Dirty Little Secret Read Online Free

instruments out today. Willie Nelson watched and occasionally interjected a comment while Elvis argued with Dolly Parton. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Elvis’s tone and body language were a lot like what he’d used on me the day before. Good—at least I knew he wasn’t really a king around here. I likely wasn’t the only fiddle player who’d ever pissed him off.
    I slipped into the restroom to scrub off my makeup, plus the fine sawdust that had stuck to it during my morning of helping my granddad build guitars. Then I returned to the wardrobe area set up at the front of the store, near the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the mall, now covered in brown paper to protect us from the curious stares of shoppers. I plopped into Ms. Lottie’s chair.
    “You know, hon,” she said, peering at me over the tops of her rhinestone reading glasses, “you could come in without makeup. Then we wouldn’t have to go through so many steps.”
    “I never leave the house without makeup,” I told her. “I’d feel naked.” All of which had become true in the past year. I’d been hiding behind inky black mascara and a scowl since I cut off my long hair. Nobody messed with a tough-looking chick like me. I’d felt like I was surrounded by a force field when I’d passed Elvis in the lounge area just now. I got in trouble only when I washed mymakeup off and Ms. Lottie made me up nicely to look like the high school portrait of my now-dead grandma.
    “Um,” I said as Ms. Lottie fitted a wig of long, straight blond locks over my head. With my hair color back to natural and no makeup, in the mirror I looked more like myself than I had in a year, which made me uncomfortable. “Does this hair go with Elvis?”
    “You’re not with Elvis today, hon,” she said, wrapping the wig with a bandanna printed like the American flag. “You’re with Willie Nelson.”
    “Why?” I asked her reflection. Even without mascara, my blue eyes looked huge. I tried not to seem so obviously panicked. Elvis must have complained to the management about me already. I’d been transferred but not fired. Not yet.
    “Elvis only works a few days a week,” Ms. Lottie explained. “He bartends the rest. We couldn’t put you with him all the time. Everybody’s schedule is real irregular because nobody can make a living doing this. And then, of course, sometimes we have people out sick. Or they lay out of work, more likely.” She placed her hands firmly on either side of the flag bandanna and gave the wig a hard jerk to straighten my fake scalp. “Even if you were all here every day of the week, we’d switch up the bands so you didn’t kill each other. You musicians are impossible, and Elvis is the absolute worst. Didn’t he come on to you?”
    I was so surprised that another “Um” was all I could manage.
    “Didn’t he ask what was under your circle skirt?” Ms. Lottie insisted, leaning forward to find the foundation she used on me.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Sounds like Dolly is telling him off, though,” Ms. Lottie pointed out as the noise of their argument rose over the empty bookshelves.
    She came in close to work on my face and coaxed me to relax my jaw. I couldn’t let go. My mind whirled with the speech I’d rehearsed for the last twenty hours. Now I didn’t need it. I should have been relieved. Elvis wasn’t going to tell on me. He’d insulted me and then had an argument with me because he did that to everybody. I could still tell on him if I wanted. Other employees and Ms. Lottie would probably back me up.
    Instead of relief, though, I felt let down and exhausted. All my hours of scheming and plotting were a big departure from my usual routine of boredom and apathy. I was left with that buzz of adrenaline, and now I had nowhere to put it.
    I was even a little disappointed to hear that Elvis came on to anything in a circle skirt, not just me. When I’d thought I was something special to him, at least I’d felt adult and