Dumplin'

by Julie Murphy

  My mother clears her throat again. “One, two, three. Eyes on me.” She pauses for a moment. “As I was saying, the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant is a treasured tradition with a rich history. Former titleholders have gone on to become business owners, physicians, and beloved mothers and wives. We even have a mayor amongst us.” She goes on to explain the origins of the pageant and how it went on hiatus during World War II and again when Kennedy was assassinated.

  I have never seen my mother in command of a room like she is right now. She stands with her back straight and speaks with her voice projected. She owns this. But, I guess, what surprises me most is how captivated everyone is. Including my table. Here, in her element, she’s not my mother. Here, she is Rosie Dickson, Clover City’s Miss Teen Blue Bonnet 1997. Here, she is royalty. Y’all hail the queen.

  “Now if you haven’t already declared your talent, you have until the first week of November to notify us. Don’t forget: the board must deem your talent appropriate. So save the sexy, understand? You will also need to have your formal, swimwear, and talent costume approved by the Wednesday before the pageant.”

  She waits for some nods from her audience. “Wonderful. I’d like to introduce you to my cohorts this year. This is Mrs. Judith Clawson, Miss Teen Blue Bonnet 1979.” The older woman stands and curtsies. “And this is Mrs. Mallory Buckley, Miss Teen Blue Bonnet 2008.” She pauses for quiet applause.

  “A yes from these women is a yes from me. A no from them is a no from me.”

  The two women walk the room and hand out hot-pink folders with the Eighty-First Annual Clover City Miss Teen Blue Bonnet logo printed across the front in gold script.

  “Look around for a moment.” She pauses as we stiffly stare at one another. “Somewhere in this room is the next Blue Bonnet. The bad news is that only one young woman will wear this year’s crown. But the good news is: she’s sitting among us. You’ll notice that this is the eighty-first anniversary of our pageant. We have wonderful things in store for you all, including a beautifully choreographed opening number—”

  “No one said there would be dancing,” mumbles Amanda.

  “. . . and the promise of front-page billing in the Clover City Tribune.”

  Mallory (she’s so young I can’t bring myself to call her Mrs. Buckley) makes the rounds at our table, and hands us all folders. Including El.

  “Oh,” I whisper. “She’s not doing the pageant. Just here for moral support.”

  Mallory, whose auburn hair is curled in bouncing ringlets, smiles at me like I’m speaking a foreign language, and hands El a folder anyway.

  “Ellen,” I whisper.

  She turns in her chair and opens the folder as she thumbs through the pages. “Yeah?”

  My mom still droning on, I lean over and say, “That was weird, right?”

  “What?”

  “With Mallory just now.”

  “How was that weird?” she whispers back as she skims through the papers in the folder.

  I feel my eyes widen. “You entered the pageant.”

  “Isn’t that what we came here to do?”

  “Thank you, ladies,” says Mom, her voice ringing like a bell. “Feel free to mingle with one another. Don’t forget: only you can put the friend in friendly competition. There’s a refreshments table on that back wall, starring my famous sweet tea, of course.”

  Applause echoes in my ears. “You can’t do the pageant. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  Everyone around us migrates toward the back of the room. “What are you talking about?” She’s not whispering anymore. “This is all we’ve been talking about for days.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Why? Why is this such a problem?”

  “You’re—you could actually win. We’re not here to win. That’s not the point.” I can hear how ridiculous I sound.

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

  I don’t know what to say. There is nothing to say.

  “Have you thought about the fact that I feel as out of place here as you do?”

  “You have to back out. El, for me, you’ve got to. Let me have this one thing.”

  “What? Let you have what? You can’t pick and choose who joins the revolution.” She makes air quotes as she says “revolution.”

  I hear the logic in her voice. I recognize the truth there. But if El entered, she could really win. And that’s why she could ruin this.

  I remember that night, two years ago, as we sat at the kitchen table and I pretended that I hadn’t heard my mom tell her to enter the pageant. It shouldn’t have mattered to me, but it did. It was a moment I’d kept locked away deep inside of me, and now it was all I could see. On a loop. She was my mother. She lived at the end of the hall, and in all that time, she’d never extended an invitation to me.

  I deserve to be selfish, I think. I deserve to make something about me.

  “You already have everything,” I say. The perfect parents. The perfect job. The perfect boyfriend. “Let me have this.”

  El shakes her head. “That’s not fair. You can’t put that on me. Maybe Callie was right, Will. Maybe we’re outgrowing each other. Holding each other back. I miss out on lots of things because of you. I can’t believe you would even think of asking me not to enter.”

  All the sorrow and bitterness I’ve felt over the last few months is clumping together into one giant fit of rage. Holding each other back? “Callie? Really? I can’t believe you talk to her about us. Sorry I can’t be some mindless friend for you who sits around and tells you how fucking flawless you are, okay? Just go ahead and say what you mean. We don’t hold each other back. I hold you back, isn’t that right?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “I’m not your goddamn sidekick or your chubby best friend.” I take a step closer to her. “This whole pageant thing is about me, El. I am making this about me.”

  Her face turns an angry shade of red. “You’re a shitty-ass friend, Will, and I’m done wasting my time. I’m not backing out of this.” And then she leaves.

  THIRTY-ONE

  On Monday, Ellen ignored me. And I deserved that. I expected it. We’re both quick to anger, but Ellen is always ready to forgive. It’s something I’ve come to count on. But then came the weekend without even a text. On Tuesday, not even Tim acknowledged me. And that’s when the knot in my stomach turned into panic.

  Today, I have to talk to her. I don’t know who’s wrong and who’s right, but I’m not prepared to go through this without her. I catch her in the hallway, after second period. It’ll be fine, I tell myself. We’re like an old married couple who can’t even remember what they were arguing about to begin with.

  “Hey, Ellen! Hey.”

  She stops and turns to me. Her whole body is taut and closed off.

  “What the hell am I even going to do for my talent?” I ask, trying to pretend like nothing happened.

  She opens her mouth, and my heart raps against my chest as I wait for her to say something. But then she shakes her head and walks off.

  Callie pushes past me and gives me a dirty look before running after my best friend. “El-bell!”

  The tears well up behind my eyes all day long, waiting to burst. I leave school as fast as I can. My mom has decided to let me take her car to and from school as long as I drop her off at work every morning. The second I am outside of the parking lot, I let the tears run. Dripping down my cheeks. Big, thick, and heavy. Like angry drops of rain against a windshield.

  She should understand. Of all people she should know. I roll to a stoplight and close my eyes for a moment, but when I do, the only thing I see is that day when we were fourteen. It’s selfish and it’s wrong, I know. But I’m not perfect and neither is she. When you love someone enough, you accept their flaws. You make sacrifices to keep them sane. I need her to keep me sane. I need her to sacrifice this for me.

  Behind me a horn blares, reminding me that I am behind the wheel of a three-thousand-pound hunk of met
al.

  At home, I pull into the driveway. I’ve got two hours to kill before I have to pick my mom up.

  I yank my rearview mirror toward me and dab at my eyes. Dab, my mother would say. Wiping only makes your eyes puffier.

  I get out of the car, but pause with my hand on the door handle. “What are you doing here?”

  Mitch stands on the crack where the driveway meets the street. His jeans are half tucked into his boots and his baseball cap is fraying and trimmed in sweat stains. “I saw you crying.”

  I slam the door shut. “So you followed me?”

  His cheeks flush red. “To make sure you were okay. Not to be, like, creepy.”

  “Right.” I hike my backpack up on my shoulder. “Well, I’m okay.” I realize that outside of awkward small talk, we haven’t really spoken since the ordeal in the hallway. I owe him an apology. “Aren’t you supposed to be at practice?”

  He shrugs.

  “Come on,” I say.

  He follows me through the backyard, and I tell him to sit down on one of our rusted lawn chairs.

  “You want some peach tea?”

  He pulls his cap off to reveal a matted head of hair and uses his forearm to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “Sure.”

  In the kitchen, I drop my bag on the table and pour us each a glass. We’re in that weird time of year where we experience every season all in one day. I guess most people might call it autumn, but in the South it’s this unruly combination of winter-spring-summer-fall. Regardless, iced tea is a year-round delicacy.

  I sit down across from him and hand him a cup. “My mom’s tea,” I say. “My gram’s recipe.”

  “Thanks.”

  We sip for a few moments.

  “I’m sorry about that day in the hallway,” I say. “When someone said something about us dating.”

  “It’s fine.” He rubs his fingers up and down the back of his neck. I think every girl has a spot—a spot on a guy that makes her melt. For El, it’s hands. For me it’s that place where their hairline meets their neck. I love that feeling of brushing the tips of my fingers against a guy’s buzzed hair. And when I say a guy, I mean Bo with his slim silver chain peeking out from the edge of his collar. Because he is the only guy.

  Except maybe he doesn’t have to be.

  “I don’t know why people have to go on dates,” Mitch says. “If we called it hanging out or something, there’d be so much less pressure. But a date, God, that’s like some huge thing to live up to.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Bad first date aside, there’s something so comforting about Mitch. He feels like the kind of person you don’t have to ask to stay because he probably won’t ever leave. I reach down, tug a flower from my mom’s flower bed, and twist it around in my fingers until it’s limp in my hands. “I entered the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant.”

  “You know,” he says, “if you try smiling, you might win that thing.”

  I smack his shoulder. “You don’t think it’s weird?”

  “That you entered?” His mouth slips into an easy smile. “Why would I think that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m not much of a beauty queen.”

  “Well, the whole thing doesn’t really strike me as your type of scene, but if you ask me, you’re overqualified for the job.”

  Heat stains my cheeks. “Thanks.”

  “I want us to be friends,” he says.

  I need a friend. I need one so bad. “I want that, too.” I stand up.

  He gulps down the rest of his tea and stands, too, tucking his hands in his pockets. “I oughta get to practice.”

  “Saturday,” I say. “I’m off work. Let’s hang out.”

  “I’m sorry for whatever made you cry,” he says.

  I wait for him to ask what happened, but he doesn’t, and I like that about him.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Me, Amanda, and Hannah sit in a tiny booth at the back of Frenchy’s with Millie at the end of the table in a chair. As we were seated, Millie took one glance at the booth and said, “Well, that looks like a squeeze.”

  The waitress’s lips turned into a deep frown, but Millie shrugged it off and asked for a chair. It’s the type of thing that would have stopped Lucy from eating here, but Millie doesn’t seem all that bothered.

  After we place our orders, I say, “So, have y’all thought in terms of the talent show?”

  “I kind of want to do something having to do with soccer,” says Amanda. “Like, some kind of trick.” She bounces her legs so hard that the whole table shakes. She’s one of those people that just can’t sit still.

  “You play soccer?” I ask as Millie leans forward with both elbows on the table. I just never really thought someone with uneven legs would be as into sports as Amanda is.

  “Well, I mean, I’m not on the team. But I kick the ball around with my brothers.”

  Millie gives her an encouraging smile. “I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to do that. I remember a few years ago Lacey Sanders’s older sister did a first-aid demonstration.”

  Hannah leans back with her arms crossed. Her bangs are overgrown and hang above her eyelashes so that she’s all hair and mouth. Like a talking wig. “Maybe I should dress up like a horse and trot around the stage for five minutes.”

  Millie turns to me, discomfort in everything but her smile. “What about you, Will?”

  “I don’t know.” I never stuck with dance classes or did violin or any kind of organized sport. My talents consist of watching television, being Ellen’s best friend, sighing, and knowing the lyrics to nearly every Dolly Parton song. “But we need to figure out things like dresses and pre-interview stuff, too.”

  “I’m not spending any more money on this shit,” says Hannah. “I’ll wear jeans up there if I have to.”

  “Maybe we could make you a dress?” asks Millie, her voice creeping so high it almost cracks.

  Hannah doesn’t answer. It’s hard for me to look at her without wondering how much she really gathered from that day with Bo in the girls’ bathroom. We’ve said no more than a handful of words to each other and she knows a secret so big that I’ve not even told my best friend.

  “So what do we need to know?” Amanda asks as she chews on a piece of hair. “Like, last time everyone was dressed up and we looked like friggin’ idiots. It was like amateur hour.”

  “Well,” I say. “There’s the dress, the talent, and the interview. I mean, there’s not that much more to it. The whole point is to walk up there and not fall on your face and to try to make it look like your fake eyelashes aren’t stabbing your eyeballs. Oh, and swimsuits. We have to figure those out, too.”

  Millie chews at the skin around her thumbnail.

  Hannah crosses her arms and stretches her whole body out, eating up more and more of Amanda’s booth space. “We are so fucked. Your mom runs the thing and that’s all you’ve got?”

  “It’s not like I’m some pageant groupie, okay? I never gave a whoop about the whole thing until last week. I’m sorry if this is something you feel like you can’t do, but too late now, sweetheart.”

  Millie makes a long slurping noise as she finishes off her soda. “Well, um, Will, if you don’t mind, I have a few things to add.” She places her soda down and sits up straighter. “There’s more to pageants than dresses and talents. It’s about showmanship. Or showwomanship. And pride. So many pageant winners go on to do big things. Look at Miss Hazel”—our local talk show radio hostess—“and Dr. Santos. It’s about the full package.”

  That’s when it hits me. Millie buys into this stuff. This isn’t a joke for her. This is the real deal.

  “None of us are the perfect contestants,” she says. “I think we can all agree to that. The key is playing to our strengths. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I’ve got the interview in the bag. Amanda, when you wear your corrective cleats, your soccer tricks are awe-inspiring.”

  I almost hold my breath, waiting for her to get to me so that she can somehow enlighten
me.

  “Hannah, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve seen you in a swimsuit, and well, you go, girl.” The edge of Hannah’s lip quivers, and I swear to Christ, if Millie can make her smile, it will be nothing short of an act of God. “So, like they said at orientation, it’s the eighty-first anniversary of Miss Teen—”

  “Wait. What’s my strength?” I ask.

  She smiles. “Your confidence, of course.”

  I zone out completely. How can she see something I can’t feel? And what’s the point in acting confident if I’m not? I never thought I cared about what I saw in the mirror. But Bo ruined that. It’s supposed to be easier to like yourself when someone else likes you.

  But that can’t be true. No matter how much I tell myself that the fat and the stretch marks don’t matter, they do. Even if Bo, for whatever reason, doesn’t care, I do.

  Then there are days when I really give zero flying fucks, and I am totally satisfied with this body of mine. How can I be both of those people at once?

  “Do you have anything else to add, Will?” asks Millie.

  I blink once. Twice. “No. No, I guess not.”

  Hannah slides out of the booth. “I’m out of here.”

  Amanda slurps her soda until the straw screeches loudly.

  I turn and call after Hannah, “What changed your mind? When Millie first asked you, you said no, right?”

  She turns back. “I get called a freak every day. I might as well make a show of it.”

  “Straight from the horse’s mouth,” mumbles Amanda after Hannah’s a safe distance away.

  Millie kicks her underneath the table. “That wasn’t very nice.”

  “Well, neither is she,” says Amanda.

  THIRTY-THREE

  This time I tell Mitch that we can meet at his house. He invites me over to watch movies and I guess I just assume that his parents will be out for the night.

  When the front door opens, I find the female version of Mitch wearing a light yellow T-shirt with kittens rolling in yarn. This woman who can only be Mitch’s mom throws a dish towel over her shoulder and brings me in for a hug. “Oh my word!” she says. “Mitch said you were pretty, but he didn’t say gorgeous.” She lets go of me for a second before grasping my cheeks and pulling me in through her front door.