Tiffany Baldwin is nine years old and already nearly past her prime in the competitive world of child beauty pageants. She loves to sing and dance and perform, but she isn't as cute as she once was, and is realizing just how cruel some of the adults are. Pressure builds as the holiday-themed Pageant of Lights nears, and Tiffany realizes that something is changing about her. Something big, and bold, and terrible. Something that she must learn to control.

Pageant is a psychological pink horror novella that marries the nostalgia of the 1990s with the heart of Little Miss Sunshine and the terror of Carrie.