The Bad Boy's Girl (Now Available as a Paperback and ebook)

Chapter Fifteen Part One : He's Searching My Body Like It's A Map To Atlantis

Please take this moment to pray for all the grieving families in Newton CT. May you all have the strength to survive this tragedy and may all the departed souls rest in heaven.

Dedicated to all of the following people. 

To BooksAreForever for inspiring Tessa's dress and for all those links which were the closes to what I'd imagined her wearing.She had me at Emma Watson and Harry Potter :P. Dedicated to BeautifulSpirit for Megan's dress. Dedicated to infernogirl73 for Beth's dress. Dedicated to uncanny2 for Nicole's dress. Also dedicated to Bookgeek4life and Becamarch10 for their exceptional suggestions for Tessa :)

Slideshow of their dresses to the right.

Chapter Fifteen Part One : He's Searching My Body Like It's A Map To Atlantis

I'm going to puke, that's it. I clutch my stomach which is churning heavily and stare at the pristine floor of Town Hall. To think so much effort has been put into making the floor gleam like Ryan Seacrest's teeth saddens me as I'm obviously going to hurl all over them.

"Sit still." Beth orders but I can't. I need to be ready to run in case I can't hold it in anymore. Why, I ask myself for the nth time, would I agree to put myself through this? What possessed me to agree to putting on a fancy dress costume and parade in front of people who have nothing better to do with their evenings.

Voodoo that explains it. My mom must have found another past time now that her book club has ended. Dark magic might possibly be the only reason that I find myself in such a situation. Sitting in front of a large mirror, all I have on is a shocking pink-definitely picked by my mom-robe with Beth hovering over me.

"Look, I get it you're nervous but looking like a Crayola gang banged clown wont help."

She's right, of course she is. I should be grateful that it's her and not her mother, Marie who's doing my makeup. Marie owns a small salon in town and has been hired by the planning committee to do the hair and make up of the contestants. Beth is just as skilled as her mom and so I asked her if she could do it instead. I refuse to let her go near my face with the amount of make up and curling irons that are available to her today.

Let's just say our styles are not similar whatsoever and Marie hates it when you interrupt her when she's working on one of her masterpieces. At least with Beth I can tell her when I think I'm starting to look like Goth Barbie.

"Do you think I can actually do it? Can I actually win a beauty pageant?" Apprehension and anxiety are weak words to describe what I'm feeling. This is bad, just really bad and I've got this ominous feeling in my gut telling me I should hitch hike a ride to the middle of nowhere.

She tsks, before answering. "As you know, I'm not the biggest fan of these things. I think it's rather demeaning to women to have them make a spectacle out of themselves just for the sake of entertainment. Do you think when we were fighting to get the vote; this was the future we had in mind? Beauty Pageants are a vain, self absorbed, demeaning show of how materialistic human nature is..."

"Your point, Beth, what is your point?"

"Oh, yeah that. All that being said, I think you'll kick ass." She grins at me before squirting something she calls 'base' in her palm and lathering it all over my face. It's sticky, itchy and uncomfortable but apparently if I don't want to look like a vampire under the spotlights I need to wear it.

There's a knock on the door and shortly afterwards Megan lets herself in. It's still early in the day so she isn't wearing her dress yet just jeans and t-shirt. She isn't taking part in the competition but is coming not only to support me but for her first date with Alex. We're in one of the rooms at Town Hall which was originally a mansion for a previous mayor, back in the 1800's. Since then it's been converted into a tourist attraction and as a place to host events such as these. Each participant has a room to themselves and since there are only ten of us as opposed to the twenty rooms they have here, we're not taking up a lot of space.