The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills (10 page)

And we got up and did it. Or they did it, and I did most of it — and that was okay.

I finally summoned the courage to call Margo the next afternoon and apologize.

“I’m really sorry, Margo,” I said. “About everything. You were right about me. About how I was being so judgmental, such a jerk. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, Janice,” she said. “I still shouldn’t have done what I did the night of the party. So stupid. Will you forgive me too?”

I waited a moment, silent, wanting badly to say yes but not wanting to seem overeager. Then, when I couldn’t take it anymore: “Of course! If you forgive me!” I blurted. “Yes,” she said. “Of course, yes!”

I smiled into the phone, relieved. It was like I could feel Margo smiling on the other end too, although all I heard was silence.

“About the Miss Livermush Pageant …” Margo eventually said. “My mom’s driving me crazy.”

I could imagine, of course, that facing Mrs. Werther would be infinitely worse than dealing with my own mom, particularly with regards to the Livermush Pageant. Margo’s mom had not only won the MML Pageant when she’d entered back in the day, she’d won everything — every pageant and contest in western North Carolina. She’d been, and was still, beautiful.

FACT:
Mrs. Werther’s greatest claim to fame was that she’d appeared frequently for some years in the first
SkyMall
catalogs — the one that’s in the back of every airplane seat pocket — when they came out in the early ‘90s. Even now, they’d occasionally reprint photos of Margo’s mom smiling while wearing a special traveler’s neck pillow, or beaming at an orthopedically designed pair of walking shoes.

I’d also noticed that Margo’s mom had a bad habit of occasionally violating the rules of the Unofficial Mom Handbook in the section on Raising Teenaged Girls — at least in the opinion of this anthropologist. Examples included: a) Giving a stern look and pinching the soft flesh at Margo’s hip while she ate a second bowl of chocolate ice cream. b) Saying things like, “Horizontal stripes? Hmm. I don’t know, Margo. Maybe someone like your friend Janice could get away with horizontal stripes. Not you, dear.” Or c) “Asparagus! Oh, I just love asparagus! It’s a natural diuretic, you know — I ate a lot of it during my
SkyMall
days.
Here, you might enjoy a little more asparagus instead of the dinner rolls, Margo!”

“She’s upped her ‘Don’t eat that!’ frequency,” Margo told me now. “Of course, I still eat what I want, but it’s getting to me.”

“But Margo, you’re beautiful!” I said, very much meaning it, proud to have such a gorgeous and independent-minded best friend.

“Why don’t you come over?”

I hung up and headed over to Margo’s. The whole thing made me so delirious with relief that I didn’t even care that it was late on a Friday night. I knocked on the door, and Margo swept me into a hug. We went upstairs to her room. After a few giddy moments of chitchat, Margo turned serious.

“I’m so happy we’re friends again,” she said, sitting cross-legged on her bed.

I studied her, and then I swallowed.

“Can I tell you what happened? In Jimmy’s bedroom the night of the party?” I asked.

Her brow furrowed. “Janice, no. Please don’t tell me he …”

“No!” I said. “No! It’s not like that at all. In fact, it’s — well, it’s sort of the opposite of that? Maybe? I think Jimmy sort of liked you, actually.”

Margo nodded regretfully.

“And I think he’s really angry. At the whole world.”

She nodded again.

“Go on,” she said. “What happened?”

I told Margo the story — almost every detail: reading Jimmy’s blog, watching everyone, how Jimmy approached me, his bedroom, the kiss, the things he said to me. When I got to the biggest secrets, I looked down, fumbling with her bedspread.

“He’s, ummm, he’s tried to hurt himself before,” I whispered. “Please don’t tell, Margo. I feel bad for him. Even though he was really mean to me. I don’t want to be the one spreading that around.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t sure if I should say any more.

“He’s bi —” I started, then quickly, “like, ‘bye-bye, Melva,’ like, totally checked out. He can’t wait to get out of this town and say good-bye because he hates it here.”

Margo nodded. I wasn’t sure if she’d understood what I’d almost said or not.

“Janice, that whole thing sounds horrible,” Margo said, her eyes still studying me. “Jimmy acted horribly to you. But I have to say it’s pretty cool how understanding you’re being of him. All things considered.”

“Well, I did delete my Jimmy Denton Facebook fan page,” I said.

Margo smiled and hugged me.

I grinned. Something had told me it was not my job to out Jimmy now, not even in revenge. That would be up to him at some point. And somehow, by keeping his secret safe, I no longer
felt so
angry or
humiliated by him. Like magic. For maybe the first time in my life, I actually
felt
pretty cool.

“If you wanna really be the number one best, Marg, you’ll come with me to the mall and help me find a Miss Livermush dress. I still have to get a discount dress — Mom’s orders. But I figure you’re the best person to help me find something. Will you?”

She nodded.

At the Letherfordton County Mall the next day, everything looked brighter than normal. The Pick’n'Pay Shoes looked more fashionable, and the Chick-B-Quick’s lemonade was a crisper, more neon yellow. Were people smiling more? For the first time in my life, I found the other shoppers to be, if not attractive, pleasant-faced.

“What’s happening to me?” I whispered to Margo. “I like the Letherfordton County Mall today. Like, I’m
enjoying
being here. What’s wrong with me?”

“Welcome to Club Optimism, young Janice. This is what ninety-five percent of the rest of the world is able to experience, at least periodically: a positive outlook. Greetings, new member.”

We found the dress section of Belk. Berneatha, a store clerk in her sixties with bright orange hair and a quivering jowl, helped Margo and me.

“Darlin’, we’re gonna fix you up real good,” Berneatha said,
flipping through a rack of dresses as quickly as a Vegas card dealer palms cards, pausing now and then to pluck one from the rest. “Come on now. Let’s show off those pretty arms.”

Pretty arms
, I thought, pulling the dress over my head.
Pretty arms
.

I looked in the mirror. The dress was a deep navy blue, and, well, the color flattered me. I didn’t look terrible. Not a wildebeest at all. And the dress was on sale.

“Wow, Berneatha, thanks,” I said. “The dress is perfect.”

“Well, darlin’, I’m good at what I do if you give me the chance,” she said, bobbing her orange hair. Another day, I would have compared that orange hair to something hideous, like … I stopped myself.

Dear Mark Aldenderfer, PhD
, I composed in my head.
What do you do when you realize that much of your research may be flawed? That you may not have been the cool, detached, professional anthropologist that you sought to be? That you were not quite approaching things the right way? Do you have to start over from scratch?

Thursday after school, one week to the Miss Livermush Pageant and counting. My personal checklist went as follows.

OPERATION FIGHTING CHANCE AT MISS LIVERMUSH

It was officially time now for the next ritual in the Livermush calendar. Mrs. Johnson, the civics teacher, held a meeting every year for all the junior girls who were participating in the Miss Livermush Pageant, so all of us knew exactly what this meant: Mrs. Johnson’s Fancy Walking Lessons. We gathered, giggling, in the library after our last class period, waiting for Mrs. Johnson to appear.

I sat with Margo and Missy Wheeler. TR held court at a crowded table nearby, casting occasional glances in our direction. This reminded me of how relieved I was that Margo’s and my friendship had been restored.

“You know that any girl who doesn’t come to Mrs. Johnson’s meeting gets kicked out of the pageant, right?” Margo whispered.

I frowned. “No way,” I said. “This meeting isn’t even officially required. They can’t do that. It’s just ‘highly encouraged.’”

Margo scoffed. “That means required. Mrs. Johnson is big in Junior Charity League, and they always read applications. Bailey Williams got kicked out last year on some application formality. But everyone knows it’s because she didn’t come to this.”

“Yeah,” Missy added seriously. “And they say if you don’t fancy walk your way to this meeting, Mrs. Johnson will blacklist you from getting a Debutante Ball invitation next year too.”

She said this as if it were the equivalent of contracting some fatal illness.

I looked up as Mrs. Johnson entered the room. A hush fell. She was so old that she had student-taught some of our grandmothers. A former Miss Livermush, she’d supposedly once been a great beauty, one of the last Southern belles, but that was hard to believe now: She had a face like a dried-out string bean, narrow coat-hanger shoulders, and a bottom as big as two July watermelons bound together. She looked like a bobbling, raisin-eyed witch. But she knew how to walk — or had once known how. I couldn’t see what was so appealing about her walk now, but no one dared question her. And no one ever mocked her — we were all too terrified.

“Young ladies,” Mrs. Johnson began. “Welcome and congratulations. Y’all will be representing this high school at Melva’s Miss Livermush Pageant. This is a huge honor and responsibility.” She blinked her tiny black eyes and swiveled her licorice-thin neck, inspecting us. At least three girls, I noticed, were gnawing their fingernails.

“Y’all are LADIES. Southern LADIES,” Mrs. Johnson bellowed. One of her watermelon buttocks jiggled as she stomped her dainty boot. “This means the following: no piercings other than earlobes — one per ear only, of course. No gaudy jewelry. No picking panties out of one’s bottom. No scratching one’s face. No sniffing and snorting. No chewing fingernails or picking lips.”

I watched as several girls guiltily dropped their hands to their laps.

“No revealing pageant dresses. No gaseous bodily emissions.”

A couple of girls giggled at this one. Margo turned to me, her eyes widened in amusement. Could Mrs. Johnson decree an end to farting, even in the short term? Declare all burps verboten?

I looked at her stony face and believed she absolutely could.

“Now, before we discuss walking, are there any questions?” Mrs. Johnson asked, her eyes again stalking the room.

We all looked down, refusing to look her directly in the face. Even TR gazed solemnly downward. No one raised her hand.

“Then let us walk,” Mrs. Johnson declared. “A Southern lady walks with leisure, as if there is an invisible string holding her head erect — an invisible string to God above reminding her that she is His precious temple.”

Mrs. Johnson demonstrated how a Southern lady stood, head high, black raisin eyes staring into the middle distance.

“She walks delicately, overstepping immodesty and mud puddles alike. She avoids the demonic wiggling of the harlot. She does not slink from side to side like a woman of loose morals but rather moves with the grace of a holy dancer.”

I bit my cheek. I could tell all the girls in the room were likewise terrified and yet desperate to laugh.

Mrs.Johnson now began her full demonstration. Her head still unnaturally erect, she minced forward, her two watermelon butt cheeks quivering beneath the fabric of her prairie skirt. She did not look like a graceful dancer, but she did look like a woman who you wouldn’t want to cross — a woman who could call her
walk a Fancy Walk and then command you to mimic that walk without question.

“See, girls?” she asked, making a curtsy. “Now y’all will try it. Line up. Silently, please.”

There was no question about this. No one dared whisper, much less crack a joke. We arranged ourselves quickly. I scrambled carefully to the middle of the line, figuring I might be noticed least here.

One by one the girls ahead of me began to walk. They stared forward. Some shook their bottoms a little. Others walked on the balls of their feet like marionettes. Mrs. Johnson yelled things at them like, “Head up!” and “Lose the hussy attitude!” and occasionally, “Brava, brava!”

Margo and Missy went just before me. They looked like awkward puppets, but Mrs. Johnson approved. “Good, good,” she said.

It was my turn.

I kept my arms carefully at my sides, my head up. I stared at the middle bookcase on the wall and fancy walked like a ballerina. It was fine, it was great —

“You are a young woman, not a scarecrow!” Mrs. Johnson shouted. “Please! Act as if your limbs are not constructed of metal rods.”

She was yelling at me, I comprehended. I was doing a bad job. I should join the Giraffe Squad. Stilts the Clown … I felt my face heat up. My limbs froze.

Her old talons were on my elbows, shaking them loose.

“Loosen up, loosen up,” the old crone whispered in my ear. “Fancy walk
like a woman
, not like some grimy-pawed child who’s afraid of getting into trouble.”

My cheeks felt like they might combust. I stared into Mrs. Johnson’s shriveled old face, her expression hard as a rock. And then, she winked at me.

“You could be the best one out there, girlie,” Mrs. Johnson whispered again. “You’ve got the fancy walk in you. You’ve just got to step up and act like you believe it. If you don’t believe it, no one else will.” Then, speaking loudly so everyone could hear, she said, “Start over! Do it again! Not like a scarecrow this time!”

Shaking, I went back to the starting point, took a breath, and began to walk. This time I held my arms looser. I imagined a string holding my head up. I walked like one of those red carpet movie stars on E!.

“Better! Better!” Mrs. Johnson said. “There’s hope for your generation yet!”

After Mrs. Johnson’s meeting ended, I felt a mixture of relief and shame. I asked Margo if I should feel stupid.

“You weren’t walking like a scarecrow the first time, Janice,” she insisted. “Mrs. Johnson’s fancy walking is what’s stupid. She’s so ancient that no one in the school wants to tell her this meeting is worthless. But you did do even better the second time.”

“Still, I was the only one she made walk twice! Ughhhh.” I groaned because that was all I could do — all any humiliated person is ever able to do. “Ughh.”

“Besides,” Margo added, “what does she know? You saw
her
walk, right? No one wants to look like that! This just makes her feel important.”

I nodded. “Just another element to explore in my anthropology paper, right?” I said, smiling a smile weak as twice-steeped tea. “Part of adolescence in Melva.”

I left Margo in the parking lot and went back inside the building to my locker. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten my notebook. I grabbed it and jotted down a few anthropological observations on the whole fancy walk experience for my research — Category: Pageant Preparation — before putting everything in my bag and heading back to the door. The hallways were quiet and smelled like pine-scented cleaning fluid. I turned the corner quickly, and as I did, almost bumped right into Paul.

He looked at me and opened his mouth, fishlike, as if to speak. But no words came out. I tried to screw my own mouth into a friendly smile, but something was wrong with it. It was too nervous, wrenched too tight and stiff to maneuver. So I offered Paul a weak grimace instead. A little pageant-queen wave.

“Hey, uh, hey,” he stuttered. “What are you, uh, I mean, how are you doing?”

I nodded. “Good. Good. Just had Miss Livermush walking lessons with Mrs. Johnson,” I explained.

He stared at me, his fish mouth globbing nervously again. I wondered then if maybe I made Paul nervous. Did I have the power to do that?

“I, uhh, I didn’t expect to run into you,” he said.

“Got-gotta run anyway,” I stammered. “But great to see you!”

“Wait,” he said. “Janice. Want to hang out for a little bit uptown? I can meet you outside once I run up to my locker.”

“Um, sure,” I said. “I’ll have to tell Margo first because she was going to give me a ride. Meet you in the parking lot.”

And I turned away from him and fancy walked down the hall. The real way this time. Even better than before. It was like I’d known how to do it all along. I was a natural-born fancy walker. If Mrs. Johnson had seen me, she would have applauded.