Chapter 2
TWO
Aubergine—yes, like the purplish eggplant color—in Virginia just happens to be the capital of the oldest beauty pageant in U.S. history.
We’re nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, named for a compound that conifers release, scattering blue light across the hazy ridges.
Because we’re at the tip-top of Virginia, only a four-hour train ride from Manhattan, we’ve got the reputation of having more…
we’ll call it je ne sais quoi than other run-of-the-mill small towns.
Still, we offer the delightful oddities expected of a Southern hamlet of fewer than three thousand residents, and whose economy thrives off of women in flouncy dresses.
If you take a stroll past the red-brick buildings on Main Street, you’ll not only find Morning Brew, a coffee shop that sells lattes and potions to help contestants win, but also Fixin’ To, a mechanic shop that features a sewing machine and doubles as a quickie alterations depot for all emergency pageant wardrobe needs.
The Rose Palace Pageant pulls from residents of the Eastern Seaboard and acts as a stepping stone for Miss Universe, Miss America, and Miss Whatever the Hell Else Is Out There. Plus, as I soon discovered, our town’s show offers one of the biggest cash prizes in the pageant world.
I know the one-hundred-year-old history well because, regardless of how you personally feel about the pageant, if you live in Aubergine, the show is in your blood.
You’re either related to a former contestant, you’ve been a former contestant, or a former contestant has bullied you.
My great-grandmother—a woman I’ve never met—won the damn thing in 1928.
All that to say that for one week a year, our town exists for the sole purpose of showcasing sparkling tiaras and choreographed dances and women strutting around in high heels.
The rest of the year, it eagerly awaits for that week to arrive again.
What the annual beauty pageant worshippers don’t realize when they flock to Aubergine on their pilgrimage is that we also know all the pageant secrets—or we make guesses and spread rumors, which is about the same thing.
Even though Momma kept me out of that scene, as a child I heard stories of the missing winner, Miss 2001.
The fact of her disappearance has become local lore, whispered about every year though no one has any new information.
The first time Momma took me to the pageant was the very same year, and it didn’t go well.
I was four years old and running around in the dressing room when I accidentally knocked into a contestant who was in the middle of putting on her makeup.
That lady toppled, creating a domino of half-dressed contestants who eventually got to their feet with smeared lipstick, boobs spilling out of duct tape push-up bras, and a murderous look in their sparkling eyes.
Suffice to say, we didn’t go backstage after that, but each year I did get roped into folding pageant programs or organizing contestant applications for Aunt DeeDee—and of course, I attended each grand finale.
I still remembered my favorite talent: Miss 2007 kickboxing a man in a padded uniform.
That memory alone made me think that perhaps I could win—or at least place.
After I told Bella and the other seven horses in my care good night, I drove my beat-up ’99 Honda hatchback to the two-story, four-bay-window house on the edge of town, the place where I’d grown up with two of the best women in the world: Momma and Aunt DeeDee.
Both never married, both part of every good memory I had.
Not that Aunt DeeDee lived with us—she had her own little loft above the shops on Main Street so she could entertain when she felt the urge—but while I was growing up, she was there every afternoon with a plate of snickerdoodles.
Even after I was old enough to be on my own until Momma finished her shift at the hospital, she would stop by to drop off a pie, to tend to her corner of the garden, to give me advice about the goings-on at Aubergine High.
Still, Aunt DeeDee, for all her home cooking and good intentions, wasn’t Momma.
As I pulled into the driveway, the sun was setting behind the mountains, the orange-pink light casting a serene hue on the robin’s-egg blue of the hand-split weatherboard.
At first glance, you wouldn’t notice the treehouse Momma had built me or the nails where we hung multicolored Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving.
You might also miss the rotted boards at the base of the house, the clogged gutters, and the dangerously outdated electrical wiring that could set the house aflame at any moment.
A couple of years ago, Momma and I had walked the property and made a list of all the things we’d fix on this hundred-year-old house as soon as I finished school and started my own practice.
Then she got sick, and any dreams of repairs or money—or a real life—vanished.
Our last happy memory is from the day before she died, when she’d had a few conscious hours and asked me to open the curtains in her room so she could count the bluebirds and warblers at the feeder I’d made in sixth grade.
Her cheeks, long pale, had pinkened as the two of us communed with nature one last time, and I’d understood why I loved the outdoors and animals.
It was because of Momma, because she’d encouraged me to observe and explore, to take a chance and have an adventure.
I blinked back tears and peered into my rearview mirror to see Aunt DeeDee emerging from her Cadillac.
My first instinct, I’m ashamed to say, was to crouch low in my seat to hide from her.
Aunt DeeDee can be… a lot, and I didn’t feel like talking about the one thing I knew she’d want to address: me competing in the pageant.
Before I could duck, she knocked on my driver’s side window with her elbow.
Unlike Momma, who mostly dressed in scrubs or comfy jeans, Aunt DeeDee always dressed to kill. Tonight she wore a tailored lavender dress suit with matching pumps, and in her hands was a casserole dish.
“Hey, Aunt DeeDee.” I crawled out of the front seat and, like a good niece, took the oven mitts and hot dish from her. She slid them off, and I could see that she’d painted her long nails fuchsia and added tiny diamonds to her pointers.
“Hello, doll,” she said, planting a quick kiss on my cheek and speaking in that half-pitying, half-concerned tone she used. I loved her for it, and it drove me crazy. “How you doing?”
I shrugged, avoiding the question and hoping she wouldn’t comment on my muddy jeans or the pieces of hay inevitably caught in my hair.
“It’s a chicken and rice casserole,” Aunt DeeDee said, patting me on the shoulder. “I know you might be counting calories with the pageant coming up, so I brought margarine instead of butter for the rolls and I used skinless chicken breasts.”
We both knew that I’d never counted a calorie a day in my life, but sure. Maybe it was her assumption that I would compete or maybe it was a twinge of rebellion that I’d never acted on, but I felt my back stiffen, pulling me to my full five-foot-seven height.
“I need to talk to you about something, Aunt DeeDee,” I said, as I watched her find her key to the front door.
“Yes, darling. What is it?”
“I know you mean well, and I’m sure Momma wasn’t thinking straight, but I just… I can’t believe the two of you would come up with a plan to…” My cheeks grew hot and I took a breath, trying to steady myself. “It’s just… I can’t believe that y’all would sign me up for the pageant without telling me.”
“Now, Dakota. It’s not that—”
“No, it’s too late.” I cut her off as I walked through the front door and living room before setting the casserole on the kitchen counter.
“The pageant starts in two days, and even if I wanted to compete, I’m not any kind of show-ready.
I haven’t had a haircut in a year, and there’s literally dirt under my fingernails.
Besides, that is not my crowd, and I don’t have time to learn how to charm and flatter my way into the top tier of superficial contestants.
Y’all waited too late to tell me, so that’s that. ”
“Excuse me, princess.” Aunt DeeDee followed me inside, putting a hand on her hip. “But you need to stop acting like you’re too good for this pageant right this minute.”
I hadn’t heard that tone since I was sixteen and tried to convince her to sign off on me skipping school to drive out to the rodeo by myself for the day.
“You know that you and I don’t have any other chance of making the kind of money that this pageant throws at the winners each year,” Aunt DeeDee continued.
She was right. Working twenty hours a week for $12.
50 an hour as a stable hand wasn’t cutting it.
“If I could steal it for you, I would, but I’ve never been great at thieving, so that option’s out unless you have some breaking and entering skills I don’t know about. ”
I wasn’t amused.
Aunt DeeDee gave me a long look as if to say she was disappointed in me.
“You used to be up for any adventure, ready to conquer any fear.” She sounded like Lacy as she put her hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes, searching for my can-do spirit.
She’d have to search long and hard. We both knew that when I’d failed at the most important task of my life, it had knocked the wind out of me.
I hadn’t quite gotten my breath back since then.