Chapter 14 Reasons to Win
REASONS TO WIN
“I SERIOUSLY CAN’T BELIEVE you’re going to go to Los Angeles for college, Nikki!” Gigi Simons hissed, adding a third knot to the back of her bikini straps.
“Right? The farthest west I’ve ever been is Biloxi,” said Ava Stennert, leaning toward her mirror while she carefully applied a false
eyelash.
“Maybe you’ll meet a surfer,” Virginia Harmond said from my left as she rubbed tanning lotion onto her arm. Her eyes widened. “Or a movie star!”
I couldn’t keep the grin off my face as the other pageant girls expressed their awe and excitement in the green room while we were transitioning to the swimsuit portion of the Miss Outstanding Teen of Northwest Georgia competition.
It was senior year of high school, and I’d worked really hard to get into USC.
I’d spent all last summer working on my college essays and making sure my résumé looked perfect.
I always got As, but school didn’t come as easily for me as it had for Linney.
To get all those As, I’d had to put in hours and hours of studying, but it had paid off.
My GPA was the second highest in school, and all the scholarship money that I’d made from winning pageants was enough to cover my entire tuition, books, and on-campus boarding.
It always felt like so much of life came so much more easily to other people, but I’d worked really hard. I’d earned my place at USC. Usually excelling just felt like meeting expectations, but I was really proud of what I’d accomplished. USC felt like the first step toward the rest of my life.
The one thing that did come easily to me these days were these pageants.
It didn’t used to, but after six years of practice, it all came naturally to me now.
I held my arms perfectly without thinking about it.
I could answer questions about modern womanhood and my role models in my sleep.
The muscles around my mouth could hold a smile for a whole competition and then for the hour after of photo ops without starting to shake.
I did try to keep my dance routines fresh, so I was always nervous about how they’d go, but for the most part, I had pageants down to a science.
Ava and Virginia peppered me with more questions about college and California, and I couldn’t help basking in the glow of their attention. We were discussing how far away campus was from Hollywood when Mary Moore appeared at my side.
“I need to talk to you about something major,” she said.
The two other girls went quiet. Their eyes followed us as Mary Moore pulled me out of earshot. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Have you seen the new girl? Penelope?” Mary Moore said, bulldozing past my question.
This was what was major? Or was she just annoyed at all the attention I’d been getting back there?
I was tempted to roll my eyes, but held back.
Mary Moore was the best person to be friends with when you were in her good graces.
When her attention was on you, you felt like the luckiest person in the room.
But when she decided you weren’t, she’d just as easily leave you out in the cold.
Honestly, I was going to miss her when I went to college, but I was looking forward to not having to watch out for the land mines in every conversation, and I was currently trying to figure out what her angle was here before she got there
first.
“The girl from Tennessee?” I’d seen her practice her dance routine during rehearsals earlier this morning, and she was good. Like, really good. For the first time in a long time since I’d been on the pageant circuit, I wondered if she was better than me.
“I don’t know where she’s from.” Mary Moore waved away my question and dug around in her kit, searching for something. “She’s pretty.” She pulled out a roll of toupee tape and a pair of scissors. Her eyes met mine. “Are you worried?”
“No?” I hadn’t been until this moment.
“Good.” She snipped off a few inches of tape. “Because we both know that pretty isn’t the only thing that wins you pageants.”
I blinked, trying to figure out if I’d just been insulted. “Right…”
“Don’t worry. You still totally have this in the bag.” I hadn’t been worried at all. Not until she started talking. “Girls like us…” She paused and peeled off the backing on the tape before sticking it onto her sternum. “We do what we have to do.”
She flashed a smile at me and a wink as she smoothed the fabric of her swimsuit over the adhesive to make sure it didn’t risk flapping open and exposing her boobs.
Her outfit firmly in place, she turned away from me, and I watched her walk away, still trying to figure out if that entire conversation had been designed to simply take me down off my high horse after all those girls had been praising me, or if it was something more.
I watched Mary Moore beeline across the crowded room… straight to the girl from Tennessee. Penelope. With her long, swaying dark hair, mocha skin tone, and big green eyes, she was beyond stunning, even from afar.
Mary Moore chatted with her cheerfully, handed her a can of butt spray, and turned her butt toward Penelope, pulling the bikini to the side to expose one cheek, then the other.
It was an honor Mary Moore normally bestowed upon me.
We did each other’s butt sprays religiously—that stuff could sting if you got it in the wrong place…
I started to wonder if Mary Moore was trying to make me jealous—show me she’d make other friends in the pageant circuit once I’d flown out to the West Coast and left her behind.
When people try to make you jealous, Nikki-Belle, my mom always said, it’s because they’re jealous of you.
This time, I let myself roll my eyes as I returned to Ava and Gigi and Virginia, and shook off Mary Moore’s weird warning. She was right about one thing; I had this in the bag.
DURING THE SWIMSUIT COMPETITION, we all watched from backstage. We had to—you had to be ready for your cue. But it doubled as an excuse to ogle the competition… and potentially even psych them out.
When it was Penelope’s turn, I noticed something was…
off. She was struggling to walk normally.
She squirmed as if she wanted to wriggle out of her skin.
From the curtains along the edge of the stage, I watched as she brushed at her butt with one hand.
It seemed to give her a second or two of relief, but after a few moments, she started squirming again. Oh no.
I glanced over my shoulder to see if Mary Moore was also watching this disaster unfold. Of course, she was, but she turned her gaze to me and widened her eyes across the darkness.
The girls backstage with me began to snicker, now…
it was obvious what was happening. Penelope had gotten an itch.
Bad. It happened sometimes—a costume that just irritated the skin beyond tolerance, or a hairpin jabbed too sharply into the skull.
A tampon string that you were suddenly deathly worried might have somehow snuck out around the seam of your high-cut bikini bottoms. It could be maddening not to be able to fix it onstage.
Still, you pushed through. You had to. Anyone who’d done this for a while had the toughness to wait it out until they were out of view of the judges.
I’d seen a girl walk across the stage in two broken heels.
You figured it out, you held it together, and you kept a smile on your face the whole time.
But—to everyone’s shock—Penelope did not hold it together.
There was a collective backstage gasp as we all watched her, in real time, succumb to the urge.
Right there on the stage, with everyone watching, she literally scratched her ass.
The girls around me erupted into cackles—and I’m sorry to say, I joined them.
How could I not? It was shocking, borderline absurd.
I couldn’t look away, none of us could, even as Penelope’s cheeks turned a red so bright, you could see it from off stage. I felt absolutely horrible for her.
Because there was no way she’d come back from that.
And sure enough, I was right. Later that afternoon, I stood onstage between Virginia and Mary Moore as the winners of the competition were announced.
Penelope stood at the end of the row, her smile firmly back in its place as they called forward the runners-up.
But it was too little too late. Ava was named second runner-up, while Mary Moore was the first runner-up.
The beat before the winner was named, the same feeling I always got settled over me: not anticipation that I’d be named the winner, but anxiety that I hadn’t prepared well enough.
The worry that I might not place at all.
I had the brief and irrational thought that Penelope would somehow be crowned the winner despite her swimsuit debacle.
But then, the judges announced: “And the winner of the Miss Outstanding Teen of Northwest Georgia is… Nicole Bennet.”
It was relief—not triumph—that rushed through me as I took my bouquet and they placed the crown on my head.
BACKSTAGE, AS I ZIPPED up my garment bag, I glanced over at Mary Moore. A slight smile tugged up the corners of her lips. “Congratulations,” she said to me. “You totally deserved it.”
Again, another comment that could’ve been a compliment, or its opposite. You never could quite be sure.
“I saw you helping Penelope with her butt spray earlier,” I said, my voice flat and straightforward.
Mary Moore just shrugged. “She helped me with mine. I had to return the favor.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“Oh my goodness.” Her mouth curled down in mock concern. “Could I have grabbed the hairspray instead? Do you think it might have made her… itchy?”
To her credit, she didn’t break into cruel laughter—but I could see the way amusement sparkled in her eyes.
I sighed. “Mary Moore. Seriously?”
“What? Oh, come on, it’s not that deep. And I love you, babygirl. You know I have your back, just like you have mine.”
I stared at her, speechless. Would I have won without Mary Moore’s intervention? And what would it have cost me to come in second, anyway? I already had a spot at USC and all the academic scholarships I needed.
But all I could think about were her words: Just like you have mine.
Was that true—would I have been capable of doing something just as bad?
I wanted to believe I wouldn’t stoop that low.
I tried to ease the feeling of guilt by thinking about the fact that Penelope, as gorgeous and talented as she was, would be just fine in the end.
Mortified in that moment, sure, but ultimately, she’d go on to win plenty of these things.
I wasn’t surprised, either, when a couple years into USC, I came home for winter break and learned that Mary Moore and Penelope had become “the best of friends.” That was just how it was.
Winning by any means necessary certainly didn’t feel great. But it was still a hell of a lot better than losing.
And besides, I figured maybe Mary Moore was right. Maybe it just wasn’t that deep.
At least I had my crown.