“Daniel Alexander said to come see you,” I said. “About my costume. He spilled his drink on it.”
“Of course he did,” Meg said. “Wait here. I’ll find you something to wear.”
She came back out with an outfit that was completely different from the white peasant blouses and patterned floral skirts. It was a deep green dress with a full skirt and ribbons woven through it.
“You can tell Gary he’ll have to live with it for today,” she said. “I don’t have any concessions costumes left in your size. This was from the children’s act in the Greenshow, years ago.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Come back tomorrow and I’ll have the other one washed for you. I don’t want you taking it home and doing it wrong and getting the stain set in for good.”
“Okay,” I said again. I resisted the urge to spin around and see what the skirt would do. The dress felt old but it didn’t smell that way. And then I had an interesting thought. If Meg had been making costumes for so many years, maybe she knew Lisette Chamberlain.
“You’re a Lee, aren’t you,” Meg said. “Ralph and Naomi Carter are your grandparents.”
“Yes.” I felt surprised even though I shouldn’t. My grandparents had lived in Iron Creek for years and my mom grew up here and the town wasn’t that big.
“I heard you bought a house here,” she said.
I nodded. “The old Wainwright house.”
“Ah,” she said. “That’s a house with some skeletons.”
I must have looked taken aback because Meg said, “I didn’t mean that literally. It’s a nice house. And I bet your mom is doing a lot of work fixing it up.”
“She is,” I said. “She’s building a deck.”
“Good for her,” Meg said. “What’s your name?”
“Cedar.”
“And you’re working for Gary.”
“Yes.”
“We could use someone to help out in the costume shop too.” Meg gestured around her at the shop, the people working in it. “We’ve got a lot of extra projects this summer. But we’ve already hired everyone we have the budget to hire. I don’t imagine you’re a juvenile delinquent who needs community service hours.”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so,” she said. “Bring that dress back tomorrow.”
4.
“Nice,” Leo said when he saw me. “Are you supposed to be a princess or something?”
“Obviously,” I said.
“Wow.”
“They didn’t have anything else in my size,” I explained.
“So how was it in the costume shop?”
“Fine,” I said. “Meg was pretty nice, actually. Maybe she’s only scary to Gary.”
“I guess it kind of makes sense that you guys get along,” Leo said.
“Why?”
“She’s Korean.”
I stared at him.
“Like, she has Korean ancestry,” he said, as if I only needed him to explain.
“I don’t have Korean ancestry,” I said. “Just because Meg and I aren’t all white doesn’t mean we automatically have things in common. That’s a stupid thing to say.”
I’d had stuff like this happen to me before. Iron Creek was a small town and even in our bigger town I’d had things said to me, usually not meant to be mean, usually just because people are stupid.
And sometimes people asked me if I was adopted, which I extra hated. I had straight dark hair like my dad’s and my eyes were the same color as his. It felt like I didn’t belong to my mom because I didn’t look like her to people who weren’t looking closely enough. Because if you do, you see that my mom and I actually look a lot alike even though she has blond hair and blue eyes.
I hated that Leo had said what he did.
“I’m sorry,” Leo said. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
I could tell he was really sorry because, for the first time since I’d known him—even when the Hellfarts were bugging him—he looked pale. And for the first time since I’d known him he didn’t know what to say.
But I was still mad.
Right then Cory walked past and knocked off Leo’s hat. “Better let your girlfriend get back to work,” he said. I hated his stupid light eyebrows and his sunburny skin.
Leo bent down and picked up his hat. A lady came by and asked him for a program. He sold it to her without any accent at all.
I watched Leo and I realized that he also knew how it felt to be different. To want big things in a very small town. To get made fun of. He wasn’t as different as I was. But he also wasn’t one of those lucky people who fit in all the time. And I thought of the first time I worked with him, what I’d seen. He did like the world—that was the thing about him that I liked the best—but the world didn’t always like him back.
“Do people think we’re going out?” I asked Leo.
He looked (mostly) relieved at the change in subject. “Most people don’t,” he said. “I’ve been telling people that we’re cousins so that they won’t think it’s so weird that we’re always together.”
I groaned. “Leo, that’s a terrible idea,” I said. “People will think we’re cousins who are dating.”