Time to Roll: Chapters 7–13

We pass by a dry cleaner’s, a florist, a drugstore with boarded-up windows, and a tractor supply shop before catching sight of the theater’s marquee.

Coralee stands with her hands on her hips and her back to me, studying the sign and the tarnished gold around the front door, which is propped open with a brick.

“You ready to rock this thing?” I ask in my pump-it-up voice as we approach the glass doors like Dorothy and her cohorts walking into Oz.

“The posters said this way, right?” I ask as I roll over stale kernels of old popcorn in front of the concession stand and down the hallway, where the water fountain leaks a damp puddle on the paisley carpet.

Over by the stage, two moms have spread blankets on the grubby carpet to let their babies roll around.

“I need a pen! I forgot to sign my name on the photo waiver!”

When I got home from the Rocking Horse Horror Show, I angry-chopped a boatload of fruit and turned it into Nadiya Hussain’s fruit salad fattoush. I can’t watch The Great British Baking Show now that Mary Berry’s gone. I’m exclusively a Nadiya Bakes girl now.

Coralee lies on the floor of her bedroom, hurling a tennis ball at the wall, which Daisy the pit bull occasionally intercepts. There’s a lot of hostility and slobber swirling around this room.

Coralee crawls up onto the bed, shooing Francis, who nips at her tank top and sidles along the headboard until he is directly over me.

Dad holds up a tiny sliver of fish on his fork for inspection. We all pause to watch. He sniffs. He gingerly places it on his tongue.

“What do we need to rehearse? We show up in two and a half weeks, answer questions in our casual wear, show off our extraordinary talents, and then prance around again in very uncomfortable fancy dress, no wiglets allowed.”

Finally he comes out with, “It could, uh, use some tweaking on the rhyme scheme, but the sentiment is nice, I suppose.”

“Because film is the most effective way to study yourself objectively,” he explains.

I watch the geese traipse up and down the lawn with their giant black feet.

I’d lean over and give her another hug, but that would make three since I came in the door, and any number over two gets her bristling with suspicion. She is wary of anyone who might be feeling sorry for her.

“She’s touchy today,” Coralee explains as Bert coughs once into the crook of his arm. “The drugstore was out of gum and her patches. They said they can’t get either until next week.”

Her helmet of hair is once again impeccable. She could bike ride and be totally safe.

“Right this way, ladies!” she trills, finally gracing Coralee with a smile, which sends my friend into what I can only describe as car-bobblehead nodding.

“Welcome, welcome, Little Misses. We are honored to have you here as shining examples of our fine state of Oklahoma!”
I suppress a shudder at both “Little Misses” and the fact that she is referring to herself in the plural form.

“Today, you will embark on one of the greatest and noblest journeys of your adolescence,” she states.

I wait for Coralee’s warning to pay attention, but she is staring up at Rae Ann with wide and unblinking eyes, like Rae Ann is imparting the secrets of the universe.

I prod Coralee and then point to the stairs.

The other girls hop nimbly up the stairs like wood sprites.

I back up a few feet to get some leverage and push as hard and as fast as I can toward the ramp.

“I see. Well, I’m doing this for practice,” Maya explains.
Bert turns to her, intrigued. “Practice for what?”

“That’s right,” she says, and a moment of silence falls over them both as they contemplate the bigness of THE BEE.

“And I can study, make flash cards, take online tutorials for speed. But I can’t simulate a live contest.”

Bert is nodding vigorously.

She explained on the way over that all available cash goes to books, a budgeted plan that Bert wholeheartedly endorsed.

When your main goal is easy movement, comfort will always come before fashion.
But—and I would never confess this out loud, especially to Mom, whose mantra is “Beauty comes from the inside out, not the other way around”—I want to feel good when I get onstage.

Then I hear the whistle—the long, high-pitched, two-fingers-in-the-mouth piercing cry that is Coralee’s calling card.

Give Beauregard Jr. my best regards (pun intended) and try not to kill him for the next ten days so I can at least see him when you get home.

My heart lurches forward and then shudders to a stop.

It takes him until Finn and Patrick clamber up over the sides to realize I cannot get “in” unless he carries me—something I have not stopped thinking about since he popped his head into my room an hour ago and suggested this whole thing.

She passes me my own pole, a Minnie Mouse relic Dad must have found in the garage along with the hat and other fishing gear.

He shakes his head, grabs the prow with both hands, and heaves. We jolt forward toward the shore.

Without his cursing and the sound of the dying, now dead, motor, I can hear the lapping of the water on the hull.

“No problem,” I say, even as I wonder how often Dad is the guy I saw earlier today, temperamental and unhelpful like a too-tired kid.

Meg might wear scrunchies and spend an inordinate amount of time on Pinterest, but she’s tougher than she looks.

I am exhausted, and my stomach roils from one too many corn dogs at the Putt-Putt Emporium, but instead of going to bed when Meg disappears to take a shower, I roll out to the porch.