Dumplin'

by Julie Murphy

  The entryway of Mitch’s house is a bottleneck. Small and congested. But his mother doesn’t move. “Let’s get a look at this face.” She slides her thumbs across my cheeks like she’s wiping away tears.

  “Mom!”

  She steps back and I see Mitch there in the narrow hallway, his cheeks a deep magenta.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, Will.” Mitch clears his throat. “Uh, Mom, we’re heading upstairs.”

  His mom nods. “Leave the door open.”

  “Mom, we’re fine!” Mitch waves for me to follow him up the stairs.

  “For the Holy Ghost!” she calls after us.

  Hanging on the posts at the head of Mitch’s bed are his mum garters from freshman and sophomore year homecoming. Mums are one of those things that are so specifically southern that I both love and hate them. The best mums are homemade with giant artificial chrysanthemums on cardboard backing with huge streams of ribbon hanging from them. Since they’re for homecoming, they’re made in school colors and the ribbons usually have glitter letters that spell out different things, like you and your boyfriend’s names or your school mascot. It used to be that girls would pin them to their shirts, but, like most things in Texas, they’ve only gotten bigger. Now, mums are so heavy that they have to be worn around your neck. And guys—especially football players like Mitch—wear miniature versions of garters around their arms. It’s all pretty ridiculous, but in a Dolly kind of way.

  On the walls of his room are a few random video game posters, but one in particular sticks out to me. A girl’s torso takes up most of the poster. She holds a machine gun with a horde of zombies behind her. Taped over whatever she might be wearing is a knee-length dress made out of a paper grocery bag. I point to the poster. “What happened there?”

  “Ugh, my mom. It’s my favorite game—or at least it was before the sequel came out—and she always hated the poster.” He lifts the paper bag dress to reveal a low cut crop top and olive green shorts so tiny they could be underwear. “She wasn’t too crazy over me having a half-naked girl in my room. Even if she was 2D. This was her compromise. Every time I take it down, she cuts a new dress.”

  “Why don’t you just take the poster down?”

  He sits on the edge of his bed. “I don’t know. I like the game. I don’t really care about the naked girl.”

  “Okay?”

  He waves his hands, like he’s trying to erase what he said. “Not that I don’t like naked girls. I mean, I don’t go looking for naked girls. I”—he takes a deep breath—“I meant that I play the game because she’s a badass. Not because you can see her ass cheeks.” He whispers those last two words.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper back. I pull out his desk chair and sit down because it’s too weird to sit on a boy’s bed.

  “So you want to hang out here and watch a movie or something? We could go out, too. I figured keep it low-key?”

  “A movie sounds good.”

  “Okay. Cool. We can watch in here on my laptop. Or in the living room.”

  “In here is fine. Or the living room.”

  “We can sit on my bed or I could sit on the floor and you could sit on—”

  I sit down next to him on his bed. “Calm down.” I’m so used to being the spastic one, the one who needs to take a deep breath. It’s sort of a relief to not feel like I could fall off a cliff at any moment. “This is fine. It’s not like sitting on your bed is going to get me pregnant.”

  “You should tell my mom that.”

  I laugh. “Well, at least we left the door open for the Holy Ghost.”

  He dims his lights and pulls out his laptop, which he sets up on a pile of pillows in front of us. “So if you want, they made a movie out of that video game or we could rent something online.”

  “I kinda want to see what this zombie movie is all about.”

  We settle back as the glow of the laptop washes over us. The movie is just as the video game poster advertised except the main character doesn’t wear a brown-bag dress. I can tell that Mitch has seen this thing hundreds of times. His lips move with the actors as they say his favorite lines of dialogue. He laughs a few beats before every joke and grimaces before every scary part and, seeing as I’ve never much liked scary movies, I can appreciate the warning.

  I almost miss most of the ending, because instead of the movie, my eyes focus in on Mitch’s hand as it inches toward mine.

  I should pull my hand away.

  His pinkie brushes mine.

  Then the laptop explodes.

  Well, actually the hospital full of zombies in the movie explodes, but since I’m not paying attention, it scares me so much that I scream.

  “What in baby Jesus’s name are you subjecting that girl to?” hollers Mitch’s mom.

  “Final Death 3!” yells Mitch.

  “I’m fine, ma’am!” I call back.

  The credits roll, sending his room into a near pitch-dark. “You hungry?” he asks.

  I am starving. “I could eat.”

  “There’s that taco stand down on Dawson. We could walk and hang out for a little while before you go home.”

  I follow Mitch to the kitchen where his mom is tallying up receipts on one of those old calculators with the receipt paper. “You two hungry?”

  “Actually, I think we’re going to walk down the street to Taki’s Tacos.”

  She takes her reading glasses off and they hang around her neck, bouncing against the kittens and their balls of yarn on her shirt. “Well, why would you do that when I went grocery shopping this morning? I’ll make salami sandwiches. Or there’s some leftover chicken spaghetti casserole, too.” She turns to me. “Not to brag, but my chicken spaghetti casserole is something to behold.”

  “We want to get out of the house, Mom. Why is that such a big deal?”

  “It’s wasteful is all.” She puts her glasses back on. “But it is a Saturday night. Be home before midnight.”

  The taco stand is on an old car lot. Weeds creep up through the cracks in the pavement as a reminder that the focus here is tacos and not landscaping. Next to the stand is a rusted playground set that looks like it was plucked from a city park and dropped in this parking lot. We sit on a bench at the edge of the circle of light put off by the taco stand to get as far away from the mosquitoes as possible.

  After we eat, we wander into the playground. I sit on a swing and so does Mitch. The chains groan against his weight.

  “Good tacos,” I say.

  He nods. “Did you like the movie?”

  “It was . . . bloody. But I liked it.”

  “So you really entered the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I did. I’m pretty screwed. I need a talent and I’ve got nothing.”

  I walk back in the swing and let the momentum push me forward as I pump my legs. “Not to mention these other girls ended up entering because I did. It’s like I’m supposed to be guiding them or something. But I don’t even know what I’m doing. And I feel responsible for them, ya know?”

  Mitch stands up behind me and gently pushes me every time I swing back. “Maybe if you worry about figuring your own stuff out, you can help them with their stuff.”

  He pushes me back and forth a few times while I let that thought simmer.

  “Hey, Mitch?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re really good at football, right?”

  “That’s what people tell me.”

  “I bet you’ll get a scholarship out of here.”

  For the first time, Mitch doesn’t respond.

  “What?” I ask. “You don’t think you will?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I will.” He stops pushing me and sits down again in the swing beside me facing the opposite direction. “I never really like doing the things I’m supposed to like. I’m good at playing football. But the whole season feels like something I have to get through.”

  It’s a hard thing for me to grasp. The idea that you can be so good at s
omething and still not enjoy it.

  “Being a guy in a town like this people expect things from you. You’re supposed to play football and hunt and fish. Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of friends, but I had Patrick. We’d go hunting on the weekends with our dads.”

  “You hunt?” I ask. I shouldn’t be surprised. Tons of people hunt here. It’s disgusting, but it’s not like I’ve sworn off meat, so I’m not one to talk.

  “Well, sort of,” he says. “I’ve been hunting since I was a kid. I’d go out with my dad and he’d let me have half a beer while we waited for whatever animal was in season to show itself. But whenever it came time to shoot, I always missed. For a while, I blamed it on me being a bad shot. My dad would get so mad at me. I’d miss the mark. Just barely. Then he started to realize that it was on purpose.”

  I feel this prickle of warmth in my chest for him. I think maybe it’s the things we don’t want to talk about that are the things people most want to hear.

  “We were in seventh grade, and my dad was harping on me real bad. Patrick and his dad were there. It was deer season. I hit one.” His voice trails off. “It was an accident. He was a big proud buck. My dad slapped me on the back. I remember feeling like I was choking.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words sound so lame. Like they did when people said they were sorry about Lucy.

  He stands and pulls my swing back by its chains. I feel him let out a long breath against my neck. “I know guys aren’t supposed to cry, but I cried a bunch that night. And I guess that’s when I decided being good at something didn’t mean you had to do it. Just ’cause something’s easy doesn’t make it right.” He lets the chain go and I kick my feet out into the stars.

  That night, I dream that I am inside Mitch’s video game, wearing the tiny shorts and a shredded shirt. My body isn’t some Photoshopped dream version of itself. My thighs are thick with cellulite and my love handles hang over the waistband of my shorts. My golden waves are done up big and high in an old-school Dolly perm. Like the girl in Mitch’s game, there are guns, ammo, and knives strapped to my back and thighs with a bazooka resting on my shoulder. I am a total badass. A fat badass.

  I run into an abandoned civic center. The revolving door pushes against months of debris as I enter the building. They come slowly at first, but then they multiply. Zombie beauty queens. Everywhere.

  I wait until they’re almost too close before I fire the bazooka. Gone. Particles fly. I duck. They’re dead. Like, really dead this time.

  But there’s still one left. One graying zombie, dressed for the best day of her life in a torn red gown. Her crown is bent and broken and her sash is too faded to read. She walks toward me, one foot dragging as it scrapes against the marble floor.

  I reload my bazooka.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  There are a few things—like the swimsuit segment—I didn’t consider before signing up for the pageant. But what I really didn’t prepare myself for was the group dance number.

  Me, Millie, Amanda, and Hannah sit in a row against the back wall of Dance Locomotive, the only dance studio in Clover City. I know this doesn’t look easy, but it can’t be much harder than walking in choreographed circles.

  My mom stands at the front of the room in a dance skirt, a leotard that’s working a little too hard, super shimmery nude tights, and black character dance shoes. Flanking her are Mrs. Clawson, in her turquoise wind suit that swishes every time she breathes, and Mallory Buckley, in her white yoga pants and petal-pink sports bra. I catch my mom eyeing Mallory several times with the slightest bit of contempt, and it gives me a sick satisfaction.

  Everyone is toned, tanned, bleached, and in matching workout gear. Whereas I wore the same pajama pants I slept in last night. Amanda in her soccer shorts and Millie in her matching sweat suit are slightly more prepared, but Hannah rounds us out in black jeans and a black T-shirt.

  “Let’s stretch it out, ladies.” My mom sits down in front of us with her back to the mirror. Everyone falls into their preferred positions. Including Mrs. Clawson, who is doing standing windmills. Her face puffs red as she counts her breaths with each rotation. By some miracle, her perm doesn’t move an inch.

  My mom sits with the bottoms of her feet touching and her legs bent into a butterfly position. “This year’s theme is ‘Texas: Ain’t She Grand?’”

  “Yes,” mumbles Hannah, “because grammar is make-believe.”

  Amanda laughs, and Millie kicks her in the shin with her tiny little Keds-wearing foot.

  I reach forward to touch my toes, but my stomach and boobs stand between me and my thighs.

  “At the end of rehearsal, you will each be assigned a Texas landmark to plan your opening number outfit around. Everyone is asked to wear a denim skirt, plaid shirt, and cowboy boots. Beyond that, you are welcome to create whatever you like in homage to your landmark. For example, if you were given our state flower, the blue bonnet, you could wear a headpiece made to look like blue bonnets. This is an opportunity for the judges to get a taste of your personality and see how well you do with an assigned task. Take advantage, ladies.”

  Ellen sits in the front row with Callie, who is of course competing in the pageant. They wear matching workout gear with Sweet 16 stamped on their hips. We haven’t spoken in two entire weeks. The last time I went two weeks without talking to Ellen was when her parents rented an RV and took her up along the West Coast. I wrote her a letter every day she was gone and left them in her mailbox. I went mad without her, and when she got back, both of our moms let her spend the night for two nights in a row.

  This is so much worse. Because she’s right there. She’s at the other end of the room, and if I call out to her, she won’t answer. I’ve almost apologized so many times, but I’ve waited too long now. And a part of me still thinks—no, knows—I’m right.

  We all stand up to learn the routine. Millie leans over, standing on her tiptoes, and says, “You should talk to her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She pushes up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “Ellen.”

  “Grapevines!” says my mom over the twangy music. “Five counts left. Five counts right. Bekah!” she calls. “Come up here, so the girls can see your technique.”

  Bekah blushes, but obeys my mother. Just looking at her annoys me, and really I’ve got no good reason. She’s good at everything. She’s pretty, too. And she’s humble.

  I spend the next hour tripping over my feet, trying to keep up with the endless grapevines and turns as we all weave in and out of one another. I catch my mom watching me in the mirror as I trip over Amanda’s platform shoe and have my ass handed to me by a hardwood floor. In the end, my mom was right to call Bekah forward, because she knows what the hell she’s doing.

  At the end of rehearsal, I am sweating in places that I didn’t know could sweat.

  Millie’s got this crazed look on her face and a huge sweat ring around her neck. “That was so cool,” she says. “What landmark did you get?”

  I hold up the slip I drew from the bowl. “Cadillac Ranch.” A place I’ve only ever seen in pictures. Something you gotta understand about Texas is that it’s freaking huge. I know tons of people who have never even left the state. I remember hearing that, depending on where you start, you could drive for a day and still be in Texas. “What about you?”

  She grins. “The Stockyards. Up in Fort Worth.” Only Millie could turn a livestock market into a pageant-worthy headpiece. If her optimism were contagious, I’d be betting on myself to win this whole thing.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I’ve heard that at bigger schools, dances aren’t really a thing anymore. There are too many students, I guess. But, unfortunately for me, dances are very much alive and well at Clover City High. And, outside of prom, the hottest shit in town is the Sadie Hawkins Dance. Because a sister can’t just ask a guy out like it’s some normal thing, girls have gone to great lengths to make sure that their Sadie Hawkins proposition is the most elaborate.

&nb
sp; Then three years ago Macy Palmer reinvented the wheel when she asked her boyfriend Simon to the dance by employing the Twelve Days of Christmas. I am not kidding. Every morning this kid came to school and was greeted by anything from three hens to twelve drummers drumming. And the guy was already her boyfriend! It’s not like he suspected she’d ask someone else. (Let the record show that they both graduated. She was four months pregnant while he had one foot out the door thanks to a golf scholarship.)

  After that, it was no longer acceptable to ask a guy to Sadie Hawkins by baking him a plate of cookies or by wearing a T-shirt with his football number on the back. Now, not only do you have to muster the courage to ask a guy out in the first place, but you’ve got to do it with style.

  Freshman year wasn’t so bad because Ellen hadn’t started dating Tim. Last year I faked sick. But this year, with everything that’s happened, I don’t notice the banners and the signs announcing ticket sales.

  After a full five hours of walking through a minefield of Sadie Hawkins proposals—including a cheerleading pyramid during lunch—I have one hour to go. I slide into my desk next to Amanda.

  She looks up from her phone. “So did you ask anyone?”

  “No. You?”

  She shakes her head. “Nah. I figure let the chips fall where they may and see who’s left tomorrow. I wouldn’t bother, but we’re gonna have to ask a guy to escort us at the pageant. Might as well cross two things off my list.”

  I drop my head into my hands and moan. I forgot about the escorts. My desk jolts like someone’s kicked it. I whip around to see Bo walking to his seat at the back of the class.

  I secretly love seeing him like this, in the clothes he chooses each morning from his closet. I wonder if he’s deliberate. Or if he’s one of those people who gets dressed in the dark because mornings are such a total violation. Or maybe he gets up super early and goes for a run or eats eggs or some other thing that morning people do.