Dumplin'

  I wonder if she talked to Callie after I left. She’s probably done it. She’d know what to say to El. After I finish my sucker, I chuck the stick and the wrapper in the trash can. I stuff my phone in my bra and as I’m passing through the kitchen, my boobs buzz. I stop right there to check my phone before I go up front.

  ELLEN: kinda nervous. will call you later.

  ELLEN: like, after.

  ME: you’re going to be a total sex kitten. meoooooow.

  ELLEN: you’re the best. maybe I can stay over tonight at your house and talk. xo

  My sticky lips break into a faint grin. I look up to see Bo staring at me as I put my phone back in my bra, only to realize two seconds too late how awkward it might look to be stuffing your hand down your shirt in front of the guy you like.

  I’ve been stared at a lot in my life. Enough to know that when someone gets caught staring, instinct says to look away. But Bo keeps on lookin’, like he’s got nothing to be ashamed of.

  Color floods my cheeks. I wipe the back of my hand across my lips and start my closing duties up front.

  Ron lets Marcus leave a few minutes early at the end of the night because Tiffanie is waiting and she’s pissed about something. Sitting in his office, Ron finishes the end of the night paperwork while Bo mops up the kitchen and I scrub down all the countertops.

  “Watch out,” he says. “I just mopped behind you.”

  I step lightly, careful not to slip, and wash the grease from my hands using the big industrial sink.

  All my jobs are done, but I find myself keeping busy while Bo finishes the floors. I fill the sink for him so that the mop can soak overnight, how Lydia likes it.

  “You two head on home,” calls Ron. “I’ll see y’all later.”

  I rush to my locker to grab my things, like I’m scared Bo might leave without me or something. I follow him out the back and he holds the door open for me so that I have to duck beneath his arm. Which doesn’t even smell bad, by the way. How can he spend the night flipping burgers and not smell like a fast-food menu?

  As we walk to our cars in silence, his hand accidentally brushes mine and I wonder what it might feel like if he caught it, letting our fingers entwine.

  Standing at my car, I look over the hood and say, “Thanks for the sucker.”

  He doesn’t turn, but tilts his head up to the sky. “Good night, Willowdean.”

  SEVEN

  Without me even having to ask, El gives me every gory detail of losing her virginity. They did it in Tim’s bedroom because his mom was out of town visiting his grandma, and his dad, a police officer, was working the late shift.

  We lay nose to nose in my bed with the lights off. “How did it feel?” I ask. “Not it, but like, how did it make you feel?”

  She closes her eyes for a second. “I felt . . . in control. Like, of my life.” She opens her eyes. “And loved. But I feel funny, too.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “We did this grown-up thing. This really adult thing. But we were still ourselves. We still laughed and made jokes. I expected to feel like this whole new person, but really it was me—plain old me—making this decision that I can never unmake.”

  I nod. I nod with fervor because pared down to those terms, I understand.

  With the tips of her fingers, El touches my cheeks and, for the first time, I notice the sparse tears rolling down my face. She touches her forehead to mine and I don’t know who falls asleep first.

  Despite pageant supplies swallowing my house, the next few weeks are pretty okay. I work mostly with Ron, but sometimes Lydia. Mondays and Wednesdays are always pie, but it’s Fridays and Saturdays that can be killer. Mom hates that we’re open until midnight, but there’s not much I can do about that.

  One Friday night as we’re shutting down, Ron walks into the dining room carrying plastic-wrapped towers of cups. “Got new cups,” he says, and drops them all on the counter.

  “What’s wrong with the ones we have now?” I ask.

  He tears the plastic from one of the towers and hands me a red cup. Our logo is there, but beneath that in italicized letters it says: Official Sponsor of Clover City’s Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant. Sometimes I think the pageant is like Christmas, and we just keep trying to celebrate it earlier and earlier until it turns into a year-round event.

  “One of those girls on your mom’s committee came by, and well, my mama won back in ’77. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to support the crown jewel of Clover City.”

  I feel myself frowning. “So we’re just going to chuck all the perfectly fine cups we already have in favor of these?”

  He shrugs. “Restock the dispensers before we head out, would ya?”

  I always forget how horrible the second half of the year leading up to the pageant is. The thing crowds in around my life, leaving barely enough room for air.

  After we’re done closing up, Marcus and Ron are in their cars and reversing out of their parking spots before Bo and I are even to our cars.

  As I’m unlocking my door—I don’t have one of those fancy clicker things—Bo says, “There’s a meteor shower tonight. It’s a small one.”

  I throw my bag onto the passenger seat. “How do you know?”

  “My stepmom. She’s big into stars and astrology.”

  I know very little about astrology except that my mom’s church calls it witchcraft. Without deciding to, I close my car door. “I’ve never seen a meteor shower.”

  He nods toward the bed of his truck as the parking lot lights flicker off. “Let’s wait for it.”

  I suck in a breath. This is what it feels like when your life starts happening, I think.

  “You got anything for us to sit on back there?”

  He turns on his radio and grabs a Holy Cross letter jacket from the cab of his truck. “Use this.”

  Bo makes a show of closing his eyes as I hoist myself onto his truck. I’m hoping his eyes are actually closed because the word hoisting and my polyester work dress do not belong in the same sentence. He offers me his hand, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I pretend to need it.

  I’m surprised to know that his fingers are calloused with wear. I like how they contrast against my own skin. Once I’m settled, it’s hard to let go.

  He winces a little as he pulls himself up.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Bum knee.” He sits next to me, holding his leg straight as he does.

  “What’s wrong with it? Is it an injury or has it always been like that?”

  “A little of both.”

  “But you’re okay?”

  He coughs into his fist. “Yeah.”

  The last lights on the street flicker off. We might live inside the city limits, but every night when this town shuts down, it’s hard to forget how secluded we are. We’re not off a highway or any major route, so it’s the type of place that can only be found by those who want to find it.

  Bo glances at the clock on his cell phone. “Should be dark enough to see them.”

  I can easily make out the shape of constellations. “You said your stepmom’s into astrology?”

  He rubs his knuckles across his chin. “Yeah.”

  “Your parents are divorced?”

  He shakes his head, but says nothing.

  “I—I’m sorry for asking. I have the manners of a cat in a box of bubble wrap. Like, it’s a problem.”

  “No,” he says. “It’s not that. I don’t mind talking to you. So don’t apologize for it, okay? I just don’t do much talking. It takes getting used to.”

  I lean my head against the rear window of his cab and cross my legs at the ankle. “I, on the other hand, talk like the world will only continue to spin if it can revolve around me.”

  “I like listening to you talk.” He laughs. “It’s kinda like Stockholm syndrome. At first it was a little terrifying, but now it’s sorta comforting. Like, the world could be ending, but I could come to work and you’d be talking like it’s your duty.”

/>   “I’m sorry,” I say, “but was that some sort of backhanded way of saying that I’m captivating?”

  “Very punny,” he says.

  I smack his arm. He grabs my hand, not giving it back. The radio behind us crackles out “Creepin’ In”—that Norah Jones and Dolly Parton song. And everything in this little town is dark, but I can feel Bo’s eyes connecting with mine. “It’s starting,” he whispers, and finally lets go of my hand.

  I let out a shuddering breath I didn’t know I was holding in.

  “It’s a small meteor shower,” he whispers. “Sorry it’s not more impressive.”

  I’m still completely taken with it all. Faraway streaks of light split through the sky, leaving traces like a bruise. I shake my head. “No. I’ve never seen one. I think that makes it special enough, right?”

  We both tilt our heads even further to the sky. It’s a few minutes before he says, “The first meteor shower I saw was huge. I never wanted it to end.”

  “Well,” I say. “You can’t have stuff this good all the time. It would turn you rotten.”

  He nods. And we sit there for a long time, like this is all some good song on the radio that we can’t pause.

  “Don’t you sort of feel like we’re the only people in the world who are seeing this?” I say after a little while, almost scared of ruining the moment.

  “I don’t know.” Bo’s voice is a quiet rumble. “My mom died. Five years ago. And I guess I like to think that wherever she is, her sky has meteor showers, too.” Each word is a naked patch of him, and I want so badly to add up all the bread crumbs I have and make sense of him.

  I wait for some kind of disclaimer from him about his theory being dumb or that he’s sorry for being a downer. Because that’s what I would say. But there’s no apology from Bo. And I like that. I like that he has nothing to be sorry for. I want to tell him that I feel bad about his mom or that I like thinking of Lucy that way, too, but instead I say, “I guess it’s an awfully big sky not to share.”

  EIGHT

  The next morning when my mom asks me what time I got home, I lie and say the place was an even bigger mess than normal. My lips twitch the whole time with the memory of sitting in the bed of Bo’s truck.

  I should call Ellen, I know, and tell her every detail. But I don’t want to share this yet. I like the idea of keeping my world in these little compartments where there is no risk of collision.

  The Saturday night crowd is pretty brutal. It’s always dead from 10:30 to 11:30 and then, as we’re getting ready to close, we get one last rush.

  Ron’s in the back helping with the food and I’m taking orders. Marcus is on drive-thru for the night. The headset barely fits around his bush of hair. Between drive-thru orders, he runs over to help me assemble trays of food, but still the line is consistently ten deep.

  I’ve stopped even bothering to look up from my register until I hear, “Oh my God. I totally forgot that Ellen said you worked here.”

  My shoulders slump as I recognize the voice.

  Callie leans across the counter and says, “I am so sorry, but those uniforms are the worst.”

  “Welcome to Harpy’s Burgers & Dogs. How can I help you?” I ask.

  Her boyfriend, Camdon or Brandon or whatever his name is, tosses Callie his wallet and says, “Gotta take a leak.”

  They exchange a kiss—which, I mean, why? Is he going to drown in the toilet?—and Callie looks back at me with a sympathetic smile. “Okay, so could we get a number one with a Dr Pepper. No tomato and extra grilled onions. Swap those fries for tater tots, too, if you don’t mind. And I’ll have a burger. No cheese. And a kids’ fry.” Her smile turns conspiratorial. “Cheating on my pageant diet already. Boys are such a bad influence.”

  “Ten dollars and seventy-four cents is your total.”

  “This is probably weird of me to ask, but maybe one day me and El-bell could come over? I would love to, like, just talk to your mom about the pageant and the year she won. Like, in a casual way.”

  I don’t even know this girl and she’s elbowing her way through my life like everything is hers for the taking. “I’ve been really busy,” I say, my voice deadpan.

  She squints her eyes at me for a second before smiling and thumbing through her boyfriend’s wallet for a twenty. “Holy shit. Did you completely die when”—she lowers her voice—“Ellen told you about her and Tim’s oral mishap?”

  “What?” I knew El was talking to Callie and not me about this stuff. I shake the surprise off my face. “Oh yeah. Totally nuts,” I say. “Your order will be out soon.”

  I’m so mad. I knew this would happen. I knew that sex would create a rift between me and Ellen. But more than anything I feel inadequate.

  Ron comes out from the kitchen and says, “We’re closing up, folks. You either take your food to go or you don’t take it at all.” I stuff Callie’s food in a bag and hand it to her as her boyfriend walks out of the bathroom.

  After we’ve locked the lobby doors and have closed the register, I head to the kitchen to gather up some trash. “I’m taking this stuff out back.”

  “Give me a few minutes,” Bo says. “I’ll help.”

  When he’s done and Marcus has turned off the drive-thru lights, Bo follows me out the back door, each of us carrying several bags of dripping trash. As the door is about to swing shut behind us, Bo kicks a rock in between the door and the frame. He drops his trash to the ground and takes mine from me and tosses it over his head and into the Dumpster. He does the same with his bags.

  “Thanks.” I turn to go back inside.

  “Wait.” His fingers brush my elbow, and I suck in a breath. “Last night. I liked hanging out with you.”

  “I know,” I say. “I mean, me too.” I reach for the doorknob.

  “Willowdean.” His voice startles me. He’s so close I can smell his skin, thick with sweat.

  I part my lips to respond, but he leans in, pauses for a second, and pushes my words away when his mouth meets mine. I don’t have time to think about his tongue in my mouth and how my tongue is answering his. Not sure what to do with them, I hold my hands at my sides, my fingers balled into a fist. He tastes like artificial cherry and toothpaste. I want to kiss him until my lips fall off.

  He pulls away.

  My first kiss. It’s the fastest thing that lasts forever.

  The midnight air is hot and dry, but that doesn’t stop me from wrapping my arms around myself. I wait for the words—either his or mine—but nothing comes. The shock I feel is etched into his expression. I run my thumb along my bottom lip and walk back inside. He doesn’t stop me.

  Closing takes forever. The dining room is a mess and so is the kitchen, but I barely notice because my thoughts are absorbed with Bo and my first kiss. My first kiss, which took place behind Harpy’s Burgers & Dogs and next to a Dumpster full of day-old trash.

  Yet, it was perfect. Every bone in my body aches, like I’ve been in a car accident and there’s nothing physically wrong with me, but still I can feel the impact of it everywhere.

  At the end of the night, I’m in my car and pulling out of the exit before Ron’s even locked the door behind him.

  I roll to a stop at the light on the corner and scrub my hands up and down my face as I try to process all that happened tonight.

  A car horn honks and I glance up at the light, but it’s still red. I hear a muffled yell to my right.

  Bo sits in the neighboring lane, waving his arms, pointing at my window. This isn’t even how he goes home. We always turn in the opposite direction. Him, east. Me, west.

  The minute I roll down my window, he starts talking. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have just”—kissed you, my head fills in—“done that. I just—” He glances up, and I watch as he notices the light for the intersecting street turning yellow. “Follow me. Please.”

  I glance at the clock. It’s already 1:35 in the morning.

  The car behind him honks. “Please.” He drives off and ch
anges lanes so that he’s in front of me.

  I probably shouldn’t follow a guy I only kind of know down a dark road in the middle of the night. Because he could, like, kill me, and then it wouldn’t matter if I was fat or if my first kiss had been next to a Dumpster, because I’d be super screwed.

  When the road splits and it’s me who should be heading right, I veer left and follow a strange boy down a dark road, the sky above us in a deep sleep.

  NINE

  We drive all the way to the edge of town to the old elementary school that caught on fire a few years ago and has since been condemned.

  This is probably one of those red flags. I think maybe I’m missing some kind of self-preservation alarm in my head because this has cautionary tale written all over it.

  When we park, I wait for him to get out of his car first. If El were here, she’d tell me to grab a tire iron or to heat up the car lighter, but she’s not. I search my front seat for a weapon, but all I’ve got is an empty jar of peanut butter, a buck thirty-two in change, and some junk mail I forgot to take in the house a few weeks ago. I weigh my keys in my hand for a moment.

  Aha! I take my three keys on my ring (car, house, El’s) and hold my hand in a fist so that each of the keys is peeking out from between my fingers. I remember seeing this on a self-defense special of Maury. Television saves lives.

  I feel ridiculous, but whatever.

  Bo leans against the hood of his old truck. Along the side is the shadow of lettering, like he bought the truck off someone who’d owned a business.

  “So this is creepy,” I say, motioning to the school with my non-key-shiv hand. The whole place is singed, but you can still see the definitive structure of a school, except for straight down the center, which is entirely gone. The elements have not done the exposed structure any favors. From here I can see the outline of the playground, entirely dark except for the highlights of the moon. On the entire lot there is only one lone streetlight. We are far outside of its glow.