El sinks down to her shoulders as the water laps against my waist and the cool relief of it makes my eyes roll to the back of my head. Ahh, now it’s summer.
We float around on our backs like starfish and it reminds me of when we were kids and we’d go under water with our goggles on and scream secrets to each other. Except that there were no secrets between us then and it was mostly things we already knew. “CHASE ANDERSON IS SO CUTE!” El would say. “I STOLE TEN DOLLARS FROM MY MOM’S WALLET!” I would scream.
I let myself float until my shoulder brushes up against the side of the pool and I feel a shadow hanging over me. Opening my eyes a sliver, I see a little boy squatting at the edge of the pool. His lips make the shape of words.
I stand and noise bleeds into my ears, almost giving me a brain freeze. I squeeze my eyes shut for a quick second. My head feels like it’s been shrink-wrapped. “What?”
The boy’s red swimming trunks are dripping wet, leaving a pool of water beneath him. “I thought you were dead,” he says. “And you’re all red.” He stands and, without ceremony, walks away.
I touch my cheeks and the water from my fingers drips down my face like a drop of rain against a dry, cracked earth. I have no idea how long I’d been floating for. Looking around for El, I find her sitting on our lawn chair, talking to a girl and a guy. I take my time moving to the shallow end in the hope that they’ll leave, but after a few minutes of stalling, they haven’t budged.
Bracing myself, I race out of the pool. El sits at the foot of our lawn chair while a girl I’ve never met sits at the other end with a boy behind her, like they’re riding a motorcycle and she’s the one driving.
“Hey,” I say.
There’s this split second where El says nothing and this other girl stares at me with this how-can-I-help-you-do-you-need-something-you-can-leave-now face.
“Guys, this is my best friend, Will.” El turns to me. “This is Callie. And her boyfriend . . .” Her voice drags for a second and she snaps her fingers.
“Bryce,” says Callie. Bryce nods from behind her. He’s got those total douche glasses on, the ones that coaches wear that almost look like Star Trek glasses. His hands grip Callie’s shoulders and I can tell they’re the type who is always touching.
“Nice to meet y’all,” I mumble.
El glares at me.
It’s not that I don’t like new people. It’s just that, in general, I do not like new people. And this is maybe the thing El dislikes most about me. For as long as I can remember, she’s tried to drag a third wheel into our perfect little mix. Maybe it makes me a total grouch, but I don’t need another best friend. And I especially don’t need this girl who can’t seem to stop staring at me like I’m some kind of car wreck.
El scoots over for me to sit next to her, but I stay where I am. “So, Callie’s entering the pageant.”
Bryce squeezes Callie’s shoulders and she lets out a shrill giggle. “Yeah,” she says. “My sister was a runner-up a few years ago. Guess you could say it’s in my genes.”
“Good for you.” My voice is thick and bitter even though I really don’t mean for it to be.
El forces a smile. “Callie’s actually doing that pageant boot camp we saw after school last week.”
I actually don’t know what she expects me to say to that. This whole conversation is a flashing sign that reads DEAD END.
“Uh, Callie,” says Ellen. “You know Will’s mom runs the pageant.”
Football players are gods in the South. And cheerleaders aren’t too bad off either, but down here, the females who reign supreme are beauty queens. Unfortunately, though, being the tubby daughter of Clover City’s most cherished beauty queen doesn’t win me much street cred.
Callie uses her hand to block out the sun as she looks up at me. “Wait, that’s your mom?”
“Yeah.” If I could change only one thing about my mom, it would be the pageant. In fact, I’m sure that my whole life would fall together like a set of dominoes if I could delete that one annual event from my existence.