THE FAIRGROUNDS FLASH neon. The Ferris wheel’s studded with a thousand bulbs. The Thunderbolt cranks techno as the cars slam forward and back. Shrieking and laughter are everywhere. The air’s thick with the smells of hot grease, fried dough, cotton candy, and manure.
I wish this was any other summer. I’d be waiting in line at the Zipper, eating a corn dog and checking out the guys from Bucksport and Ellsworth while Mags tells me to put my eyes back in my head. Any other year, my biggest worry would be where the party’s at tonight and how much beer they’ll have.
This year, I’m standing backstage at the pavilion with fourteen other girls in gowns and heels, everybody whispering and giggling half-hysterically and checking their makeup in compact mirrors. I’m holding Nell’s forearm with both hands, too freaked to even talk about how freaked I am.
She smiles. It’s weird to see flashes of our Nell through that sophisticated stranger’s face. “Don’t look so worried,” she whispers. “We’ll be okay. We’ve been practicing our butts off, right?”
Everybody stared at her when we got here, and the stares had nothing in common with how they’d looked at me in my ball cap and raccoon eyes on Wednesday. Maybe Nell Michaud the special ed kid isn’t so funny anymore. Maybe she stands a chance in this. Her style is totally different from everyone else’s; most girls wear pastels and the shellacked updos they specialize in at Great Lengths. It was pretty sweet to see Bella, all decked out in a glittery peach dress slit halfway up her butt crack, gape for a good ten seconds before she remembered to pick her jaw up off the floor.
Mrs. Hartwell comes in and holds up her hands for quiet. “Showtime, girls. Best of luck to you all. Remember, the judges are watching for smiles and energy, so let’s keep it up, up, up. Head over to your wings. I’ll be rooting for you.” She gives us a big thumbs-up and takes her place at the edge of the curtain.
Nell has to pry her arm out of my grip, giving a little wave as she leaves me for stage left.
You can hear them out there, a crowd of a couple hundred people all shifting and talking and eating fair food at once, sounding like one giant monster with its tentacles coiled through the grandstand, waiting for its annual Bay Festival sacrifice of girl meat. I try to remember that Mom and Mags are out there, and lots of people from school, too, like Kat. And maybe Jesse. Maybe Shea.
Mrs. Hartwell hauls on the pulley, and the curtain opens with a clatter. My eyes fill with spotlight. My breath is gone, my brain wiped of anything but light.
Dance music blasts from the sound system. The first girl in our line walks out onto the stage, smiling and doing exactly what we rehearsed. The crowd cheers. One by one, the girls climb the risers to hit their mark. I’m next, but I can’t move. The girl behind me shoves my shoulder. Please God, get me to the fifth riser.
I don’t know what pulls me up there, but then next thing I know, I’m in my place. I didn’t freeze, I didn’t fall. My first real thought is Nell, but she’s exactly where she should be, smiling straight into those lights, all charcoal hair and white organza and red, red lips. I straighten my back, angling myself out like I’m supposed to, and force my head up. It’s dusk now, and the bulbs studding the grandstand turn everything into glare and shadow. You can’t see any faces in the crowd.
“Welcome to the forty-third annual Bay Festival Queen Coronation,” says the emcee into his mic. Applause. “Our judges this evening are Alden Mercer of Mercer’s Appliance and Repair, Cathy Browning of Riverview Realty . . .”
We sit with our legs crossed as the intros finish and the Q-and-A segment begins. The judges work from the bottom riser on the opposite side to the top riser on ours, so I get to sit and watch most of the other girls go first. The cold sweats have dried, but now my stomach is nauseous and tight. Nobody’s ever gotten a crown after barfing on their shoes in front of most of Hancock County, I don’t think.
The questions are kind of dumb—“What makes you blush?”; “What do you think is the most interesting facet of your personality?”—but Bella gets nailed with, “What advice would you give the next generation of girls on navigating high school?” She hesitates for a second, then delivers this incredible load of crap about high school being a “stepping-stone to the rest of your life” and how important it is to balance academics with extracurriculars. This from the captain of the basketball team who bullies most freshmen into quitting within the first two weeks.
When it’s Nell’s turn, I squeeze the edge of the riser until I realize that Libby’s probably doing the exact same thing in the stands right now, and force myself to sit back and take a breath. Nell’s standing at center stage now. The judge asks, “If you could change one of your physical characteristics, which would it be?”
She takes maybe two seconds before answering. “I wouldn’t change anything. I think what some people call flaws are what make us special, and beautiful. The trick is to learn how to bring those features out, not try to cover them up.”
The applause is big. Really big. The judges thank her and off she goes.
The girls standing between me and my moment in the spotlight are disappearing fast, and none of them get applause like Nell did. I watch them dwindle down to three, then one, then none.
By the time I’m crossing the stage, filling my lungs is like blowing into a couple sandwich bags with holes poked through them. I stop where I’m supposed to, keeping my gaze on the mic as I stand there, pinned by hundreds of eyes.
“Darcy Prentiss, age seventeen, from Sasanoa,” the emcee says. People clap just like they have for everybody else.
In the silence that follows, I wait for Shea to yell something nasty from wherever he is. Nobody speaks. There’s a rustling of papers as the judges, who sit at a long table hung with bunting, shuffle their sheets of questions.
A paunchy old guy dressed in a light-colored suit and a loud tie clears his throat and says into his mic, “Miss Prentiss, in your opinion, what are the benefits of growing up in a small community?”
My silence is total. I may as well have never spoken before in my life, and never will. Time grinds down like a bare knee over gravel, and every twitch and tic of the judges’ faces are magnified times ten as I try to produce a single half-bright thought.
“I don’t really like living in a small town.” Somebody’s finally talking. I guess it’s me. “Maybe when I’m old I’ll look back and think it was great, but right now, I guess I’d like to know what it’s like to go to school with different kinds of kids. People who do and say and wear different things. And I’d like to know what it’s like not to have everybody know everybody else’s business all the time.” I’m rolling now; there’s no stopping this, for better or worse. “We’re lucky not to have to worry about being shot in the street and stuff like that, though. And it’s nice to be able to walk from school to the Quick Stop for lunch.”
I run out of positives and stand there, sweat popping out all over me, my legs trembling down into my sandals. For the first time, you can hear the fair sounds again, screams from the rides and crazy music.
One of the judges stops gaping long enough to thank me, and I go back to my riser.
The rest of the girls and I who didn’t make it to the next round are flagged down and ushered out the stage door during a ten-minute intermission by Mrs. Hartwell, who’s still smiling and telling every disappointed, crying girl what a good job she did, how nicely she held herself out there. “Darcy,” she says. She takes in my big relieved grin and laughs, shaking her head. “You were truthful. I’ll give you that.”
I feel awesome, all light and bouncy. I could eat about fifty corn dogs, wash them down with two gallons of Moxie, and ride the Zipper until they shut off the midway lights. I’m off that godforsaken stage, and Nell was chosen for the next round.
Bella and Alexis made it, too, and along with a couple other girls, but I’m not worried. Nobody can beat Nell tonight. There’s something special about her in that lily-white dress, something glam and so-not-Sasanoa. She’s taking that crown home and we’re going to nail it to the roof to show who’s got class.
Some of the girls leave right away, which, judging by Mrs. Hartwell’s expression, is a sore-loser thing to do, but the rest of us go stand by the fence along the grandstand to watch. I can’t see Mom or Mags, but they’re probably up toward the top of the bleachers so Libby can take pictures.
When the lights come back up, Nell and the four other girls who are left sit in a row on the bottom riser closest to the judges. Somebody’s brought out a fancy throne with red velvet cushions, which is where is the Queen sits for photo ops.
The judges start calling them up for questions one by one like before, but these questions are hard: How does social media affect young women’s body images? How can schools encourage girls to foster a lifelong interest in science and math?
When Nell’s standing back in the spotlight, they ask her, “Who is your role model, and why?”
She wasn’t ready for it. Neither was I. I have no idea what she’s going to say. After what feels like a long, long time: “Rita Hayworth.” She pauses, leans down to the mic. “She’s an actress. From the forties.”
One of the judges leans forward. “And why?”
Nell thinks. “Because she always knew what to do with her hair.” She shows us exactly what she means, doing the head toss we saw Rita Hayworth do in Gilda at the drive-in this June. The crowd erupts, hooting and whistling so loud that the judges have to wait a couple minutes so their “thank you” can be heard. I laugh my butt off. So maybe she didn’t sound brainy like Alexis or Bella. She still brought the house down.
When the Q and A is finally done, the emcee tells us that the judges will now confer, and starts thanking all the sponsors. I shift from foot to foot and finally kick my sandals off, squeezing my hands together as I wait.
It takes nearly twenty minutes, but eventually the results are taken over to the emcee. “Without further ado, the title of Miss Congeniality goes to”—big pause—“Eleanor Michaud!”
I scream. Nell screams. The dance music cranks up, and she runs out to the meet one of the judges, the old guy in the suit, who gives her a bouquet of white, pink, and yellow roses. He slides a satin sash trimmed with glitter over her head that says Miss Congeniality on it, and awkwardly sets a little tiara on her head, so as not to mess up her hair. So she didn’t win Queen—it’s a bummer, but she’s still shining up there.
Cameras are flashing everywhere. Nell’s crying. Behind my hands, two tears roll down my cheeks before I can wipe them away.
When the applause dies down, Nell’s sent to stand beside the throne while second runner-up is announced. Alexis. I’ll give her credit for looking honestly shocked as she rushes out to get her sash and tiara.
Drumroll time. If it’s Bella, I’ll eat my pantyhose.
“And this year’s Bay Festival Queen is . . . Rachel Pelletier!”
It’s the tall, gorgeous blonde who answered the science and math question; I think maybe she goes to Bucksport. Everybody’s on their feet as Mrs. Hartwell comes out with the rest of the judges, bringing the crown and a huge bouquet of roses and a little velvet cape they drape over Rachel’s shoulders as she takes her seat on the throne.
I work my way back over to the stage, waiting for Nell to come out as people leave the pavilion for the next event on the festival schedule, probably the country music band lined up for nine o’clock. Bella comes out first, looking like she swallowed a quart of vinegar. Her buttoned-down mom’s waiting for her, and Bella blows right by her, the two of them sniping at each other all the way—“I told you not to wear that dress, it was totally inappropriate for a pageant like this,”; “God, Mother, enough!” Fun times in the Peront house tonight. Then again, it’s probably never real fun.
As I wait, I keep an eye out for Shea, but I don’t see him. He probably never even set foot in the pavilion tonight. He didn’t have to. He knew I’d do the work for him, worrying that he might show, wondering what he might do. I guess nobody can psych you out better than yourself. “Darce!” I look up to see Mags raise a hand in the crowd. Feels like I haven’t seen her in about a year.
They’re still taking pictures onstage. Nell’s crying as she smiles, hugging her roses. I really don’t think she could’ve been happier if she’d taken Queen.
My gaze moves across the dirt track, back over the crowd, maybe hoping for Jesse, I don’t know. Instead, she snags my attention, over by the grandstand post.
I watch her standing there, wearing a moss-green North Face T-shirt, cargo shorts, and Birkenstocks. Elise Grindle.
She’s smiling and talking to the guy she’s with, the guy who no doubt fed her some line about turning out to support Nell tonight. How Nell was always one of the special ones. I almost don’t recognize him in his street clothes: a sport shirt, jeans, boat shoes. He holds the leash of a yellow Lab that’s sitting with her tongue hanging out, food watching.
They step away from the grandstand, Elise slipping her hand into his back pocket. I stare at his back as they join the leaving crowd, moving so easily. They have a dog. Might as well be a kid. Another building block of a phony life.
I step out into the midway, barefoot, arms hanging at my sides, making people stream around me. He sat right there with his eyes all over Nell tonight, cool as could be. Now he’s going back with Elise to their apartment on Irish Lane, where he’ll keep playing house with her, and it makes me feel so damned ugly I could cry. Because it’s not over. It never was. And some part of me always knew it.