She nods, and Dale presses his lips together in a thin line. “You email the club’s address if you ever need anything,” he says.
Lee steps forward and plants a kiss on my forehead. “There’s nothing good about losing someone,” she says. “But maybe Lucy wasn’t supposed to be your compass forever. Maybe she was there for you just long enough so you could learn how to be your own compass and find your own way.” She winks at me. “The universe is a strange thing.”
I leave Dale and Lee there at the stage door and hop into the backseat of the van.
“What did they want?” Amanda asks.
“Just told me not to come back until we’re eighteen.”
“You’ve got lipstick on your forehead,” says Hannah.
“I know.” I want to leave it there forever as a blessing. The last permission I need to be my own role model.
THIRTY-NINE
One week turns into two, and I realize that Mitch and I have begun to spend lunches and almost every moment not dedicated to work or the pageant together. I almost even tell him about the drag show at the Hideaway, but it’s like trying to explain your favorite part of a movie to someone who’s never seen it—you’ll never do it justice.
We both settle into an easy type of routine where I come over and watch him play video games, even taking the controls myself a few times. I stay for dinner one night, but it feels too much like trespassing.
From what I gather, Mitch and his mom eat dinner together every night while his dad takes his meal on a TV tray in front of his recliner. I watch him walk in from work, grab a beer, and wait in the living room for his food to be brought to him.
The three of us eat at the dinner table in total silence as our silverware scratches against plates. I want to ask Mitch about it, but it feels like a secret I’m not meant to know.
A few days later, we sit at lunch, talking about what we want to do after graduation when he brings it up all on his own.
“I don’t know if I can leave my mom,” he says. “I mean, he doesn’t, like, hit her or anything. But they don’t talk. Not at all. And I kind of hope that maybe it’s me who’s the problem, so that if I do leave, it’ll get better.”
“Why don’t they get divorced?” A single-parent home is all I’ve ever known, and Lucy more than made up for some deadbeat dad. My real dad was some guy passing through town. He stuck around for a while, but not long enough to be more than some guy. He’s in Ohio or Idaho. Wherever the potatoes come from.
He smiles in a broken kind of way. “My mom doesn’t believe in divorce. She gets really upset every time I mention it.”
Just as I’m about to respond, Tim walks right past us. “Hang on a sec,” I say as I’m already leaving to follow him. “Tim!” I look around for any sign of Ellen as I follow him up to the lunch line.
I cut past three freshmen to squeeze in behind Tim. “Tim, come on. Talk to me.”
He reaches for a tray and so do I.
“We’re friends, too, ya know,” I remind him.
He takes one of the bowls of mac and cheese from beneath the heat lamps. “I know that, Will.”
I check over my shoulder once more for El even though I didn’t see her in second period.
“She’s sick today,” he says.
The lunch lady tries to offer me a plate of chicken-fried steak, but I wave her off.
“You’ve got to get her to talk to me.”
He shakes his head. “When has anyone ever had any luck making Ellen do anything?”
He has a point. “Come on, Tim. Something. I can meet you guys one day in the parking lot or maybe you can tell her you want to meet her in the gym and I’ll show up instead.”
“I’m not tricking her into talking to you. I don’t wanna get in the middle of this.”
Tim pays for his food as the lunch lady eyes my empty tray. I take a bowl of green Jell-O and hand her a few dollars without waiting for my change. “You can’t tell me she’s not miserable without me.”