Page 29 of The Accidental Beauty Queen
“That’s okay.” Ginny shrugs. “A bad score from one judge won’t keep you out of the finals. If five out of six liked you, you’re still in this.”
I correct her at once. “You meanyou’restill in it.”
“I think I meantwe.” She gives me a conspiratorial grin. “We’restill in this.”
She has a point. He’s only one judge out of six. And I know I crushed it on the first five interviews.
Do I really need to throw it all away? Do I reallywantto?
I let out a weary sigh. “What if he talks to the other judges and tells them I’m a train wreck?”
She shakes her head. “He can’t. The judges aren’t allowed to share their scores with each other. They can’t discuss the contestants’ performance at all until the pageant is over and the winner has been crowned.”
Okay, this is important information. Total game changer.
“What went wrong, anyway?” Ginny asks. “With judge number six?”
“Everything.” There’s only so much I can say, since I never told her that I’ve been flirting with a total stranger while I’ve been walking her dog. “You didn’t tell me about the questionnaire. He asked me about my favorite book.”
I slide my gaze over to Ginny and smirk. “Fifty Shades?Seriously?”
She gives me a blank look. “Everyone loves that book. It sold something like a million copies.”
Well, 125 million, actually. My librarian soul weeps every time I think about that statistic.
“I know, but why on earth would you choose something so... so”—I want to sayembarrassing, but I also don’t want to sound like a Puritan, because I have a feeling that would lead to a discussion of my dating life, or lack thereof. And I can’t have that conversation. Not now, not when I’ve just been so thoroughly rejected by the only man I’ve been remotely interested in since Adam—“controversial?”
“That’s precisely why I chose it. Miss American Treasure should be a strong woman with a strong opinion. I would have defended that book by talking about how empowering it was for a lot of women.”
It’s an interesting take. It’s also one I never would have come up with on the fly. “A heads-up would have been nice.”
“Sorry. I didn’t think to go over the questionnaire. Anyway, I figured your answers wouldn’t be a problem.” She shrugs. “You’ve always been the smart one.”
The smart one.
I’ve never thought of myself that way. All this time, I’ve been so painfully aware of Ginny’s reputation as the pretty one that I haven’t for a moment considered how I fit into the equation.
Maybe I haven’t been as invisible as I’d thought.
The smart one. It sounds like a compliment, but I know better. If I’m the smart one, that means Ginny is the opposite—the dumb one. I know this as surely as I know what not being the pretty one means.
I reach for my twin’s hand and squeeze it tight.
She squeezes mine back, and I know without a doubt that I can’t quit the pageant. Switching places might not be such a bad thing. It might even be the best thing that’s ever happened to us.
Like it or not, I’m in this for the long haul.
8
When I wake up the next morning, the two most frightening words in the English language are spinning in my head.
Swimsuit competition.
I’m fully aware of how shallow that sounds. Obviously, there are more frightening issues facing the world than the two scraps of emerald-green Lycra my sister calls a bathing suit. But at the moment, none of them loom as large.
“Do I have to wear a bikini?” I whine, casting a longing glance at Ginny’s luggage. “Don’t you have a one-piece in there somewhere?”
Or better yet, a burka?
