For tonight, I reach for a hot-pink embroidered silk robe and use my Hulk Hogan feather boa to fashion a collar to hide my wisps of chest hair.

At my desk, I sit down and open my laptop, turning on the camera. It takes some effort to tug the wig over my orange curls. The black really doesn’t suit me, but it’s all I have to work with for now. I try a few different poses, pouting my lips and squinting a bit as I prop a hand under my chin.

“Yes, honey,” I say to myself. “Darling,” I drawl.

I hit the red record button, and for a moment the wind is sucked right out of me, like I’ve just been hit square in the chest with a dodgeball—a reality I’m all too familiar with. I gasp a little, but then force my pulse to slow as I clear my throat.

Everyone wants to leave me? I’ll show them what they’re missing.

I wave into the camera, my fingers fanning up and down. I really should have painted my nails, but that doesn’t matter. No one will notice my nails if I give them plenty of other things to notice.

“Good evening, y’all. I’m Pumpkin, but you can call me Miss Patch.”

Five

“Incoming!” Clem warns as she slams her body down onto my bed.

“Nope,” I moan and bury my face into my pillow.

My face! Shit, shit, shit.

“It’s almost noon,” she says. “Mom told me to tell you that if you want to sleep this late, you can start working overnights with Dad.”

“Well, then go, so I can get out of bed. I require privacy.”

She groans. “Guys are gross, you know that?”

“I’m not telling you to go because of that,” I say. Though, honestly, it’s always best to give me a few minutes to collect myself and Clem knows that. It’s biology, okay?

But that’s not the issue this morning. The issue is my face. I slept hard last night after trying to scrub my face with a bar of soap and warm water. (I keep thinking about getting into skin care, but it just hasn’t happened yet, so sue me.) I ended up making more of a mess than I started with and went to bed looking like a melted clown. Judging by the crusty sensation around my eyes and mouth, I don’t look much better now than I did last night.

Clem rips the pillow from my hands. “What are you hiding from me? Did you get a face tatt—ooooh,” she finishes as she sees my clown mug. “Are those . . . is that . . . lipstick? On your chin? . . . and your ear?”

I reach past her for my phone and open the reverse camera to examine the damage. Lipstick smeared down my chin and mascara and eyeshadow blended into a storm around and under my eyes. The blush and foundation, though, have managed to mysteriously evaporate when, in reality, I’m sure they’ve sunk deep into my pores, where they’ll live forever. Or until I figure out how to suck the dirt from and shrink my pores.

I look to my pillow, Clem still holding it clutched to her chest. Ohhhh there’s my blush and foundation. Or at least some of it. Note to self: be sure to wash pillowcase myself.

“Your lipstick, actually,” I finally say.

“Oh,” she says, her voice an octave too high. “I didn’t know you were into makeup.”

“I’m not,” I say quickly. “I could be. Or maybe I am. I don’t know. Jury’s out.”

She nods. “Fair. So you were just chilling in my room?”

“I was looking for you,” I tell her. “And for your information, I totally covered for you when Mom came home.”

“Thanks,” she says with a sigh.

I reach under my bed and grab my laptop. “I did a thing last night and if I show you, you can’t make fun of me.”

“Waylon, I would never make fun of you.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.”

She nods, conceding. “Okay, but I would never make fun of you for something that was actually important.”

She gasps. “Is this why you called for an emergency pep talk?”

My stomach turns at the memory of sitting in the back room, waiting for Lucas to return. “Not quite,” I say as I open up the video and hit play.

I wait for her to say something, but she watches in silence.

On-screen, after introducing myself, I lip-synch to Lizzo’s “Good as Hell,” Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own,” and “Lady Marmalade” from Moulin Rouge. At the time, I felt my selection showed range. Thankfully, the middle-of-the-night blaring music coming from my room is nothing new for my parents. Between each song, I tell funny stories about myself. The first and only time I wore a skirt in public (outside of Halloween), which happened to be at school in eighth grade because Clem got in trouble the previous day for wearing a skirt that was shorter than her fingertips even though the cheerleaders routinely wore their uniforms to school, which were much shorter. And besides, my sister has very long arms and shouldn’t be punished for our father’s genetic makeup. There was nothing in the boy’s dress code about skirts and definitely nothing about hemlines. Of course, I was tormented for weeks, and I think this was probably the first time that I promised myself if I could just survive high school, there’d be a better version of my life waiting on the other side.

The second story is my coming-out story, and how I’d dreamed of the moment the way some people dream of their wedding day. In the end, though, the whole family kind of shrugged and said they knew all along while Clem stole the show (without warning me) and dropped the bomb that she was gay too. My third and final story was a recounting of last night and how my disappointment over the results of Fiercest of Them All had turned into a very specific kind of motivation that had spurred me on to create this very video.

“And that’s why I’m here in this wig and lipstick,” I said. “Eat your heart out, y’all. Miss Pumpkin Patch is here to slay the day and my fat ass won’t take no for an answer. Your season seventeen queen has arrived. Game fucking on.”

Clem sits beside me, her jaw unhinged. “That. Was. FIERCE.” She turns to me and grips my shoulder. “You never told me you wanted to do drag, Waylon!”

I shrug. “It didn’t even feel like drag. It’s like I was showcasing a very specific part of myself, ya know?”

She gasps. “Waylon, what if they actually cast you?”

I scoff. “Never gonna happen. I’ve never even performed. I probably won’t even send it in.”

She jumps up to her feet, standing on my mattress as she towers over me. “What are you talking about? You have to send it in!”

“Clem. Come on. The people who try out for these shows are pros. They’re actual performers. This was just for fun.”

She crosses her arms over her chest before plopping back down and nuzzling against my shoulder. “You know, Hannah says the Hideaway has a few drag nights.”

I shake my head. “I’m good.” The Hideaway is the scary former biker bar outside of town that could barely stay in business, so for three nights a week they have what they call Rainbow Nights, and it’s definitely not a church outreach event dedicated to celebrating the promise of God’s love like Mrs. Michalchuk, my former Sunday school teacher, had thought it was.

“You know—” I start, intent on asking her about my discovery. By the time I fell asleep last night, I’d convinced myself that the email was no big deal. Just Clem testing the waters to see if she could even get in and how far she could take it before backing out. The same thing happened with swim team in tenth grade. She joined, quickly became the best on the team, and won the district championship in the hundred-meter butterfly. When the time came to pick it back up again the following year, she skipped out and said she’d already proven to herself she could do it and that was enough. Clem is a joiner. She likes to join every club and team and group there is. To her, life is a buffet, and everything from mock trial to astronomy club to the soccer team is on the menu.