Dumplin'

  FIVE

  Summer vacation doesn’t have the same effect it had on me when I was a kid. When El and I were in elementary school, Lucy would take us to Avalanche Snocones. With syrup dripping down our hands, we’d sit in the dim living room with the ceiling fan whirring on high while Lucy flipped through channels until landing on the trashy talk shows that my mother would never let us watch.

  But the first weekend of summer passes like it’s nothing special. On Monday morning I wake to find my phone blinking.

  ELLEN: SWIMMING. NOW. SUMMER. SO. HOT.

  ELLEN: NOW.

  ELLEN: NOW.

  I can’t help but smile when I see her text. Ellen lives in a non-gated community with a poorly maintained neighborhood pool. But during the summer, the place is an oasis.

  I know that fat girls are supposed to be allergic to pools or whatever, but I love swimming. I mean, I’m not stupid. I know people stare, but they can’t blame me for wanting to cool off. And why should it even matter? What about having huge, bumpy thighs means that I need to apologize?

  When I pull into El’s driveway, I find her sitting on her porch in her bikini with a towel wrapped around her waist.

  Our flip-flops smack against the sidewalk as we walk the three blocks to the pool, and even though it’s only ten in the morning, we are dripping (or as my mother says: glittering) with sweat.

  “Oh God,” El says as we’re waiting in line. “There are a shit ton of people here.” She crosses her arms over her stomach.

  I loop my arm through hers. “Come on.”

  Because of the crowd we’re only able to stake out one lawn chair. El unwinds the towel from her waist and rushes off to the pool. I yank my dress over my head, kick my shoes away, and speed walk on my toes.

  El sinks down to her shoulders as the water laps against my waist and the cool relief of it makes my eyes roll to the back of my head. Ahh, now it’s summer.

  We float around on our backs like starfish and it reminds me of when we were kids and we’d go under water with our goggles on and scream secrets to each other. Except that there were no secrets between us then and it was mostly things we already knew. “CHASE ANDERSON IS SO CUTE!” El would say. “I STOLE TEN DOLLARS FROM MY MOM’S WALLET!” I would scream.

  I let myself float until my shoulder brushes up against the side of the pool and I feel a shadow hanging over me. Opening my eyes a sliver, I see a little boy squatting at the edge of the pool. His lips make the shape of words.

  I stand and noise bleeds into my ears, almost giving me a brain freeze. I squeeze my eyes shut for a quick second. My head feels like it’s been shrink-wrapped. “What?”

  The boy’s red swimming trunks are dripping wet, leaving a pool of water beneath him. “I thought you were dead,” he says. “And you’re all red.” He stands and, without ceremony, walks away.

  I touch my cheeks and the water from my fingers drips down my face like drops of rain against a dry, cracked earth. I have no idea how long I’d been floating for. Looking around for El, I find her sitting on our lawn chair, talking to a girl and a guy. I take my time moving to the shallow end in the hope that they’ll leave, but after a few minutes of stalling, they haven’t budged.

  Bracing myself, I race out of the pool. El sits at the foot of our lawn chair while a girl I’ve never met sits at the other end with a boy behind her, like they’re riding a motorcycle and she’s the one driving.

  “Hey,” I say.

  There’s this split second where El says nothing and this other girl stares at me with this how-can-I-help-you-do-you-need-something-you-can-leave-now face.

  “Guys, this is my best friend, Will.” El turns to me. “This is Callie. And her boyfriend . . .” Her voice drags for a second and she snaps her fingers.

  “Bryce,” says Callie. Bryce nods from behind her. He’s got those total douche glasses on, the ones that coaches wear that almost look like Star Trek glasses. His hands grip Callie’s shoulders and I can tell they’re the type who is always touching.

  “Nice to meet y’all,” I mumble.

  El glares at me.

  It’s not that I don’t like new people. It’s just that, in general, I do not like new people. And this is maybe the thing El dislikes most about me. For as long as I can remember, she’s tried to drag a third wheel into our perfect little mix. Maybe it makes me a total grouch, but I don’t need another best friend. And I especially don’t need this girl who can’t seem to stop staring at me like I’m some kind of car wreck.

  El scoots over for me to sit next to her, but I stay where I am. “So, Callie’s entering the pageant.”

  Bryce squeezes Callie’s shoulders and she lets out a shrill giggle. “Yeah,” she says. “My sister was a runner-up a few years ago. Guess you could say it’s in my genes.”

  “Good for you.” My voice is thick and bitter even though I really don’t mean for it to be.

  El forces a smile. “Callie’s actually doing that pageant boot camp we saw after school last week.”

  I actually don’t know what she expects me to say to that. This whole conversation is a flashing sign that reads DEAD END.

  “Uh, Callie,” says Ellen. “You know Will’s mom runs the pageant.”

  Football players are gods in the South. And cheerleaders aren’t too bad off either, but down here, the females who reign supreme are beauty queens. Unfortunately, though, being the tubby daughter of Clover City’s most cherished beauty queen doesn’t win me much street cred.

  Callie uses her hand to block out the sun as she looks up at me. “Wait, that’s your mom?”

  “Yeah.” If I could change only one thing about my mom, it would be the pageant. In fact, I’m sure that my whole life would fall together like a set of dominoes if I could delete that one annual event from my existence.

  Callie laughs. “You’re not entering, though, are you?”

  I wait for a second. Two. Three. Four. Ellen says nothing.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Obviously, I would never enter that depraved popularity contest. But still. What kind of shithead makes that assumption?

  “It seems like you’re not that type of girl. Like, not in a bad way.”

  I am suddenly reminded of how small my bathing suit is. The leg holes cut into my hips and the straps dig into my shoulders. Anxiety creeps through me like twisting vines.

  “But,” Callie says, “Bekah Cotter is going to be some serious competition. Girl is as all-American as they come.”

  The need to escape pulls at my feet.

  And, of course, Callie is using my dress as a beach towel so that her precious skin doesn’t touch the hot plastic seat.

  I turn to Ellen. “I’m going to run back to your house to use the bathroom.” I slide my feet into my flip-flops and grab the first towel I see before walking off as fast as I can.

  “Is something wrong?” I hear Callie ask in the kind of way that says, What’s her problem?

  “But they have bathrooms here!” El calls over the crowd.

  The towel barely fits around my waist. I don’t care. I keep on walking.

  A car of boys passes by me and honks.

  “Oh, fuck off!” yells El from behind me.

  I turn. In nothing but her swimsuit, she jogs down the sidewalk with my dress and bag in her arms.

  “I’ve been trying to catch up to you!” she says.

  I open my mouth to speak, but remember that I’m mad at her. I keep walking. We don’t fight. I know that best friends are supposed to fight, but El and I never get into it. Sure, we argue over dumb stuff like TV shows and which Dolly look is the best, but never anything real. Yet I’m so mad that she left me out there to dry with that Callie girl. She said nothing.

  Maybe I’m making a bigger deal of this than it is. Maybe it’s the type of thing only I noticed. Like, how when you have a pimple and you think it’s the only thing anyone else sees when they see you.

  But then there was the way Callie looked me up and down. Like I was some kind of a
bomination. The truth is that I’m mad I felt uncomfortable to begin with, because why should I? Why should I feel bad about wanting to get into a pool or standing around in my swimsuit? Why should I feel like I need to run in and out of the water so that no one has to see the atrocity that are my thighs?

  “Will! Freaking wait! Jesus Christ.”

  Not bothering to stop, I say, “I need to head home.”

  “Can you tell me what happened back there? You turned into a total psycho. What was that?”

  I stop because I’ve reached El’s house and now that my feet have nowhere else to go, it’s like I can’t stop my mouth from talking. “What was that?” I yell back at her. “That was you leaving me out in the pool by myself. You abandoned me out there. And who the hell was that twiggy bitch?” As soon as it’s out of my mouth I regret it. All my life I’ve had a body worth commenting on and if living in my skin has taught me anything it’s that if it’s not your body, it’s not yours to comment on. Fat. Skinny. Short. Tall. It doesn’t matter.

  But El only says, “You looked so relaxed! How does leaving you in the pool by yourself make me a shit friend? You’re sixteen years old and you’re mad at me for leaving you in the pool by yourself?”

  I’ve seen El and Tim argue enough times to know that this is her specialty. She simplifies the situation to the point that whoever’s sitting across from her is left feeling foolish. She’s the type of person you want arguing for you. Not against you.

  I shake my head at her because I don’t want to say it out loud. I don’t want to say that I’m mad because I was left without my security blanket: her. Or that she should have stood up for me back there.

  “And that ‘twiggy bitch,’” she says, “is my coworker. You don’t have to be her friend, but you could at least be nice to her.”

  I throw up my hands. “Whatever. It’s done. I don’t want to argue.”

  She drops my bag and dress on the trunk of my car. “Fine.”

  I slip the dress over my head and hand her the towel from around my waist before digging my keys out of my purse. “I’ll talk to you later.” I walk to the driver’s-side door, but she’s still standing there.

  “Wait,” she says. “Come inside.”

  I sigh through my nose.

  “Oh, quit your sighin’. I need your help.”

  In Ellen’s room, I sit down on the floor with my legs crossed. “Lemme hold Jake.”

  She locks her bedroom door and walks straight to her closet. “Next time. He’s shedding.”

  Like any other sane person, I’d always had a healthy fear of snakes, but then, when we were eleven, El’s parents separated for a little bit, and she absolutely lost her shit. To appease her, Mr. Dryver promised her a pet. What he did not expect was for his daughter to ask for a snake.

  When she first got Jake, an albino corn snake, he was no longer than a pencil, but I still refused to come over to her house. I couldn’t even bear the thought of being under the same roof as him. But then El had her twelfth birthday, and I couldn’t miss it. Lucy took me to the pet store so I could see the snakes and she even arranged for me to hold one. When I chickened out, she held the snake instead. I could see her hands shaking, but it still calmed me.

  Now I can sit for hours while we watch movies, with Jake weaving in and out of our hands like he’s stitching us together.

  Ellen pulls a Sweet 16 shopping bag from the depths of her closet. “I need your help deciding.”

  I pop up on my knees as she empties lace bras and matching panties all over her bed.

  “For Tim.” She plops down on the edge of her mattress. “I want to look good.”

  I hold up a sheer pair of purple underwear by my pinkie. “You bought all this stuff at work?”

  “Callie helped me pick out some of it, but I need you to narrow it down so I can return the rest.”

  “Oh.” I want to ask her if she told Callie that this was for her first time. We sift through the pile. Pink, white, black, red. Even green. Of course she told her. I know I’m making this into something more than it is. I don’t have the monopoly on Ellen-Tim sex conversations, but it feels like a betrayal.

  “Okay,” I say, “white is out. You’re a virgin, which is cool. I mean it wouldn’t be uncool if you weren’t, but what I’m saying is you don’t need to look like something that shouldn’t be defiled. I mean, the whole point is to get defiled, right?”

  “Right.” Her voice is definitive as she plucks out the white bra and pantie. “Should I have gotten, like, legit lingerie?”

  I shake my head. “I think this is definitely the way to go. It says, ‘I’m ready to have sex’ without putting too much pressure on Tim.”

  “I would die without you. Just straight up cease to exist.”

  A smile grows on my face. “The black is too intimidating. I mean, it’s super fucking hot, but maybe save it for later.”

  She stuffs it into the bottom drawer of her nightstand.

  “I like the green, but it’s not quite right.” I bypass nude, red, purple, and blue. “This.” I swipe my hand across her bed, pushing aside every other set except for a tan-and-blush-striped set. “It says ‘summertime virgin, but not for long.’”

  El smacks my arm and then reaches for it. The whole thing is trimmed in lace with little pearl buttons as accents. She holds the set close to her chest and slides down on the floor next to me. I turn around and sink to the ground.

  She rests her head on my shoulder. I love how we smell after the pool. Like chlorine and sweat. The scent of summer. “Tonight. We’re gonna do it tonight,” she says.

  SIX

  After leaving Ellen’s, I am drained and the idea of taking fast-food orders all night feels impossible.

  I tiredly pull my Harpy’s cap on over my head and tug my ponytail through the back as I take my place on the register.

  “Hey, hey, Will,” calls Marcus from the condiment bar. “Lookin’ kinda toasty. You get some sun?”

  “I guess.”

  “You’re a little on the late side.”

  I check my rolls of coins to see if I need to run to the office for change.

  “Hey, I’m thinking of pulling together a betting pool for the pageant. You think you could get me some inside intel when the time comes?”

  I shake my head and slam my register shut.

  “What?” Marcus asks. “You don’t talk anymore? Strong and Silent back there rubbing off on you,” he says, referring to his self-given name for Bo.

  I take one deep breath as I check the to-go bag supply underneath the register. “It’s been a long day. Need some space.”

  Marcus mumbles something about PMS and to my surprise, from the kitchen, Bo says, “Why can’t she just be having a shitty day? You don’t need to make up some bullshit reason why.”

  Ron lets out a low whistle from his office.

  Marcus laughs. “Damn.”

  “Maybe she saw your face,” says Bo, “and she knew the day was a lost cause.”

  He winks at me from the service window. I whip my head around and smile.

  I keep my hands busy in between customers, stocking and restocking napkins and condiments. Bo listens to his music, but with only one earbud in instead of two. Marcus is on his phone all night and, from what I gather, is arguing with Tiffanie via text.

  Bekah Cotter, with her long, golden hair and compact curves, comes in with a huge group of friends and they sort of camp out with fries and fountain drinks. Callie’s right. Bekah will enter the pageant, and she’ll probably win. She’s one of those pretty girls you try so hard to hate. But she’s nice and kind of talented. Well, if you count baton twirling as a talent.

  Bo’s on dining room duty, and when he makes the rounds with the cordless vacuum, Bekah is quick to pick up some spare trash from the surrounding tables. She says something to him. Nothing I can hear. But he smiles, and it’s hard not to feel like I’ve swallowed a handful of rocks. I don’t get why we call it a crush when it feels more like a curse.
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  The bell above the door rings, and in walk Millie and her friend Amanda with the corrective Frankenstein shoes. Millie wears a light yellow T-shirt and shorts set with little heart-shaped gems glued to the collar of her top. I wish there was a way for me to tell her all the ways she makes her life harder than it needs to be without me coming off as a bitch.

  Her forehead is damp with sweat, but her smile is unflinching. “Oh, hey, Will! I didn’t know you worked here.”

  Amanda nods, appearing to be quite impressed. She wears soccer shorts and a T-shirt with a picture of her little brother in his Little League uniform silk-screened to the chest. Like the type of shirt you see parents wear to their kids’ big games.

  “I bet you get tons of free food,” Amanda says, and hikes her thumb back toward where Bo stands in the dining room. “And the sights aren’t so bad either.”

  I shake my head, trying not to laugh. “Uh, yeah. I do all right.”

  They take their order to go, and Amanda hangs back for a little too long to check out Bo as he walks to the kitchen.

  I take my break after Marcus and Bo. When I open my locker to grab my lip balm, I find a red sucker. It’s one of those fancy ones that sits in the wooden stand at the grocery store checkout. I twist my lips back and forth for a moment before sliding it into my pocket, trying hard to play it cool in case he’s somehow watching.

  When I was a kid, we used to decorate shoe boxes at school and use them as Valentine’s Day mailboxes. We’d leave them on our desks all day. I never liked for anyone to see me check my box. It wasn’t that I was scared of not getting any valentines. Everyone gave each other cards. It was required. But it was that I always hoped for more. I wanted to be the girl with a special card signed Your Secret Admirer.

  It may not be a note in a shoe box, but it still makes my heart feel like it’s made of springs.

  As I unwrap the sucker, I think about texting Ellen, but turn my phone facedown when I can’t decide what to say. I slump down in my chair and savor my candy. She could be having sex right now. She could be an official non-virgin and I wouldn’t even know it.