Mrs. Bookbinder cleared her throat. “I’m so pleased to announce that our Miss South Haven 1951 is—” She turned and smiled at Betty then returned her attention to the audience. “Miss Stern’s Summer Resort—Miss Betty Stern!”
Cameras flashed. Betty saw only bright lights. She was shocked—but was she really? She was rendered speechless as someone removed her Stern’s sash—wait! Maybe she’d wanted to keep it—and laid another sash over her head, onto her shoulder, and across her body, and smoothed it over her chest and hips. She had no idea who was touching her, but she supposed it didn’t matter. She’d won.
Betty was Miss South Haven.
Someone placed a bouquet of at least two dozen red roses into her arms, and someone else set something on her head. Oh! A tiara! She lifted her chin just a smidgen, so it would stay on for all the photographs. The photographs that would be published in all the newspapers. All the newspapers that would mention her grandparents’ resort. She wished she could see their reactions.
Betty walked to the middle of the runway. Was this what it was like to be a movie star, or Princess Elizabeth? Her thoughts zoomed to Nancy Green in Europe, or the Europe Betty imagined from films and books. Ice water surged throughout Betty’s body, leaving her cold, and woozy, and wondering. Another flashbulb popped just as she turned to look at Nancy.
A swirl overtook Betty’s stomach and moved into her throat. The nausea goes away. How did Nancy know Betty was nauseated?
She’d also been light-headed, and her new dress hadn’t fit. Come to think of it, most of her blouses had become tight across the bust.
No, please no!
“Excuse me, I have to go,” Betty said. She whirled around. The microphone stand wobbled as she pressed her bouquet onto Nancy’s chest, not knowing or caring if it had fallen to the ground.
When were her last monthlies?
Betty jerked herself away from random hands trying to hold her back. “I have to go.” She was going to vomit. Betty pushed aside a burgeoning crowd of well-wishing girls. She dashed down the stage steps. Her tiara slipped off, but she didn’t stop to retrieve it. Yes, she was going to throw up.
“Betty!” yelled either Zaide or Joe. She couldn’t tell. Their voices were the only way they were alike.
Betty kicked off her pumps and ran down the aisle toward the front of the pavilion. As she reached the door and strode outside, she heard the fuzzy thuds of someone tapping the microphone.
Betty ran to the edge of the beach, stopping short. She vomited onto the ground. Empty, she moved with ease and without a churning stomach or spinning head and stepped onto the sand. It wasn’t pale and warm and soft, no longer able to cradle her if she lay upon it. It stretched out in front of her, cold and wet like she imagined quicksand to be, ready to drink her in and swallow her up. The lake ahead was calm, but ominous, not wondrous. Betty stared toward the lighthouse, a beacon not only for ships. If she stared at its immense sturdiness, perhaps the ground would stop shifting beneath her feet. She swayed, legs like spaghetti, so she lowered herself to the ground, sand sticking to the vomit on her hem. Nannie would be mad. Betty heard the echo of Abe’s voice faraway behind her while the lighthouse faded into pieces as if she were looking at it through the broken colors of a kaleidoscope. The bright blue day dulled to ominous gray.
Then everything went dark.
Chapter 23
BOOP
Boop wore white linen pants and a deliberately wrinkled lavender tunic. The crinkly cotton prompted her ironing instinct, but pressed, smooth, stiff fabric wasn’t the style. She had swiped a pale-pink color across her lips, just enough to be summery but not so pale as to match her lips to the skin on her face. She’d seen that look in a magazine and thought the models looked washed out.
“You look so pretty,” Hannah said as she walked into the living room. Her hair had been trimmed into a long blunt cut, and she’d let it dry with its natural wave, but it didn’t look messy. Her loose knit navy T-shirt dress had no holes. Boop wouldn’t say it aloud, but Hannah already looked like someone’s mommy.
“You’re all dressed up,” Hannah said.
“This isn’t dressed up. Not really.” Boop thought back to the days of hose and heels, satin and silk. “I was thinking you could drop me off to see Georgia and then hightail it out of here and go home to Clark. He’s back in Kalamazoo, I take it.”
Hannah smiled. “Yes, he is.”
“Well, you were right. The good outweighs the hurt with Georgia. And I have lost enough people I loved.” Nannie, Zaide, Marvin, and too many friends. When she was a little girl, she’d lost Tillie and Joe. Boop wasn’t going to lose Georgia. Not while she had a choice.
“That’s one bit of good news this morning. Here’s another.” Hannah placed a small pink tissue-wrapped bundle onto Boop’s lap.
“What’s this?” Boop’s heart rate quickened. She knew.
“Open it,” Hannah said.
Boop needed only to unfold one flap and see a pink edge with a fragment of embroidery to know for sure. It was her Miss South Haven 1951 sash. Despite all of the yearning, she hesitated to look at it, let alone touch it. She laid her hand on her chest as if pledging allegiance to the flag, and her heart pounded, maybe as rapid and strong as it had the day her name
