Page 23 of The Accidental Beauty Queen
Miss Arkansas nods. “You and I filled them out together, Ginny. Surely you remember.”
My face goes hot, and I fear my sash might spontaneously burst into flames, exposing me as the liar that I am. “Ohthatquestionnaire. Of course! What a nightmare.”
Great. Ginny didn’t say a word about a questionnaire. But if it’s titled “All About Me,” I’ve got to be familiar with whatever answers she provided. Ginny’s my twin. I know everything about her.
Still, a heads-up would have been nice.
“Attention, ladies.” A woman with an enormous, dazzling tiara balanced on her waves of chestnut hair extensions claps her hands, and we all swivel our heads in her direction. The words on her sash are spelled out in red, white, and blue rhinestones, and they read,Miss American Treasure 2013. “My name is Jordan Collins, and I’m the title holder assigned to your group.”
She’s a dead ringer for Beyoncé. There’s a smattering of applause from the half dozen of us assembled, and every eye is glued to her glittering crown.
Even mine.
It’s exactly like the one in the photograph of my mother on Ginny’s nightstand. My eyes go a little misty, which I blame on sleep deprivation. I can’t possibly be getting emotional over a beauty pageant.
Somewhere in the back of mind, I hear Ginny’s voice.It’s not a beauty pageant. It’s a scholarship competition.
“Your personal interviews will begin in one minute. I’ll open the door, and you’re to enter the ballroom as instructed yesterday at the pageant orientation luncheon. Any questions?”
Indeed, I have a million questions.
Mainly, what the hell am I doing here?
“Good luck, y’all. I’m sure you’re both going to do great.” Miss Arkansas squeezes my hand, along with Miss Nevada’s, and then dashes back to her own group, which is lined up directly behind ours.
“Thanks,” I say.
Why is my heart beating so hard? This pageant isn’t important to me at all. I’m just a placeholder until Ginny gets better.
“Here we go,” Lisa whispers behind me when Beyoncé opens the door to the ballroom.
I can barely breathe. I think I might be hyperventilating as we walk single file inside the ballroom. Thankfully, I’m the third in line, which gives me the opportunity to watch how the girls in front of me peel off and go stand in front of the first two judges’ tables.
It feels like I’m moving in slow motion, probably because I can barely take a step in my beauty queen shoes. I’m a newborn giraffe in a room full of gazelles.
The judge at the third table is clearly a former pageant queen, so pretty she barely looks real. She meets my gaze but doesn’t crack a smile as I come to a stop directly in front of her. My stomach plummets, and I just know she’s going to pull out a hand mirror and ask me to wax poetic about the girl I see in its reflection as soon as I take a seat.
“Time,” Beyoncé says, and maybe it’s just my imagination but she actually sounds a lot like the real Beyoncé.
Focus.
I perch on the edge of my chair, knowing without a doubt that if I sit back all the way I’ll never be able to haul myself into a standing position in these shoes again.
“Howdy, I’m Miss Texas.” Again with the howdy. Who. Am. I?
Even my voice sounds different—too loud, too animated. But the judge seems to like it, if her sudden smile is any indication.
“Good evening,” she says. “Why don’t you start by telling me how you got involved in pageantry?”
“Oh.” I sit up a little straighter.I know this!“It’s a family tradition.”
I go on to explain that more than three decades ago, my mother won this very pageant. Then I tell the judge how I’m competing in her memory. I tell her about my mom’s illness and what it was like growing up without her.
I’m telling Ginny’s story, obviously. Not mine. But as I go on to describe the photograph of our mom on the night she was crowned, my throat grows thick.
Maybe it’s the exhaustion, or maybe it’s the fact that I look so much like Ginny that the line between our two identities has grown blurry once again, but the story feels as much mine as it does hers this time.
With one important difference—I leave out the part about being an identical twin. I don’t mention Ginny at all. It seems like the wise thing to do, in light of the circumstances. But it also leaves me feeling strangely untethered, as if I’ve willfully erased her existence. Or mine...
