Emily's Tiara Trouble Read online

  This morning I headed over to Chloe’s before school so I could measure the circumference of every piece of fruit in the diorama to make sure the ratios were perfect for each planet. They’re spot on.

  ‘Could all entrants please take their places by their projects,’ Ms Bayliss says.

  ‘Good luck, paidi mou,’ Yiayia whispers as Chloe kisses her and leaves us to stand by her diorama.

  I scan the other entrants. There’s twelve kids altogether with some impressive projects.

  ‘I think that papier-mache volcano might be Chloe’s biggest threat,’ I say. ‘What do you think, guys?’

  ‘Quiet, girls,’ Yiayia says. ‘The judging is about to start.’

  Ms Bayliss turns on a microphone. ‘I’d like to thank everyone for entering this year’s fair,’ she says. ‘It’s been tough to choose the finalists, but I’ve managed to narrow it down to four.’

  I hold hands with Bella and Grace.

  ‘The finalists are: Jeremy Kleban, Joshua Gardner, Liam Campbell…’

  I gasp. I think my heart skips a beat too.

  ‘…and Chloe Karalis!’

  Bella and Grace squeal.

  I exhale in relief.

  The unsuccessful entrants join the crowd while everyone sizes up the finalists.

  Jeremy has made a cardboard maze for a mouse, Liam’s grown a tomato seedling and Joshua built the papier-mache volcano.

  ‘That volcano does look good,’ Grace says. ‘Joshua will give Chloe a run for her money.’

  Ms Bayliss taps the microphone to get our attention. ‘All four finalists did a wonderful job, but there can only be one winner.’

  I cross my fingers and toes for Chloe.

  ‘There was one particular project that stood out,’ Ms Bayliss says. ‘And I think you’ll all see why in a moment. Lights, please.’

  We’re suddenly standing in darkness.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask.

  Yiayia chuckles. ‘You’ll soon see,’ she says. ‘My Chloe has a surprise for you.’

  Everyone cranes their necks to look up in awe. Ooooooooooh. Aaaaaaaaaah.

  Images of the actual planets and hundreds of stars glow from the ceiling.

  ‘Where is it coming from?’ Bella asks.

  ‘Chloe, of course,’ I say.

  I should’ve known she’d have more than fruit up her sleeve.

  The lights flick back on. Ms Bayliss pulls a blue sticker from her coat pocket.

  ‘Those images came from a homemade slide projector behind Chloe Karalis’s diorama,’ she says. ‘So, not only has Chloe introduced us to the world of astronomy through her diorama of the solar system, she has also used principles of physics by assembling a device that projects light onto a distant surface. I think we can all agree that her extra effort is deserving of first place.’

  Grace, Bella and I leap into the air and cheer with all our might.

  Yiayia lets out a hoot and does a little dance, which makes us all laugh.

  Chloe waves as Ms Bayliss slaps the blue sticker on Jupiter.

  Mission Lab Coat: complete.

  I wake up with a start.

  ‘Ava, it’s six in the morning! What do you want?’ I hiss.

  Ava is standing over me with her face so close to mine, I can feel her breath on my cheek. She looks as if she’s about to burst into tears. I didn’t mean to sound so harsh. I’m just sleepy, and Mum made me go to bed in hair rollers which have been digging into my scalp for about ten hours now.

  ‘I don’t want to go in the pageant,’ Ava says. ‘I’m not pretty enough. I won’t win.’

  My sister’s words make my heart ache. This is exactly the reason the Anti-Princess Club planned its fourth mission. No one should be judged on their prettiness. Especially five-year-olds like Ava.

  I pull back my doona and Ava snuggles up beside me. I think carefully about what to say. It’s too late for her to pull out of the pageant. Mum has already bought her dress and made all the arrangements.

  ‘Ava, you are the prettiest girl I know,’ I say. ‘But it’s all about maths. It depends on odds and averages.’

  Ava doesn’t understand. She’s only just mastering addition and subtraction, which is impressive for a five-year-old. But I try again.

  ‘The problem with these things is that it depends who the judges are on the day,’ I say. ‘The judges there today might think black hair is pretty, so because you have red hair, they might not give you a lot of points. Another judge on a different day might think red hair is prettier than black hair.’

  Ava sighs. ‘Well, can we find out what the judges like before it starts?’

  ‘No, that’s the problem,’ I say. ‘All you can do is smile and try to have fun. If you don’t win, it’s not your fault. If I was the judge, you’d win for sure.’

  It’s been a long night. I hosted a sleepover for the Anti-Princess Club so we could plot our final mission. Mum thinks the girls are here to support me in the beauty pageant – which they are, but not in the way she imagines.

  The other anti-princesses stir in their sleeping bags. Bella’s eyes are the first to open.

  ‘Good morning, beauty queen,’ she says. ‘Erk, beauty queen sounds even more spew-worthy than princess.’

  Mum is banging some pots and pans down in the kitchen. ‘Wake up, girls,’ she calls. ‘It’s pageant day!’

  Chloe and Grace make spewing sounds from their sleeping bags.

  ‘Let the final mission begin,’ I say.

  We get dressed and head downstairs to where breakfast is waiting for us.

  ‘Now don’t stuff yourself with food, Emily,’ Mum says. ‘You don’t want a bulging tummy in your pageant dress.’

  I ignore her and scoff three pieces of toast plus a banana. I also grab a yoghurt for the road.

  Mum snatches the yoghurt from my hands and herds us outside to her van. We all squeeze in between the hanging frilly dresses, shoeboxes and a silver briefcase.

  ‘Here we go,’ I whisper. ‘The final mission begins.’

  The trip to the hall where the pageant is being held takes about half an hour. None of the anti-princesses says a word for the whole drive.

  ‘You must be nervous, girls,’ Mum says from the driver’s seat.

  ‘Yup,’ I manage. It’s not a lie. I am nervous. I’m scared of the mission not working out.

  We pull up in a car park full of mums and daughters flapping around like noisy galahs. I wave goodbye to the anti-princesses at the main entrance as Mum puts her arms around Ava and me to direct us through the back door for contestants.

  What we walk into is like another planet. It’s a room lined with dressing tables and huge mirrors surrounded by light globes. There are twice as many girls as chairs, and everyone is scrambling to find a space to get ready.

  Mum grabs a chair and orders me to sit. I try to get up so Ava can take my place, but Mum gently pushes down on my shoulders so my butt can’t move.

  ‘Ava’s not onstage until later, Emily,’ she says. ‘We need to concentrate on you right now.’

  She snaps open the latches of her briefcase. There are pots of powder and glitter, tubes of lipstick and cream, and at least a dozen sponges and brushes of all different shapes and sizes.

  I sigh with relief when Mum starts to unravel the rollers on my head. As she takes them out, the unrolled strands spring up into spirals around my face like hundreds of tiny slinkies.

  ‘Don’t you just love it?’ Mum asks.

  Ava pulls a face and pokes her fingers into her mouth. ‘Mummy, why didn’t you just leave Emily’s hair the way it was? You always talk about how pretty it is, so why are you changing it?’

  I love my sister. She’s such an anti-princess in the making.

  Mum ignores Ava and takes a sponge out of the briefcase. She dips it in brown gunk and starts rubbing it on my forehead.

  ‘Yuck!’ Ava shrieks. ‘It looks like mud.’

  Mum plonks down the soggy sponge. ‘You’re not helping here, Ava.
I’m taking you to Emily’s friends. They can look after you in the main hall.’

  I freeze.

  ‘Act cool, Emily,’ I mutter to myself. ‘You can’t blow your cover now. The anti-princesses will figure out what to do with Ava.’

  Mum comes back into the dressing room and picks up the sponge. Before long my whole face is two shades darker. Then my eyelids are painted purple, my lips pink and my cheeks orange. If I was a circus clown, this might make sense.

  I can’t take my eyes off myself in the mirror – partly because I look so strange and partly because I’m too embarrassed to turn around.

  ‘My oh my, Emily, I could just eat you up!’ It’s Hungry behind me.

  ‘You remember Fiona, don’t you, Emily?’ Mum asks. ‘She’ll be onstage with you today.’

  I turn to face Hungry and wait for the rest of the girls in the room to point their fingers at me and start laughing. But they don’t. ‘All of you girls look so pretty!’ Hungry shrieks.

  I scan the room in disbelief. We all look the same. We all have gunk on our faces, big curly hair and glitter everywhere. Even our dresses are the same. There are different colours, but they’re all sparkly, pouffy and extremely uncomfortable.

  ‘Ten minutes, everyone,’ Hungry calls. ‘Finish off that make-up.’

  Mum looks edgy, but I feel a hundred times worse. Maybe a thousand times worse. No, at least a hundred thousand times worse.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you, Emily?’ Mum asks.

  ‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘You better go and get Ava. My friends will want to watch me when I’m onstage. They won’t be able to look after a five-year-old at the same time.’

  Mum falls for it. Phew.

  I suddenly feel an extra pang of guilt.

  ‘I love you, Mum,’ I say. ‘I hope you’ll be proud of me.’

  Mum gives me a light hug so as not to squash my dress and an air kiss to avoid smudging my make-up. ‘Of course I’ll be proud of you, Emily.’

  I make my way to the wings with the other contestants. The smell of hairspray makes me want to sneeze.

  I take my place behind twelve girls, all waiting for their turn to go onstage. Broadway-style, cheesy music starts to play over the loudspeaker before a voice drowns it out.

  It’s Hungry.

  ‘What’s your favourite place to go shopping, Pollyanna?’ Hungry asks.

  What boring questions. I wonder what she’ll ask me when it’s my turn onstage.

  ‘Psssst, Emily,’ Bella whispers from behind a curtain. ‘Are you ready?’

  The girl in front of me turns around. ‘What was that? Is there someone there?’

  We can’t get caught out. Not now when we’re so close to the stage.

  ‘It’s just my mum,’ I say. ‘She needs to fix something on my dress.’

  I slip behind the curtain where the anti-princesses are armed and ready.

  ‘Quickly,’ I whisper. ‘There’s only a minute or two at the most before it’s my turn.’

  Bella rubs my face with a washcloth and pulls my hair into a ponytail. Chloe unzips my dress and slips a T-shirt over my head. Grace helps me step into some tracksuit pants and sneakers.

  ‘And now, let’s welcome to the stage … Emily!’ Hungry booms over the microphone.

  ‘You’re ready,’ Chloe says. ‘Go now!’

  I step out from behind the curtain and zoom onto the stage before anyone has a chance to stop me. The music comes to an abrupt halt.

  I hear gasps and murmurs from the crowd, but I can’t make out what anyone’s saying. I force a smile at Hungry, whose mouth is gaping.

  ‘I’m ready for my question,’ I say.

  Hungry shuffles some cards in her hands and clears her throat. She looks horrified.

  ‘Um, well …ahem,’ she says. ‘Okay, Emily. What is your favourite fairytale?’

  I take the microphone from her hand and walk to the front of the stage. The lights are so bright that I can’t make out anyone’s faces. It’s probably a good thing that I can’t see Mum.

  I clear my throat and begin.

  ‘I don’t have a favourite fairytale. And that’s because fairytales aren’t very fair at all. My friends and I call them unfairytales.’

  Hungry calls from behind me, ‘Okay, Emily, you can leave the stage now.’

  ‘I’m not finished,’ I say into the microphone. ‘I need to explain why fairytales are unfair. They are unfair because the girls in fairytales are never the heroes. They’re almost always princesses who need rescuing by princes. That’s why my friends and I decided to form the Anti-Princess Club. We don’t want to be treated like princesses. WE. DON’T. NEED. RESCUING.’

  ‘That’s very nice, Emily,’ Hungry calls again. ‘It’s time to leave the stage now, thank you.’

  ‘One more thing,’ I say. ‘You know what else is unfair? Beauty pageants. Girls shouldn’t be judged on their prettiness. We’re all pretty, and we don’t need to slop gunk on our faces or wear silly dresses to prove it.’

  Hungry clears her throat and jabs her finger towards the wings.

  ‘And you know what else?’ I ask. ‘There are so many things that are way more interesting than being pretty. I bet there are all sorts of awesome girls in this room – awesome writers, trumpet players, high jumpers, skateboarders, even scuba divers. I know there is at least one awesome scientist, athlete and designer here.’

  The stage lights dim. Hungry is trying everything to get me out of the spotlight now.

  ‘Keep going!’ calls a familiar voice from the back of the hall.

  It can’t be. I shade my eyes with my hand and squint over the audience. It is. It’s my dad.

  ‘I, I…’ my voice quivers. ‘I want my mum and dad to know I love them. I’m not doing this to make you angry, Mum. I’m doing it to show girls that they don’t have to be princesses if they don’t want to.’

  I put the microphone on the floor and rush offstage past Hungry and her furious face. I think I might have seen actual steam shooting out of her ears.

  There’s a clap. Then another. Clap, clap. Clap. Clap. It turns into applause. It turns into cheering. It turns into chanting.

  ‘No more princesses! No more princesses!’ the crowd yells.

  I see the anti-princesses on the other side of the stage. They’re holding hands, jumping up and down and squealing. Bella gives me a thumbs-up.

  Mission Tiara: complete.

  Ava refused to go onstage after me, but luckily Mum was so happy to see Dad that it took the focus off us. He wanted to surprise us when he got home from his latest Army stint two days early.

  Dad is still very impressed by my speech. He says the look on Hungry’s face was hilarious, as if she didn’t know whether to snatch the microphone from me or let me speak.

  Even Mum admitted the whole pageant thing was a bit too stressful for her liking. All that build-up and competition gave her heart palpitations. She says I convinced her that kids shouldn’t be judged on their looks – even though she still insists Ava and I are the prettiest girls in the world. She also says she’s going to stick to beautifying grown women from now on.

  Of course, I didn’t win the pageant. It would have been very weird if a girl in tracksuit pants walked out with a tiara on her head.

  I did win a different sort of crown, though. The anti-princesses decided to make me the leader of the club. They figured every organisation has a president or a captain, and I guess they chose me because I called that first meeting that got it all started.

  It’s not just the four of us to organise now.

  It seems my speech inspired a few of the girls in the audience. Well, more than a few. The mathematical term would be one hundred and two. That’s right. The Anti-Princess Club has one hundred and two members plus Bella, Grace, Chloe and me – that’s one hundred and six altogether.

  About half of those members are girls who approached me at the pageant. But then my inbox got swamped after a video of my speech went viral online. There ar
e loads of new anti-princesses that I’ve signed up but haven’t even met in real life.

  Our treehouse isn’t big enough for everyone, so I came up with a new idea. I built a website that’s now an online club where members can chat to each other. Bella designed a banner and did a few illustrations for the homepage.

  Sometimes I help the younger members with maths homework in our chatroom, and Chloe jumps online if anyone needs help with science. Offline, a few of the anti-princesses from our school formed an Anti-Princess Club soccer team with Grace as their coach.

  The original club members still hold an official meeting at least once a week. We alternate between the treehouse and Chloe’s apartment because we love hanging out with Yiayia.

  Baklava, HQ, Lab Coat and Tiara were our first missions, but they won’t be our last. I can’t wait to see what crazy codenames will land in my notepad next. I wish I could come up with a formula or equation to figure out what our future missions will be.

  Whatever lies ahead, there’s one thing I’m certain of: we won’t need rescuing.