Kirsten Hubbard - Like Mandarin

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2011 by Kirsten Hubbard

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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eISBN: 978-0-375-89750-4

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v3.1

The winds in Washokey make people go crazy.

At least, thats what everybody says. Our part of Wyoming is plagued by winds: hot winds, cold winds, dry winds, wildwinds. Wildwinds are the worst. Not only do they torment us from the outside, but they also seem to bluster inside us: battering around in our lungs, whistling through our capillaries.

I wouldnt be surprised if some of that wind blew into the passageways of our brains.

On the afternoon of my last beauty pageant, almost eight years ago, the wildwinds had already begun. That was what got into me, I like to think: I acted crazy that day because my head was filled with wind.

But that doesnt explain why that afternoon sticks in my memory like a tumbleweed blown against a barbed wire fence no matter how much I would like to forget it. Its because two of the biggest events in my history came gusting together at once: I saw Mandarin Ramey for the first time. And Momma gave up on me for good.

How I despised those beauty pageants. The judges with white teeth and orange skin. The itchy dresses like bathtub poufs. The makeup lacquered on my face, and the shoes binding my feet like those of the Chinese concubines in my chapter book Women of Faraway Lands. The usual girls screeching the same three songsI Feel Pretty, the national anthem, and Home on the Range.

Instead of singing, I recited historic speeches. When paired with my classic cuteness, it made me just unusual enough to stand out. I won plaques and trophies. A bowling ball airbrushed with wild mustangs. Gift certificates to restaurants with names like the L & L Hitchin Post Inn and the Cow Town Caf. Momma entered me in every pageant within two hundred miles, and some even farther away than that. Wed spent the majority of my early life on the road, zigzagging through the state in Mommas little pink hatchback, from Sundance to Saddlestring, Evanston to Medicine Bow.

The final act of my pageant career could have happened in any one of those places. But to Mommas everlasting humiliation, I screwed up in our own backyard.

The Little Miss Washokey, Wyo., Pageantas the butcher paper banner affixed to the stage readwas held every spring on our schools great lawn. Id turn seven later that month, which meant the stakes were high: Momma said the winner of the Little Miss Washokey pageant would be eligible for the tri-county pageant in Benton. After that came the state pageant in Cheyenne. And after that, the nationals, which just might make me world famous.

Our talents had been showcased, our speeches recited, our hypothetical questions answered, and the dozen or so of us were packed onstage for the grand finale, which consisted of us bopping in our clashing dresses to music rasping from a tape deck. The wildwinds plucked at the curls of our hair, tugged at our skirts. Momma had pinned a lilac bloom behind my ear, and the wind tore it away.

I remember watching it whirl across the stage like a paper boat caught in an eddy of rainwater, my mouth hanging open.

That was probably when the wind got in.

In the beginning, pageants had been fun for me. Well, maybe not the pageants themselves, but everything that went with them: our exciting road trips, shopping and prepping, all that special time with Momma. But as each pageant season came and went, Momma grew more serious. Or maybe she didntmaybe shed always been dead serious about the pageants, and at almost seven, I was finally old enough to realize it.

Either way, as I watched my purple flower gust over the edge of the stage and disappear, I knew I wanted the fun back.

Momma never forgave me for what I did next.

I gathered the front of my yellow dress with both hands and, to her absolute horror, flipped it over my head.

The audienceparents, schoolteachers, old folks with nothing better to dogasped in unison. And maybe they sucked in too much wind themselves, because they all began to laugh. Their laughter encouraged me. Whoever was managing the tape deck cranked up the volume, and the other girls stopped dancing to watch as I bounced and skipped and twirled, waving my dress in the air. I kicked over the microphone stand with a bang. I even turned and shook my lacy white bottom.

Clutching at her lopsided french braid, Momma stumbled over the folding metal chairs and the people in them, her face puckered with fury. She marched onstage, shoved down my dress, and latched on to my arm. She didnt let go until she had dragged me around the corner of the old brick schoolhouse.

Whats gotten into you, Grace? Her face was inches from mine. Whyd you have to go and do that?

I licked my lips and tasted Vaseline. Spring fever, I suggested.

Momma usually chuckled at what she called my precocious remarks. But that time, she just mashed her lips together and shook her head.

Ive told you showing your panties in public is obscene. What were you thinking? You knew how important this pageant was! But you decided to make a fool of yourself in front of everybody and humiliate me, you, the entire family

Momma and I were the entire family. I stuck out my bottom lip and nodded at appropriate intervals, hoping she would hurry up and finish yelling so we could get home. Momma scolded me often, but we always hugged and made up.

It was then I noticed Mandarin Ramey.

Of course, I didnt know she was Mandarin, not yet. She was just a strange girl, standing a few yards away beneath a cottonwood tree, staring openly at us.

In one hand she held a lilac bloom. Her other hand was stuffed into the pocket of her jeansboys jeans, with patches on the knees. Dirt smudged her wind-chapped cheeks. Her skin was darkly tanned, but her eyes were pale hazel, the color of a glass of tea held up to the light. Her tangled black hair seemed to catch the wind, to ride it, like Pocahontas in the Disney movie. She looked like one of those feral children, raised by wolves or worse.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Mommas voice pierced through my trance. Are you listening to me? She gave me a shake. Have you heard a single word Ive said?