Page 34 of Even If the Sky is Falling
Jones cleared her throat and looked away. Dianna was surprised by her continued silence. She had usually emptied her clip by now. Dianna sat on the floor beside her skirt and continued to dab. The skirt was stiff but it didn’t look stained from what she could tell in the shoddy lighting. It was one of the few things she had left of her grandmother, but she was trying not to get emotional about it now. Jones would surely use any weakness she learned about her in here for future commentary.
Jones sat down across from her, leaning her back against the shelving. “How long do you think we’ll be in here?”
“I have no idea,” Dianna answered. “How early do you think they send out the warning before the meteor actually hits something?”
Jones leaned her head back and knocked it repeatedly against a shelf, like she could wake herself up from this nightmare. “This is so stupid. We’re just supposed to wait here with no cell service for God knows how long?”
“Looks like it.” Dianna shrugged.
“Why are you so chill?” Jones asked, suspicion settling into her glance.
“Because freaking out isn’t exactly helpful. I could panic, but it wouldn’t open that door and it wouldn’t save me if that meteor is headed in our direction. Might as well sit quietly with my existential crisis.”
“Hmm,” Jones muttered.
Dianna sighed, deep from her stomach. “Okay, let’s hear it. What are you thinking?” Usually, Jones made her every thought vocal. Never in her life did Dianna think she would be urging Jones to speak her mind. But these were strange circumstances, and Jones was acting even stranger.
“I just figured pageant girls were all about the drama.”
“Did you get all of your pageant knowledge fromMiss Congenialityor something? I already told you, pageantry is more than just smiling and waving and learning how to walk gracefully in heels. Some of the most powerful women in the world were in the pageant circuit. And we always did a ton of community service.”
“Are you trying to sell me a product or something?” Jones asked. But instead of her usual smirk of disdain, laughter was laced through her smile. “You sound like an infomercial forToddlers and Tiaras: All Grown Up. I’m sorry, but don’t you ever get sick of...performing.”
“Well, it gets really old when everyone just assumes you don’t care about anything but makeup and Kate Spade purses.”
Jones worked her lip between her teeth, because shedidthink Dianna only cared about makeup and handbags, though she had no idea who or what a Kate Spade was.
“So whatdothey teach you in pageants? Because it looks like a lot of dressing up in pretty gowns and sound-biting world peace.” She stayed silent before continuing. “And no, none of my pageant knowledge comes fromMiss Congeniality. It comes fromDrop Dead Gorgeous.”
Dianna couldn’t help it. A laugh spilled from her mouth and bubbled into her lap. “Oh, my goodness, that just about explains it, doesn’t it? Sorry to disappoint, but I was never in a single pageant where girls died in asinine ways and not once did a float explode.”
She couldn’t hold in her giggling as her body rumbled with it. No wonder Jones judged her so much. That’s what happened when satirical films took on the one hobby taken the least seriously. Her laugh got stuck in her throat, however, when Jones reached over with her foot and tapped the inside of her calf with it. Even through Jones’s boots, it set Dianna’s entire body on fire. She swallowed until her laugh settled back down into her stomach.
“What do they teach you?” Jones repeated. She was no longer tapping Dianna with her foot, but had settled her toe in the concave arc of Dianna’s ankle.
“Um,” Dianna started, trying to clear her head. She pulled her legs toward her and crossed them. She couldn’t trust her body, it was acting way out of whack. “Well, they stress philanthropy and scholarship. That’s why I started doing them, actually. To earn scholarship money for college.”
“You needed scholarship money for college?” Jones asked in a tone of disbelief.
Dianna rolled her eyes. “Yes, Jones. Not everyone at this school was born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”
“I guess I just figured,” Jones said, but she shrugged instead of finishing her sentence.
“I know what you figured. Here comes Dianna Ellis, rich beauty queen with a stick up her ass. Trust me, you’re not the first person to make assumptions about me that are totally wrong. I had to get scholarships for college and law school. What my grandma left me definitely couldn’t send me to a place like this.”
If Jones could sink into the floor she would. She had called Dianna every stuck-up name in the book, and had thought of several more that weren’t appropriate in mixed company lest she give their white classmates reason to believe they could repeat them, but she hadn’t for a second thought that Dianna did pageants for money and not because she wanted some validation that she was beautiful. Jones’s mother had always said that making assumptions turned you into an ass, and here she was, proving her mother right.
“Well, since you are a smarty-pants, what do you know about this thing?” Jones pointed to the roof as a metaphorical stand-in for the meteor falling from the sky.
“Not much,” Dianna said, shifting on her butt. She hated sitting on floors. They always put too much pressure on her lower back. A few downward dogs would probably help, but she was too self-conscious to splay herself out in front of Jones. “All I know is that we have to stay in here until they tell us we can leave.Ifthey tell us we can leave. If it doesn’t flatten us.”
“Oh, it’s definitely going to flatten us,” Jones said.
“You think so?”
“I’m not exactly a religious zealot, but if I were a god, I would definitely take out the worst place on Earth, which, surprise, we are currently in. This law school is chaotic evil.”
“Well, that’s positive,” Dianna laughed. She ignored the nagging in her head that these really might be her last moments. She had never thought much about death. She was surprised she had survived her grandmother’s passing and felt like she counted down the minutes until she saw her again in some promised afterlife. She never expected it would come so soon. No matter where the meteor hit, it was bound to kill them all one way or another. She found it shockingly easy to find peace with that. It wasn’t useful to stress about things beyond her control. Her therapy and Zoloft must be working, maybe a bit too well.
