Thread by Thread: The submission
542 Words
She picked up the garment bag with both hands, holding it high enough that the hem would not touch the ground, and walked to the end of Sycamore Road in the November cold to the bus stop with the wind pulling at the garment bag and her jaw set and her eyes forward.
The Route 12 bus came at nine thirty eight. She boarded carefully, holding the garment bag above the seats, and stood the entire four mile ride because she was not going to let her dress touch a bus seat after forty three days of work. An older woman near the front watched her with a curious expression. Callie smiled at her once and then looked out the window and counted the stops.
She arrived at the Holt Farms event barn at nine fifty seven. The doors were not yet open. Three other participants were already waiting outside in the cold. Callie stood with her garment bag held against her body and her breath making small clouds in the November air and waited.
At ten o'clock exactly the doors opened.
She walked in and submitted her entry.
The woman behind the registration desk, the same cheerful Holt Farms employee in the green polo shirt from October, took her submission number and noted the time of arrival and placed a paper tag on the garment bag with care. Callie watched her do it. Then she thanked her and walked back outside into the cold.
She stood in the parking lot for a moment. The wind had picked up and it moved through the bare oak trees along the property fence with a sound that was almost like voices. Across the lot she could see Victoria Whitfield stepping out of a black SUV in a camel coat with her garment bag on a proper padded hanger carried by the woman Callie assumed was Diane. Margaret Whitfield walked beside her daughter with her hand lightly at her back and said something that made Victoria smile the particular smile of someone who expected to win.
Victoria did not look in Callie's direction.
Callie watched them go inside. Then she adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder and walked back to the bus stop.
Phase One was done.
Phase Two was in fourteen days and Callie had not finished practicing her presentation and her sewing machine still had a tension assembly problem and she had a double shift at The Dusty Spur on Friday and Boss Pete had already made a comment about her being distracted and the thirty five dollars she had spent on the machine repair had meant she missed her contribution to November's electric bill by exactly thirty five dollars which Earl had covered without saying a word about it and which sat in her chest like a stone she was carrying quietly.
She rode the bus home with the empty garment bag folded on her lap and her hands still.
Phase Two was in fourteen days.
And somewhere in the back of her mind, beneath the exhaustion and the cold and the weight of everything she was holding together with sheer will, the dress existed. Beautiful and real and fully hers.
That was enough to keep moving.
For now.
- Writer
