Pretty Ugly: A Novel by Kirker Butler Page A

wedding ring and startled Bailey awake. “We’re here, sweetie! Get up and help me with these bags.”
    Bailey nodded. She knew the drill. She slipped on her shoes and grabbed a luggage cart from one of the bellmen by the front door while Miranda inventoried their bags. Every week there was more stuff: garment bags, makeup kits, hairpieces, photos, r é sum é s, crowns, camcorders, air-brushing system, self-tanner, eyelashes, shoes, back-up shoes, etc. Thank God Bailey was naturally (for the most part) beautiful, or they’d have to buy a full-size SUV.
    Maneuvering the luggage cart through the hardening artery of the loading zone, Bailey thought about Frogger. The game had become one of her favorites since winning a Nintendo DS at some pageant. She couldn’t remember which one. Currently, Bailey held twenty-four titles in six states, and she couldn’t name half of them. They had all become one big pink blur. She hated to think that her greatest accomplishments had come before she was even a teenager, but it was also difficult to imagine that she would ever do anything else in her life that would earn her a room full of trophies.
    When she reached the revolving door, Bailey found her mother, ashen faced, mouth agape, staring at a piece of paper taped to the window. Miranda snatched it from the glass and read it out loud to make sure she was as angry as she should be.
    “SHOOTING NOTICE”
    “Welcome! This weekend the Learning Channel (TLC) will be following several contestants from the Little Most Beautiful Princess Pageant for a reality show to air later this year (title TBD). By entering these premises, you are legally agreeing to be videotaped. Your image may be used for the program and/or for any promotion pertaining to the program. Cameras will be in the audience during the pageant as well as many of the backstage areas. Production assistants will be on hand to get signatures for release forms; however, because of the large crowd expected to attend, obtaining signatures from everyone will be impossible. Therefore, your attendance at the Little Most Beautiful Princess Pageant, and its surrounding activities, is an implicit agreement to be recorded. Thank you for your cooperation and good luck!!”
    “A reality show?” Miranda screamed to no one in particular. “Those filthy sons of bitches! They stole my idea!”
    For five years Miranda had been trying to convince a network, any network, that a reality show featuring her and Bailey would be the biggest thing on television. Beauty pageants were made for reality TV: pretty girls, cutthroat competition, and inspirational role models. Entertainment distilled to its purest form.
    “Aren’t there already a ton of pageant reality shows?” Ray asked one night as Miranda sat up in bed addressing envelopes.
    “Not like this one. This is a mother/daughter show. It’s called The Princess and the Queen .” She paused to let him tell her how great it was.
    “Cute,” he said, sluggish from an old Valium he’d found in a winter coat pocket.
    “I just think pageants are so much more interesting than the regular reality show garbage: Oriental people having a bunch of kids, or midgets going to work. I mean, good for them, I guess, but who cares, you know?”
    The idea, which came to her fully formed in a dream, was so perfect she had a treatment written before breakfast.
    THE PRINCESS AND THE QUEEN®
    A reality show by Miranda Miller
    “My name is Miranda Miller and I’m Miss Daviess County Fair, 1991!”
    Aside from my wedding vows, no words have made me prouder to say than those. I know firsthand what it takes to be a beauty queen, and that’s why my daughter, Bailey, has become one of the most successful pageant girls in America! But have you ever wondered what it takes to get there? Well, I’ll tell you, it takes two —a princess and a queen!
    And that’s why you’ll love our new reality show, The Princess and the Queen !
    Nothing is more American than family,