“Yeah. Just hurry.”
She skips to the back behind Morgan as Callie stations herself behind the counter, swaying her hips to the beat of the poppy music playing on the speakers as she pretends to read some kind of sales report.
Squeezing between the racks, I think about how miserable this place must be on a Saturday. Callie turns the music up when the song changes to a hyper-techno beat and I take that as my cue to sneak into one of the fitting rooms. Each stall is made of a wall of curtains and consists of one little stool. The only mirror is the communal mirror outside. That’s got to be a pain in the ass—to have to leave your room every time you want to see how something looks on you.
On the other side of the curtain, hangers scrape against metal. “Where’d El’s friend go?” asks Morgan.
“I don’t know,” says Callie. “I didn’t see her leave, but she’d be pretty hard to miss.”
“Aw, be nice,” says Morgan. And it seems like it should be a kind thing to say, but her voice is laughing.
“Did El-bell find anything?”
“She’s trying on some dresses in the break room.”
More hangers-against-metal scratching. “It’s really sweet of El to hang out with that girl, but all she does is follow El around like a sad puppy dog. I mean, get your own life, right? It’s sad.”
That’s all it takes for my whole body to tense with anger. I yank the curtain aside and trip over the fabric as I do.
Their four eyes follow me to the bench outside of Sweet 16, where I slouch down as low as I can so that I can’t see the two of them anymore.
If I could unzip my skin and step outside of myself, I would.
All the display windows in the mall are packed with formals for homecoming and pageant season. Across from Sweet 16 is a store called Frills with a glittering baby blue gown on display. Written across the window, in shoe polish, it says, Clover City can only have one Miss Teen Blue Bonnet. Make it you. Check out our one-of-a-kind dresses!
I hate how much I despise the pageant, but it feels like a disease. And the whole town is sick.
“Hey.”
I twist around to find Bo sitting down on the back side of the bench.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, like an accusation.
“Shopping with my stepmom and brother.” He points to the shoe store next to Sweet 16. “I saw you sit down on the bench. My little brother’s been trying on basketball shoes for forty-five minutes.” He smiles and dips his chin down into his chest. “What are you doing here, Willowdean?”
I want to touch him. I want to reach over and kiss his face hello. But I don’t. Because we’re not pressed into darkness behind Harpy’s or huddled together in the cab of his truck and because even though neither of us has ever said so, we are a secret.
“Here with my friend. She’s picking up her paycheck.”
“Ellen?”
I nod. I’ve talked about El with Bo, but in a past tense kind of way. I don’t know how to explain the strange gap that has formed between us, so it was easier to talk about her in the same way I talked about Lucy. Like she was a thing from a life before him.
I notice that he’s wearing an old basketball tournament T-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts. “It’s weird seeing you without your uniform on. I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Oh, I recognized you.” He stretches his legs out along his side of the bench. And his legs. I’ve never seen his bare legs. “So where does your friend work?”
I point back to Sweet 16.
His mouth opens and I know that I will forever judge him based on how he reacts to this information, but a voice interrupts him.
“Bo,” calls a tall, thin woman with shiny chestnut-brown hair cut into long layers. She’s too young to be his mom and too old to be his sister.
Bo glances over his shoulder and then back at me. “My stepmom,” he whispers.