There were two hundred people exactly in the town of Boastenville. One hundred and ninety-nine of them were people who considered themselves the very best in absolutely everything. One hundred and ninety-nine of the most competitive, most talented, most intelligent, most amazing people to ever be.

And then there was her.

Georgie Freedman, who only lived in Boastenville since her mother — self-proclaimed as being the best child birther ever — delivered her by herself while also cooking dinner and cleaning the house and packing up orders for her homemade candle business, all before the other citizens of Boastenville could remind her that no one could reside within city limits unless they were specifically invited and of course all invites had to be approved by the insanely talented city board, which was the most efficient and organized city board to ever exist.

But there Georgie was, having come into the world on the kitchen floor of the house her mother built herself and ultimately causing, as her mother liked to remind her, the biggest and best drama the town had ever seen. In the end, Georgie was giving resident status by default and allowed to stay because not even Boastenville wanted to kick out an innocent baby. But it was still done reluctantly and came with constant scrutiny, everyone in town forever waiting for the day when she would be good enough at something to actually fit in with the other one hundred and ninety-nine people.

Not that Georgie wanted to fit in with any of them, apart from her mother. Life was hard enough as it was with people just knowing where she came from.

“You live there?” People would always ask. Some with disgust (“Unfortunately,” she would reply), some with curiosity (“Long story,” she would say) and some looking overly impressed (“Born into it. Don’t get too excited,” she would tell them), but there was never anyone who didn’t know about Boastenville and what it stood for.

“You live here,” her best friend in the entire world, Sebastian Forester, said the day she finally brought him home to meet her mother.

She’d shrugged. “Yeah, this is it.”

“Hmmm,” he’d said. “I was expecting more.”

She’d laughed at that. “I always do too.”

She’d taken him to dinner at the best Italian restaurant in the world, the one built by the world’s greatest architect who had recreated the Sistine Chapel but made it look like it was made of spaghetti.

“Interesting choice,” Sebastian said.

They’d gone inside, and the chef had hurried to greet them before he’d realized who they were. His face fell visibly, like it always did when she dared to show her face in town.

“It’s you,” he said disdainfully.

“And I brought a friend,” she said.

“Lovely,” the man muttered grumpily.

“Why do you let them treat you like that?” Sebastian asked her that night. “Why not just prove them wrong, once and for all?”

“No,” she said. “I’m not going to give them the satisfaction.”

Sebastian sighed. “I hate that you have to live like this though.”

“I’ll be eighteen soon enough,” she said, and she would be. The magic age where she could leave home, go where she wanted, be known perhaps for who she was and not where she was born. The dream really.

The greatest dream in the world if she were being honest.

And so Georgie kept living in Boastenville, because her mother did, and she was the greatest daughter in the world, or so her mother proclaimed, but Georgie didn’t have the heart to explain how she was wrong in this case, nor did she have anywhere else to go.

But she did have Sebastian, who made life bearable, and with his help and the help of her mother’s, they all planned Georgie the greatest eighteenth birthday party the world had ever seen.

“Why do all these people even want to come to your party?” Sebastian asked her as the world’s largest tiger was led through the backyard.

“Because it’s Boastenville,” she answered. “And none of them can resist a competition.”

Nor, she knew, could they resist the 100-pound golden trophy that was displayed next to the stage, proudly declaring “The Best of the Best.”

And she was right. Once the clock struck five o’clock, the guests started arriving, decked out in their fanciest dresses and classiest suits and heels so high they could almost have been stilts. Women wore jewelry that cost thousands and men did the same with watches and cufflinks. Everyone decked out in only the best, talking about the best things they ever did with the other bestest people they knew.

By most accounts, the party was a success. Wine flowed and the food disappeared and the guests laughed and told increasingly loud stories about their proudest moments. Some of the attendees even deigned to tell Georgie happy birthday while pointedly looking away from her simple gown and bare nails and unjeweled body. But sure enough, when her mother took the microphone, to announce the best of the best competition had started, every single person was gathered around the stage, jittery with excitement.

They started with the strongest. The man who could lift his body weight, and then the next man who could lift twice his body weight. The man who could lift three times the first man’s body weight, and on they went, until they got to the man who claimed he could do ten times his body weight, which was more body weight than any other man who claimed they were the strongest.

Georgie stepped forward then, away from the shadows at the backside of the stage where she had been standing with Sebastian and watching the show. She pointed to one of the limousines that had brought the guests to her party.

“I can lift that car,” she said.

For a moment, there was silence. And then someone tittered, “Going for best liar, are you?”

“That’s not even a great lie!” someone else shouted, and the crowd laughed. But Georgie only smiled as the man doing ten times his body weight was awarded a point.

Next up were the fastest. The man who could run a mile in three minutes and forty-two seconds, one second faster than the current world record. The next man who could do it in three minutes and forty-one seconds. The one after that who only needed forty seconds after three minutes. On and on they went, until once again Georgie spoke.

“I can do a mile in less than a minute,” she said. And again there was silence.

“Get better lies!” someone yelled, and the crowd laughed, and Georgie smiled.

And she kept smiling as the night went on, even when no one believed her when she said she could throw the farthest and jump the highest and do the most flips without her feet ever touching the ground.

Finally, as the night started to approach the day after Georgie’s birthday, the boasts from the crowd wound down and the whispers that perhaps it was time to crown the winner started to be heard.

“I agree,” Georgie’s mother said, having taken back the mic and resumed her place as official hostess.

She walked over to the hundred-pound golden trophy and stood beside it. “The winner of the best of the best competition,” she declared proudly, as the top name on the board with the listed points began to blink, “is my daughter, Georgie!”

The boos were instantaneous. The shouts of anger. People began to shove forward. The man who thought he’d won shouted more curse words than Georgie had ever heard.

“You can’t do this,” someone yelled as another reached for the trophy. But Georgie’s mom was faster and she lifted it easily into her arms before tossing it across the stage to her daughter, who caught it like it was nothing. Then, with the same smile she’d had all night, Georgie tossed it into the air — so high no one could even see where it went — before she shot up into the air after it, performing twists and flips as she went, each one perfectly executed.

She landed on the back of the giant tiger, who turned its head and licked her gently before letting her nuzzle it. Then she slipped off his back, the trophy still in her arms.

The entire population of Boastenville had gone silent, mouths open in shock, eyes wide.

“But you’ve never boasted about anything,” came an incredulous voice, and Georgie turned her head, meeting first Sebastian’s eyes and then her mother’s eyes from across the stage.

And she smiled then, at the woman who had known the truth and never said a word, and at the best friend she ever could have asked for.

“Why,” Georgie said, turn back to the rest of Boastenville, “should I ever have even had to?”




Fiction.



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