GEMMA BELROSE ♠ THE BRAT ♠ PATRON ♠ TWENTY-THREE
“…Swallow your pride, you will not die, it’s not poison.” Bob Dylan
“Hosting our parade is none other than our very own Miss Teen Catterville, who has taken it upon herself to, er, prepare a speech for her…appearance on the float.”
The crowd let out a collective snicker and snort when Little Miss Gemma Belrose, in her pink tulle dress and lipstick to match, patent leather kitten heels and shiny coin purse, marched up onstage and snatched the microphone from the announcer’s hand, pasted on a smile and gave her own cheeks a pinch for some extra pink.
“Well, it is just a pleasure to be here,” Gemma announced under some frightening combination of a gasp, giggle, and sigh. “I’d like to thank the pageant academy for such a great honor, my daddy and our very own handsome Catterville Mayor Belrose, Jesus Christ, and Faith Hill.”
And with that, she smiled so hard it came across more aggressively than a frown and swiveled her wrist as if she’d just gotten done meeting the queen. Forgetting that the microphone was still in her hand, she turned to one of the gowned girls behind her, the smile on her lips immediately dissipating to reveal the venom beneath. “Now get your fugly Mary Janes off my dress, Amy-Anne.“
Gemma knew from when she was very young that it was far better to be too much than not enough. For in a family of southern royals such as her own: Corinthian, the modern king; Anne, the white marble queen; and Crystal, her gilded, cold duchess of a sister, she’d either have to earn her title loudly or perish in the silence.
So she established herself as the Veruca Salt of Catterville, Georgia as quickly as possible, walking tall and demanding the world with a stomp and a smile. She was the most dangerous kind of girl - the awful sort of mean that pretended to be sweet. She charmed adults then turned around and ruined her peers with a just handful of words.
Gemma headed entire armies with tulle armor and silk-bowed steel. Soon, she was not just the most popular girl in school but the most popular girl in Caterville’s high society - a circle that, since her father had become mayor and transformed the town into an elite Southern haven, was quickly on the rise. But with all of her self-absorption and boastful talk, the click of her heels that sounded more like thunder than a song, her bullying tactics and fake tears, came a little girl who held the fear that she was not good at much of anything in her trembling palms. That she would never be talented enough, beautiful enough, or just plain goodenough without her loud looks, forced accent, and big attitude.
Gemma wore Debutant Queen, Spoiled Rotten like the pageant sash she’d donned when she’d altered the Miss Catterville pageant votes in her favor.
So if she didn’t have the fortune of being born the doe-eyed and soft girl that the world just gave things to, Gemma decided that she would take as she pleased, earning the Belrose manor’s right wing’s master bedroom - the biggest room in the house - for herself, talking her way to perfect report cards, assembling a herd of minions to fulfill her every wish and command, and breaking up relationships when she had her eyes set on a boy she found handsome, arm candy she kept under her heel with little care for whether the sweet nothings whispered in her ear were prompted by genuine love or a collar pulled into a chokehold.
It is better to be feared than loved, some say. Gemma? She was neither. She’d push and push and push until the rest of the world just couldn’t say no.
Of course, Gemma did have her weak moments. The frills she wore on the outside - dresses with big skirts, wide-brimmed flower hats, lipstick in shades of pink, and gloves laced at the wrist - matched whatever semblance of a heart she had hidden underneath. She was nothing more than a young girl who loved old movies ( clasped her hands together and mouthed the words to Casablanca in the dark ), slow dancing ( “You love me, don’t you?” whispered in the ears of boys who’d already told her the answer in their eyes ), and sitting out by the sprawling field in front of the manor’s porch, spinning around in her beautiful dress as the fireflies pecked light at her bare legs and some sweet ballad played from her phone on the wicker table.
Those were the moments her heart felt the fullest, her skin felt the weakest. And just as quickly as she’d allowed herself to be a girl, she’d stomp out the bug and curl her lip. “Disgusting.”
Gemma was just about to turn sweet eighteen, on the cusp of her entire life ( really, just a finagled admission ticket to Duke University and a boy with blue eyes lined up with an engagement ring ), when her sister Crystal - a girl who’d always been a half a stranger to her, so much older, so much stiffer, just a matching set of eyes across the dinner table or banquet hall - woke her up near midnight with her bags packed and the most emotion Gemma had ever seen the girl emit spilling over from her wide eyes.
“I’m leaving this town, Gemma, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll come with me.”
Gemma frowned, rollers tumbling from her blonde curls, that petulant scowl forever on her face. “Where are you going? And what business do you have waking me up at this ungodly hour?“
“The car’s waiting outside.”
There was a moment then that Gemma saw something other than the whole life she’d had planned for herself since she was a little girl: a degree she wouldn’t use, a husband that looked good beside her in photos, three kids ( two boys, one girl ), a white house on a hill like her family’s, a maid and a nanny, and getting together with the girls for manicures on Friday, book club on Saturday, and mojitos with face masks on Sunday.
Instead, she saw buildings, saw tire streaks, saw her hair tumbling loose from its bind, saw the horizon.
As it turned out, a moment was all it really took.
Crystal never did tell Gemma what happened that night. What she knew of it was caught from glimpses of the news channels that eventually forgot the disappearance of their hometown hottie Tanner Crowley and Catterville’s two lost golden girls.
In fact, she knew close to nothing ( a feeling Gemma was neither accustomed nor warmed to ) when they showed up on their estranged cousin Bruce’s doorstep at some odd warehouse flat in Lower Manhattan. The first year was miserable. She felt the loss of her friends, her boyfriend, her circle and title like mourning a loved one.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to pay our final tribute of respect to that which was Gemma Belrose’s social life.
She despised the gray of the city, the dullness of its people, the grime of its streets. Although Bruce and his strange ruggedness and Crystal with her sharp edges seemed to fit right in, she stuck out like a sore ( and ruffled ) thumb. Until, of course, it all took a turn for themagical.
Bruce and Crystal let Gemma in on the circus a few months after she turned eighteen, led her down a stairwell and into a world she’d only swooned over from the opposite end of her television set.
Beautiful elite spitting fire and spinning into clouds of confetti and dust - diamond ladies contorting into beams of light, handsome gentlemen in tailored and gorgeous suits that made every inch of her flush. And Gemma, who was so fond of popularity contests, saw it all as the social club of her dreams, heightened only by the news that her estranged family had descended from the circus’s founder himself, Quinn Fellows.
For all Gemma knew, she was the princess of Cirque Empire, and no one could tell her otherwise.
Five years since they knocked on Bruce’s door, Gemma has settled into her new life quite nicely. When she isn’t wining and dining Manhattan’s finest during the day, trying to claw her way into New York’s high society as she had Catterville’s, she’s schmoozing with the rest of the masses at the circus, waltzing in for the drinks and conversation, asserting herself to anyone who will listen - on the prowl for loyal subjects and a handsome beau to keep on her arm.
But most often, she’s feigning intellect and sophistication at the Fellows’ table, a group of aficionados who have deigned to adopt her family’s original name and fight in the running to become the next ring master. But with Bruce’s talk of their ownership and her tendency totake, that title is as good as Gemma’s.
Let the boys and girls play with their books.
Why know what you’re talking about when you can pretend to?
♠ CRYSTAL BELROSE ♠ SISTER In their family, Crystal was always this faraway entity, the cold and older version of the Belroses’ signature light features that Gemma seemed to both admire and frown upon from afar. Though there were never any nights spent up late braiding each other’s hair or advice given other than Crystal’s callous one-liners ( the age gap made it impossible ) about the cruelty of men and society ( sometimes both at once ), Gemma was always intrigued by her sister’s ability to hold her own and defy expectations in a way that she so obviously could not.
More often than not, Gemma pretends to loathe her sister for dragging her out to New York City and away from her social circle of fellow Belles and Southern gentlemen, but now that Gemma is of adult age, there isn’t a thing in the world that would make her return to Catterville.
Le Cirque Empire is and continues to be the biggest adventure of her life, and she owes that all to Crystal.
♠ BRUCE BELROSE ♠ COUSIN Never very close to her sister, Gemma always longed for an older brother, someone who’d look after her rather than try to raise a fellow wolf. Although Bruce is an odd character, a city cat who prefers the pale indoors, she appreciates his elegant, old world aesthetic and eloquent speech. Often, they bond with each other late in the night at the flat they share. Gemma will serve him a plate of strawberry ice cream to accompany her own, and she’ll let him ramble on about the circus as she only half-listens to gather conversation topics around the Fellows.
♠ ROSEMARY XYLOURIS ♠ FRENEMY Pinched smiles, babydoll dresses, shiny hair, and glossy eyes. Gemma and Rose are cut from the same desire for attention and affection. Though the two have had it out for each other from the moment they crossed paths at Cirque, each is well-versed in the strategy of keeping your enemies close. But with every spotlight shone in either direction, their pleasantries grow more cutting, their shopping trips more forced, and their grins as sharp as a wolf’s.
♠ THE FELLOWS ♠ COMRADES AND COMPETITORS One of these things is not like the other. The only Fellow who is nothing more than a patron at Cirque, it would be an understatement to say that Gemma shoved her way in. She knows that Bruce and Crystal want nothing to do with them, believing that the Belroses - Fellows blood - need no social club to announce their status at Cirque. But there isn’t a club in the world that Gemma can resist being a part of, and a small part of herself fancies herself a ring master’s coated gown and top hat over her curls - that she could be the one to return the circus to the Fellows name.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that she’s infatuated with the group’s self-proclaimed president Brett Fowler. Though theirs is a rivalry she doesn’t fully understand ( something murmured about a broken friendship between broken men ages ago ), she adores listening to him boast and bellow. It doesn’t matter that he shrugs her off and pinches her cheek so condescendingly that it stings. What Gemma wants, Gemma gets.
GEMMA’S FACECLAIM IS LILY JAMES &. FLEXIBLE. SHE IS TAKEN.
