Free Going Off Script by Giuliana Rancic Page B

was great at signing my mother’s signature to fake excuse notes or report cards she never saw, but I didn’t have the patience for mass-production forgery. I stuffed the ballot box after letting myself into the front office after school with a key I’d gotten hold of in some clandestine manner several semesters earlier when I needed to do an emergency interception of interim report cards. Whitman was a huge school, and plenty of kids—my crowd included—would never be caught dead actually voting for something as lame as homecoming court. I correctly assumed that plenty of ballots would go to waste if I didn’t put them to good use. So I forged and waited. When they announced the homecoming court over the intercom, there was a noticeable pause before the final nominee’s name was read: “…and finally, Julie DePandi.” You could hear necks breaking in my classroom as each kid turned to look at me in disbelief. It was me and four straight-A, goody-two-shoes popular girls who couldn’t believe I was crashing their ball. I was not what Whitman considered queen material. “A little rough around the edges” would be putting it diplomatically. My friends were all laughing themselves sick, waiting for me to let them in on what was surely one of my infamous pranks.
“What a bunch of bullshit! What’d you do, dude?”
Forgetting momentarily that I had, in fact, rigged the vote, I wasdeeply offended. Was my nomination
that
unimaginable? “What do you mean? No!” I protested. “I don’t see what’s so funny. People
love
me!!”
    Needless to say, I came in a distant fifth.
    Older and much wiser now, I wasn’t about to watch my Miss USA/Universe dream crash and burn on takeoff. I suppose I could have gone back to Naples and tried to make my way to the Miss Universe stage as Miss Italy, but then who would my father heckle on TV? Besides, I had already played the Italian card once on the pageant circuit. That particular fiasco had been put into motion when my sister entered the Holy Rosary Miss Pomodora contest at our church. In her pink taffeta gown, Monica was by far the prettiest one—and the obvious choice to represent tomatoes in our parish—but the catechism teacher’s little sister won instead. I vowed to avenge my family’s honor and become Miss Tomato as soon as I was old enough. When that time came, however, I changed my mind: Nope, I was going bigger. I was shooting for Miss Italia USA! That was a real pageant, held in that American mecca of pageantry, Atlantic City. I pestered my mother into buying me a gorgeous black-and-white striped silk dress at Saks. I wish I still had that dress today; I would wear it on the red carpet in a heartbeat. The only way I got Mama to agree to spend so much money on it in the first place was to assure her that I would win and pay her back with my cash prize. Little did Mama realize, the dress cost far more than the money I would receive and I knew this. My secret plan would be to wear the gown with the tags still on, avoid perspiring, then return it after the pageant for a full refund. (Yeah, I know: if there had been a Miss Tacky award, I would’ve won it.)
    The gown looked fabulous, and maybe if it could have competed without me, it would have at least made runner-up. Not only did I lose, but to make matters even worse, Saks was on to me and refused to take the dress back. I confessed to Mama,who was fuming, but was more upset over a rumor she had heard about the winner being related to the organizer. Between Miss Holy Rosary Tomato and Miss Italia USA, we developed a full-blown conspiracy theory about pageants at the lower level being corrupt. This had Mafia written all over it, we concluded. I had milked, or possibly even started, rumors in high school that I was a Mafia princess, but this latest outrage forced me to sever all imaginary ties with them now. The Cosa was no longer Nostra. This despicable organized beauty pageant crime syndicate would be exposed for all