Page 118 of The Wedding Favor

Good news. Athletic wear was broad enough that yoga pants counted. Bad news. Most of the women were still wearing swimsuits. I was considering showing up in a snowsuit and skis.

Gloria still found me wholly underwhelming when it came to the basics—walking, talking, standing straight. But Hallie took to the pageant life very quickly. She learned her dance numbers, practiced her walk, and listened carefully at each meeting. After each practice, she was a little more confident. I often reminded myself that I wasn’t doing this for myself, but for Hallie. Oh, and to see Megan Tillman wipe that smirk off her face.

Abe and I might be tiptoeing around each other for the rest of the summer, but Hallie and I were solid. My favorite part of the day was hanging out with her. She’d become a bonified member of The Beautifully Broken Fan Club, too.

The week before the pageant, Gloria demanded I model the formal dress I’d found at a thrift store.

“Absolutely not,” Gloria said, horrified. “You cannot be serious.”

I looked down at myself. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s black and clearly two sizes too big for you.”

I shrugged. “I’m not spending money on this pageant if I can help it. It’s just a dress.” And sure, okay, it was kind of drab and plain but it had been twenty bucks. I couldn’t pass that up.

“You are hopeless,” she said. Then she told me she was “taking to her bed” again. Not because she was sick but because she was so offended by my dress.

Yessica had become the one bright spot amid these stupid pageant rehearsals. She’d moved to Two Harts to keep her elderly aunt company and would be working as an English teacher at the high school, her first teaching job, in the fall. Then she’d arrived in Two Harts to discover Great-Aunt Stella had signed her up for the pageant. “It will be a good way to meet people,” she’d said.

Like me, Yessica was not thrilled about being here. “I’m short, chubby, and a klutz. Go ahead, put me in high heels and make me dance. What could possibly go wrong?”

To be fair, even in high heels, Yessica was a much better dancer than me.

“She’s going to say my name wrong,” Yessica whispered. We were at the end of yet another meeting and Casey, our fearless leader, was letting each of us know when our assigned practice session for our talent would be on Saturday.

“Jessica,” she called.

“Told you,” she whispered.

“You’re on the schedule for practice at two thirty. What were you doing again? Do you need any additional props?”

“Yessica.”

Casey looked up from her ever-present clipboard, perplexed. “What is a Yessica?”

“It’s my name. It’s Yessica. You called me Jessica.”

Casey blinked rapidly. I worried her fake eyelashes might detach from her lids and fly across the room. “Oh, right. Yessica. What is your talent again?”

“I’ll be playing the viola.”

“The violin?”

“The viola. Kind of the same thing as a violin, but not.”

“Right. The violin.” Casey jotted it down and moved on to me.

“And lastly, Iris, what will you be doing?”

“Singing.”

A few of the other women, the ones who’d gone to school with me, who’d lived here in Two Harts their entire lives like me, turned on their stools and stared at me.

Casey cleared her throat delicately. “I wasn’t aware you were a singer.”

“Oh, you know, I’m a woman of many talents.” None of those talents were remotely musical, but this was what it came down to. Me. Singing. In front of the entire town.

At the end of class, Yessica gathered all of her things. For such a small woman, she took up all the space. Notebooks and pens with objects taped to them (so they were harder to lose), snacks, water bottles. Last week, she brought a portable fan. Casey told her she couldn’t bring it back. She told Casey that she had a medical condition that required access to a fan at all times. Casey wasn’t bold enough to ask her what the condition was. If she had, Yessica was prepared to make something up on the spot.