Wanting Sheila Dead(39)

Girls clapped. Girls yelled. Girls screamed. Coraline had seen it on the show. She didn’t understand it.

“Get ready,” Johnny Rell said. “One. Two. Three. Go.”

Somebody screamed again. Everybody rushed for the doorway at once. Coraline didn’t stop to wait for Deanna. They were always telling you that this was not a place to make friends. This was a place to fight to win. Coraline was not very good at that.

Everybody started up the stairs at once, too. They were like a herd of stampeding bison, and once they got upstairs to the hallway leading to all the bedrooms they were even worse. Coraline raced past that black girl and past Grace Whoever-she-was and ran into the room she shared with Deanna. Her clothes were all hanging up carefully in the closet. It made her crazy. She never got dressed this fast. She always consulted with somebody, and took a long time choosing between things. She always asked her mother.

“Not too fancy,” she said, under her breath.

“What?”

Deanna was in the room, too. They were both standing in front of the same closet.

“Nothing too fancy,” Coraline said. “You see them on television, you know, going to lunch places. If they go to some big event like the Oscars, they’re all dressed up, but when they go out to lunch they just wear stuff. Jeans. T-shirts. Nothing fancy.”

Deanna stared. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right.”

Coraline knew she was right. She had a good pair of jeans, her one really expensive pair, from Calvin Klein. She put those on and then went through her T-shirts to find the one that fit the best. It was hard to know what to do. She had an expensive T-shirt to go with the expensive jeans, but the expensive T-shirt didn’t fit all that well. She finally grabbed a bright red one that said COKE—THE REAL THING! on it in swirly letters. It covered her like paint.

Coraline raced to the vanity table. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup under ordinary circumstances. She didn’t think she needed to. That would work here, too. These people wore enough makeup not to look bad in photographs, but not enough to look like clowns. She put on a pale lipstick and then some gloss over it so that her lips shimmered. Then she got up and started running again.

She got to the downstairs foyer just before Deanna and just after the black girl, who looked like she was participating in a freak show. She had her hair frizzed out beyond belief and enough kohl around her eyes and mascara on her lashes so that she looked half dead. Coraline backed away a little and bumped into the Asian girl.

“I don’t understand how she ended up in the house at all,” the Asian girl said. “She isn’t going to win this competition. You can see that she isn’t.”

Coraline made a strangled little noise. “Most of us aren’t,” she said. Which was true.

The Asian girl made a little noise and turned away. Coraline found herself next to Ivy Demari again. She told herself that it was really all right. Ivy was odd looking, but she was very nice. It was better to be next to her than to Grace.

Grace was standing right near the front door, so that anybody who came through them was sure to see her. She looked defiant.

“Do you think there’s going to be another fight?” Coraline asked Ivy.

“With Grace?” Ivy shook her head. “Sheila’s had Grace on a platter already once today. She won’t do it again to the same person.”

Coraline shrank back a little.

It was just at that second that the front door opened, but instead of the limo driver, it was Sheila Dunham herself who came in. Coraline shrank back yet again. Sheila Dunham was such an unpleasant-looking woman. She was too thin, in the wrong way. And her mouth always turned down.

And she stalked.

Coraline sucked in air.

“Take the earrings off,” Sheila said to Mary-Louise Verdt. Mary-Louise put her hands up to her ears and unfastened her big gold hoops.

Sheila went past Grace without stopping. Coraline could hear the collective sigh of relief when it came. She was pretty sure she participated in it.

Sheila went past three more girls, looking them up and down. She stopped at Janice Ledbedder and walked around her. Then she moved on. Janice looked ready to faint.

Coraline was feeling a little better than she had. This was not too awful. There was no screaming. Sheila didn’t act like a crazy woman all the time. This looked like it was going to be one of her calm periods. If only they could get out the door and into the limousine. If they could get this challenge started, Coraline was sure she’d be just fine.

Sheila inspected Andra Gayle, but didn’t say something. Still, Coraline thought, you could practically see the contempt on her face. Sometimes, on the show, Sheila reduced girls to tears just by looking at them.