I was in a department store with my mom. It was dim inside, the displays were rather lopsided and messy, and the carpet was red and nearly threadbare. I didn't recognize the store, though my mom seemed to know her way around. She told me to steer clear of the salespeople trying to get contestants for the Miss USA Pageant.
"They're having a rough time getting contestants this year," Mom explained. "They're having to recruit people from malls all over the country."
I didn't mean to get swept up in the beauty pageant thing, but the next thing I knew, I was standing on wooden risers that reminded me of the ones we used in middle school chorus. There were lots of us standing before a group of judges in the department store. It was an odd mix of people: some were familiar to me, some were faces from the past, some were fictional characters I write about in my novels and short stories, and some I had created solely for the purpose of the dream. We were all supposed to sing for the judges. I was surprised when I tried singing the soprano part in an operatic aria... and hit all the high notes perfectly and effortlessly. After that, the whole group danced to "One" from A Chorus Line.
From this point in the dream, I felt as though I was writing a story about the contest as well as being a participant in it. I had planned the outcome of the pageant, and I could feel the thrill I often get from imagining a story's plot in my head. I was onstage, grinning fiendishly because I had planned the list of ten finalists. The names were being read, and one girl I knew from high school was so confident that she was going to be named a finalist that she actually stood at the front of the stage. I was laughing to myself because I knew she'd be horribly embarrassed when her name wasn't called. I didn't like her much in high school, so I had consciously made the decision not to put her on the list of finalists. Since I had all the control over the pageant, I figured there would be no harm in making myself a finalist. So I did.
We began practicing for the real pageant after the finalists were named. People were assigned songs to sing and dances to perform. There was even a guy who had been named a finalist, and he was going to sing a song from Cabaret to open the show. All the people who hadn't been in the top ten were supposed to be background dancers.
My fictional character Victoria Cabalini took the stage after the guy was done singing. She sat on the front riser with a pair of bongo drums and started singing Dar Williams' "In Love But Not at Peace." I woke up before she was able to finish it.
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