered around, being forced to scrabble and scrape and make a fool of herself. She was done lying to her loyal friends and hurting the people she loved. Enough was enough.
On Saturday, up on that stage, she would finally take back all the power Gabby had stolen from her. She wouldn’t wait until after the pageant to approach the mayor and tell him where Rouge-o-Rama was located. Instead of saying the words Gabby had scripted for her, she would march up to that microphone during the interview portion and expose the salon in front of the entire town. Gabby would be finished, and Scarletville would never know Felicity had been living a lie.
It was time for her sound check, but Felicity couldn’t let her mom see her like this. She splashed cold water on her face and patted herself dry with paper towels. After a whirlwind few minutes with powder, mascara, and lip gloss, she looked more like the pageant girl Ginger expected her to be. She heard her mom’s voice in her head: It’s the face you present to the world that matters, not how you feel inside.
She forced a smile and went down to the auditorium.
Lorelei was just finishing her sound check, belting out the final lines of a sappy power ballad Felicity didn’t recognize. Ginger hurried over and kissed Felicity’s damp cheek. “We’ll be ready for you in a minute,” she said, failing to notice that her daughter was on the verge of exploding into a million pieces.
While Felicity laced up her tap shoes, a sullen, pumpkin-haired boy checked the floor mikes, then plodded back up to the sound booth at a glacial pace. “Ready for your music?” he finally called.
There was nothing in the world that Felicity wanted to hear less than “Red Is the Color of My Heart,” but there was no getting around it. She took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
The cheesy trumpet riff began, and Felicity gritted her teeth to keep from screaming. If I hear this song one more time, I am going to lose it, she thought. She danced through the routine, trying to keep a smile on her face, but she could tell there was no life or joy in her performance. Although she executed the choreography perfectly, her mom’s face was lined with worry when the song ended. “Baby, you know you need to dance with much more energy than that,” she said.
Felicity nearly snapped at her mom just like she’d snapped at Gabby, but she caught herself in time and counted to five inside her head. When she felt calm enough to speak, she said, “I know, I’m just tired. I’ll do better at the dress rehearsal tomorrow.”
“We need to get the sound levels right today. If you’re tapping harder tomorrow, it’s going to sound all wrong. I need you to be consistent and dance this routine the same way every time, Felicity. Matty, cue up the music again, please.”
Felicity nearly burst into tears of frustration, but she struck her opening pose without complaint. She told herself that after her performance in forty-eight hours, she would never have to hear this song again. But Ella-Mae Finch’s saccharine voice frayed her nerves, and forty-eight hours seemed like eons.
As soon as she was finished and Ginger announced her approval, Felicity grabbed her bag and fled the auditorium in her tap shoes, her purple flats forgotten by the edge of the stage. Her feet echoed sharply as she ran down the corridor of City Hall, out the front door, and across the lawn to the parking lot. Slumped in the front seat of her car, Felicity tore through her bag until she found her iPod. When she jammed in her earbuds and pressed play on “Cookie-Cutter Girl,” the strength of the opening chords sent the memory of Ella-Mae’s voice running for cover. The music felt like aloe on a blistering sunburn, and the relief of it finally made Felicity’s tears spill over.
Despite her mom’s claims that everything she did was for Felicity’s own good, Ginger was no better than Gabby. She, too, had forced Felicity into a life of secrets and lies that Felicity hadn’t chosen for herself. Ginger had carefully molded her daughter to serve her endgame—to climb the social ladder and better the family. And now the only way out was through. Winning this horrendous pageant was Felicity’s only chance to turn her life around.
The worst part of it was that there was only one person who could actually relate to what she was experiencing. One more smart, ambitious girl who was trapped in a life she didn’t want and who was desperate for a way out. One more girl who had spent years keeping secrets to protect her family. One more girl who didn’t have the money to follow her dreams and would do whatever it took to get it, even if it meant tearing other innocent people down.