They serve us barbecue for lunch. I think that maybe lunch is some secret component of our final score because there is no higher achievement for a southern woman than the ability to eat barbecue and walk away stain free. After lunch we all have to sit through a keynote from Ruth Perkins, a seventy-eight-year-old former Miss Teen Blue Bonnet, who decides not to use the microphone because it gives her feedback in her hearing aid. Which means we’re all left smiling and nodding as she talks at a secret-telling level of volume.
After a while, there’s this awkward moment where she’s waiting for applause and none of us can tell if she’s done talking. We eventually clap and Mrs. Clawson takes the stage to thank her and offer her a bouquet of flowers.
“All right, ladies,” she says into the mic. “None of you can leave until you’ve had your picture made for the paper. There are chairs along the wall, so sit in the same alphabetical order you were in today. You’ve got five minutes to touch up your faces.”
I turn to Hannah who sits next to me, and bare my teeth. “Anything in my teeth?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Me?”
“Nope.”
We part ways and go to our respective chairs as everyone else storms the bathrooms. I wait for El to sit down beside me. I can’t make my brain concentrate on what I might say, but I’m going to talk to her. I have to.
She plops down in the chair next to me, and licks her thumb as she tries to rub off a barbecue stain on the lapel of her blazer.
“I bet they can take it so the stain’s out of frame,” I say. “Or Photoshop it.”
She keeps on with the stain, diligently making it worse and worse, but says nothing.
They begin to call us up one by one and we scoot up a chair each time they do.
With two girls ahead of me, I say, “I don’t want us to be mad at each other anymore.”
I wait for her response. We move up a seat.
“I was wrong.” We move up one more seat. “I was really wrong, and I can’t do this anymore. I can’t not talk to you every day. Please don’t be angry with me.”
“Willowdean?” calls Mallory.
I glance back to Ellen before standing up. She’ll crack soon. She has to.
“Willowdean?”
“It’s not that easy.” El’s voice scratches, like she hasn’t spoken in days. “We’re turning into different people.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re not good for each other.” I think the parts of me that are built on memories made with Ellen are some of my favorite parts of myself. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I was stubborn.”
I sit down on the small stool in front of the backdrop. My mom stands behind the photographer. She motions with both her pointer fingers like she’s pulling a smile across her face.
I pull in one deep breath and beg myself to smile. Smile. Smile. Smile.
Ellen sits there against the wall, still rubbing her barbecue stain in circles.
I don’t smile.
After photos, we’re released to set up our backstage dressing areas. The community theater downtown was designed with the pageant in mind, which means the women’s dressing room is four times the size of the men’s.
Each seat is labeled. I find my name on a piece of paper taped to a small stretch of mirror. Except over my name in black marker in all caps is DUMPLIN’. Scrawled in a hurry like someone had to say my name and couldn’t resist. I look right and then left to see if I can spot the culprit.
Ellen plops all her stuff down next to mine. I see her name taped to the mirror. We’re in alphabetical order again.
In the reflection, her gaze catches mine. She digs through her purse for a minute before coming up with a pen. Stretching over me, she reaches for the paper with my name on it. I watch as she scribbles my name sans Dumplin’ on the back, tears the piece of tape off and reapplies it before sticking the sign back on the mirror.
“Thanks,” I say.
She sits down on the stool next to me. “It’s just a word. Doesn’t mean anything unless you let it.” She turns to me. Her eyes don’t quite meet mine. “But if it hurts you, it hurts me.”
My whole body relaxes, but my chin trembles. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I shake my head. “No. No, I am.”
She looks up then, notices my quivering chin, and takes my hand.
The room begins to swell as more girls file in.
“Come on,” she says.