“Yes, of course,” Mary-Louise said. “I’m sure I won’t have any trouble.”
“That way.” The woman with the clipboard pointed right again.
Mary-Louise stepped away from the table. Girls were crowding in, pushing each other, but they were stopping well back from the tables. There was something intimidating about the tables. Mary-Louise had to admit it: There was something intimidating about a lot of the girls, too. She was sure she was dressed all wrong, but she couldn’t quite put a finger on why.
She went to the doors on the right. She looked across the lobby and saw that there were also doors on the left. This place was called a ballroom. Maybe they held dances here. Maybe there were dressing rooms. She had no idea.
She went through into a narrow corridor and looked around again. It was a shabby place. The carpet here was worn. The paint on the walls was faded.
The first room she came to was painted a sickly color of pink. There were already two girls in there, looking at magazines. The second room she came to was beigy-brown. It was empty, and it smelled a little bad, as if somebody had left a sandwich in the wastebasket overnight. She went farther along the hall and found it, the blue room.
Mary-Louise went in, and looked around, and put down her purse. There were windows. She went to them and tried to look out, but the only view she got was of a blank wall. She got her purse again and sat down in a big chair in the middle of everything. Then she took out her phone.
She was in the middle of calling her mother when she heard a voice from the hall that said, “Oh, for God’s sake.”
She looked up and saw a woman standing in the door, very thin and businesslike, running a hand through her hair.
“For God’s sake,” the woman said again. “You can’t have that here. Didn’t they tell you you couldn’t have that here? I don’t know what I’m going to do if they haven’t bothered to confiscate any of them.”
“Excuse me?” Mary-Louise said.
The thin woman came into the room and snatched the phone from Mary-Louise’s hand. “The phone,” she said. “You’re not allowed to have a phone. Well, a camera phone, actually, it’s the pictures she cares about, but this is a camera phone, isn’t it? Everything’s a camera phone these days.”
“Excuse me,” Mary-Louise said again. “It’s a very expensive phone. My boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday.”
“I don’t care if the pope gave it to you,” the thin woman said. “You’re not allowed to have camera phones in here, and you’re not allowed to have them at all during the competition.” She reached into the pocket of her jacket and came up with a small pad of Post-it Notes. “What’s your name?”
“Mary-Louise Verdt,” Mary-Louise said. “But—”
“You’ll get it back when you leave,” the thin woman said. “Honestly, I can’t believe they didn’t remember this. I hope all of them haven’t forgotten it. You said your name was Word?”
“Verdt,” Mary-Louise said. “V. E. R. D. T.”
“Right,” the thin woman scribbled something on the Post-it Note and stuck it to Mary-Louise’s phone. The woman’s hair seemed to have wired out and gone crazy in just the minute or so she’d been in the blue room.
Mary-Louise was wondering if she should make one more protest about the phone when another girl came up to the door, smiled faintly at the thin woman, and tried to squeeze in. She was a very unusual-looking girl. She was wearing almost nothing but leather, and she had seven piercings in the left side of her nose alone.
“What about you?” the thin woman asked. “Do you have a phone?”
The new girl looked confused. “Yes, of course I have a phone. Do you need to use it for something? I mean, I’m sure—”
“Show it to me.”
The new girl reached into an oversized purse that was very much like the one Mary-Louise had, and came up with a Samsung Propel.
The thin woman rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake,” she said. “You’re not allowed to have a phone.”
Then she took the phone, brought out the pad of Post-it Notes, and demanded that the new girl deliver her name. Mary-Louise didn’t really hear it. Everything was happening so fast, and the thin woman seemed to be angry.
“I’ve got to go out and stop them before they do more of this,” the thin woman said. “Then I’ve got to get people to confiscate all the phones. This is a complete load of crap. It’s going to hold us up for half an hour.”
Mary-Louise tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to her. Then the thin woman was gone. She’d left the door open, so that Mary-Louise and the new girl could look out into the corridor where girls were arriving from the lobby, all of them looking insecure.