Dumplin' Read Free Page A

time my mom bent down to help her up.
    â€œShe had her after-lunch ambrosia and closed her eyes.” She shakes her head. “I let her sit there for a minute because I thought she was napping.” She stands and kisses the top of my head. “I’m going to bed, Dumplin’.”
    â€œNight.”
    I wait for the sound of her door clicking shut before I bury my dinner in the trash can beneath one of those free newspapers. I grab a fistful of pretzels and a soda before running upstairs. As I pass Lucy’s closed door, I linger for a moment, letting the tips of my fingers brush the knob.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
THREE

    â€œI think I want to have sex with Tim this summer,” says Ellen as she plucks a cube of cheese from her lunch spread and pops it into her mouth. El has been “considering” having sex with Tim every Friday for the last year. Seriously, before the start of every weekend we debate the pros and cons of Ellen and Tim finally doing it.
    â€œThat’s weird.” I don’t look up from my notes. I’m not a bad friend. But we’ve had this conversation so many times. Plus, it’s the last day of school and I have one final left. I’m trying to cram and El is not because she’s done with all of her finals.
    With her mouth full of candied pecans, she asks, “Why is it weird?”
    â€œQuiz me on this.” I pop a few grapes in my mouth and hold out a study sheet dissecting the branches of the government. “Because it’s not like a wedding. It’s not like, ‘Ohh, I like summer colors. I’m gonna do it over the summer so that I can properly coordinate my lingerie with my most preferred season.’ You should do it because you want to.”
    She rolls her eyes. “But summer’s like a time of transition. I could come back to school a
woman
,” she says, sparing no dramatics.
    I roll my eyes back at her. I hate talking to talk. If El was actually going to go through with it, I’d have crawled over the table to have a nose-to-nose conversation with her about every detail. But she never goes through with it. I don’t get how she can talk about the
possibility
of sex so much.
    When she sees that I haven’t taken the bait, she glances down at the paper. “The three branches of government.”
    â€œExecutive, legislative, and judicial.” I decide to give her a crumb. “Plus, having sex doesn’t make you a woman. That is so freaking cliché. If you want to have sex, have sex, but don’t make it this huge thing that carries all this weight. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”
    Her shoulders sink and her eyebrows pinch together. “How many senators and representatives serve in Congress?”
    â€œFour hundred and thirty-five and one hundred.”
    â€œNo, but yes. You got it backward.”
    â€œOkay.” I repeat the numbers under my breath. “And it doesn’t matter what time of year it is as long as it feels right. Right? I mean, winter is cool, too, because you’re all like, ‘Oh my God, it’s so cold. Body heat.’”
    She laughs. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right.”
    I don’t want to be right. I don’t want El to have sex before me. Maybe it’s selfish, but I don’t really know howto handle her doing something I haven’t. I guess I’m scared I won’t know how to be her friend. I mean, sex is serious business, and how can I navigate her to places I’ve never been?
    I want to tell her that she should wait. But she and Tim have been dating for almost a year and a half and she still blushes every time she talks about him. I don’t know how to measure love, but that seems like a good place to start. And I don’t know that I’d be asking her to wait for any other reason than