Winning (22 page)

I strand Ivy at the mall and hightail it home. On the way, I call Natalie. No answer. I call Matt. Same thing.

I have the sinking feeling that I am so totally fucked.

My brain is whirring a mile a minute, trying desperately to process everything that has happened. Trying to figure out what happens next. I'm usually three steps ahead, but right now, I'm ten behind.

Natalie is nowhere to be found. She's probably out getting wasted with Uncle Doug. I consider calling him but can't bring myself to do it.

I pace the house, feeling like a feral cat. Feeling like I'm about to explode.

I get back in my car and drive over to Matt's, but see Sloane's car parked in the driveway. Maybe Ivy was bluffing about that part. Or, even if she's not, maybe Sloane's plan to break us up has backfired. He hasn't called me. Hasn't texted. You can't break up with someone without telling them, can you?

That night, I don't sleep. I can't. Instead, I go into the basement and run until my legs are about to give out. No word from Natalie. No word from Matt.

It occurs to me that I am utterly, completely alone.

Is this how Natalie feels? Is this why she works so hard to numb herself?

I sit on the basement steps and let myself cry. Real tears, not the fake ones I can conjure up on command.

I cry until I have nothing left inside of me. Then I get up, wipe my eyes, and go to my room, where I lie awake until my alarm goes off the next morning.

At the game, I sit in the stands with Matt's family. If he is breaking up with me, they do not seem to be any the wiser. Doug is supposed to be there, too, watching the Homecoming game with us, but he already texted me that he's running late. Probably nursing an epic hangover. Natalie still wasn't home by the time I left. I can only imagine what the two of them have been up to.

The Spencer Spartans are winning, of course. We always do. So far Matt has scored two touchdowns, and we've barely begun the second quarter. I'm relieved to see that whatever transpired last night hasn't affected his performance.

My head isn't where it needs to be right now. It bothers me that I can't get ahold of my mother. She could at least pick up the phone.

At halftime, there's the tradition of parents walking the
candidates out onto the field for the final Q&A. It's kind of a dog-and-pony show for the alumnae. Natalie says this is a relatively new tradition—that back in her day, the king and queen were voted on in school the Friday before the game. There was a parade too, and the king and queen rode on the main float.

But several years back, the daughter of a big donor didn't win queen. He wanted to see his kid on the field, though. So they had all of the candidates trot out and do this dumb Q&A. The following year, they switched the election to take place at the dance, so all of the parents with candidates could see their kids honored. It's stupid and no other school in Indiana does Homecoming in quite the same way.

My freshman year, my dad was still alive. He walked me out as freshman class princess. I loved being on his arm, even though someone had the nerve to ask me why my grandpa was my escort. Sophomore year, just a few weeks before the accident, he was away on a business trip, so Natalie accompanied me.

Last year, I almost had to walk alone. But then Uncle Douglas stepped in at the last minute. He is once again my escort. And he arrives just in time. Alone.

The last thing I want to do is make an entrance with a man who apparently snorts coke off my mother's breasts. But I don't have time to find a replacement. So I swallow my disgust and delay confrontation.

“You look beautiful,” Doug tells me, with a quick kiss to the cheek. I try not to recoil. “Shall we?”

I walk across the field on Doug's arm, feeling my stomach
churn. This is supposed to be one of the highlights of my high school career, and I can't even enjoy it.

The queen candidates stand in a row, clutching the bouquets of flowers our male escorts presented each of us with. One by one, we step up to the mic to introduce ourselves and answer a question posed by Frick.

I am the last to go. I didn't even really hear anyone else's answers. I'm too lost in my own head.

When it is my turn, Frick looks at me and very pointedly asks, “Who would you say is your greatest role model, and what would you do if you found out that person wasn't who you thought they were?”

The smirk on her face says it all. She knows. Somehow, she knows about Natalie.

I open my mouth to speak but no words come out. I am shaking. I am standing in front of hundreds of people, all of them waiting for me to say something, anything, and I don't have a single word.

The mic catches my sob, amplifies it out to the crowd. I drop my bouquet, cover my mouth with my hands, and run off the field. I don't stop running until I get to my car.

All that work. All those plans.

I rock back and forth, shaking, and am startled when I see a concerned Doug gesturing at me to roll down the window.

“I can't,” I say. Then I start the car and peel out of the parking lot.

I reach my house in record time. I can't believe I just did that. Me, Alexandra Miles. Turns out these colors
do
run.

As soon as I enter I can hear Natalie clanging around in the kitchen. Seething, I storm in there, ready to rip her a new one.

“You,”
I say, pointing at her. “You have ruined
everything
.”

“What are you talking about?” Natalie asks. “Is the game over already?”

“It's all over, Mother. I've lost it all. To protect
you
.”

“I still don't know what you're talking about.”

I pull my phone from my purse, queue up Ivy's video, which she oh-so-graciously forwarded to me after I called Frick. “Here,” I say, thrusting it toward her.

Natalie squints and pulls the camera closer to her eyes. When she realizes she's the star of this particular home movie, she lets out an “Oh, fuck.”

“Is this your doing?” she asks. “You've been following me?”

“No,” I say. “A classmate did. And then she gave it to another classmate who used this video to blackmail me. I gave up
everything to protect you. And for what? So you could do drugs with Uncle Dougie? Jesus, Natalie. What the
fuck
?”

“You have no idea how hard it's been for me,” she says. “You are young, and beautiful, and you have your whole life ahead of you. Me, I'm just a washed-up beauty queen.”

I shake my head at her. “So that gives you the right to be a shitty parent? What if you'd gotten arrested?”

“It's not like that,” Natalie says. “We play from time to time. But it's not like . . . I'm not an addict, if that's what you're thinking.”

“I don't know what to think.”

Natalie starts to pour herself a Blanton's.

“No,” I say. “Don't you dare!”

“Can I at least sit?”

We move to the table. Natalie sighs heavily. “What do you want from me, Alexandra? In another nine months, you're going to college. You're going to leave me behind. Why do you even care?”

“Because you're my mother!” I say. “Of course I care.”

“It's been three years,” Natalie says ruefully. “You never noticed. Not once.”

“What do you mean?”

“Me. Douglas. Three years. You were too self-involved to see what was going on.”

“But, Dad's only been gone—”

“I know exactly how long your father's been gone,” she says, cutting me off. “He didn't notice either.”

Natalie starts talking, spilling a long, complicated story about how she married too young, to a man who was too old. She left the pageant world at his request. She gave him a beautiful daughter, played the part of the perfect corporate wife. In return, he allowed her access to his money.

“I was more like a prostitute than I was a wife,” she tells me. “Except in the end, we weren't even having sex.”

“Don't,” I say.

She shrugs. “Douglas desired me. He always has. Even before your father and I got married, we . . . had some moments. And with your father gone, he could finally have me.”

My ears feel like they're bleeding. None of this makes sense. My mother has spent the past two years as a sort of recluse. How could she have been carrying on some secret affair? With Uncle Douglas, of all people?

“You were so happy though,” I say. “Right before Daddy died. You were inseparable.”

“We were.”

“But you were screwing Dougie the whole time?”

“No,” she says. “Not then. That was real.”

Suddenly, my lungs feel constricted and I am unable to breathe.

“The brakes,” I say. “The rumors. You?”

“No,” she says. “I would never. How could you even think that?”

“How could I
not
?”

Tears spill from my eyes. My mother's response? “You're going to ruin your makeup.”

Is it any wonder I am the person I've become?

“He'll be happy you finally know,” Natalie says after a while. “We won't have to hide anymore.”

“Great,” I say. “So now the two of you can smoke crack at our dining-room table.”

“No, dear,” she says. “Crack is for the lower class.”

I think this is her attempt at a joke. At any rate, she offers a weak smile.

“You're going to leave me,” Natalie says. “You're going to be somebody. You'll be the somebody I never was, and you're going to leave me here, all alone.”

“What about Douglas?”

“He will take care of me,” she concedes. “Until my skin gets too wrinkly, or my tits start to sag. Then I'll be alone again. But you, Alexandra—you will never need anyone. You are all that you need.”

“I needed
you
,” I say, my voice choking on the words.

Natalie has no response to that. She looks over toward the Blanton's longingly.

“Go ahead,” I say. “Drink up. I'm done talking.”

I walk upstairs and straight into the bathroom, where I take a long, hot shower. Trying to wash away all of the ugliness of today. I think of the shower water like a baptism of sorts.

It's time for the resurrection of Alexandra Miles.

Matt is supposed to pick me up at six o'clock on the dot, but he doesn't show. I've stopped trying to get ahold of him. I've never been a fan of futility.

I consider skipping the dance altogether, especially after this afternoon's performance. But to do so would be the ultimate show of weakness, and that's something I simply cannot allow.

So I do my hair. I do my makeup. I step into my lavender dress, a floor-length number with layer upon layer of diaphanous skirt. The strapless bodice sports literally thousands of hand-sewn crystal beads. It's a pageant dress, but not one I've ever worn in competition.

It's the dress I thought I'd be wearing when I became queen.

I drive myself to the dance. I plan to walk into that decorated gym with my head held high, daring anyone and everyone to ask me about what happened during halftime. I am going because not going would be sealing my fate. What Natalie said—about me being the somebody she never was—is spot-on. I am nothing like my mother. I will not hide in my
house. I will not let a man derail my dreams.

I sit in my parked car as long as I can stand it. If I don't go in soon, I know I'm going to chicken out.

I can't let them win.

Even though I will leave the dance without the crown I worked so hard to win, I will still leave a winner. The crown is not the prize—I am.

Couples are still arriving as I make my way to the door. They look at me and they whisper. Yes, that's how quickly I replaced Ivy in the gossip mill.

Taylor Flynn is working the table, collecting tickets. “My gosh,” she says to me. “I didn't think you'd be here.”

“Um . . . thanks?”

She offers a tight smile that's so totally fake. “I need your ticket,” she says.

Only, I don't have a ticket. Matt bought the tickets.

Taylor reads the expression on my face and says, “That'll be twenty dollars.”

Is there no indignity I'll be spared tonight?

I pull some crumpled bills from my purse and thrust them in her direction. In return, she slides me a ballot. “Voting ends at eight,” she says. “There's a box on each table to collect them.”

There is music thumping through the gym, and a medium-size group of kids dancing near the DJ. I feel eyes on me from every direction. This is not me being paranoid, either. People are watching, and they are whispering, and I'd be lying if I said I
wasn't second-guessing my decision to come.

Not that I let any of this show. To all those who are observing, I am my normal social self. Smiling, waving to “friends,” making small talk.

I spot Matt across the room, chatting with Bobby and Ivy. Ivy, wearing a dress and shoes I picked out for her. Wearing makeup I paid for. Sporting a hairstyle that my former best friend gave her.

Ivy sees me before Matt does. She smiles and waves. Matt turns to see who she's waving at. When he realizes it's me, he turns, giving me nothing but back.

So that's how it's going to be.

I consider taking a lap around the room. I want to know what people are saying about me. I can't change the story until I do.

But before I get very far, Sloane cuts me off at the pass. “You showed,” she says, not without admiration. “I'm impressed.”

“Not now,” I say, pushing past her.

She calls out after me, “Have fun tonight!”

I have never felt so humiliated in my entire life.

It is nearing seven thirty, which means I only have to stick around for another thirty minutes. Sixty tops, depending on how long it takes them to tally the votes. I've decided I'll stand to the bitter end, until that crown lands on someone else's head.

No one talks to me.

Not a single person.

At eight, Taylor comes around to collect all the ballot boxes.
It's almost over. The wait. Thirty minutes from now, the king and queen will be announced.

Over in the corner, I spot Erin Hewett. She's all alone, too. At least, I think she is.

But then I see her. Sam. She, too, is wearing a dress I picked out. She looks prettier than I've ever seen her. Happier, too.

In a second, I find out why.

Because there they are—Erin Hewett and Samantha Schnitt—kissing each other, right there in the middle of the Homecoming dance.

Son of a
bitch
. I didn't see it. How did I not see it?

At exactly nine o'clock, Constance Frick takes the stage to announce this year's Homecoming court. First, it's the senior class prince. That honor goes to Tyler Moses. Then, she announces the princess.

That honor goes to
me
.

This is worse than winning nothing at all. Because now it's clear that I am the runner-up. Now I have to stand on a stage and watch someone else take my crown.

Frick calls my name again. I have to take the stage. There's no getting out of this now.

Next, Frick announces the king. It's Matt, of course. He stands there, wearing a purple-and-gold plastic crown and holding an equally hideous plastic scepter. He doesn't look at me. He may never look at me again.

“And now for the moment you've all been waiting for,” Frick says, looking downright cheerful. “Your Homecoming Queen for this year is . . . Ivy Proctor.”

The crowd explodes. Of course they do. Of course.

Ivy locks eyes on me as she walks up the steps to the stage. I want to look away but can't.

“Thank you,” she mouths. I fight the urge to rip out all of her hair with my teeth.

It hurts to watch Frick place the rhinestone tiara on Ivy's head, instead of mine. But I don't show it. I smile and clap and act like this is everything I wanted. She may have won, but I'm still claiming the moment.

The music starts for the King and Queen's dance. I watch Matt take Ivy into his muscled arms and I choke back a sob. Tyler reaches for my hand, gentleman that he is, and we join them on the floor.

It is the only dance I'll dance tonight.

As soon as the song has ended, I make a beeline for the door. Enough is enough.

But before I leave, I take one last look around the room. Sam and Erin are dancing together, and nobody seems to care. Sloane is dancing with James Leitch, and no one seems to care that she's pressed up against a freshman either. And there's Queen Ivy, tucked into Bobby Jablonski's embrace.

Looks like everyone got their happy ending. Everyone but me, that is.

It won't be easy, fighting my way back.

But I know I can, and I know I will.

I am—and always will be—Queen Alexandra Miles.

Winner.