Red(60)
And that person was Gabby.
The song ended, and Felicity started it over a second time, then a third. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, soaking in the music, the one thing that made her feel like she wasn’t completely alone. And as she finally began to calm down, she realized she was idly moving her feet to the beat, tapping out her talent routine on the floor of the car. “Cookie-Cutter Girl” was faster than the Ella-Mae Finch song, but the rhythms of her feet fit surprisingly well with the Sharks in Heaven music.
Felicity’s eyes snapped open, and her tears stopped as abruptly as they had begun. She was out of the car in a flash. She started the song a fourth time, then tapped through her routine right there on the asphalt, ignoring the government employees who stopped to watch her on the way to their cars. The Sharks in Heaven song was a little shorter than “Red Is the Color of My Heart,” and the verses and choruses weren’t arranged in the same way. But she knew she could alter the choreography until it fit. She could make it work.
Standing in the City Hall parking lot, her face still streaked with tears and mascara, Felicity made a decision. She knew she couldn’t win this pageant and get her hands on the prize money unless she was proud of what she showed the judges. She was no cookie-cutter girl, easily manipulated and controlled. She remembered how Ivy had thrown her painful silver heels into her bag and announced that from now on, she was doing the pageant her way. If her friend could do it, so could she.
Ginger had managed to force her into this pageant. But now that Felicity was in, her performance would happen on her own terms. There would be no acting, no sucking up to the judges, no horrible music.
Just her.
16
THURSDAY, MAY 27–FRIDAY, MAY 28
That night, as soon as Felicity was sure her mom and brothers were asleep, she grabbed her iPod and her dance shoes, crept down to the basement, and went to work. Three hours and twenty-seven repetitions of “Cookie-Cutter Girl” later, she was exhausted and sweaty, but the routine felt pageant-ready. She tiptoed back up to her room, burned a CD of her new music, and labeled it red is the color of my heart so her subversion wouldn’t be discovered until it was too late.
It was three o’clock in the morning, but there was still work to do. Felicity dug Gabby’s interview answer out of her bag and started altering it to include information about where the mayor could locate Rouge-o-Rama and its proprietor. She pictured the stricken look on Gabby’s face when she realized she had finally lost, and it gave Felicity a perverse kind of pleasure. At long last, she’d be back in control of her own life.
Just after four o’clock, she fell asleep with the lights on and dreamed of competing wearing a pageant gown made of brown human hair.
When she arrived at school the next morning, clutching her triple mocha as if it were a life raft, Felicity found her locker wrapped in red paper, strung with balloons, and painted with the words good luck, felicity! There was a pile of gifts stacked on the floor: individual roses and carnations, an entire bouquet of pink lilies, two boxes of chocolates, and a stuffed penguin. It was disturbingly reminiscent of a makeshift shrine at the site of a fatal highway accident. Everyone who passed her locker wanted to hug or high-five her, and several people she barely knew asked to take pictures with her. Felicity was so tired that the whole experience seemed like a bizarre dream.
She was storing the offerings in her locker when Haylie dashed by on the way to her first class, an enormous stuffed tiger tucked under one arm and a rose behind her ear. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. “Isn’t today amazing?” she squealed.
“Amazing is a good word for it.” Felicity poked at the tiger, which was wearing a rhinestone-studded collar. “Where did all this stuff even come from?”
“Admirers,” Haylie said. “We have admirers, Felicity!”
Ivy joined them and snatched Felicity’s coffee, which was sitting untouched on the floor. She took several huge gulps, then announced, “Today is ridiculous.”
“That’s another good word for it.” Felicity pried the coffee cup from Ivy’s fingers. “C’mon, let go. I really need that today.”
A group of swim team guys passed by and let out a string of catcalls. “There’s our beauty queen!” they shouted. “Knock ’em dead, Locklear!”
“I’ll knock your face dead,” she called back. They hooted louder as they disappeared around the corner.
Haylie heaved an exasperated sigh. “Come on, Ivy, can’t you at least try to enjoy the attention?”
Ivy grimaced. “I’m going to physics. See you at lunch, if I even survive until then.”
The rest of the day was no different. The flock of identical giggling sophomores swarmed Felicity’s lunch table and assaulted her and her friends with questions about their dresses. Another crowd surrounded Madison and Lorelei on the other side of the cafeteria, and a third grouped around Jacob Sinclair next to the vending machine. When Felicity saw Jacob accept a wad of cash from a tall senior, she remembered what Jonathan had said about his pageant-gambling website. Her stomach twisted as she wondered how many of those people were betting on her.
By the time Felicity arrived at City Hall for the pageant dress rehearsal, it was a relief to be away from her adoring fans. She collapsed in an auditorium seat beside Ivy, who had scrawled please leave me alone across her white T-shirt with a marker. On the other side of her, Haylie snuggled the plush tiger in her lap and compared notes with Cassie about the gifts they’d gotten. Felicity closed her eyes and tried to snatch a few moments of much-needed rest.