Charlie hated her life. Well, that wasn't exactly the truth because she had awesome best friends and a sister who would do anything for her, and she would do anything for them, too. But she hated that these friends forced her to go to things she would much rather avoid like the plague. Today, they forced her to go to Pretty Con, the convention for beauty gurus and everything that had to do with that type of stuff, while all she wanted to do was spend the day with the boys. 

"Why do I have to be here?" Charlie asked yet again, dragging her feet as she followed Paige and Frankie through the main area of Vuugle. "You guys know I hate things like this."

"Don't you want to support your sister?" Paige asked her, raising a judgmental eyebrow at Charlie. She stuck her tongue out at her. "Amelia wants to win Pretty Con for the fourth year in a row, Charlie. You need to be here for her."

"Amelia knows I hate this stuff," she answered. "She knows that I'm proud of her and everything, but this is not my type of thing."

"Mine either," Frankie agreed wholeheartedly. 

"We're here to make sure Amelia wins," Paige told them. She stopped walking and sent her best glare to Charlie and Frankie. It didn't intimidate Charlie in the slightest. She knew that Paige was a soft teddy bear, not someone who could hurt anyone, let alone a fly. "Then you two can go back to being haters, okay?"

"Fine."

The three of them continued walking through Vuugle, toward Amelia's station. Amelia, who was currently wearing that dazzling smile of hers, had a few people standing around her station, watching as she braided a girl's hair, teaching them how to braid better than what they had originally been taught. When Charlie used to have longer hair, Amelia would always try things out on her head since she could see it much easier. And it also made Amelia happy when Charlie was annoyed with her for being forced to play with her by their parents.

However, just as they all made it to Amelia's station, the girl sitting in the chair suddenly screamed as Amelia held her braid up in the air. Charlie frowned. Amelia was acting like she was going crazy. Was it because of the little girl's station across the way from here? A lot of the fans had flocked over to that station instead of to Amelia's station, and the people who had been here all went over to that station because of how Amelia just cut that girl's hair off.

"We need a plan," Frankie said after pulling Charlie and Paige away from Amelia, who was currently glaring at the cutest little girl Charlie had ever seen in her entire life. "If Amelia keeps alienating her fans, they won't vote for her, she won't win, and Paige and I won't be able to show our Bad Hair Day video."

"Okay," Paige said with a nod. "Charlie and I'll stay here and do damage control with Amelia. Frankie, you go out there and drum up votes for her."

Charlie was glad that Paige volunteered Frankie to go out into the horde of beauty girls. There was no way she wanted to go out there and die because of the intense girls who cared more about their appearance than anything else in their lives. Besides, she was always down to spend time with her best friend, and this was a great way to do that while also spending time with her crazy sister.

"Out there?" Frankie asked. Her chest started heaving while she began hyperventilating. Unfortunately for Charlie, the two of them were very similar in the sense that they hated any type of beauty con or pageant or fashion show. "Into the pretty?"

"Or I could go out there and you could stay with Amelia and Charlie," Paige replied.

All three of them glanced over at Amelia to find her holding a compact in her hand as she stared at Didi, who was showing almost all the fans here in the main area of Vuugle how to put in pink extensions in their hair. Suddenly, Amelia squeezed the dark compact so hard that it shattered into a million pieces as she yelled, "I will not lose to you!"

Frankie looked absolutely terrified to head into the crowd of crazy girls, but she also looked like she didn't want to stay with Amelia even more. Before Charlie could stop herself, she said, "I'll go get these freaks to vote for Amelia. You two do damage control, okay?"

"Are you sure?" Paige asked her before she could step into the frenzy. Her brow was creased as she looked at her. "It's crazy out there if you don't know how to handle it."

"Thanks for offering me to the wolves," Frankie said with a roll of her eyes, "but you're worried about Charlie. I see who your favorite friend is, Paige."

"I'll be fine," Charlie told her. "I will try to get as many people as possible to vote for Amelia while you two fix her."

Charlie stepped into the crowd of crazy fangirls and started hyping Amelia up to all of them. It was pretty easy because most of these girls knew who Amelia was and had watched all her videos multiple times through. The next group Charlie walked to was some of the up-and-coming beauty gurus to try to get them to vote for Amelia instead of Didi. That was a mistake, though.

"Oh, look, it's someone who desperately needs our help, ladies," the first girl said when she saw Charlie make her way over to them. Charlie frowned at them. Was that how they wanted to create fans by being rude to them? "She needs a lot done to look perfect, but we are the best people around. Thank you for using our service."

"I'm not here for a makeover," Charlie told them quickly. She didn't want them to reach out for their tools, so she had to explain this to them as quickly as possible. "I actually was wondering if --"

Charlie felt all the girls converging on her, all talking over each other, trying to get her to try their makeovers for various beauty trends that she had no idea what they meant. All she knew was that all the different scents of perfumes that wafted over from the girls attacking her was making her head go all dizzy. There was no way she was going to pass out in the middle of these crazy girls, though, so she pulled her shirt over her nose and took a few deep breaths of the filtered air, trying to figure out how to get out of the horde before she lost her mind.

She couldn't find an opening at all through these people. It was like they were glued to each other, preventing her from getting out of the multitudes. Her breath was caught in her throat when she realized that these girls weren't going to leave her alone until she allowed one of them to experiment on her, to change her appearance since she didn't look like the "normal" girl with long hair and painted nails and dresses. 

The crowd suddenly parted as Paige pushed her way through the girls, reaching out for Charlie. She accepted Paige's outstretched hand, and the two of them forced their way out of the crowd together. Charlie took a few deep breaths as they made their way over to a less crowded corner.

"Thank you so much, Paige," Charlie said with a breath of relief. She hugged her quickly. "I thought I was going to die in a cloud of perfume and smoke."

Paige giggled to herself as she pulled out of the hug. "You just have to be strong, you know?"

"Okay, we both know you're not strong at all. I could use you as one of my weights."

The two of them laughed together. Charlie was glad that Paige was her best friend because they could always laugh together about the most random things. She had brightened her life ever since she met her, and she wouldn't give that up for anything. 

"I was thinking you and I could work together to get everyone to vote for Amelia," Paige explained to her after their laughter subsided. "You need all the help you can get in this environment."

"You left Frankie with Amelia?"

"Yeah, I did."

"The only person who can help her now is God because Amelia is not mentally stable right now."

"That's also why I came to find you." Paige shivered. "Amelia is going crazy because she's afraid of losing."

"Then let's go get her more votes!"

Paige and Charlie set off together toward the crowds of beauty girls. This time, though, Charlie wasn't scared to head into battle. She had Paige with her this time, and that meant everything to her. She could face these girls -- anything, really -- with her best friend by her side.