Red (18 page)

Gabby’s face registered genuine surprise. “Who told you there was an experiment?”

“I heard you’ve been blowing off all your work in journalism to write up some secret case study for a stupid internship application. Can’t you see how messed up it is to destroy someone’s life for research? I’m a
person,
Gabby, and I never even did anything to you!”

“Keep your voice down,” Gabby hissed. “Do you want everyone to know we’re in here? And for your information, you are
not
the case study. You don’t know
anything
about what I’m doing.”

“You are such a liar. I bet you love playing these sadistic little mind games. I bet you enjoy every second of—”

“
I’m
the case study,” Gabby snapped. “Not you, you self-centered baby.”

Felicity stared at her. “How are
you
the case study? That doesn’t even make sense. I’m the one being tortured and blackmailed!”

“I don’t have to discuss this with you.” Gabby turned to grab the doorknob, but Felicity was faster and managed to block her way. She stared her enemy right in the eyes, and for the first time, she saw something other than sarcasm and contempt.

Gabby was uncertain. And Felicity suddenly understood something: Gabby needed her. For whatever reason, she needed her to say the words on this paper on Saturday. And that meant Felicity had more control than she’d thought.

“I won’t swap the questions unless you explain to me what you’re doing,” she said.

Gabby snorted, but Felicity could tell her bravado was faltering. “You’re totally bluffing. You’ll do whatever I want you to do, because you know I’ll expose you if you don’t.”

Felicity shook her head. “You don’t know me at all. You have no idea what I’ll do.”

They stared each other down for what felt like an eternity. It was so hot and musty in the closet that it was hard to breathe, and Felicity feared she might faint. But she stood her ground, the doorknob gripped tightly in her sweaty hand.

And finally, Gabby looked away first.

“I’m writing an exposé about Scarletville High for an internship at the
Chicago Tribune,
” she said quietly. “It’s supposed to showcase my investigative journalism skills. It’s about how people react when a brunette gets the kind of publicity and attention that’s usually reserved for popular redheads like you. All the stuff I’ve had you do made me visible in ways I could never have been on my own. And then I listened to the gossip, and I learned what people considered ‘acceptable’ for someone of my ‘status.’ ”

“What about this?” Felicity held up the interview question. “This isn’t making you visible. This has nothing to do with you. Now you’re just trying to humiliate me.”

“Why can’t you get it through your thick head that this isn’t about you? That has
everything
to do with me. It says I have a right to be given a
chance
in this ridiculous town. Someone needs to say it out loud, and nobody ever does. You know as well as I do that nobody in Scarletville gets treated with respect unless they have red hair. If you didn’t know that, you wouldn’t be so terrified of someone finding out what you really are.”

Felicity shoved the paper back at Gabby. “If you want someone to say this out loud, why don’t you say it yourself? Leave me out of your stupid crusade!”

“Nobody
cares
if I say it, Felicity! It’s always ‘Oh, look at the bitter brunette, she’s just pissed she’s not popular.’ People automatically listen to you. You can do whatever the hell you want, and there are never any consequences. God, you have
no idea
what it feels like to grow up in a place where nobody takes you seriously.”

“If you hate it here so much, why don’t you just leave?” Felicity shouted, forgetting to keep her voice down. “Go to boarding school or something. Nobody’s forcing you to live here! Nobody
wants
you to live here!”

“You think my mom has the money to send me to boarding school? I have three little sisters, and my dad’s been unemployed for two years! If we could afford boarding school, trust me, I’d be out of here in a hot second. But at this point, the internship at the
Tribune
is my fastest ticket out of this hellhole. So if I have to take you down to get it, Felicity, I will take you down. You’re just another shallow redheaded clone, and there are plenty more to take your place when you fall.”

Felicity was afraid she would start clawing at Gabby’s eyes if she spent one more second with her in that oppressively stuffy closet. So she pushed her way out and stumbled down the hall to the stairs, gulping deep breaths of dust-free air. She dashed into the bathroom and was horrified by her red-faced, wild-eyed, sweaty reflection in the mirror. She looked like a hunted animal. No one should be allowed to debase her like this. She was finished being ordered around, being forced to scrabble and scrape and make a fool of herself. She was done lying to her loyal friends and hurting the people she loved. Enough was enough.

On Saturday, up on that stage, she would finally take back all the power Gabby had stolen from her. She wouldn’t wait until after the pageant to approach the mayor and tell him where Rouge-o-Rama was located. Instead of saying the words Gabby had scripted for her, she would march up to that microphone during the interview portion and expose the salon in front of the entire town. Gabby would be finished, and Scarletville would never know Felicity had been living a lie.

It was time for her sound check, but Felicity couldn’t let her mom see her like this. She splashed cold water on her face and patted herself dry with paper towels. After a whirlwind few minutes with powder, mascara, and lip gloss, she looked more like the pageant girl Ginger expected her to be. She heard her mom’s voice in her head:
It’s the face you present to the world that matters, not how you feel inside
.

She forced a smile and went down to the auditorium.

Lorelei was just finishing her sound check, belting out the final lines of a sappy power ballad Felicity didn’t recognize. Ginger hurried over and kissed Felicity’s damp cheek. “We’ll be ready for you in a minute,” she said, failing to notice that her daughter was on the verge of exploding into a million pieces.

While Felicity laced up her tap shoes, a sullen, pumpkin-haired boy checked the floor mikes, then plodded back up to the sound booth at a glacial pace. “Ready for your music?” he finally called.

There was nothing in the world that Felicity wanted to hear less than “Red Is the Color of My Heart,” but there was no getting around it. She took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

The cheesy trumpet riff began, and Felicity gritted her teeth to keep from screaming.
If I hear this song one more time, I am going to lose it,
she thought. She danced through the routine, trying to keep a smile on her face, but she could tell there was no life or joy in her performance. Although she executed the choreography perfectly, her mom’s face was lined with worry when the song ended. “Baby, you know you need to dance with much more energy than that,” she said.

Felicity nearly snapped at her mom just like she’d snapped at Gabby, but she caught herself in time and counted to five inside her head. When she felt calm enough to speak, she said, “I know, I’m just tired. I’ll do better at the dress rehearsal tomorrow.”

“We need to get the sound levels right today. If you’re tapping harder tomorrow, it’s going to sound all wrong. I need you to be consistent and dance this routine the same way every time, Felicity. Matty, cue up the music again, please.”

Felicity nearly burst into tears of frustration, but she struck her opening pose without complaint. She told herself that after her performance in forty-eight hours, she would never have to hear this song again. But Ella-Mae Finch’s saccharine voice frayed her nerves, and forty-eight hours seemed like eons.

As soon as she was finished and Ginger announced her approval, Felicity grabbed her bag and fled the auditorium in her tap shoes, her purple flats forgotten by the edge of the stage. Her feet echoed sharply as she ran down the corridor of City Hall, out the front door, and across the lawn to the parking lot. Slumped in the front seat of her car, Felicity tore through her bag until she found her iPod. When she jammed in her earbuds and pressed play on “Cookie-Cutter Girl,” the strength of the opening chords sent the memory of Ella-Mae’s voice running for cover. The music felt like aloe on a blistering sunburn, and the relief of it finally made Felicity’s tears spill over.

Despite her mom’s claims that everything she did was for Felicity’s own good, Ginger was no better than Gabby. She, too, had forced Felicity into a life of secrets and lies that Felicity hadn’t chosen for herself. Ginger had carefully molded her daughter to serve her endgame—to climb the social ladder and better the family. And now the only way out was through. Winning this horrendous pageant was Felicity’s only chance to turn her life around.

The worst part of it was that there was only one person who could actually relate to what she was experiencing. One more smart, ambitious girl who was trapped in a life she didn’t want and who was desperate for a way out. One more girl who had spent years keeping secrets to protect her family. One more girl who didn’t have the money to follow her dreams and would do whatever it took to get it, even if it meant tearing other innocent people down.

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.

T
hat 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.

All too soon, her mom strode out onto the stage, dressed in a yellow sleeveless blouse and bright green capri pants that made her look like an ad for a lemon-lime sports drink. She beamed at the girls with a high-wattage smile that was almost painful to look at. “Good afternoon, ladies! I’m sure you’ve all had a very exciting day at school, and I hope you’ve been reveling in all the attention. You deserve to be treated like royalty, so enjoy every second of it! We’re going to run the pageant in real time today, which means you’ll do your full talent routines and all of your costume changes. The dressing room will be filled with pageant volunteers, so please take advantage of their help. And remember—heads high, shoulders back, tummies tucked, and
big, bright smiles
!”

Felicity cruised through her personal introduction, her swimsuit portion, her talent routine, and her mock interview question on autopilot. Before she knew it, her mom was giving them a final pep talk and releasing them for the night. Everyone headed for the door in twos and threes, bemoaning how they’d tripped on their trains, sung wrong notes, or looked like whales in their swimsuits. Their work for the day was done.

Felicity’s was just beginning.

She followed Haylie and Ivy down the hall, half listening to Haylie talk about her pre-pageant diet and meditation ritual, but when they reached the front door, she stopped short and pretended to rummage through her bag. “Crap,” she said. “I think I left my car keys in my mom’s office.”

“Want us to wait for you?” Ivy offered.

“No, it’s fine, just go.”

“Okay. I hope you find them.” Haylie hugged her tightly. “Oh my God, I can’t
wait
for tomorrow. I’m so,
so
glad we’re all doing this together.”

“Me too,” Felicity said before Ivy could cut in with a snarky remark.

“Think positive thoughts before you go to sleep, and don’t forget to eat breakfast!” Haylie called as she pushed the front door open.

Felicity went around to the side door of the auditorium, opened it a crack, and peeked inside. She couldn’t see her mom from this angle, but she could hear her having a wrap-up meeting with Brenda and Celeste, both of whom had been on the pageant committee for a decade. Felicity wondered whether she had time to slip into her mom’s office and swap the interview questions now, before the meeting ended. But that seemed too risky—she should probably hold off until her mom left to pick up the twins in a few minutes. She propped the door open a bit, sat down, and settled in to wait.

After fifteen minutes, the meeting still wasn’t over, and she heard her mom say, “Shoot, I’m going to be so late to pick up the boys. Let me call Felicity and ask her to go get them, and then we can talk about the florist.”

Felicity’s phone started vibrating in her bag, and she jerked back from the door in a panic. Thank God she’d remembered to turn off her ringer before rehearsal. She dashed up the hallway and around the corner and managed to catch the call on the last ring. “Hello?”

“Hi, baby. Where are you? Why are you out of breath?”

“I’m in the parking lot,” Felicity lied. “I’m not out of breath, I was just … laughing. What’s going on?”

“I have to be here later than I thought, so I need you to pick up the boys at day care, okay? If you could get them into their pjs, that’d be really helpful. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“Sure, okay,” Felicity said. “No problem.”

“You’re a lifesaver. See you later.”

Felicity hung up the phone, her head spinning. Waiting to swap the envelopes was no longer an option. It was now or never.

She jogged toward her mom’s office on the other side of the building. Nearly all the other offices she passed were dark and unoccupied—most of the staff left early on Fridays.
Please be unlocked, please be unlocked,
Felicity begged silently as her mom’s door came into view. Through the window of the office, she spotted the box of gold envelopes on the desk—she could easily make the exchange and be out in thirty seconds. After one final glance up and down the hall to make sure she was alone, she turned the doorknob.

It was locked.

She cursed under her breath. Maybe someone at the security desk could open the door for her. She was hesitant to involve another person in her criminal activities, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Every second she waited was one second closer to being caught.

When she reached the desk near the front door, Felicity saw that her favorite security guard was on duty, and her heart lifted. Arthur had always had a soft spot for her. Today he was napping in front of his bank of monitors, his long Santa Claus beard spread out on his chest, and he startled awake when Felicity touched his shoulder. “Felicity!” he boomed. “How you doing, honey? It’s so good to see you!”

“You too,” Felicity said. “Listen, could you do me a huge favor? I think I left my car keys in my mom’s office, and she’s in a meeting. Would you mind opening the door for me?”

“Anything for my girl.” Arthur hoisted himself out of his chair with a grunt and started down the hall at approximately the speed of a Galápagos land tortoise.

It took nearly five minutes to reach her mom’s office. Felicity plodded alongside her old friend, answering his questions about the pageant and trying not to betray her panic. Even when they reached her mom’s door, the ordeal was far from over—Arthur had a key ring the size of a grapefruit, and he had no idea which key was the right one. After sixteen tries, the lock finally clicked open, and Felicity nearly did a cartwheel.

“Thank you so much,” she said.

Arthur flipped on the office lights. “Now, let’s see what we can find.”

Felicity’s relief flickered out like a birthday candle in a strong wind. The gold envelopes on the desk beckoned to her. All she needed was ten seconds alone with them. But Arthur was feeling around on the tops of the filing cabinets and didn’t seem likely to leave. If she got him to turn his back, maybe she could make the swap with him in the room. Felicity gripped the replacement envelope in her bag, waiting for her moment of opportunity. “I was sitting over there by the window,” she said.

Arthur took the bait. As soon as he lumbered over to search the window ledge, Felicity lunged toward the box on the desk and whipped Gabby’s envelope out of her bag. For a moment, her brain couldn’t even process what she saw. One entire edge of the precious replacement envelope was covered with a gooey stain. With mounting panic, Felicity tore open the front pocket of her bag and saw that her strawberry kiwi lip gloss was missing its top. There was sparkly pink slime everywhere.

“Crap,”
she muttered, stuffing the envelope back into the bag.

“What’s the matter, honey?”

“My stupid lip gloss opened up all over my bag.” Felicity’s mind raced. Now she would need to start the computer, retype the fake interview question, find a new envelope, and make the switch before her mom finished her meeting. And that meant she needed to be alone
right now
.

While Arthur still had his back turned, Felicity closed her sticky fist around her car keys and slipped them behind a picture on her mom’s desk. “Oh, here they are,” she exclaimed, forcing a laugh. “God, I’m always leaving these everywhere. I need to put a tracking device on them or something.”

“Keys are so mischievous, aren’t they? Sneaky little buggers.” Arthur trudged toward the door. “Ready to go?”

“Sure. After you.” On her way out, Felicity pushed the button on the doorknob that kept the lock from engaging, then pulled the door shut behind her. “You’re my knight in shining armor, Arthur,” she said. “Thanks so much for the help.”

“It was my pleasure. You show them who’s boss tomorrow, okay?” The old security guard patted her cheek and gave her a paternal smile before plodding back toward his post.

As soon as he turned the corner, Felicity slipped back into the office, closed the door, and turned on her mom’s prehistoric computer. While it booted up, she flipped through the box of gold envelopes until she found number four. If she was going to do this convincingly, she had to know how the original question was formatted.
This is it,
she thought.
This is the moment I become a criminal
. She took a deep breath and ripped the envelope open.

Inside was a sheet of white paper with her question typed in the center: “What food do you think you are most like, and why?”

Seriously? This
was supposed to be her all-important interview question, worth thirty percent of her score? She wondered if the other competitors spent time making lists of foods, animals, and colors they resembled, just in case. What answer could she possibly have given?

“I’m like a bag of barbecue potato chips—mild on the surface, but hotter and spicier the deeper down you get.”

“I’m like a coconut—hard to crack, but rewarding if you make the effort.”

“I’m like a cherry—red, sweet, and hard-hearted.”

The computer finally whirred to life. Felicity opened a word-processing program and gingerly extracted her gloss-smeared replacement question from its envelope: “Scarletville was founded as a sanctuary for redheads. How do you think having non-redheads living in our town enriches or detracts from our community?” It was infinitely better than the other question, and for a moment, she was actually grateful to Gabby. She retyped the question and hit print, then nearly jumped through the ceiling when the printer started making horrible grinding noises.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she begged in a whisper, stroking the machine as if it were a cat. “It’s just two lines. You can do it.”

As soon as the paper dropped into the tray, Felicity heard an even more horrifying sound—her mother’s laughter in the hall. And then a key clicked in the lock.

There was nowhere to run.

In a desperate attempt to save herself, Felicity scooped up the papers and torn envelopes, hit the computer’s power button, and dove under the desk. There was no time to grab the new question from the printer. Her heart began performing an Irish step dance, and she curled into a tight ball as the lights flipped on.