The buzzing starts when we hear the news. We don't spend much time wondering about the sound because we are too busy laughing. A beauty pageant? What the actual fuck? Our laughter crackles throughout the iron corridors and for a moment, we are warmed. There's no beauty in the Hive. Here, we got pus-colored cinderblocks. Pissy fluorescent lights that turn us into hags. The gun-metal grey of The Yard and the slap-hard faces of our keepers. Wayward teeth and plum-bruised eyes. Things that scream over and over: You have no right to beauty. Which we already know, have known most of our lives. So, we laugh until our stomachs seize and our ears ring and we get so dizzy we lean against the cold hard walls as if they are our friends.

But after the laughter wanes, the buzzing continues. At first, we think it's an electrical problem or insect infestation. Then we realize it's the pageant. Any mention of the word sets off a rattling buzz that lasts for hours. We feel it vibrating in plastic lunch trays and metal doors, rising through our rubber-soled shoes to shudder up our legs and jostle our hip bones. It clatters around in our heads, shaking loose strange and pointless thoughts: the lipstick color we used to wear-Morning Frost-or the scent of the perfume we stole from the drugstore in sixth grade. We become noisier, laugh louder, act wilder, but some of us sit on the thin mattress of our bunk or hunker down in a corner, fingers pressed in our ears, eyes winched shut.

We learn more. The pageant is anonymously sponsored and has met with great success in other countries, whatever that means. We don't have to participate, but if we do, we'd better not put even a pinky toe out of line if we know what's good for us. We are a test case. Hairstylists will come. Professional make-up artists. We can pick outfits from barrels of used clothes. We may invite family members, if they will come. One of us claps her hands over her ears, moaning, and is immediately thrown out. She has three daughters who never visit. The rest of us fall silent as stones.

We cannot wear belts. There is no prize.

A catwalk is erected in The Yard. A short rotund man glides in to teach us how to walk. His name is George but we dub him Thief because he is that smooth. We are not allowed stiletto heels, only flip-flops, but Thief says it doesn't matter, just throw our shoulders back, fix our gaze on a point in the distance, put one foot in front of the other. We walk. Hands soft! he shouts, and we uncurl our fists. Move like a river, ladies! And though we scoff, we try to image what it might be like to live easy in our bodies, to flow. We do not tell him about the buzzing, but he seems to know. When it gets to be too much, he comes over and holds our faces with his eyes.

The pageant has kicked up a ruckus: the community is outraged. Protests take place outside the Hive's walls. We watch social media reels in the rec room. Some people carry signs saying things like Penitence Not Pleasure! and There's nothing beautiful about crime! But others read: Rehabilitation, not Objectification: Stop the Exploitation of Female Inmates! We laugh so hard we would roll on the floor except it might mean getting booted from the pageant.

Pageant day comes. Our keepers watch as we pull on street clothes for the first time in months, years, decades. A silky midnight-blue dress. A pair of cut-offs. A velvet skirt that flairs when we twirl. A charcoal-grey pants suit. Corduroy overalls. Jeans and a plain white T-shirt. The buzzing shakes the Hive like a five-alarm bell, but we don't care. Today, we will let everything in. We giggle without shame and raise our faces to be painted. We let Thief tuck Morning Glory blossoms in our hair, behind our ears. We tell each other how beautiful we are and mean it. Then we stream down the catwalk, backs straight, gaze set on things far, far from here. The whole audience roars, even the keepers. Eventually, one of us is declared a winner but we can't remember who.



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