Puddin'

by Julie Murphy

  Ellen runs down the hallway, screeching to a stop in the doorway. “Bye, Mom!” And then she sees us. No, me. “Hi. Um, hey.”

  Millie beams. “Ellen! This is Callie.”

  Ellen lets out a held breath. “We are previously acquainted.” She puts on a smile. “Y’all come on in. Millie, could I speak with you?”

  Millie nods, and the two turn off into the formal dining room while I stand in the foyer. They whisper for a moment before I hear Ellen say, “If you say so.”

  Wow. This is like ten times worse than walking in on your parents talking about you. I’m not surprised by Ellen’s hesitation, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel like shit because of it.

  The two rejoin me in the foyer, and Millie turns to me. “Let the fun begin!”

  We follow Ellen upstairs to a second TV room besides the one opposite the dining room.

  “Millie’s here,” says Ellen as she emerges from the stairs. “And she brought a friend.”

  “Is it Malik?” someone asks before letting out a wolf whistle.

  Everyone laughs, and then I step forward from behind Millie.

  And silence.

  Willowdean grunts before looking to Ellen, her nostrils flared, like my presence is the ultimate betrayal.

  I shake my head and look to Millie. I knew this would happen. Surely she did too. Or maybe this girl is just giving me a taste of my own medicine after all these years, and this is her way of kicking me when I’m down—getting her whole gang of losers to shun me while I’m trapped at her stupid slumber party.

  “Y’all,” says Millie, seemingly unaware of the brick wall of silence and the fuming chubby Dolly Parton wannabe in the corner. “This is Callie.” She touches my arm gently, like she’s an adult introducing me to a classroom of hyenas. “Callie, this is Ellen, who you know.”

  I nod.

  “And that’s Amanda.” She points to a gangly girl, spread out on the floor with a small plastic tub full of nail polish bottles. Then she motions to a light-skinned black girl with swoopy bangs and two long braids like Wednesday Addams. “That’s Hannah.” Ah, yes. Horse Teeth. “And—”

  “Willowdean,” I say far too sweetly. If this is how it’s gonna be, then I’m ready. I put up the most valuable self-defense mechanism I’ve accrued over the years: sugary Southern manners so sweet they bite.

  “Hello, Callie,” Willowdean says from where she sits perched on the arm of the couch, overenunciating each syllable like she’s spitting out each letter.

  I swear, this girl brings out the best of the worst in me. “Be careful up there,” I say. I turn to Ellen. “I’d hate to see Mrs. Dryver’s lovely furniture get ruined from somebody cracking the arm of the couch. Furniture can be so delicate.”

  “The furniture,” says Ellen sharply, “is just fine.”

  Hannah whistles low as she shakes her head and scoots closer to Amanda to claim a dark shade of purple polish.

  I grin. “Good choice,” I tell her. “It really reflects the whole angsty thing you’ve got going on.”

  I can feel Millie’s eyes on me, but it’s too late.

  Amanda, who seems to be the most mellow of them all, looks up at me from behind heavy-lidded eyes and snarls.

  Willowdean throws her hands up. “What are you even doing here?”

  “Callie is my guest,” Millie says, her tone even.

  “Well, maybe she should learn some manners,” mumbles Willowdean.

  Ellen claps her hands together in an effort to defuse the situation. “I’ll show y’all where you can put your bags.”

  We follow her to her room, which I remember from our stint as friends. Her corn snake is coiled on top of a rock beneath a sunlamp in his glass case.

  I shiver. The one time I had spent the night here with Ellen, the week before the pageant, I lay awake all night, thinking about that snake slithering up the blankets. No thank you.

  Millie drops off her bag and then follows Ellen back out into the hallway.

  “Be out in a minute,” I say as I drop my bag on my bed and pretend to rifle through it.

  “I’ll be right back,” I hear Millie say from the other room.

  I look up and find her standing in the doorframe. She opens her mouth a few times, like she’s about to talk, but then thinks better of it.

  “I should go home,” I finally say.

  Millie steps into the room and closes the door behind her. She takes a deep breath and presses her fists into her hips, like she’s channeling Wonder Woman—just a fatter, pastel version. “You don’t have to be like this,” she says.

  I’m a little too shocked to even speak. I didn’t know she had it in her.

  “You don’t have to be like this,” she says again. “Every time you say some rude, biting thing, it’s a choice you’re making. And you don’t have to make that choice. I’ll be honest. I don’t understand much about you or the life you used to lead, but what I do understand is what you just felt. Walking into a party full of girls from school and immediately knowing that you are the outsider.”

  I hoist my bag up on my shoulder. “I’m just going to go outside and call my mom.”

  “No, you aren’t,” says Millie, her hands still on her hips. “Being the fat girl—yes, I call myself fat, and I know you do, too,” she tells me. “And just so you know, that word doesn’t have to be mean. No offense, but it’s people like you and all your old friends who make that word hurtful. Anyway, being the fat girl my whole life has never been easy, but it gave me a way thicker skin than you’ll ever have. So I know that life sucks, but I just basically gave you a buffet of friends out there, and all you did was show everyone why they shouldn’t even waste their time.”

  I could do three things right now. One, I could break down and just start sobbing. Really, I could. I’ve had a shit week, and being told off by Millie Michalchuk is just the turd cherry on the shit sundae. Two, I could storm out of this house and call my mom. Or hell, I could just walk home if I had to. Or three, I could suck it up. I could go out there and treat this gathering of the losers as an extension of my job at the gym—something I just have to power through. And maybe it won’t be so bad. If anything, it will buy me goodwill at home. I hate to admit it, but I guess it’s less than awful to be out on Saturday night, even if the company is less than desirable.

  Besides, if that’s the best cattiness Willowdean can muster, she wouldn’t survive a day as a Shamrock. And Ellen . . . well, I might as well show her what she’s missing.

  I let my bag slide off my shoulder, and it makes a thud sound when it hits the floor. “All right. Let’s do this.”

  Millie busts out into a grin so wide you can barely see anything but teeth. “Perfect.”

  I’ve gotta say, I have girl time down to a science. Between dance classes at Dance Locomotive, dance team in middle school (we were the Lucky Charms. Duh), and the Shamrocks in high school, I have always been on the top of every slumber-party guest list. And on a scale of one to ten—ten being pro level—this slumber party is a solid four.

  In the TV room, I sit down on the floor beside Amanda. I figure she’s a safer bet than Hannah, who seems to be in a constant state of brooding.

  Millie stands up, holding out a movie for us to see. “Okay, as a continuation of your romantic comedy education, I give you—Clueless!” She turns to me. “Last time we watched Bend It Like Beckham.”

  I nod, impressed. “Good choice.”

  She curtsies. “Thank you.”

  She pops the movie in, and I reach over Amanda for the bottle of nail polish. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not at all,” she says. She throws her body against the bottom of the sofa while the opening credits play. “I can never do my right hand. Do you think you can learn ambidexterity, or are you just born that way?”

  I shrug. “Who knows? But I give a pretty bitchin’ manicure. Let me.”

  “Oh.” She tentatively holds out her hand for me, like she’s deciding whether or not to trust me.
“Cool. Thanks.”

  If I’m going to infiltrate this group for the night, I definitely chose the right girl to sit next to.

  Ellen steps over me with a bag of Doritos hugged to her chest. She spreads out behind us on the couch, with Willowdean sitting on the last cushion with Ellen’s head in her lap. Willowdean lets out a long sigh, and I can’t tell if it’s contentment at sitting with her BFF or exasperation at my presence. Probably both.

  Millie takes up residence on a plush-looking armchair as I reach for a coffee-table book and a napkin to use as a flat surface to paint Amanda’s right hand in the neon-yellow polish she already used on her left hand.

  We watch the opening scenes of Clueless, and we all laugh along at all the jokes that hold up to this day and of course the nineties fashions that I secretly love. My dad is actually the one who first shared this movie with me. He says it was one of the first dates he took my mom on, and that after she went out and bought a plaid skirt just like Cher’s and wore it for two weeks straight.

  Outside, the sun slips down beyond the horizon and the room grows darker, almost like a movie theater. For my nail polish, I choose a fluorescent orange. One of my favorite polish colors, despite my mother’s insistence that it makes me look like I dipped my fingers and toes in a bag of Cheetos.

  By the time we’ve made it to my favorite scene, where Cher is giving a classroom presentation, I’m blowing on my fingers, waiting for them to dry. I don’t even realize I’m quoting along with Millie when Cher, with her long, perfect blond hair and her gum wrapped around her pointer finger, says, “And in conclusion, may I please remind you that it does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty?”

  On the screen, the classroom erupts in applause as Cher puts her gum back in her mouth. In the TV room, Millie lets out a giddy squeal. “I just love that part. I want a cross- stitch with that quote on it!”

  “Okay,” says Hannah. “That was pretty badass. But just so we’re clear, that brunette girl doesn’t even need a makeover.”

  Maybe if the whole night is just movies and no talking, I’ll survive.

  Halfway through the movie, I notice Hannah struggling with her right hand as she tries to apply her purple polish. She’s holding her hand up in the air the way I used to before my mom taught me how to paint my nails properly.

  I lean forward and say, “The trick is to lay your hand down on a flat surface and paint a strip down the center of the nail and then thin strips on either side.”

  At first she just gives me this how-dare-you-speak-to-me look, and maybe after what I said to her at first, that’s fair. But she doesn’t reject me when I hand her the napkins and coffee-table book I used for Amanda and myself.

  After the movie, we turn on a few lights, and Millie pulls out all the stops to try to get everyone to indulge in some girl talk, but no one’s really interested in divulging any personal secrets, and truthfully, it’s probably due to my presence.

  So Millie takes her own bait and tells us all about that boy Malik, who everyone else already seems to be aware of. She blushes when she recaps the long stream of embarrassing text messages they exchanged when she was on painkillers last weekend, and she swoons when she relays the story of their first real kiss last night. She’s even charitable enough to say that I’m one of the people who encouraged her to make a move—and I think she’s actually serious.

  “Was he your first kiss?” asks Willowdean, her voice so warm that I think she might have forgotten I’m even in the room.

  Millie blushes but shakes her head. “No.”

  “What?” Willowdean sounds genuinely shocked, and I am, too. “Millie Michalchuk, a woman of the world!”

  “I kissed a few guys at Daisy Ranch, that weight-loss camp my mom used to send me to.”

  Fat camp? If Millie’s gone to fat camp, why is she still . . . fat?

  “A few?” says Amanda. “I thought it was just that one.”

  “Well, he was the only memorable one,” says Millie. “But it was nothing like kissing Malik. And most of those guys at Daisy Ranch acted like I should be so lucky to kiss them. Like they were doing me a favor.”

  “I totally get that.” Willowdean rolls her eyes. “It’s like people get it in their heads that fat people can only date fat people, which is so annoying.”

  “Yes! Most guys treated me like they were my only shot at love. It didn’t help that the guy-to-girl ratio was like one to ten.”

  It’s so weird to hear both Millie and Willowdean use the word fat so flippantly. I don’t like to admit it, but I do sort of feel like it makes sense for fat people to date each other.

  “That’s how it felt with Mitch sometimes,” says Willowdean.

  I perk up at the mention of his name but try my best to hide my interest—interest I didn’t even know I had. I’m quick to brush it off. He’s the one semipopular person who’s not going out of his way to ignore me or ditch me. Of course his name would pique my interest.

  “It’s like, if I date a guy like him,” she continues, “people will think, ‘Oh, of course, two fatties together. At least they’re not contaminating the gene pool with their fatness.’ And that just pisses me off. Then people see me with Bo, and they’re like, ‘Well, what kind of favor does he owe her to pretend he’s her boyfriend?’”

  Ellen groans, throwing her hands up in the air. “Why can’t you just date whoever the hell you want—or no one!—without people making assumptions?”

  Willowdean sighs. “I don’t know, but I appreciate your rage.”

  Ellen lays a fat kiss on her cheek. “Anytime.”

  I actually have to avert my eyes, because I can’t tell if they annoy me or if I’m jealous. I just cannot fathom how this constant finishing-each-other’s-sentences type of affection isn’t somehow fake. No one clicks with anyone else like that. Not in a real way.

  Later that night, Willowdean and Ellen sleep in her room, Hannah and Amanda take the guest room, and I take the loveseat while Millie takes the sofa.

  As we’re lying in the dark, slipping in and out of sleep, she says, “You survived.”

  And she’s right. I did.

  Instead of feeling proud, all that shrouds me is a deep sense of betrayal. There was a time when I thought that what I had with Sam, Melissa, and the rest of the Shamrocks was real. Dysfunctional, but real. But now the only thing I know is that they’re all living my dream without me, and not a single one of them seems to care.

  Millie

  Nineteen

  Callie hasn’t said much about Saturday night since I dropped her off at home on Sunday morning, but I actually take that as a good sign.

  In Mom’s craft room, she used to have a cross-stitch hanging above her sewing machine that said IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANYTHING NICE TO SAY, IT’S BEST YOU NOT SAY ANYTHING AT ALL. And I know that’s one of those quotes that people just throw around, but when I was a girl, Mom and Grandma would watch this movie called Steel Magnolias over and over again. There was this one line that always made Grandma chuckle. “If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.”

  I think Callie is probably the kind of person that only knows how to tell you what’s wrong and not what’s right. So Callie’s silence? Yeah, I can take that as a good thing. And even if she didn’t have a good time, I wouldn’t care. I’m still riding the high from my night with Malik. Yesterday at school, we didn’t talk more necessarily, but there was just something different. Maybe in the way he smiled at me or how his fingers lingered when he passed me my worksheet.

  Tuesday morning is just one of those days where I’m running two minutes behind no matter what I do, but in the world of first-period school announcements, those two minutes matter.

  Amanda and I split off in the parking lot, and she waves to me dramatically. “Godspeed!”

  I speed walk the whole way to the office and make it just in time for the final bell. I’m huffing a little, but I’m here!

  Callie’s mom, Mrs. Bradley, beams as I walk in.

&nbs
p; “You look radiant this morning!” I tell her.

  She cups her hand to her cheek and waves me off with her other hand. “Call it hot-flash glow.”

  I smirk and hand over the list of announcements for her to approve.

  She holds a finger to her lips and gives it a quick once-over. “All looks good to me,” she says. “Oh! Except for the show-choir auditions for next fall. Mr. Turner had to move those to next week.” She lowers her reading glasses and her voice. “Rumor has it that Mr. Turner’s husband is none too pleased about the time commitment show choir requires.”

  I offer a sympathetic smile, but the clock catches my attention before I can respond. “Oh shoot!” I say. “I better hop on the PA.”

  She reaches around and swings open the little gate that separates the attendance office from the rest of the front office. “All yours!”

  I settle down behind the desk nearest the window and pull the microphone right up to the edge of the table.

  I stretch my mouth out for a minute, making ridiculous faces, before doing a few vocal warm-ups. “Unique New York. Unique New York. Unique New York. Red leather, yellow leather. Red leather, yellow leather.” I overenunciate each word. “She sells seashells on the—”

  Mrs. Bradley clears her throat to let me know it’s time and gives me the thumbs-up.

  I hit the red button. “Good morning, gold-and-green Rams! Millie Michalchuk here with your morning announcements. Show-choir auditions have been postponed until next week. Tune in here, or watch the schedule on Mr. Turner’s door for updates. Today’s special in the cafeteria is the ever-popular chicken-fried steak served with white gravy, mashed taters, and green beans. The Shamrocks will be selling baked goods in the courtyard, so go support their efforts to make it all the way to Nationals this year!”

  I continue on with a few more items on my list before handing the show over to Bobby Espinosa from student council so he can do the Pledge of Allegiance and our daily moment of reflection.

  Afterward, I’m buzzing with energy. If ever I doubted that ditching Daisy Ranch for broadcast journalism camp this summer is a bad idea, all it takes is one morning of announcements to remind me of the exhilarating buzz I get from just this little thing. Compared to this, reporting the news live on television must be pure adrenaline.