Dumplin'

by Julie Murphy

  “Listen,” he says. “I obviously don’t know the whole story here, but good friendships are durable. They’re meant to survive the gaps and the growing pains.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Amanda Lumbard is a horrible driver, but since Millie couldn’t use her mom’s van tonight, she’s the only one of us who has access to a car that both works and can fit all four of us comfortably.

  “That was sweet of your mom to let us borrow her van,” says Millie.

  Amanda shrugs it off, her foot weighing down on the gas. “She was actually kinda excited to hear I was going out with friends. Even if it is a Tuesday night.”

  I nod along. I didn’t really give all the details when I invited them via group text.

  ME: Hey, so I think we can all agree that we’ve got some things to work on before this pageant. There’s this pageant-ish event going on in Odessa tomorrow night and I think we could pick up some pointers.

  HANNAH: My dance card is full.

  ME: We’re going to need transportation, too. My car’s out of commission.

  MILLIE: Sitting here with Amanda. We’re in. She can drive. Can’t wait!

  HANNAH: Fine. I’ll go.

  The half truth is that I feel responsible for the three of them and I thought maybe we could use some pointers for the pageant. I’m not trying to be a ringleader or anything, but if I hadn’t started this whole thing, we wouldn’t be in this boat.

  The whole truth is that I needed a ride. That’s kind of horrible of me, I know. But I paid for Amanda’s gas, and her mom’s van isn’t cheap to fill up. So I’m absolved, kind of.

  As we speed farther and farther away from town, I listen as Millie and Amanda bicker back and forth over some series of books they’re reading while I sit in the back with Hannah and a crumpled paper in my hand.

  DOLLY PARTON NIGHT!

  Come see your favorite Dolly Parton impersonators duke it out for the crowning glory of best little whore in Texas!

  Winner gets bragging rights and a one-year supply of Avon lipsticks courtesy of our very own Kiwi Lavender!

  The Hideaway on Palmer and Fourth, Odessa, Texas

  Doors open at 8! Show starts at 9!

  As we pull into the parking lot, Millie turns to me. “You’re sure this is the right place?”

  I check the cross street and point to the hot-pink sign that blinks THE HIDEAWAY. I recognize this place from the picture of Lucy that Mrs. Dryver gave me to keep. “This is it.”

  “What kind of pageant would be in a bar? This is a bar, right?” she asks.

  I clear my throat. “I think it’s probably best if we keep an open mind. And I didn’t say it was a pageant necessarily.”

  Hannah laughs. “This should be good.”

  We all pile out of the car.

  Amanda stands in the flickering pool of light below the sign. “My mom’s van is safe here, right?”

  None of us answer.

  There’s a short line at the door with a group of gay guys in front of us. Or what I assume to be gay guys. This is going to sound totally Podunk of me, but I’ve never actually met a gay person. Well, I mean, someone who was open about it. There are gay people in Clover City, I’m sure, but the ones I’ve heard of have been treated as urban legends or cautionary tales. Lucy had lots of gay friends online because, as she put it, Dolly Parton is the patron saint of gay men.

  There are moments in my life when I feel like I know everything and that I’ve left no rock unturned. But things like this remind me of how small my world is.

  “Y’all, I think those were gay guys,” whispers Amanda after they go through the door.

  Hannah rolls her eyes. “You’re a fucking Einstein.”

  Amanda is undeterred. “How do they get their eyebrows so perfect?”

  The man standing at the door is a big, burly guy with a belly, but all he’s wearing is a pair of jeans and a leather vest.

  It’s hard to imagine Lucy at this place, but then I think of the bright blue eye shadow I saw her wearing in that picture, and it doesn’t seem so impossible.

  “IDs,” he growls.

  “Uh, for what?” asks Millie.

  “Eighteen and up,” he says.

  My stomach sinks to my butt. “That’s not what the email said,” I tell him.

  “Well, that’s what I say,” he says.

  Hannah pushes past Millie and Amanda. “Listen, we drove here from Clover City. Do you even know where that is?”

  He grunts.

  “That’s right,” she says. “Of course you don’t, because it’s a sad little town that no one’s ever heard of. We drove two hours to get away from that shitter and you can’t be telling us it was all for nothing.”

  He licks his lips. I almost think she might have cracked him. I mean, look at us. Millie’s wearing a polyester pantsuit and Amanda’s in a pair of soccer shorts—I think they might even be the same ones she wore yesterday. We don’t look like the kind of girls who are capable of drinking the place dry. Well, Hannah might.

  “Nope,” he says. “Sorry, kiddies. No can do.”

  “But look at this email,” I tell him, like that will somehow make a difference.

  He takes the paper from my hand and his gaze hovers at the top of the page before he says, “This isn’t your email address.”

  I swallow. “It’s my aunt’s. Lucy.”

  Carefully, he folds the paper and hands it back to me. He pulls four fluorescent orange wristbands from his vest pocket and fastens them around our wrists.

  My mouth drops wide open.

  “If any of you even look at the bar, you’re out.” He holds my elbow while the others file in. “Lucy was good people.”

  I nod and silently thank her for this little bit of magic tonight.

  Inside we find a small table off to the side of the stage and far, far away from the bar. The waiter walks by, glances at our wristbands, and brings back four waters.

  Millie scoots her chair in close and smooths down her hair. “There’s a whole mess of men here, don’t y’all think?”

  Hannah looks around for a moment, and the expression on her face shifts. “Give me that email.”

  I lean away from her. “What? Why? No.”

  She reaches for my pocket and despite me pushing at her hands, rips it out. Millie and Amanda are in their own worlds, absorbing their surroundings. Hannah takes a second to glance over the email. “Holy shit,” she says.

  The lights begin to dim. “What?”

  She shakes her head. “Oh my God. You don’t even know, do you?” She smacks her hand on the table, laughter spurting from her mouth. “Millie,” she says. “Your mama’s gonna make you wash your eyes out with soap when you get home tonight.”

  Millie’s mouth forms an O, but that’s all I see before the club goes completely dark except for a few runner lights by the bar.

  Over the speakers comes a low, sultry voice. “Tramps, vagabonds, ladies, and lords, welcome to Dolly Parton Night at the Hideaway!”

  The crowd cheers.

  “First to grace our stage tonight is the lovely Miss Candee Disch! Let’s make her feel welcome, y’all.”

  A spotlight hits center stage on a tall woman with a huge blond wig. She wears a floor-length velvet gown in lime green. Her makeup is exaggerated and her lips are bubbly and drawn on. The music starts and I know the song within only a few notes. “Higher and Higher.”

  “Your love has lifted me,” she sings. “Higher, higher, and higher.” Then the tempo speeds up and even though she’s straight and lean, her hips appear like magic and she’s shaking, working the stage with everything she’s got. I am totally taken. So much so that I don’t even think to watch for reactions from my friends. I sing along with the song, and not until she’s about to walk off the stage do I realize that Hannah is in absolute hysterics.

  My eyes have adjusted to the darkness. Millie turns to me, her expression still in that same O shape it was in when the lights went down. “Willowdean,” she says. �
�Correct me if I’m wrong, but that was a man. A very lovely man.”

  I glance around. Men holding hands. Girls with their arms around each other.

  “This is better than reality TV,” says Amanda.

  The crowd applauds as Candee Disch curtsies. “Let’s hear it for the iconic Britney Swears!”

  Another woman enters from offstage, and I see it now. The rough edge of her square jaw. Her broad shoulders. The stubble beneath her makeup despite her close shave.

  This is a drag show.

  I sit up straighter in my chair.

  My stomach flurries with excitement. For the first time since that night when I sat in the back of Bo’s truck, watching the meteor shower, I feel like my life is happening.

  “I’m almost impressed,” says Hannah.

  We watch as drag queens every shape and size and color give it their all and leave everything they’ve got on that stage in this dingy little bar out in the middle of West Texas. They wear sparkling, elaborate costumes with incredible high heels and insane wigs. Each of them is their own brand of beauty. There’s even a duo with a woman cross-dressing as Kenny Rogers for a rendition of “Islands in the Stream.”

  My favorite, though, is a short Asian queen named Lee Wei. She wears a baby-blue minidress with sequins so long that every time she moves, she’s a blur of motion. When the spotlight zeros in on her and the song begins, it only takes one note before the whole bar loses it. “Jolene.”

  It’s cliché, I know, but if I had to listen to one song for the rest of my life, it would be “Jolene.” Everyone loves it, but I like to think it takes a special kind of heartbreak to really call the song your own. I mean, Dolly Parton—THE Dolly Parton—is singing to some mysterious Jolene who she thinks is more beautiful and more worthy than her, begging her not to take her man. It’s catchy and everyone knows the words, but to me, it’s this reminder that no matter who you are, there will always be someone prettier or smarter or thinner. Perfection is nothing more than a phantom shadow we’re all chasing. If I could sing worth a lick, this would be the song I’d sing for the pageant.

  By the end of the song, I’m wiping away tears I didn’t even realize I was shedding.

  The four of us leave at the end of the night with this look of wonder plastered to our faces, like we’ve spent the last few hours sitting too close to the TV.

  As we’re walking to the van, someone calls to us from the back door. “Hey! Kiddies!”

  I turn. It’s the bouncer from earlier. “Y’all go on,” I tell Millie, Hannah, and Amanda. “I’ll be there in a sec.”

  The burly man sits on a stool, holding the back door open with his back. “Name’s Dale,” he says. “You enjoy yourself tonight?”

  I nod. “I think it’s safe to say that this has been a formative experience in my life.”

  “Seems like a fair thing to say about most drag shows.”

  I nod back to the van. “My friends had fun, too.”

  “Lee!” he calls behind him as he stubs out his cigarette beneath his boot. “Honey!”

  Lee Wei, the queen who sang “Jolene,” saunters out the back door. She’s even shorter and somehow rounder without her high heels. She looks from me to the bouncer, and smiles, even though she obviously has no idea who I am.

  “You ’member Lucy?” Dale asks. “Used to come around here with Suze Dryver.”

  El’s mom. Oh Jesus. I wish El had been here tonight. It’s the only thing that could have made the whole experience even more perfect.

  Lee holds her hand to her chest. “Oh, sweet Lucy! Of course I do.” Her voice is deeper than I expect.

  “This is her niece,” says Dale.

  I nod. “Willowdean.”

  Without a moment of hesitation, Lee reaches for my hand. “I am so sorry,” she tells me. “Lucy was a real gem. She had a kind, open heart. We were so sad to see her go.”

  “Th-thanks,” I say, and I don’t really know why, but I add, “I’ve been real lost without her. Like, she was this compass I didn’t even know I had.”

  She nods, and Dale presses his lips together in a thin line. “You email the club’s address if you ever need anything,” he says.

  Lee steps forward and plants a kiss on my forehead. “There’s nothing good about losing someone,” she says. “But maybe Lucy wasn’t supposed to be your compass forever. Maybe she was there for you just long enough so you could learn how to be your own compass and find your own way.” She winks at me. “The universe is a strange thing.”

  I leave Dale and Lee there at the stage door and hop into the backseat of the van.

  “What did they want?” Amanda asks.

  “Just told me not to come back until we’re eighteen.”

  “You’ve got lipstick on your forehead,” says Hannah.

  “I know.” I want to leave it there forever as a blessing. The last permission I need to be my own role model.

  THIRTY-NINE

  One week turns into two, and I realize that Mitch and I have begun to spend lunches and almost every moment not dedicated to work or the pageant together. I almost even tell him about the drag show at the Hideaway, but it’s like trying to explain your favorite part of a movie to someone who’s never seen it—you’ll never do it justice.

  We both settle into an easy type of routine where I come over and watch him play video games, even taking the controls myself a few times. I stay for dinner one night, but it feels too much like trespassing.

  From what I gather, Mitch and his mom eat dinner together every night while his dad takes his meal on a TV tray in front of his recliner. I watch him walk in from work, grab a beer, and wait in the living room for his food to be brought to him.

  The three of us eat at the dinner table in total silence as our silverware scratches against plates. I want to ask Mitch about it, but it feels like a secret I’m not meant to know.

  A few days later, we sit at lunch, talking about what we want to do after graduation when he brings it up all on his own.

  “I don’t know if I can leave my mom,” he says. “I mean, he doesn’t, like, hit her or anything. But they don’t talk. Not at all. And I kind of hope that maybe it’s me who’s the problem, so that if I do leave, it’ll get better.”

  “Why don’t they get divorced?” A single-parent home is all I’ve ever known, and Lucy more than made up for some deadbeat dad. My real dad was some guy passing through town. He stuck around for a while, but not long enough to be more than some guy. He’s in Ohio or Idaho. Wherever the potatoes come from.

  He smiles in a broken kind of way. “My mom doesn’t believe in divorce. She gets really upset every time I mention it.”

  Just as I’m about to respond, Tim walks right past us. “Hang on a sec,” I say as I’m already leaving to follow him. “Tim!” I look around for any sign of Ellen as I follow him up to the lunch line.

  I cut past three freshmen to squeeze in behind Tim. “Tim, come on. Talk to me.”

  He reaches for a tray and so do I.

  “We’re friends, too, ya know,” I remind him.

  He takes one of the bowls of mac and cheese from beneath the heat lamps. “I know that, Will.”

  I check over my shoulder once more for El even though I didn’t see her in second period.

  “She’s sick today,” he says.

  The lunch lady tries to offer me a plate of chicken-fried steak, but I wave her off.

  “You’ve got to get her to talk to me.”

  He shakes his head. “When has anyone ever had any luck making Ellen do anything?”

  He has a point. “Come on, Tim. Something. I can meet you guys one day in the parking lot or maybe you can tell her you want to meet her in the gym and I’ll show up instead.”

  “I’m not tricking her into talking to you. I don’t wanna get in the middle of this.”

  Tim pays for his food as the lunch lady eyes my empty tray. I take a bowl of green Jell-O and hand her a few dollars without waiting for my change. “You can’t tell me
she’s not miserable without me.”

  “Listen, I’ll try, but I just don’t see how I can make something happen.”

  I nod my head like a madwoman and pretend he didn’t say that second half. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “I really hate that Callie girl,” he says.

  Relief floods my chest. No stronger bond than a common enemy.

  I hurry back over to the table where I left Mitch. “I am so sorry,” I tell him.

  He’s unfazed. “Can’t beat a Jell-O craving.”

  I shove a spoonful in my mouth. I could have at least gone for the red bowl.

  “Hey,” Mitch says. “Not to put you on the spot, but my mom’s been talking about making you a homecoming mum, and I wanted to make sure that wouldn’t be awkward or anything.”

  I smile. “No, that wouldn’t be awkward or anything.”

  The door chime at the Chili Bowl so rarely rings, which means I always find myself startled when it does.

  Ron, my former boss, walks in. Because of the log cabin interior and maroon accents, he looks like a candy cane in the middle of a lumberyard with his red-and-white-striped shirt and white pants.

  “Ron,” I whisper, circling around the counter. “What are you doing here?”

  “Maybe I want chili,” he says, a little too loudly.

  I cross my arms over my chest and give him the best cut-the-shit stare I can muster.

  “All right.” His voice drops a few degrees. “Listen, we’re desperate and super shorthanded. I’ve got Lydia working sixty-hour weeks covering your old shift because everyone we hire leaves when they find something better. She’s threatening to quit on me and I can’t afford to see her go.”

  My head’s shaking before he can even finish.

  “Hear me out.” He puts one hand up. “You left in an awful hurry. I may be old, but I’m not dumb. I don’t know what happened, but whatever it was, I promise the boys will be on their best behavior. I grilled each of them—Marcus and Bo—after you left, and I got nothing.” He shakes his head, and I see the lines of exhaustion crowded around his mouth and eyes. “Give us a second chance. I’m begging you, Will.”