"I have to say, it's nice to see you again after all this time," Mrs. Kearning said.
Lilian was walking down a hall, Alexis right behind her, right beside popular local pageant judge Amanda Kearning. Kearning had first met Lilian when she was a child, but had always wondered why she'd dropped out of the public eye and stopped doing pageants. Now, seeing her as a grown adult, coming back to the industry, Amanda could see she'd grown up to be as beautiful as she'd always assumed she would be when she was a little girl. "Well, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't weird being here," Lilian said, smiling as a couple young girls in dresses ran past them laughing, heading to the main dressing room; "but, I figure that these pageants gave me so much when I was little, I wanted to kind of give something back." "That's beautiful," Kearning said, before looking back at Alexis, who was absentmindedly chewing gum, and asking, "and what about you? Why are you here?" "Because she drove," Alex said, pointing at Lilian. "She's just my friend, along for the ride," Lilian said, her and Kearning chuckling together. Truth was, Alexis had always struggled with her self image, and being at a place like a beauty pageant, especially one geared towards little girls, made her feel especially uneasy. Part of the reason she'd started doing drugs in the first place was simply to curb her appetite and help her stay skinny. As they continued walking, heading to the judges room, Alex stopped when they started to pass by a little girl sitting on a bench by herself, her knees pulled up to her chest. Alex knelt down beside the bench and looked at the kid. "You alright?" she asked, as the girl looked up at her and Alex noticed her lazy eye. "I'm not gonna win cause of my eye," the girl said weakly, clearly having been crying. "Well, I think your eye is cool, and besides, you can see everything with it. Liars, cheaters, and all the beauty around you outside of this fake fashion show," Alex said, patting the girl on the shoulder, "trust me, you're the most beautiful girl here, and it's because of your eye." The girl started to smile, and nod, taking Alex's statements to heart. Alex stood back up and jogged down the hall briskly, catching back up to Lilian and Amanda. A long time ago, Alexis had made a promise to herself to be nice to kids, only because nobody was ever nice to her as a kid. Nobody should have to feel that level of loneliness, especially a child, she thought. *** Maddie slowly opened her parents bedroom door and snuck in quietly, looking around cautiously. Her mother was out of the house for the time being, but that didn't mean she wanted to leave any kind of impression that she'd come in here. She crept in on tip toes, careful not to wake her sleeping father. Maddie approached a dresser, where his leftover lunch sat on a metal meal tray, and she examined it. The problem was, she wasn't exactly sure how to look for signs of poisoning or anything. How does one tell if one is being poisoned? Maddie left the tray alone and continued towards the bathroom, pushing it open as quietly as she could, so she could sneak in without him remotely stirring. Once inside, she walked over to the medicine cabinet and pulled it open slowly, knowing it was creaky. Nothing in here looked odd or out of the ordinary. Why would it? It'd be stupid to poison him with something from their own bathroom, in such close proximity to him, she thought. No. If this was really happening, and she was determined to investigate his claims, then she knew the poison had to be coming from somewhere else. Something else. Something she wouldn't be looking for. Maddie sighed dejectedly and sat on the toilet seat lid, looking at her shoes. Could he just have been delirious? Or could what Stinko had been saying was true? That he was simply trying to get between her and her mother and cause a rift? But why would a parent do such a thing? None of it made sense to Maddie, and she began to doubt it ever would. After a bit, Maddie finally stood up and walked out, creeping slowly and silently past the dresser once again, and she noticed her father rolling a little in the bed, mumbling something. She didn't even know which parent she liked, or if she liked either of them to be honest. Ever since the kid had died at her party, neither one had made any attempt whatsoever to see how she felt, or if she was remotely okay. They'd just...gone about their lives, business as usual. Maddie walked over to the bed and looked at her fathers sleeping face, chewing her lip anxiously. What was she supposed to do? Was she just making all this up in her head to alleviate the guilt of her parents not loving one another, or even seemingly her? Why did she even care, when it seemed like they didn't care about her? Maddie didn't know what a family was. And she had her folks to blame for that. *** "So, what's it like to be the most beautiful girl in a building?" Alexis asked Lilian as they followed Kearning into the judges room. "Well, I don't know about the most beautiful," Lilian said, "but I'm certainly right up there." Alexis chuckled as she and Lilian seated themselves at a small round white table in the center of the room, clearly where judges ate lunch between pageants. Kearning walked to the counter and started warming up the pot of coffee as they talked. "You know," Kearning said, "it's rare that someone who does pageants becomes a judge, and even more rare when it's someone who quit doing them. You're kind of an anomaly." "I've been told that," Lilian replied. "Lucky," Alexis said, "nobody's ever called me anything nearly that cool." "You wanna be called something? I can call you something," Lilian replied, the both of them laughing. "All I mean is," Kearning said, picking up her coffee mug and turning to look at the girls, "historically, people who quit pageants aren't all that interested in judging them later in life. You might be the first we've run into, well, besides..." The girls looked at one another, then back at Kearning. "...there was this woman a few years back, someone who ran in the same circuit you did actually. Her name was Ashley. I won't give you a last name, not that it'd be hard to figure it out after what she did. Anyway, Ashley became so disenchanted with the whole thing, that after she left the pageant scene, she wound up murdering her boyfriend, who just happened to be a fashion designer. Simply being around something even remotely adjacent to the thing that haunted her was enough to make her snap, I guess." "Holy hell," Lilian whispered. "Awesome," Alexis chuckled. "...you're not gonna murder anyone, are you?" Kearning asked Lilian, slightly smirking. "I don't like people, but I don't think I'm capable of murder," Lilian said, "so I'd have to say no." "That's good," Kearning replied, laughing as she turned back to face to now warmed coffee pot, pouring herself a mug. The door to the room opened, and two other judges walked in; a youngish looking woman, perhaps a trainee, and a middle aged, but very handsome, man. He was wearing an ash grey suit, and his hair was combed neatly. He had small black round glasses hugging the bridge of his nose, and he stopped when he and Lilian's eyes caught one another. He then continued after a moment, talking with the woman he'd entered with, while Lilian felt her insides clench up violently. Whether or not he recognized her remained to be seen, though judging by the fact that he stopped when he saw her gave Lilian the impression that he did recognize her, but more importantly, she recognized him. The same man, just older now, who'd come into her dressing room on her last pageant. The man whose actions eventually drove her to seek therapy. He was still here, he was still judging, and that broke Lilian's trust in the system. It shouldn't be surprising, considering the kinds of shit men in power get away with and have been getting away with forever, but it did. It did, for some reason, surprise her. She thought maybe someone, at some point, might've said something, but apparently not. Had he continued to do to other young girls what he'd done to her? This was something she both itched to know and feared knowing. "Lily, Alex, this is Anna, our intern, and one of our longest running judges, Michael Brown," Kearning said, sipping from her mug after introducing them. "Nice to meet you," Anna said, shaking the girls hands, while Michael took the pot from Kearning and poured himself a cup of coffee, then sipped it before speaking. "You look very familiar, did you use to do pageant work or have you judged somewhere else or?" Michael asked. "I used to be in pageants as a little girl, yes," Lilian said, curious as to whether he was merely pretending not to know her or genuinely unsure if he knew her; she continued, "but that was a long time ago, and I haven't done anything in the pageant circuit for years. I just figured it'd be fun to boost girls self esteem now as an adult who also did it." "A noble cause," Michael said, nodding. Alex looked from Lilian to Michael, then back to Lilian. She wasn't certain, but she just sort of got the feeling that something was off, and she'd find out what. *** "Maybe I am making it up," Maddie said, sitting in the booth with John. Maddie had taken up visiting the diner frequently, hoping to catch Lilian or one of her friends there. Lately, John - considering he didn't work nearly as much as the others seemed to - was the one most often around. He was seated opposite her, eating a sandwich, dressed in a collared button down shirt with flamingos on it and khaki pants. "Maybe I just want something terrible to be happening so I can make sense of why my family sucks so much," Maddie continued, laying her chin flat on her arms on the table, sighing, "cause, like...why else would they suck if it wasn't for some awful reason?" "Sometimes families just suck," John replied, "but you know, Mads, you have something not every kid with a sucky family has. You have a support group of adults who care about you outside of your family. You're a very lucky young lady, honestly. Some kids would kill to have what you have." Maddie had never really considered this, but John was right. Even if her family did suck, she had adults she could turn to, and she was lucky in that regard. She had even begun to consider John more of a parent to her just thanks to his kindness and advice than her own father had ever been. "...what if I'm the reason my family sucks?" Maddie asked in a small, sad voice, and John immediately stopped eating and looked at her seriously. "No child is ever the reason their family sucks," John said sternly, "so don't you ever think that about yourself. You were brought into this world without your consent, and it is your parents responsibility to care for you, and if they fail, it's THEIR failure, not a failure on YOUR part." Maddie smiled and nodded, then shut her eyes and rested on the tabletop as John continued eating his sandwich. "Thanks Stinko," she said quietly. "Anytime, kid," he replied. It's true what they say, Maddie thought, clowns really do make you feel better. *** Lilian was standing in the bathroom, trying to steady her breathing. She wouldn't even looked herself in the mirror over the sink, simply because she was terrified she'd see Michael standing behind her. She heard the door open and she heard Alexis enter and stop at the sink, next to Lilian. "Are you okay?" Alexis asked. "no," she said quietly, "i am very much not okay, actually." "As soon as that guy came in, everything-" "He was the one," Lillian said, forcing the words out of her mouth, even as disgusting as they tasted slipping past her lips, "he was the one who came into my dressing room on the night of my last pageant, he's the reason I quit altogether. He locked the door, he put his hands on me, down my stockings...if...if my mother hadn't come back, he...he might have..." "Hey, shhh," Alexis said, putting her hands on Lilian's arm, "you're okay, you're safe. That's...that's fucking sick, but look at you now, back, stronger than ever, more than willing to face him down." "I don't know what's worse, that he did it, or that he didn't remember doing it. How many girls has he done this to that he can willingly forget about some of them?" Lilian asked, looking at Alex, tears in her eyes, her lips trembling, "because...because he's still here. Somehow, I deluded myself into believing some kind of justice might come for his actions, but no, he's STILL. FUCKING. HERE." Alex had never seen Lilian this shaken, and it honestly frightened her. For as long as they'd known one another, Lilian had always been the strong one. The one who didn't break down. The one who was, what the kids call, a boss bitch. So to see her so genuinely scared, so open and vulnerable, it broke Alex's heart. Alexis pushed her black hair from her face and choked on her words, unsure of what to say. "Lilian," Alex said, "you're the coolest, strongest person I've ever known. You're, like...my hero. To see you be this scared only makes you cooler, cause it proves even someone as strong as you is capable of being scared, which only humanizes you moreso. Fuck this guy. Prove him wrong. Judge and save kids, not hurt them, like he is. You're the force field now between his awfulness and the goodness of the world, okay?" Lilian looked at Alex, realizing that this dweeby, drug addicted weirdo was her best friend in the world, and threw her arms around Alexis, surprising her with a tight hug. Alex, stunned momentarily, finally started laughing and hugged Lilian back. "I love you, man," Lilian said. "Hey, I love you too," Alex said, "how could anyone not, really?" Lilian had never really had a best friend. In fact, before working with these people, she'd never really had friends proper, so having one she could trust, one she could even call a best friend, was more than welcome honestly. She was thankful they were in one anothers lives, because she knew each of their lives would be lesser without the other one. Who knew that a pirate and a princess would ever make such good friends?
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A young woman named Lilian Phillips, who plays a princess at birthday parties, befriends a little girl who had a child die at her own birthday party. Archives
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