Dress Codes for Small Towns by Courtney Stevens (10)

There’s an after-church Hexagon meeting going on at Woods’s house. A much-needed Save the Harvest Festival follow-up. I’m late. Dad needed an extra thirty minutes of my time.

“Billie,” he said, waving me into his home office. I stood next to the coatrack, beside his robe, touching the velvet stole draped over the hanger. I’ve loved the feel of it since I spent Sunday mornings on his lap.

He whispered, “I’ve heard a rumor that your mother is on the Corn Dolly ballot this year.”

I wondered who was telling him positive things. “That’s great.”

“Billie, this might really help us.”

“I know.”

Then came the ask. “Can you tread carefully?”

The thing is: my nose was clean. Serving old people, being nice, wearing a shirt that wasn’t black to church this morning.

I promised him I would do my best.

He promised me that if Mom won a Corn Dolly no one would care about the fire.

We crossed our fingers that this rumor was correct. It was nice to be on his side again.

I push through the Carringtons’ back door without a knock. The kitchen smells like peppermint tea, which makes me think of Big T. Mrs. Carrington clucks. “There’s my favorite girl.” She’s standing at the counter, wearing yoga pants and a zippered fleece, attacking her grocery list. One of these days, if the festival doesn’t die, she’ll be awarded a Corn Dolly for being ungodly beautiful at fifty.

“Someone has to keep you on your toes,” I tease, and steal an orange from the bowl.

She chews her pencil eraser, strains her ears toward the hallway. “They’re in the game room. Try to make them behave.”

“It’ll take all five of them to make me behave, Mrs. C.”

“Please. Your insides are all mushy and good.”

“Take that back,” I call over my shoulder.

I pause outside the game room door, anticipating the scene. Woods stands at the front of the room. Einstein is on his easel. Some action movie is reeling on the big screen, but everyone is watching Woods. Fifty, Janie Lee, Mash, and Davey—in that order—are sardines on the couch. There’s a bowl of popcorn, two Mountain Dews, two waters, and Woods’s mug of tea spread across the coffee table. Fifty’s begging everyone to walk the beam; Woods is reminding them that “progress is imperative.”

When I push open the door, I am correct in ninety-five percent of my prediction.

Post church, Woods has stripped to T-shirt and mesh shorts. He is twitchy with excitement and casting a forty-foot shadow over the entire room. I am overcome by the desire to tackle him straight on, tell the rest of these bastards to leave, and see if he’ll watch the book television so I can nap on his shoulder. I wanted to be in a group, and now I want that group to be limited to two. Gerry said, I don’t kiss everyone. I kiss the people who have the little pieces of my soul. I am struck again with the knowledge that Woods has one of my pieces.

Instead, I say, “You assholes started without me.”

Woods throws a marker, which I catch and throw back. I launch the orange, too. It hits him in the chest and rolls under the couch. We’ll find it in a year and blame the stain on Mash.

“We waited as long as we could,” he says to me. To Davey, he says, “Elizabeth who?”

Davey drums his fingers on the side table. They nearly blur. And that’s just like him. He’s a helicopter. He could lift off, right here, and I wouldn’t be surprised. Catching my eye, he halts his fingers, looks at me, warns me about something without saying a word.

Unfazed, I give him the standard up-nod, and vault over the back of the couch. After having stepped on nearly everyone, I settle on the floor directly in front of Mash.

“If you throw up on me, I’ll never forgive you,” I say, and pull his leg hair. “What’s going on?”

Mash’s face is redder than the radishes in Grandy’s garden. He has a smattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose that look like sprinkles on a cupcake. They make him look innocent. His blush makes him appear guilty. “Einstein is currently rescuing our love lives.”

“It’s going to take more than Einstein to do that,” I tell them. “We can blow up a sock and burn down a church, but limitations, people, limitations. I thought we were brainstorming KickFall and fund-raising.”

I’ve thrown off Woods’s ju-ju with my negativity and he has to refocus. “We are. But delay of game. You, Billie McCaffrey . . . are just in time to . . . help us . . . figure out the Sadie Hawkins part of Harvest Festival.” Every pause, he adds some unseen stroke to Einstein. Every stroke, my stomach knots.

“That sounds like a terrible way to spend a Sunday afternoon,” I say.

Last year, the dance flew under our radar. We watched the Corn Dolly competition—a token year, the Corn Dolly was given posthumously to Reagan Gentry, our Spanish teacher, who died of a brain aneurysm—and then square-danced our asses off in a large group. I didn’t think it was strange that we were the only people our ages not looking for a corner away from the watchful eyes of adults. I thought it was marvelous.

“But the girls ask the guys.”

Leave it to Fifty to state the obvious.

“That means four out of six people in this room have no say,” I tell Fifty, peering around Woods’s body to read Einstein. Only the top of the board is visible. “‘The Hexagon of Love,’” I read. “The whole thing is a little pretentious. Couldn’t we just go for the standard love triangle?”

No one is listening. This happens when Woods is in full swing.

“Elizabeth Rawlings is an interesting choice,” he says to Davey.

Elizabeth Rawlings is a junior with a good first name, a bent for Sylvia Plath, and the most perfectly straight teeth God ever made. We were on the softball team in middle school. She bounced around through various groups and wound up being one of those tights and cat T-shirt girls. She’s probably biding her time in Otters Holt, dreaming of a commune in California. Is this who Davey believes is his equal? I reject the idea.

Her friends call her Lizzie. This has always been a point of consideration for me. There are many ways to shorten our name—Liz, Lizzie, Libby, Lib, Beth, Betsy, Liza—none of which I tolerate. I can’t imagine being a Lib. I’d rather run naked off Rock Quarry Cliff or fall off Vilmer’s Beam.

Mash gives a half laugh at the board and at me. Maybe he’s surprised at his cousin’s choice. Maybe he’s just glad I’m here. I too am slightly surprised Davey hasn’t named Thomas, and I’m not the only one. Fifty mouths “Audi Thomas” to me. He stops smiling when I flip him off.

Despite Fifty’s comment, Davey could come out to this group if he wanted to. None of us would flip our shit. Especially not Janie Lee and me. We’ve heard it all. Two inseparable girls: must be gay. I saw them holding hands. One of them is dyke-ish. They cooed at each other when they were reading Romeo and Juliet.

There are a few students at school who are out. Not an easy path. Most people wait until college, and then move to bigger cities. The price of their sexual freedom is paid for with a loss of home, and often a loss of community respect. In 2005, a beloved woman in town, Corn Dolly winner 1984, married her girlfriend, whom everyone had thought was her roommate, in Canada. The committee didn’t ask for her Dolly back, but they “accidentally” printed the calendar without her name in 2006. This is the kind of thing you don’t forget. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to control the Corn Dolly committee. The kind of thing that makes you want to override the system.

I’d like to believe my generation is different. We’d give a Corn Dolly to a gay woman. We’ve all read enough, watched enough, YouTubed enough to understand sexuality isn’t black and white. What do we care who someone finds attractive or falls in love with? But that doesn’t mean you don’t need a machete and some body armor if you want to walk the openly gay road in Otters Holt.

Dad is always up my ass about wearing jeans and muscle shirts. And it’s not because he’s worried about skin cancer on my arms. “Billie, people think where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

If Davey went openly gay, I can predict the consequences the way I predicted the state of this room when I arrived. My dad would reread his youth ministry textbooks on Generation Z and Sexuality and Raising Conservative Teens in a Liberal World. People would wear oven mitts to handle him. They’d say, “I should have known. Did you see his eyeliner?” Girls my age would say, “It’s a shame” or “I wonder if he’s bi.” Who knows how his parents would feel, but they would certainly have opinions.

Elizabeth Rawlings is a safe choice, but Davey’s never struck me as someone dedicated to safety.

“Doesn’t Elizabeth Rawlings draw pentagrams on all her notebooks?” Fifty asks.

“Why aren’t we doing something fun?” I ask in return. “This is lame.”

Davey pulls a pillow into his lap and goes back to his drumming. “We’re not allowed. Woods decided we have to lose our man-cards by charting out the dance.”

His expression says: We should be in your garage.

Mine says: Let’s blow this pop stand.

Against better judgment, we both stay put.

“So let me get this straight. You five are trying to figure out how to get dates?”

Five noses scrunch. Five semi-nods. My disapproval is so visible, Fifty lands the lowest of blows.

“You look like your dad.”

“Oooooohhhh,” Woods and Janie Lee say together. Each watches my response.

“Good thing I’m against murder on the Sabbath,” I tell Fifty.

“I’m terrified,” he says.

Fifty and I are two Betta fish in the same tank. Eventually, I’m going to eat him. But for now, it’s easier to join the chaos. There’s history between us. Dance history. Sadie Hawkins is held outdoors in the middle of town if it isn’t raining, in Vilmer’s Barn if it is. Eighth grade, Fifty and I did some very G-rated experimenting and missed the whole dang Corn Dolly presentation and half the dance. That was the year Mash’s mama, Jeanelle, won. 2013. Fifty and I never told a soul we missed it. We certainly wouldn’t tell them why. For an asshat, he’s got the softest lips.

“All right, deal me in,” I say.

Davey says, very matter-of-factly, “Just remember this Hexagon of Love all started with Woods.”

“It started with wood all right,” I joke.

This is not the first time anyone has made a Woods’s wood joke. We land on familiar ground. Everyone cackles except Woods, who isn’t laughing because he’s too busy lunging at me. He’s twice my weight, so when he drags me into the middle of the floor and draws dry-erase lines down my nose and across my cheeks, I am forced to jab his ribs incessantly like a child. “If you break my sunglasses—” I threaten.

He’s squirming and nearly defeated when Mash says, “Better not let Mary Dancy see you mounting Billie like that.”

From beneath the attack, I say, “Mary Dancy?” very differently from the other three boys chanting, “Mary Dancy, Mary Dancy, Mary Dancy.”

In a quick, painful, show-stopping moment, I get my first look at the top of Einstein—a line attaches Woods Carrington to Mary Dancy. Janie Lee throws an UGG at Woods’s head—the first good use of those boots.

Breathless, I cock my head to the side. Reread. Mary Dancy? She’s the only female in the history of Otters Holt who has ever kicked for the football team. She has rock-hard quads and a stack of tiaras from the county fair and a zillion other beauty contests.

It all started with Woods, Davey had said.

“What do you two think?” Woods directs his question at Janie Lee and me.

I think my eyes might explode and take Janie Lee’s heart along in the explosion.

I say, “I’m forming an opinion.”

“Me too,” Janie Lee chirps.

Sadie fucking Hawkins.

Everyone hee-haws at something Fifty says and none of them, except Davey, hears me ask, “Am I on the board?”

Davey tightens the laces on his high tops, throws me sympathy from the corner of his eye. Woods moves aside. I read the whole board.

HEXAGON OF LOVE