Seven Days in June(68)

The blood drained from Eva’s face. “No.”

“Ask her,” he said gently. “Ask her.”





FRIDAY





Chapter 20





It Was That Boy




GALVESTON, TEXAS, WAS BLAZING. IT ALWAYS WAS, BUT THE END OF JUNE WAS brutal. Especially up in Lizette Mercier’s attic–cum–rehearsal studio. The AC in her rickety leased house refused to work, except (randomly) on Sundays, Mondays, and Wednesdays.

To combat the oppressive heat, Lizette scattered Home Depot fans around the periphery of the pink-painted attic—which caused papers, boas, gowns, bedazzled sashes, robes, and other sequined miscellanea to fly about as if caught in a windstorm. Lizette relished the drama. Sometimes, she even threw confetti directly into the fan, just to get her girls used to being distracted while performing. Something always threw you off on stage. Bright lights, a glimpse of your boyfriend, side-eye from the judges. Your competition doing terrible things to ruin your stage presence, like when Emmaline Hargrove flashed that hairy, nude Burt Reynolds centerfold from an old ’70s Cosmo at her, from the wings.

When was that, 1983? No, ’84. The Miss South Louisiana Mardi Gras pageant. Emmaline Hargrove was trash. Lizette got revenge, though. First by nailing the talent portion of the show (“Brick House” on clarinet) and then by nailing Emmaline’s dad (Justice Peter Hargrove). Lizette won Miss Congeniality that year. It wasn’t the big prize, but she was pleased, nonetheless.

Sometimes smaller victories count more, she thought. That’s quite the catch phrase, actually. I should get that printed on a banner for my girls.

It was time to replace the banner draped across her back wall, anyway. TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE. After winning Junior Miss Crawfish, one of Lizette’s girls had crafted the glittery sign for her. It was a decade old, and the sequins had fallen off the e in “thine.” TO THIN OWN SELF BE TRUE didn’t make sense, but she always encouraged her girls to remain as skinny as possible, so it still worked.

Lizette wasn’t sentimental, but she did love gifts from her students—sweets, stuffed animals, bouquets. Her favorites were the thank-you notes. She was the most successful pageant coach in the greater Galveston Beach area. Which was a feat, considering she ran a strictly word-of-mouth operation. No marketing. And definitely no social media. She loathed the thirstiness of Instagram, and Facebook felt like a yearbook from the Twilight Zone. To Lizette, all the “conveniences” that were supposed to make your life easier were actually just the tech equivalent of mosquitoes buzzing in your ears. She hated mosquitoes. And she hated being bothered.

Plus, Lizette didn’t want to be found. The internet wasn’t a place for people with secrets.

Her first client had been her neighbor’s daughter, whom she’d spied practicing for Little Miss Forever Beautiful in their shared backyard. The perky fifth grader had been working on a majorette routine but kept dropping her baton. “You need a longah wand, darling,” she’d called out over the peeling, ticky-tacky iron gate dividing their lawns. “One to match ya wingspan!”

Lizette had continued with her unsolicited performance notes—and when Kaileigh swept every title in the competition, she knew her advice had value.

Right now, she was working with Mahckenzee Foster, a twerking, tap-dancing, death-dropping demon. Lizette leaned forward in her director’s chair, lasering in on the little girl’s form. Lizette wasn’t a trained dancer, but she did understand presence. When she worked as a cocktail waitress, the mere cadence of her walk inspired chaos. Or, at least, it inspired drunken, red-faced white men to shout “Halle Berry” at her. Lizette looked nothing like Halle. It was that white-person phenomenon where they see a pretty brown face and declare that it looks like the first pretty brown face that springs to their minds. She’d been compared to Thelma from Good Times, Jasmine Guy from A Different World, and the Black girl from Saved by the Bell who went nuts—no resemblance.

Just another way they make you feel invisible, she thought. Lizette knew that the only person she looked like was herself. And Clo Mercier.

All told, her past didn’t bother her. Nothing bothered her, really. She lived on a Xanax-assisted cloud, stubbornly impervious to bad feelings and dark days. When a depressive thought popped up, she swatted it away.

“One more time, sweet Mahckenzee,” she purred, adjusting her kimono so it draped prettily around her legs. At fifty-five, with dreamy doe eyes and hot-rollered hair rippling to her shoulders, she looked like she ran an upscale 1940s brothel, not a kiddie-pageant consultancy.

When Lizette first heard her Samsung Galaxy ring, she ignored it. The phone sat on the director’s chair next to hers, the one she reserved for helicopter moms who wanted to observe rehearsals. After it rang a good six times, Lizette caught a glimpse of the name lighting up her screen. She yelped and then accidentally crushed her Diet Coke can in her right hand.

“Holy shit,” she said, grabbing the phone. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. Mahckenzee? Keep practicing, doll, I’ma step downstairs for a moment. Need to take a call.”

“Okay…Miss…Miss Lizette!” panted Mahckenzee, who’d been dancing for forty minutes straight.

Lizette floated downstairs. She looked in her wall mirror, added a bit more CoverGirl Red Revenge lipstick to her bee-stung lips, and then draped herself over her white leather-look couch.