But I don’t like to remember her funeral. I like to remember things like the time she took me to my first dance class when I was in third grade. My leotard barely stretched over my protruding belly and my thighs touched no matter how hard I begged them not to. I was too fat. I was too tall. I didn’t look like all the other girls waiting to go into class.
Since I refused to get out of the car, Lucy came to sit in the backseat with me. “Will.” Her voice was smooth like warm honey. She tucked a loose hair behind my ear and handed me a tissue from the front pocket of her housedress. “I’ve wasted a lot of time in my life. I’ve thought too much about what people will say or what they’re gonna think. And sometimes it’s over silly things like going to the grocery store or going to the post office. But there have been times when I really stopped myself from doing something special. All because I was scared someone might look at me and decide I wasn’t good enough. But you don’t have to bother with that nonsense. I wasted all that time so you don’t have to. If you go in there and you decide that this isn’t for you, then you never have to go back. But you owe yourself the chance, you hear me?”
I only stuck with it for the fall, but that didn’t seem to be the point.
In Lucy’s sock drawer, I find a small box of cassette tapes—all Dolly Parton. I choose one at random and put it in the stereo on her nightstand. I lie back on her bed and listen with the volume turned down so low it sounds like a murmur. Lucy loved Dolly probably more than anything. And I guess I owe a lot to Dolly, too, because without her, Ellen might not be my best friend.
Mrs. Dryver is maybe the best-known Dolly Parton impersonator in this part of Texas. She’s got the petite physique and voice to match. Since Lucy was the vice president of a regional Dolly Parton fan club until a few years ago, their paths crossed on a regular basis. It’s hard for me not to believe that my friendship with Ellen wasn’t somehow fated long before we were born, back when Dolly was still a poor nobody in Tennessee. Like El was some kind of gift that Lucy had always meant for me.
It wasn’t just the look of Dolly that drew us in. It was the attitude that came with knowing how ridiculous people thought she looked, but never changing a thing because she felt good about herself. To us, she is . . . invincible.
FIVE
Summer vacation doesn’t have the same effect it had on me when I was a kid. When El and I were in elementary school, Lucy would take us to Avalanche Snocones. With syrup dripping down our hands, we’d sit in the dim living room with the ceiling fan whirring on high while Lucy flipped through channels until landing on the trashy talk shows that my mother would never let us watch.
But the first weekend of summer passes like it’s nothing special. On Monday morning I wake to find my phone blinking.
ELLEN: SWIMMING. NOW. SUMMER. SO. HOT.
ELLEN: NOW.
ELLEN: NOW.
I can’t help but smile when I see her text. Ellen lives in a non-gated community with a poorly maintained neighborhood pool. But during the summer, the place is an oasis.
I know that fat girls are supposed to be allergic to pools or whatever, but I love swimming. I mean, I’m not stupid. I know people stare, but they can’t blame me for wanting to cool off. And why should it even matter? What about having huge, bumpy thighs means that I need to apologize?
When I pull into El’s driveway, I find her sitting on her porch in her bikini with a towel wrapped around her waist.
Our flip-flops smack against the sidewalk as we walk the three blocks to the pool, and even though it’s only ten in the morning, we are dripping (or as my mother says: glittering) with sweat.
“Oh God,” El says as we’re waiting in line. “There are a shit ton of people here.” She crosses her arms over her stomach.
I loop my arm through hers. “Come on.”
Because of the crowd we’re only able to stake out one lawn chair. El unwinds the towel from her waist and rushes off to the pool. I yank my dress over my head, kick my shoes away, and speed walk on my toes.