Dumplin - Julie Murphy Page 0,81

out of here. I was good at basketball. Good enough to get noticed by some smaller colleges, and maybe he saw that, too. But I was never supposed to leave Clover City. Before Holy Cross, I was supposed to live here and die here, working with my dad.”

Each word is familiar to me. His truth is my truth. There’s a version of the future in my head where I stay here forever. I watch my mom work until the day she dies. And then it’s just me in that house with its broken front door, full of pageant supplies and Dolly Parton records. Bleak, I know. But, still, there’s a bit of comfort that comes with knowing how your life is going to turn out. I’ve never had a surprise turn out in my favor.

“I don’t blame him,” he continues. “It’s that feeling of people leaving. It’s scary.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I think maybe we’re both talking about a different kind of loss. The kind that can’t be fixed with a plane ticket.

There’s a knock at his door.

“Come in.”

“Hey, son.” Bo’s dad is a shorter version of Bo. Sturdy and broad. He notices me and nods.

“Dad, this is Willowdean. We go to school together. She works at Harpy’s, too.”

I stand up. “Good to meet you, Mr. Larson.”

He waves a hand at me. “Call me Billy.” He turns to Bo. “I need your help swapping this tire out on the van real quick.”

“Sure.” Bo hops up and promises he’ll be right back.

I stand there for a moment. In Bo Larson’s bedroom. By myself. On his desk, next to the signed basketball, are three frames. The first one is Bo from a few years ago. He’s wearing a Holy Cross jersey and has a basketball tucked beneath his arm. He looks younger with his close-cropped hair and his stubble-free face, but the outline of his biceps foreshadows the next few years. A promise of the Bo I know today. The next one is old and kind of grainy, like it might have been taken on a cell phone. It’s Bo’s dad, Bo, and his brother, Sammy. Bo looks no older than nine. The three of them are on a dingy-looking beach—definitely a Texas beach—with the water at their backs. Bo stands alongside his dad, with his arms crossed and his feet spread wide. Mr. Larson holds Sammy over his head like a dumbbell. The final frame is his parents’ wedding photo. And now I see where Bo gets his height from. Mrs. Larson had at least three inches on her husband. She wears a light yellow tea-length dress with gold sandals and her hair loose around her shoulders. It’s a candid photo. Mrs. Larson’s head is thrown back in laughter, while Mr. Larson wears the grin I’ve seen on Bo so many times.

“She was beautiful. A total Scorpio, too.”

I turn. Loraine stands in the doorway, wearing a quiet smile.

“I’m sorry,” I say, but for what I don’t really know. “I was waiting for Bo to get back.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

I chew on my lip for a moment before asking, “Did you know her?”

“Only in passing, but, from what I hear, she was a good one to know.”

I look at the picture once more.

“Come have some iced tea with me,” Loraine says.

Most women in the South take great pride in their iced tea and pass their recipes down from generation to generation. But Loraine is not most women. She mixes her tea with powder from a box. To my mom, powdered iced tea is almost as bad as the possibility of being left behind in the wake of the rapture.

“You want some lemons?” she asks.

“Yeah, that’d be great.” I squeeze two lemons before taking a sip. Delicious. Like frozen lasagna. Wherever my mom is she’s just fainted.

Loraine sits down in front of me with a glass for herself. She’s one of those people who could be twenty-five or forty-five and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. “What’s your sign, Willowdean?”

“Pardon?”

“Your star sign? Astrology?”

“I—well, I don’t know.” According to my mom, astrology is two steps away from demonic possession. “I never really paid attention before.”

She shakes her head and tsks. “I’ll never understand how it is people navigate their whole lives without knowing their signs. What’s your birthday?”

“August twenty-first.”

“Ah,” she says. “A Leo, but barely.”

I lean in. “What’s that mean?” I’m learning a whole new language for the first time.

“You, my dear, are a lion.” She says it with