“Here in my hands I hold a perfectly normal water bottle. One that I drank out of this morning to take my vitamins.” If I can make my voice sound all magician-y, maybe no one will notice what a hack I am. I tap the water bottle all over. “Totally average water bottle.”
I hold up my quarter. From the front row, my mom squints. I uncap the bottle to show that I cannot fit it through the top. The room is so quiet. Is this why magicians always tell jokes? Or play really intense music that sounds like lasers? I display the quarter once more before gripping it between my fingers like the book said and slapping it into the side of the bottle and through the crack I had created.
“Voilà!” I say, which might be cute, except I’ve spoken too soon. I shake the water bottle, but besides the few stray drops from this morning, it’s empty. I hadn’t checked to make sure that I was hitting the right side of the water bottle.
“On the floor,” calls Callie from the third row where she sits beside Ellen.
Ellen. She chews on her bottom lip.
Her in the audience. My shitty talent. This fully lit auditorium. I’m wasting my time with this pageant. I don’t think this is what Lucy imagined when she stashed that old registration form away in her room. And it’s no one’s fault but my own. Tears threaten at the corners of my eyes, but I force myself to hold them back.
I look down, and there at my feet is my quarter. Quickly, I bend over to pick it up before shoving it through the other side of the bottle.
Worst magic trick of all time.
The only applause comes from Millie. Of course.
“I’m still learning,” I say.
I stand at the edge of the stage as the committee members—my mom included—converse back and forth. Finally my mother says, “Approved.” But her face says it all. Disappointed. Underwhelmed.
I squeeze past Hannah and Millie to get to my seat. “Weak sauce,” whispers Hannah.
“Oh, like you have anything better planned,” I snap.
“Hannah Perez,” calls my mother.
Hannah stomps across the stage in her army-navy surplus boots.
Then—thanks to the kid in the sound booth—her music begins to play. It’s a song I remember hearing on Lucy’s record player: “Send in the Clowns.” It’s the type of song that settles in your bones and makes you sad for a reason you can’t quite pin down.
Hannah’s voice isn’t even all that amazing, but she really sings it. Like, she wrote it herself. The music crescendos and so does her voice. I stop seeing Hannah with her usual sour face and her huge teeth and her fading black clothes. And all I see is this girl who sings this heartbreaking song because she gets it even when the rest of us don’t.
The music cuts out in the middle of it fading, and there’s a brief silence before every single person in the auditorium claps.
When the applause fades, my mom says, “Hannah, that was lovely.” And she says it in a way that says, Now, that is how you do it, Dumplin’.
Hannah nods and takes the steps two at a time. She doesn’t say thank you. Just grabs her backpack from where it sits at her feet and leaves.
I watch every single talent. Callie signs to the Titanic song, which I’ve got to admit is kind of a surprise. Millie plays “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on the xylophone, which isn’t incredibly impressive, but suits her still. And Ellen clogs to some German folk music. She was on a clogging team all the way up until seventh grade, and she’s as bad at it now as she was back then.
It makes me smile, and she sees me, but doesn’t acknowledge me. When she’s done, I clap too loud and even my mom turns around.
As my mom and I are driving home, she lowers the volume on the radio at the stop sign before our house and says, “That talent approval was the only favor you’ll be getting from me.” She pulls a deep breath in through her teeth. “I get that you don’t take this pageant seriously, but maybe you could at least pretend to.”
She’s right. It’s not fair to her or Amanda or Millie or Hannah. When I get home, the first thing I do is sit in front of my computer with Riot curled around my feet as I compose an email. The subject line reads: SOS.
FORTY-SIX