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“You were the best,” the girl had said. “You looked like you were having fun.”
But tonight, she was staring it down.
She didn’t win, of course. The crown went to a girl who could sing opera while doing a split. But as Dumplin’ walked off stage, the head judge—the one with the helmet-hair—caught her arm.
Dumplin’ held up a beat-up kazoo. “It’s a tribute. Lucy used to play ‘Yellow Rose of Texas’ on this thing at every family barbecue. She was terrible. Amazingly terrible. But she never cared who was listening.” Dumplin-
Dumplin’s heart swelled. “Did she cry?”
She walked out anyway. Not a sashay, not a waddle. A walk. One foot after the other. She felt every eye in the audience: the snicker from a group of cheerleaders in the second row, the polite, worried smile of her mother (the former pageant queen who had never quite forgiven the world for giving her a “big-boned” daughter), and the quiet, steady nod from El, who had snuck a bag of barbecue chips into the auditorium.
“What, then?” El asked, peeking over the stall door. Her eyes widened. “Is that… a kazoo?” “You were the best,” the girl had said
Dumplin’ caught her eye and winked. She played on, even worse than before. She added a little shuffle dance step. Her dress strap slipped. She didn’t fix it.
That was the legacy Dumplin’ was reaching for. Not the tiara. The laugh.
“Okay,” she said, sucking in a breath. “The talent portion. I’m not juggling. I’m not doing a dramatic monologue from Steel Magnolias .” The crown went to a girl who could
And that, she decided, was a crown no one could take off.
“That’s the look,” Dumplin’ replied, adjusting the strap of her bright pink, one-shouldered dress. The dress was a miracle. She’d found it in the back of her late Aunt Lucy’s closet, sandwiched between a velvet robe and a pair of cowboy boots with actual rattlesnake skin. Aunt Lucy—or Lucy, as she’d insisted everyone call her—had been the undisputed, plus-sized queen of the Clover City pageant circuit back in the 90s. She’d never won the crown, but she’d won every single “Miss Congeniality.” People remembered her laugh longer than they remembered the winner’s name.
She reached center stage. The spotlight was a hot, white sun. For a second, she forgot how to breathe. The mirror’s lie echoed in her head: You don’t belong here.
That night, Dumplin’ sat on the roof of her house, the way she and Lucy used to do. The pageant crown was still on its velvet pillow inside, unworn. But pinned to her t-shirt was the little girl’s pageant number: #43, scribbled on a piece of notebook paper. The girl had torn it off and handed it to her in the parking lot.