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“You must be so excited about the Art Institute,” she said, trying to steer him back into more comfortable territory.

“Oh yeah, definitely. I honestly can’t even believe I got in.”

“I’m not surprised at all. You’re insanely talented. Ms. Kellogg told me she’d never seen a portfolio like yours.”

Jonathan broke into a huge goofy grin. “She said that?”

“Yeah, when we were setting up for the art show.”

“That’s … Wow. That’s awesome.”

Their milk shakes arrived, and Felicity took a long sip of hers. It was absolutely perfect, thick enough that a spoon could stand up in the center but not so solid that she needed to make an embarrassing fish face to get it through the straw. As she closed her eyes to savor her next slurp, she heard Jonathan laugh. “Good, huh?”

She could hardly bring herself to remove the straw from her mouth. “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

“Just wait till you have the jalapeño cheddar fries.”

She took another rapturous sip. “So, are you nervous about moving all the way to Chicago?”

Jonathan laughed. “All the way? It’s only a five-hour drive.”

Five hours sounded like an eternity to Felicity—Scarletville Community College was only fifteen minutes from her house. She wondered what it felt like to have the freedom to escape, to have some say in what your life would become. “My mom couldn’t handle me being that far away,” she said. “And it would suck not to be able to see my brothers. Won’t you miss your family?”

“Sure. But it’s not like it’s hard to drive back and forth. It’ll be fine. And Chicago’s such a great city. I mean, I can go to the Art Institute and sketch every day if I want. They have a huge Impressionist collection. And there’s so much live music and theater and stuff, and places that actually stay open past nine.”

For the first time, Felicity really tried to imagine leaving Iowa, turning her back on everything she had ever known. She pictured herself walking down busy, unfamiliar city streets, getting lost in crowds of strangers who didn’t think she was special, who couldn’t care less what color her hair was. She’d be totally anonymous. At first, it seemed terrifying, almost impossible to fathom. But beneath her fear, she felt a current of electricity buzzing through her blood at the thought of starting over. Jonathan didn’t look nervous at all as he talked about leaving everything behind. He looked as if his life were only just about to begin.

And just like that, as she watched him, Felicity’s doubts began to fade. Leaving Scarletville and chasing her dream suddenly felt like something she could do. There was a whole new world waiting for her out there.

“What do your parents think about you leaving?” she asked.

“They’re fine with the Chicago part, but they’re not thrilled about the art school thing. They think I should do something more … I don’t know, productive. Be a ‘contributing member of society’ or whatever.” He made exaggerated air quotes around the words.

That sounded painfully familiar. “What do they want you to do instead?”

“They’re both lawyers. Something like that, I guess. Or premed, or business.” He wrinkled his nose, as if the word smelled like rotting fish guts. “The thing is, I think my dad actually gets it. He played bass in this band called Six-Fingered Man before he met my mom. But then they got married and had all of us, and he had to stop, and now he doesn’t play at all anymore. When I first told him I wanted to go to art school, his face kind of lit up, you know?”

Felicity knew. That was the same look her mom gave her every time they discussed the pageant.

Their baskets of fries arrived, and Felicity grabbed a waffle fry and dunked it in the jalapeño cheddar dip. True to Jonathan’s word, the fry was glorious—just the right crispiness, just the right amount of salt and grease. “Oh my God, these are
ridiculously
good.”

Jonathan laughed. “Try the other kind.”

She complied. The barbecue sauce was sweet and salty and smoky and cinnamony all at once. It made her want to get up and dance. “That’s it. I am never eating anything else for the rest of my life.”

“Right there with you.” Jonathan grabbed a fry and clinked it with Felicity’s as if it were a champagne glass. “To not being at prom.”

“Cheers.” As she stuffed the fry into her mouth, Felicity realized she hadn’t thought about Brent and Gabby since she had gotten into Jonathan’s car. She was warm and happy and surrounded by delicious food smells, and she suddenly felt intensely grateful. “Hey, thanks for this,” she said. “I was having a really awful night before you showed up.”

“Thanks for coming with me. My night wasn’t going so well, either.”

“Why didn’t you ask someone to prom who you actually wanted to go with? Your sister will have her own proms.”

Jonathan played with his cuff link, suddenly unable to meet Felicity’s eyes. “Well … the girl I really wanted to ask was—um—indisposed, I guess.”

Of course. A wave of sympathy swept through her. She’d had to give up her boyfriend for one important night, but it would be infinitely worse to be in Jonathan’s place, pining for someone who was all the way across the ocean. “That sucks. But I guess it’s kind of hard to get to prom if you live on the other side of the world, right?”

Jonathan looked up, confused. “The other side of … what? What are you talking about?”

“Well, I mean, she’s all the way in Capri, right?”

“Who is?”

“Lucia. Isn’t that who—I mean, I thought …” Felicity let the sentence hang in the air, half finished.

Jonathan burst out laughing. “
Lucia?
Wow,
no
. Where’d you get that idea? Lucia’s my best friend. She used to live across the street from me until her mom got a research grant to go to Italy. I would never— It’s not like that at all.”

“Oh.” Felicity thought back on that day in the art studio, when he had looked so tenderly at his portrait of Lucia, as if he missed her more than anything. But of course you’d feel that way about your best friend. Jonathan had said nothing to imply that he liked her in any other way. Felicity had fabricated their entire romance. The realization sent a curious sensation through her, as if her heart were levitating.

“But then, who—” she started.

Jonathan shook his head and smiled. “Don’t worry about it. So, the pageant’s really soon, right? You must be excited.”

Felicity reflexively plastered on her “I love competing” smile, but as she opened her mouth to give her usual cheerful answer, she realized she didn’t have to lie right now. Jonathan had opened up to her about personal things, and he deserved the same level of forthrightness. She let the fake smile fade. “Honestly? Not really.”

“How come? A lot of people think you’re going to win. Jacob Sinclair from my math class set up this website where you can place bets on the contestants, and I heard that after Madison, the most money is on you.”

Felicity stabbed at her shake with her straw. “Oh great. Now I feel like a racehorse.”

“But at least you’re a winning racehorse, right?”

“I guess.” She shrugged. “Pageants just aren’t my thing. When I’m up there competing, it just doesn’t … it doesn’t feel like
me,
you know? It’s all just acting.”

Jonathan nodded encouragingly, and she relaxed a little. Now that she had finally found a safe place to express herself, her words came spilling out like water from a broken dam. She told Jonathan about how her mom was obsessed with the pageant and had been pressuring her to win since preschool. She told him about the vomit-inducing Ella-Mae Finch song. She told him she had never really cared about competing and wished she could escape the life her mom had planned for her. Saying it all out loud for the first time made her feel like a helium balloon whose string had been cut, soaring dizzyingly upward.

“I totally get it,” Jonathan said when she was finished. “You want your own life, not a rerun of hers. But she can’t
make
you do the pageant. Why don’t you just quit?”

“I can’t. She’d never forgive me. Plus, there’s a huge prize if you win, and I could really use the money.”

Jonathan regarded her carefully as he chewed, his head cocked slightly to the side. “Hey, I don’t know anything about pageants or anything, so feel free to ignore me. But what would happen if you just, you know, competed like yourself? If you didn’t pretend to be someone else, or suck up to the judges, or use that horrible music? Could you just … act like you?”

Felicity shook her head. “That’s not really how it works. The pageant’s not about who you are, it’s about how well you can play the game. I just have to suck it up and deal. It’ll all be over in a week.”

“Well, you know better than I do. I just think—I mean, you’re an original person. You drive a bright green car with peace signs on it, and you make the most amazing art, and you don’t always do what people expect you to do. Otherwise you’d be at prom, not here. It’s just—” He shrugged. “I think you’d probably do really well either way.”

“Thanks,” Felicity said. Somehow, hearing him say that meant more to her than all the times her mom had told her that her routine looked perfect, all the times Brent had told her she was hot. An unexpected lump rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard. “Hey, don’t tell anyone what I said, okay? It’s better if people think I’m excited about competing.”

“What, you don’t want me to write a feature story for journalism about your secret pageant aversion?” Jonathan smiled and offered her the last waffle fry. “I can see the headline now: ‘Tiaras Hold No Sparkle For Beauty Pageant Hopeful.’ ”

Felicity giggled. “I didn’t know you took journalism.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty fun.”

“Is Gabby in your class?”

Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but she’s been totally slacking lately. She was supposed to be my partner for this project a few weeks ago, and then she bailed on me at the last second, so I had to do the whole thing myself. I heard she’s working on some huge exposé for this internship application for the
Chicago Tribune,
and Mr. Armstrong likes her ’cause she writes for the paper, so he lets her do whatever she wants. She just sits there in the corner with her headphones on and works on it every day during class.”

“An exposé? What kind of exposé?”

“I don’t know, she won’t tell anyone. It’s some big secret thing. She says it’s a case study, and if anyone knows what she’s doing, it’ll skew the results or something.”

Jonathan kept talking, but Felicity wasn’t paying attention anymore. A finger of cold was creeping down her spine.
A secret case study
. She had no idea what Gabby was writing or what she was trying to prove, but Felicity knew one thing beyond a doubt.

She was the case study.

She had spent so much time trying to figure out what Gabby had against her, what she had done to deserve the kind of treatment she was getting. But it wasn’t personal. There was no grudge, no jealousy, no malice. Felicity was just a convenient lab rat, running through the maze Gabby had built for her. Gabby was ruining her life, hurting her friends, stealing her boyfriend, controlling her like a puppet, all for the sake of a stupid
internship application
.

Felicity felt something snap inside her, and her hands balled into fists under the table. Screw her mom’s instructions about finding a way to make the blackmail work for her. She was done being compliant and letting her enemy destroy her world for no good reason.

It was time to take Gabby down.

As the ponytailed artie squeezed by their table on her way out the door, a plan came to Felicity all at once, fully formed and beautiful. The mayor had been trying for years to find Rouge-o-Rama and close its doors for good. And now that Felicity knew there were other places she could get her hair colored, it no longer mattered to her whether the salon’s location remained a secret. If she had to drive to Caldner every few weeks, so be it. It would be a tiny price to pay if she got to see Mayor Redding run the Vaughns out of town. Plus, exposing the salon would destroy Gabby’s credibility with everyone in Scarletville. Once the whole town knew the enormity of the secrets she’d been keeping, any rumor she spread about Felicity would just look like a desperate attempt at retaliation.

All Felicity needed was an audience with the mayor. So it was a good thing she’d see him at the pageant just one short week from today.

“Felicity? Everything okay?” Jonathan’s voice seemed to be coming from miles away.

She took a deep breath and pulled herself back to reality. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m great. Just … sad that the fries are gone.”

“We can get more. Want to? You haven’t tried the curly fries with curry ketchup yet.”

Felicity’s phone beeped, and she dug it out of her bag.

HAYLIE: WHERE ARE U? ivy & i are worried.

FELICITY: not coming back. i’m fine, don’t worry. have fun. talk to you tomorrow.

HAYLIE: WHERE DID U GO??? UR NOT COMING TO THE PARTY???

“Are you sure everything’s okay?” asked Jonathan.

Felicity turned off her phone and dropped it into her bag. “Everything’s perfect,” she said. “Curly fries sound amazing. It’s on me this time.”

Hours later, Felicity and Jonathan were deep in a heated discussion about whether painting a canvas one color constituted “making art” when they noticed that the staff of Fry Me to the Moon was wiping down tables and stacking chairs. The colored lightbulbs above their heads started winking out in sections. “Sorry, guys, we’re closing,” April called as she scrubbed the counter. “You’re going to have to take your debate somewhere else.”

It didn’t seem possible that they’d been talking for four hours, but a chicken-shaped clock on the wall confirmed that it was one in the morning. Felicity stood up to put Jonathan’s tux jacket back on, then groaned at the way her fry-filled stomach strained against her dress. “It’s officially your fault if I’m too fat to fit in my pageant gown next week,” she said.

“Don’t even try to pretend it wasn’t worth it.” Jonathan held the door for her, gently touching the small of her back as he ushered her through. His hand lingered for just a moment longer than necessary, and Felicity found she didn’t mind at all.