Clucking her tongue, she took her glasses off, letting them dangle down the front of her shirt. “I loved that little girl, but Lord, what a pill she could be. Anyway, all those times she knocked down your castle, you never once cried. Never complained. You jutted that bottom lip out and got back to work. You never quit, even when that would have been the smartest thing to do.”

Somehow, I didn’t think that was supposed to be a compliment. But I was still about to thank her when Aunt Jewel reached across the table and took my hand. “You are trying to be too many things to too many people, Harper Jane.”

Aunt Jewel’s fingers were cold, the skin papery, but she held me tight as she added, “And I think one day, one day soon, you’re gonna have to choose.”

Chapter 27

Chapter 27

“YOUR LEOTARD is ugly.”

I looked down at the little girl standing next to me. She came up to right above my elbow, but I was pretty sure that a solid foot of that was hair. The rest of her was covered in a sea of pale blue ruffles, so I wasn’t sure how she had any room to talk about what was ugly.

Still, being mean to kids is never okay, so I made myself put on a smile. “That’s not very nice,” I told her, but the little girl shrugged.

“It’s very true.”

In front of us, another girl about the same age as this devil spawn standing next to me was practicing her “dance” on the stage. It mostly seemed to consist of some awkward shuffling and a few waves, and every now and again she’d glance down to where her mom was doing a much more enthusiastic version of the same dance in the front row.

I sighed and shifted my baton to my other hand. Normally the Little Miss Pine Grove portion of rehearsal was over by the time we got in, but Sara was running late today, so we were stuck waiting for the younger girls to finish. Which apparently also meant we were stuck getting harassed by second-graders.

“It’s the sleeves,” the girl next to me said, looking me up and down. There was something weird about the way she talked, and when she opened her mouth to yawn, I realized she was wearing those little fake teeth they use to cover a missing tooth or two.

Seriously, pageants were the weirdest.

“Well, I like the sleeves,” I told her, tugging at the material in question. I’d used Leigh-Anne’s old majorette uniform, a sparkly green number that was a little too big for me. Aunt Jewel had sewn on some sleeves for me to give it “a little flair.” Apparently, to Aunt Jewel, “a little flair” meant a metric ton of sequins and fake jewels, so every time I threw the baton, my arms clattered.