Burgundy finally glances up and upon seeing me, one of her perfectly groomed eyebrows pops up. Clay and Tabitha both have the same kind of reactions, but are more successful at masking them. It is then that I realize that I am the first of the . . . I’ll call us the unlikely suspects.
I think of all the good advice I’ve ever gotten in my life. Most all of it is from Lucy. But nothing clicks. Nothing prepares me for this moment. So I channel my mother. If my mother were standing here in this room right now, what would she say? If she weren’t running this whole show, and she was just my mom, what would she tell me to do?
Smile, she would say. And don’t you dare sigh.
I smile. So hard my cheeks hurt. And I do my best not to sigh.
“Willowdean Dickson?” asks Tabitha.
I nod. I smile. I. Don’t. Stop. Smiling.
“Dickson,” says Burgundy. “You’re not Shirley’s daughter, are you?”
“Yes,” I say. I hear my mother: manners. “Ma’am,” I add. “Yes, ma’am.”
Clay clears his throat. “Okay, let’s get this show rollin’. Willowdean,” he says, holding up a crisp dollar bill. “If I were to give you this dollar, what would you do with it?”
This is a trick question. Still smiling. A dollar. What could I do with his dollar? Okay, I could give it to a homeless guy. I could buy a donut. Yes, sir, please, I would love to buy a donut with your dollar.
No, no. I’ve got to think bigger. Charity feels too obvious. “I would go to the dollar store and buy a box of pencils. Then on the morning of the SAT, I would roam the halls, selling them to the slackers—I mean, the students who forgot their pencils. For three bucks apiece.”
It’s quiet for a moment, and then Clay lets out a hoot of laughter.
Beside him, Burgundy purses her lips. “And what would you do with the money?”
“Buy more pencils,” I say. She begins to scratch something down on her score sheet. “And then, once I had a nice chunk, I’d donate it to charity. Or use it to buy a holiday meal for a family in need.” Creativity? Check. Savvy? Check. Selflessness? Check.
Tabitha smiles to herself, and I think maybe she even winks at me.
Once the judges finish writing down their comments, Tabitha looks up. “We have one other question for you. Define loyalty.”
The adrenaline is sucked from my body like a vacuum. I am not smiling. “Loyalty.” I take my time with each letter, trying to stretch out how long I have before I’ve got to give an answer. “Loyalty is . . . loyalty is being there for someone. It’s selfless. It’s about standing by someone’s side even when you don’t want to.” Ellen. All I see is Ellen. “Because you love them.”
That night when we lay in her bed, talking about the first time she had sex. It was so hard. I felt like there were nails in my stomach, but I stayed there with her. I listened to every detail because that’s what you do for your best friend. I can feel her out in that hallway, thinking of me. For as angry as she is with me, I know she’s sitting out there wondering how I’m doing in front of these judges.
“Loyalty isn’t blind.” Even when I wish it was. “Loyalty is telling someone they’re wrong when no one else will.” It embarrasses me to know that I told El she couldn’t enter the pageant. Like us competing alongside each other would somehow ruin the point I was trying to make. When, really, with her, I am only stronger. I am the best possible me.
I think that my whole world has cracked into all these little pieces, and the only way I can go about fixing it is one shard at a time. For me, the first piece is always Ellen.
FIFTY-SIX