Dumplin - Julie Murphy Page 0,13

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