“Sorry.” He’s taken off his work shirt—I can see it draped over the bench seat inside his truck—and is wearing his crewneck undershirt. The chain I always notice peeking out from beneath his work shirt carries a patron saint pendant. “I used to go here. Before it burned down. It’s the only place on this side of town that I could think to go to at this time of night.”
“Oh.” I want to ask him what happened with his mom and who his favorite teacher was and if he took the bus or if his parents gave him rides every morning. But I don’t. I want. I want. I want.
He starts laughing, and not some quiet chuckle. He’s gasping for air. “You come prepared,” he says, pointing to my fist.
I hold my self-defense hand up. “Um, you led me to an abandoned elementary school. That has ‘I want to kill you and play dress up with your dead body’ written all over it.”
His laughter subsides for a moment, and he says, “Okay. That’s fair. Good on you.”
I drop the keys in the pocket of my dress, and kick a few pieces of gravel around. “Just don’t kill me.”
A smile flickers for a moment before he says, “I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. Without asking.”
“So. Why. Did. You?” Each word comes out like a drop in an empty bucket.
“You know how when you’re a kid and you’re having a great day? You like your teacher. Your friends are okay. You don’t suck at school. But then you do something that you would never be able to stop even if you saw it coming?”
He sees the confusion on my face.
“Like—like calling your teacher Mom.”
I can’t hide my horrified expression. “Wait. What? I’m sorry, but did you compare kissing me to calling your teacher Mom?”
He pushes his hands through his hair and groans. “No. Well, yes. But it was like this reaction I had. Like this thing I couldn’t control.”
“And now you’re embarrassed?”
“No, no!” He throws his hands out, like they could wash away his words. “I meant that it felt like I couldn’t help it. I’m only embarrassed that I didn’t even take the time to read you. That I just did it. And I’m sorry if that’s not something you wanted me to do.”
“It’s okay,” I say, mostly because he normally doesn’t talk so much and I’m a little mesmerized by it.
He steps forward. “Is it okay as in, ‘don’t let it happen again,’ or . . . was it okay?”
I shrug because the rest of my body is frozen.
He takes another step forward. It’s quiet for a moment. This is my chance to step back and stop whatever this is from happening. I feel my self-control slipping.
“Because I think you kissed me back.”
My cheeks flood with heat. He’s got me there. “It didn’t suck. It just wasn’t, like, explosions,” I lie.
“So, mediocre?”
I bite down on my lips, making them disappear. I take three steps, closing the distance between us.
He props his elbows up against his truck and tilts his head back.
I do the same, and for a moment, we share the sky until I break the silence. “So you kissed me on an impulse?” The tension winding through my muscles eases as I find myself getting more comfortable with him. “But why?” There’s still that hum, though. That vibration of adrenaline.
Drizzles of rain splash down on top of us, making the air feel instantly thicker with humidity. Bo glances up, like he might somehow figure out how to make it stop.
“Let’s get in the truck.” He opens the passenger door for me and I hop inside while he jogs around the front and lets himself in.
We just miss the onslaught of rain. Drops slap angrily at his windshield. It’s so loud he almost has to yell. “On a scale of one to ten,” he says. “How was it?”
“You’re really not going to let this go, are you?”
“I’m kind of an egomaniac.”
I feel brave. I am brave. “Maybe you should go for a do-over. Best out of two.”
He clears his throat, and my eyes are all on him. “Well, I usually prefer to get it right on the first try, but I’d hate to deprive you.” He scoots past his steering wheel, traveling to me. His hand cradles my cheek in his palm. Nodding his head down, his lips nearly meet mine. “You’re sure?”
Surprising even myself, I don’t answer. I kiss him. I kiss Bo Larson. And when he parts his lips with mine, I don’t think about it. Because for the first time in my life, I fit. I fit without any question.
He braces my cheeks with both hands and pulls me even closer to him.
If El even feels one-tenth of this with Tim, then I don’t know how she waited so long to have sex, because when Bo’s lips move against mine, I can think of nothing outside of us.
His hands travel down to my neck and along my shoulders. His touch sends waves of emotion through me. Excitement. Terror. Glee. Everything all at once. But then his fingers trace down my back and to my waist. I gasp. I feel it like a knife in the back. My mind betrays my body. The reality of him touching me. Of him touching my back fat and my overflowing waistline, it makes me want to gag. I see myself in comparison to every other girl he’s likely touched. With their smooth backs and trim waists.
“I’m sorry.” His breath is hot and short.
“No,” I say. “Don’t. Don’t be sorry.” I’m not that girl. I don’t spend hours staring in the mirror, thinking of all the ways I could be better. Me shrinking away from his touch embarrasses me in a way I don’t entirely understand.
He shakes his head. “No, I mean, I shouldn’t have—I don’t think—I shouldn’t be dating anyone right now.”
I guess what’s funny is that until he mentioned it, the thought—the possibility—of us together hadn’t even crossed my mind. “Oh.” It comes out like a sigh.
“I have a lot of shit going on. And I shouldn’t. Or at least I haven’t for a while.”
I nod.
If any other girl had told me that she’d been told this by a guy, I’d tell her to back it up. To put the brakes on. Because he sounds like a jerk. I just can’t think that about Bo. But I guess this is how every girl in the history of the sexes has been played. Because the rules apply to every situation except your own.
I open the door to his truck. “I better get home.” Rain splatters inside the interior.
“It’s late.” That’s it. That’s all he has to say.
“I’ll see you at work.”
It takes 2.5 seconds for the rain to soak through my clothes. My dignity has left the building. I get in my car and speed off out of the parking lot. I turn the volume on the radio up all the way in the hope that it might drown out everything rattling inside of me. Lucy, my mom, Ellen, Bo. Little versions of each of them seem to live inside of me, one louder than the next. The only voice that isn’t there—the one I need the most—is my own.
TEN
It is officially too hot to go swimming. Even for Ellen. Jake slithers in and out of our hands as we watch a daytime talk show about a woman who is in love with her brother, but didn’t know he was her brother because they didn’t grow up together.
“They have got to be lying,” I say.
El shakes her head. “No, no, they’re weird, but I think they’re telling the truth. Plus, why would they lie?”
“Um, because they’re gross and because they know it. They probably got caught and needed an excuse or something.”
“God,” she huffs. “You are such a skeptic. Would it hurt you to believe that not everyone has shitty intentions?”
Jake coils around my wrist. His scales are smooth from having just shed. “I’m not always a skeptic, but the odds of them telling the truth are practically nonexistent. I mean, that’s like saying Tim could be your brother.”
She’s so engrossed in the show that she doesn’t answer.
This would be a good time to tell her about what happened with Bo. My mom was already asleep when I got home, but she said she heard me come in after two and that next time that happene
d she would call my boss. An unladylike hour, she called it. It sort of killed me that she automatically assumed I came straight from work. I WAS MAKING OUT WITH A BOY IN AN ABANDONED PARKING LOT, I wanted to scream. But that sounds pretty unbelievable. Even to me. And I was there.
I don’t know how to form the words to explain to El that not only did I get my first kiss, but it ended up being a full-on make-out session. She’d already be pissed at me for not telling her about my feelings for him in the first place. And even though neither of us said that what happened last night was a secret, it feels like one.
It’s stupid, I guess, because El would never think this, but I feel like last night was so completely unfathomable. A boy—a totally hot boy who girls stare at—kissed me, like really kissed me. It was the type of kiss that leaves you short of breath. I don’t know how to talk about that with my best friend. Not to mention that if I told her about last night, I’d also have to tell her how the night ended. With Bo promising that this would never happen again and with me mortified by the thought of his hands touching my body.
I don’t want to tell her any of that, though. As foolish as it is, I want to preserve her good impression of him because I guess a little part of me thinks that despite how last night ended, he and I might somehow still stand a chance.
But a chance at what? At being boyfriend and girlfriend? The idea is so ridiculous to me that I can’t even imagine what it might feel like to hold someone’s hand in public.
It’s not that I feel unworthy. I deserve my happy ending. But what if, for me, Bo is a high point and, for him, I’m a lapse in judgment?
I need Lucy.
The credits on the talk show begin to roll and El wipes a few stray tears from her cheek. “Oh my God,” she says. “Oh my God. That was so sad. They love each other so much and they can’t help it. And society will never understand.”
“Are you on the rag or something?”
“You’re a real shithead sometimes, you know that?” She stands with Jake. “I’m putting him up. You want to hang out for lunch?”
I smile. “I better go home. I want to dig through some of Lucy’s stuff before my mom gets home. She started cleaning her room out a few weeks ago.”
I follow El to her room as she lowers Jake into his cage. He nestles himself beneath his heat lamp. The light clings to his scales, and he revels in it.
After a few minutes, El says, “Will?”
“Yeah.”
“Luce used to wear this bee brooch when we were kids. Do you remember that? The one she’d wear on her winter coat when she picked us up from school?”
My mouth goes dry. I nod. She wore it on the collar of her winter coat. This was before she was at her largest, but still pretty big. The coat was black and drab and obviously purchased for the sake of utility without any thought of fashion. It’s the type of sacrifice you make when you’re a bigger person. Her brooch, though, was like the sun peeking through dark clouds. She’d call us her bee-utiful girls and take us for hot chocolate on Mondays, because Fridays didn’t deserve all the attention.
It was funny. I used to think of myself as a Monday and Ellen as a Friday. But Mondays and Fridays were just twenty-four-hour stretches of time with different names.
“If you see that brooch—and only if you don’t want it—would you mind keeping it for me? Not that I’m, like, owed it or anything, but I always really loved it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be sure to look for it.”
Since the day she died, I’ve felt that Lucy was only mine to memorialize and that if I faltered, I’d be letting her down in the worst kind of way. The realization that she wasn’t just mine comes as a painful relief.
ELEVEN
I will not kiss Bo Larson. I will not think about Bo Larson. I will not kiss Bo Larson. I will not think about Bo Larson. It’s a mantra that repeats over and over again in my head, and whenever I’m by myself, I even say it out loud.
A few hours before I leave for work on Monday afternoon, my mom asks me to fill a prescription for her, because she’s scared the pharmacy will be closed when she gets off work.
I drive downtown to Luther & Sons Pharmaceuticals. Because parking is limited, I have to take a spot in front of All That Shines, a jewelry store nearly as old as Clover City, which has been the sole distributor of Miss Blue Bonnet crowns for the entire state of Texas.
The heat clings to my shoulders as I’m locking my door. “Shit,” I mumble. In front of my parking spot and anchored to a bucketful of cement is a sign that reads: CUSTOMERS ONLY.
I double-check, but see no parking, so I take a second to run inside.
Behind the dusty glass case, sitting on a creaking wooden stool, is Donna Lufkin. The Lufkins have such family pride that not even conservative tradition can sway a Lufkin woman into changing her last name when she gets married. Donna, though, never did get married.
Donna is round with a sturdy build. Her cargo shorts are frayed at the edges, and her gardening clogs smell like they’ve been doing exactly what they were made for. She is the opposite of what you might expect from a person who sells pageant crowns. Sure, she sells other stuff, but it’s the crowns that make this place a landmark.
“Willowdean Dickson,” she says. “I haven’t seen you since—” She stops herself.
“Lucy’s funeral,” I finish.
She nods, but doesn’t try to smile, which I appreciate more than she will ever know. “Did your mama send you in for something? I just got the new crowns in.”
“No, ma’am. Just not a whole lot of parking out there and I was wondering if I could leave my car while I run inside the pharmacy?”
She waves me off. “Hell, those signs don’t do a bit of good anyway.”
“Thanks,” I tell her with one hand on the door.
“You wanna see ’em?”
“See what?”
She grins. “The crowns, of course.”
Now this might seem like no big deal, but the cubic zirconia pageant crowns are guarded more safely than the bank across the street. No matter how much I despise this pageant, it’s not something I can just say no to.
Donna locks the front door and I follow her through the curtain leading to the stockroom. We have to walk through two offices before she unlocks a tiny closet lined in boxes. Each box is marked with the names of towns from all over the state, but front and center are three labeled CLOVER CITY.
“Wait,” I say. “Why do we have three?”
She counts them out on her fingers. “One: the original. Sometimes it goes on display at city hall. Two: the one given to the winner. Three: held in reserve in case crown number two goes missing.”
She takes all three boxes and lines them up on her desk. The one given to the winner and the backup are almost identical, but the original . . . well, it looks like the type of thing you’d find in your grandmother’s jewelry box. The rhinestones are foggy and the metal tarnished with age, but there’s still something so regal about it. I like that it’s not too shiny or too prissy like the newer crowns, and yet, it has a presence.
Donna catches me looking at the original. “I like her best, too.”
For a moment, the pageant makes sense, and I get why my mom devotes half of her life to it and why most of the girls in this city dream of gowns and spotlights when the sky is heavy with stars. “Do you ever try them on?”
Her cheeks turn the lightest shade of pink. “Between you, me, and these four walls: once in a while.” With great care, she reaches into the box holding the original. “Try it on.”
“Are you sure?” With my luck, I would be the person to break the original crown.
She looks directly at me. “You think I look like the type of woman who isn’t sure?”
I shake my head.
She situates me in front of the mirror on the back of her door. I hold my breath as she places the crown on top of my head. I know it’s just costume jewelry and that none of this is real, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling the weig
ht of the crown like a responsibility. I wish Lucy or Ellen or even my mom were here to see me in my red and white Harpy’s uniform with Clover City’s prized possession resting atop my head.
“Truth be told, I don’t think your mama’s even tried it on. Best not to tell anyone about this.”
I say yes with my eyes, because I’m scared to even nod. “Why are you letting me try it on?”
She shrugs. “Maybe ’cause you don’t always have to win a pageant to wear a crown.”
I will not kiss Bo Larson. I will not think about Bo Larson.
Marcus called in sick, like he could somehow smell how awkward tonight was guaranteed to be.
The shine of the crown has worn off, and we are slammed. Bo ends up having to come out of his kitchen cave to help me on register. From what I can tell, the only phrases in his vocabulary are: “Dine in or take out?” and “That’ll be [insert total].”
Every now and again, our hands brush or we bump into each other. And every touch sends electricity through my veins. But when he gets into an argument with a customer over pickles, Ron tells him to go back to the kitchen.
At the end of the night, Ron sends us all home early and promises to come in tomorrow morning to do the closing checklist. I would protest because my mother taught me that a southern lady always puts up a fight when anyone else volunteers to do the cleaning, but I’m all too ready to be home.
I try to be quick and beat Bo out the door, but with every step I take, he’s on my heels.
I have got to find a new job.
My hand is on the door of my car and I’m nearly home free.
“Willowdean.”
I turn.
He moves toward me so quickly that I feel like I’m moving, too.
Our noses brush and his lips stop short of mine. My mind’s eye has yet to catch up and process that he is here, in my bubble, redefining everything I thought I knew of myself. My discretion. My pride. They’re both gone and it’s like I’ve got horse blinders on.
I am kissing Bo Larson. I am thinking of Bo Larson.
For the first time in my life, I feel tiny. I feel small. And not in the shrinking flower kind of way. This feeling: it empowers me.