Dumplin - Julie Murphy Page 0,24

a total jerk about how uncomfortable I felt. But after coming in with her every Thursday to pick up her paycheck, I can say with confidence that I have enough evidence to form a scientific opinion of this place.

My Scientific Opinion: This place is a shithole and all the girls who work here are vapid skanks who treat me like El’s charity case friend.

The walls of Sweet 16 are covered with mirrors and mannequins with jutting hipbones, low slung jeans, and tiny T-shirts that say things like, I’m too pretty to do homework. I follow Ellen through the crammed racks, careful not to knock over the whole goddamn store with my hips.

“El-bell!” squeals Callie, who I’ve decided is my sworn enemy. “Mo-mo,” she calls behind her with one hand cupped around her lips, “El-ephant is here to pick up her moolah!” She reaches into a box below the register and hands El a pristine white envelope. “Hi, Willow!” Leaning toward me, she adds, “Oh my God. Pageant boot camp has been a miracle. I almost have a six-pack. But, like, I don’t want to get too muscle-y. That’d be gross.”

“It’s Willowdean,” I mutter, but she doesn’t hear me because Morgan, the too-old-to-be-in-college-too-young-to-be-your-mom store manager, floats out from the break room. She’s tall and willowy, all the things El is on her way to becoming. “Oh my gosh, we got all this super cute stock and I am capital D dying over here. Seriously, my paycheck is, like, gone. Bills who?”

El laughs. Which pisses me off, because how was that funny?

“El,” she continues, using my nickname for my best friend, “you’ve got to come back and try this stuff on.”

El turns around and glances back at me.

I nod her on despite myself.

She claps her hands together. “Okay, but I have to be quick!” She turns back again. “I promise this’ll be fast. I bet none of it’ll fit me anyway.”

I smile with my lips closed. Following her to the back, I stop, frozen in place by the raise of Morgan’s brow. “Sorry,” she says, her lips twitching into a smile. The kind of smile that says you’re not really sorry. “Employees only.”

“You okay out here?” asks El, her eyes catching mine.

“Yeah. Just hurry.”

She skips to the back behind Morgan as Callie stations herself behind the counter, swaying her hips to the beat of the poppy music playing on the speakers as she pretends to read some kind of sales report.

Squeezing between the racks, I think about how miserable this place must be on a Saturday. Callie turns the music up when the song changes to a hyper-techno beat and I take that as my cue to sneak into one of the fitting rooms. Each stall is made of a wall of curtains and consists of one little stool. The only mirror is the communal mirror outside. That’s got to be a pain in the ass—to have to leave your room every time you want to see how something looks on you.

On the other side of the curtain, hangers scrape against metal. “Where’d El’s friend go?” asks Morgan.

“I don’t know,” says Callie. “I didn’t see her leave, but she’d be pretty hard to miss.”

“Aw, be nice,” says Morgan. And it seems like it should be a kind thing to say, but her voice is laughing.

“Did El-bell find anything?”

“She’s trying on some dresses in the break room.”

More hangers-against-metal scratching. “It’s really sweet of El to hang out with that girl, but all she does is follow El around like a puppy dog. I mean, get your own life, right? It’s sad.”

That’s all it takes for my whole body to tense with anger. I yank the curtain aside and trip over the fabric as I do.

Their four eyes follow me to the bench outside of Sweet 16, where I slouch down as low as I can so that I can’t see the two of them anymore.

If I could unzip my skin and step outside of myself, I would.

All the display windows in the mall are packed with formals for homecoming and pageant season. Across from Sweet 16 is a store called Frills with a glittering baby blue gown on display. Written across the window, in shoe polish, it says, Clover City can only have one Miss Teen Blue Bonnet. Make it you. Check out our one-of-a-kind dresses!

I hate how much I despise the pageant, but it feels like a disease. And the whole town is sick.

“Hey.”

I twist around to find Bo sitting down on