While Veruca had been able to comport herself more than before, this change in attitude had nothing to do with her realizing she was a grown adult in a public space and throwing a tantrum like a toddler was unacceptable but because she got to reminisce about the time she was acknowledged as the fairest of them all by a panel of judges. It did not matter that it was so obvious that her father had rigged the pageant so that she would win, she simply excluded that fact from her memory and essentially rewrote history to claim she was crowned Miss Universe Great Britain 2013 because others realized that she was the most beautiful creature to ever walk the earth. Now, all of this would have been fine if it stayed confined to the mind of the little brute where reality is more twisted than a Slinky, at least there her delusions did not hurt anybody; but due to Charlie's prodding for details about her life after the tour of the factory he accidentally ruptured the brat's tailor-made reality with his clarification of her obviously untrue recanting of history, and now he had to suffer the consequences for doing so. Even though the little brute was not above getting into a physical altercation to shut up one of her critics, fortunately for the Good Boy, Veruca felt she could get Charlie to see things the way she did by venting her frustration with how things ultimately went for her at the Miss Universe pageant. Although, her telling him this story was never meant to get this emotional, originally the brat was just going to brag about how she was the most beautiful beauty queen ever, but her fellow Golden Ticket winner had to ruin her moment with his pesky clarifications and logic.
And after getting angry over an attack on one of her proudest achievements, she unfortunately had reached the part of the story that infuriated her the most, which led her to disclose to the Good Boy, "The domestic competition crowned me in the summer in Birmingham and then I was off to Moscow in November for the Miss Universe pageant. You should have seen the other contestants; it was like walking into a kennel. Anyone with half a brain would have been able to see that I was surely the most beautiful contestant of them all. But do you know what those bastards did? They crowned some skank Miss Universe and they didn't even make me runner-up, they buried their lead. You know what they ranked me? Number 11. Number 11! I'm not Number 11, I'm Number One!"
The little brute tried to relive her days as a beauty pageant contestant as little as possible because of how much it hurt having to face the fact that she was not the most beautiful woman on the planet, but when she did remember it infuriated her, it made her stomp her feet on the floor and flail her arms in the air like a toddler, all the while screaming entitled, self-validating nonsense, such as, "I'm Number One! I'm the best! I'm the prettiest! I'm supposed to be the winner! I'm supposed to be Miss Universe!"
Charlie could feel the eyes of everyone else in the restaurant descending on him, piercing his soul like spears for failing to keep this adult woman stable and acting her age in a dining establishment, and with the stares not lifting he pleaded with her in hopes of getting her to stop, "All right, all right, calm down. I'm sure you were really pretty."
"No! The prettiest! I am the prettiest!" Veruca screamed back, correcting the heir as she grabbed the table and began shaking it side to side, luckily Charlie reached out and grabbed both of their glasses so that the hibiscus tea would not spill, or the glass fall and shatter.
"Of course, Veruca, the prettiest," Charlie nervously replied as he grabbed and squeezed both of Veruca's wrists and told her what she wanted to hear, in hopes it would quell her rage at what happened in the past.
Apparently, hearing confirmation that she was in fact the most beautiful woman out of an international competition of beautiful women was what she needed to calm down. With the tantrum having subsided, the other patrons returned to their dinners and most likely gossiped about the out-of-control couple next to the mural of canoes in a swamp. But even though he had just seen what happens when the brat remembers her loss, Charlie was still curious to know how it all went down, and so he carefully asked, "So, tell me, why do you think you lost?"
The brat was all too eager to respond and cast blame onto someone besides herself, and so she asserted, "Many reasons, all those other whores probably seduced the judges and they cheated me out of my victory. I tell you, that whole trip was terrible, I couldn't even get a good night's sleep the night before."
"Why? What happened?" Charlie asked rather concerned and unable to dismiss that last claim as the delusions of a spoiled brat.
Veruca began recanting the events that led up to the Miss Universe pageant in 2013 for Charlie, going into detail about something that occurred in her accommodation during the trip. The Salts stayed at the Ritz-Carlton, Moscow, one of the priciest hotels in the Russian capital because only the most luxurious lodge was acceptable for bratty Veruca. If the little brute had it her way, she and her father would have stayed in the most luxurious room the hotel had to offer, Room 1101-The Presidential Suite. Unfortunately, that room had already been booked for the night before and the day of the pageant, so they were left staying in Room 1102, just another high-end luxury suite that was still better than most hotel rooms, or homes for that matter, in Moscow, but not the best room. Oh, was Veruca furious when Mr. Salt had to break the news to her, the only way he could get her to calm down was by giving her the master bedroom all to herself. That is not to say she would not have staked a claim to the master bedroom if they had stayed in The Presidential Suite; no matter where they stayed, whenever the Salts were away from home Veruca always scoured their accommodations for the best room and christened it with a loud MINE! And while the master bedroom in 1102 had many of the same amenities that the one in The Presidential Suite had, like a gold-toned bed and a view of the Kremlin and Red Square, it was never going to be good enough for the brat.
Veruca went to sleep early that night, but at some point later on she was awakened by the giggles of two distinct women and another particular voice, a very odd and rather cartoonish man's voice, eliminated from the other side of the wall, telling the two women, "Oh, yeah! That is right, pee all over that bed, get it all wet!"
"What the...?" Veruca blurted out as she removed her pink eye mask to see around her room, only to realize the voices she was hearing came from the other side of the wall.
Wearing a pink silk pajama blouse and matching pants, Veruca got herself out of bed and got closer to the wall that separated Room 1102 from The Presidential Suite, and placed her ear on the wall, where she heard the man's voice cry out, "Get it all drenched, this is how the Blacks sleep, in beds covered in piss! You know, Opolo isn't even a legitimate president, he was totally born in Kenya, believe me!"
Veruca was not interested in finding out what was happening on the other side of the wall, she just wanted to relax without any distractions, and she manifested her frustrations by banging her balled up fists on the side of the wall in order to get her neighbor's attention, and screamed, "SHUT UP! I'm trying to sleep over here!"
The guest in The Presidential Suite did not seem to notice Veruca's complaint, instead he seemed to be focused on the events playing out in his room and asked the two women with him, "You don't think they got cameras in here, right?"
With no response to her request, Veruca stormed out of the master bedroom in utter frustration at the event, and as she made her way down the hallway of Room 1102, she loudly grunted, "UGH!"
The little brute made her way to one of the guest rooms where Mr. Salt was sound asleep, but despite that, Veruca had no problem disturbing his slumber so that he could fix whatever problem had arisen in front of her like she had done for years. Once inside the room where her father was, the brat began kicking the mattress and screaming, awakening and startling the elderly gentleman in the process, "Daddy! Go over there and make them stop! I can't sleep with them screaming!"
In an ironic twist, Mr. Salt ignored his daughter's screams the same way the other guest in The Presidential Suite ignored her screams before and went back to sleep, but not before telling her to do the same. Veruca threw another tantrum in the guest room, but seeing as her father ignored her, she rushed back to the master bedroom, slammed the door shut and jumped back into bed where she pressed her pillows on her ears in hopes of blocking out the noise that kept her awake. Even though the noise emanating from The Presidential Suite eventually ceased, Veruca was still too furious to fall asleep immediately, leaving her not fully rested on the day of the pageant.
Seeing as she placed 11th in the international competition, Veruca left the pageant utterly pissed and no longer wanted anything to do with Miss Universe or Moscow, telling Charlie, "I came back home the day after the pageant, why stay where no one recognizes your superior beauty? After that, Daddy got me an appointment with an agency that launched my modeling career. I did some modeling here in London and in New York, but they demanded too much. Now I do my own modeling on the side on SwiftyPic, it is a lot easier, I get to choose what and when I want to model now."
The life of a model seemed to Charlie like it would have been the perfect life for Veruca considering the fact that she saw things through two prisms: self-aggrandizement and self-preservation. A model, by nature, seeks approval for their superficial qualities until those qualities are eroded by time or their replacements are no longer seen as appeasing. Models must also do everything they can to protect their assets, both concrete and abstract, in order to keep their careers afloat. Veruca loved to speak about her superior qualities and was not afraid to bite back at those who dared to attempt to burst her bubble of boastfulness. And while she did quit a professional modeling career for the much smaller self-employment route, it did not surprise Charlie she made such a move. Considering that she always got whatever she wanted without having to do any actual work, from one of Wonka's Golden Tickets to the title of Miss Universe Great Britain 2013 and a billion other undisclosed things before and after the two aforementioned examples, Veruca could not even begin to understand the question about what she wanted to do with her future because she never had to do anything before, apart from striking back against the sources of her grievances. The Bad Nut really had not changed, even after all these years.