Chapter Twenty-One. Melanie
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MELANIE
Four Days Before the Pageant
“Hey, Melanie, it’s so good to see you,” Kennedy Claire says, hugging my neck when I first walk into the Sherman Ranch Events Hall.
It’s a pretty building, vaulted ceilings with exposed wood beams, a massive stone fireplace, and a whole bank of floor-to-ceiling windows.
I’m sure once the development is done, the view will be gorgeous.
Right now, though, we’re looking out on a construction zone, the air filled with chitchat overlapping the background noise of beeps and men yelling and bulldozer blades scraping against stone.
I can’t imagine that Izzy Whitmore hasn’t crossed the mind of every single person in this room at least once.
I hug Kennedy Claire back, giggling nervously and telling her how pretty her decorations look.
The two of us don’t exactly run in the same circles, but in a town as small as Anhalt, you’re bound to bump into each other—at a Preston High football game, or at the Cedar Grove Café, or in the aisles of H-E-B.
The first time I ever ran into Kennedy Claire as an adult, it was at Meet the Teacher, when I was bringing Hannah up for kindergarten and she was doing the same with Sarah Lynn.
She gave me a hug then too, and chattered away about their summer trip to Disney World and her plans of joining the PTA, as if we’d been old friends in high school, as if she hadn’t made my life a living hell back then.
And what was I supposed to do, but chatter right back?
That’s how it is in small towns, I suppose. Water under the bridge, and all that.
Whenever I see her now, we’re friendly, waving down the bleachers at each other.
But I always get that momentary puke-in-the-back-of-my-throat feeling when I first lay eyes on her, the same feeling I get anytime I smell artificial watermelon, because the first time I ever got sick drunk was on a bottle of watermelon Boone’s Farm that Cat nicked from the Texaco when we were seventeen.
Kennedy Claire hands me a welcome bag and invites me to partake of the snacks table, an elaborate banquet of mini-quiches, pastries, fresh fruit, and a serve-yourself mimosa table.
“Hannah’s hair looks so pretty like that,” she says. “I didn’t realize it was so curly.”
Hannah spent the drive over here answering all my questions with grunts and one-word replies, still miffed about me opening her mail last night and confiscating those horrible diet pills.
As soon as we walked through the doors, she ditched me, in search of teenage company, like a heat-seeking missile.
“She looks different, that’s for sure,” I say.
Then Kennedy Claire is off, moving and grooving through the room, handing out her party bags and making connections.
I take a front-row seat by myself, the flimsy metal folding chair creaking beneath me, and I flip through the welcome folder, schedules, and recommended vendors.
The women beside me are laughing at something I’m not privy to.
They’re the type who live on Kennedy Claire’s side of town, who drive sleek white SUVs and fill their schedules with Pilates classes, manicures every two weeks and highlight retouches every six, and I know it’s absurd, but that old feeling that they are laughing about me creeps its way into my mind.
I scan through the prize list.
A fourteen-karat gold crown, custom boots, one year of unlimited spray tans, photo shoot stylings, high-end hair care products.
It all seems nice and fine. Until I see the last one: $3,000 in services from AURA, with their sleek logo stamped at the bottom, listed as the head sponsor of the pageant.
I look it up on my phone. AURA is an acronym for Aesthetic Unification & Rejuvenation Associates, a sly, clinical-sounding veil for what it really is: a boutique plastic surgery clinic.
I imagine Hannah lying back on the crackling paper cover of some quack doctor’s exam table. Him injecting her face with all sorts of foreign substances, and her smiling big and bright as he does it, thinking she’s about to leave that place somehow prettier than the good God already made her.
I look up to find her. The girls are all gathered by the display table, admiring the Lone Star Princess crown and flipping through albums of past contestants and winners.
Sarah Lynn is touching Hannah’s shoulder, leaning in to whisper something.
I know how mean girls can be, how they can be like sugar syrup to your face then call you vile things behind your back.
How they compliment your sweater while all the other girls snigger and you’re left wondering how, exactly, you ended up the butt of the joke.
Hannah looks down at her dress, like Sarah Lynn did in fact comment on it. I see two other girls slide eyes over to look at my daughter.
I feel the urge to spring to my feet and check up on Hannah, to claw at the girls picking at her. Someone like Kennedy Claire could. Cat would. But I don’t.