Page 26 of The Serpent King

Lydia looked up from the blank page she was staring at on her screen while reminiscing. “You cannot possibly have read that book fewer than seven times.”

“Eight times.”

“So why—”

“Because Deathstorm, the final book in the series, comes out in March. And I’m rereading the whole series before then so I don’t miss any details when I talk about it on the forums. They’re brutal there. I don’t want to look like a noob. I’m reading it with one of my friends from the forums. They’re good books. You should read them.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, no. I wouldn’t read five thousand pages of something if it contained precise instructions on how to lose twenty pounds by eating Krispy Kremes and orgasming. Do you not have homework?”

“Damn, Lydia, you’re everyone’s mom tonight,” Dill said. Travis gave him an inquisitive eyebrow raise.

Lydia raised her hands in surrender, still gazing at her screen. “Nope. Nope. I’m done. Y’all do your thing. This is what I get for trying to help.” This is what I get for trying to keep from having to watch your life wither and die on the vine in this stupid little town.

Her phone buzzed.

OMG just got sneak peek at Vivienne Westwood pre-Fall. Mind-blowing, Dahlia texted.

JEALZ.

Cool things going on with subverting trad. ideas of femininity etc.

I ALREADY SAID JEALZ.

Soon, love. BTW spoke with Chloe this morning. Expressed interest in rooming with us in NYC.

Chloe Savignon was a young actress and fashion designer. Lydia had never met her in person, but had corresponded with her online and seen her movies. She was a fan of Dollywould.

I’m down, she texted.

She could barely process how different her life would be in a year. A change she had wrought through her own force of will and ambition. From a nobody in a nothing town at the edge of the Cumberland Plateau to rooming with actresses and fashion industry scions in the most glamorous city in the world, attending one of the finest universities in the world. The possibilities were so endless. Her new friends would dress and talk differently. They’d be from big cities and elite prep schools. They’d have beach houses where they’d spend weekends. They’d have late-night conversations about Chomsky and Sartre and Kraftwerk and Kurosawa and the Givenchy spring line. Friends who would introduce her to new things instead of it always being the other way around. That’s what would replace this. Not that this wasn’t fun. Not that Dill and Travis weren’t good friends to her. Not that she wouldn’t miss them. Not that she wouldn’t feel guilty leaving them behind. But.

A year from now, she wouldn’t be sitting in a Christian coffee shop across from friends who resented her ambition, that was for sure.

This was a good mind place for her to start drafting her college admission essay. She began typing.

I was born and raised in Forrestville, Tennessee, population 4,237, according to the last census. Not surprisingly, technology startups, software companies, media conglomerates, and so forth are reluctant to set up shop in a town named for Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Opportunity and possibility don’t knock at your door in Forrestville. You have to create them for yourself.

The coffee shop faced out onto the town square. Her classmates congregated at the gazebo at its center and used the square as a turnabout when they cruised the main drag, ending up at the Walmart parking lot. She could see them beginning to gather.

Another text from Dahlia. Meeting mum for dinner in hour. Wish me luck.

Speaking of, any chance your mom would be into writing me a rec letter for college? I’ll need a few, Lydia texted.

What am I doing? Lydia thought. I just casually sort of asked for a letter of recommendation from one of the most powerful women in the media. Lydia had met Vivian Winter all of one time, at Fashion Week (Dahlia’s stockbroker father had chaperoned them in Nantucket). Fortunately, Dahlia loved opportunities to show off her influence.

Oh mum adores you. We’ll make it happen.

With that small victory, Lydia resumed work on her admission essay.

When I was thirteen, I decided that there was no reason why only adults from big cities should have a voice in the national conversation on fashion, pop culture, and the arts—the three things I love most. So I started a blog called Dollywould. I drew my inspiration from a quote by one of my idols, a fellow Tennessean and strong woman: Dolly Parton. She said, “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” So that’s what I did. I paved a new road. I wrote from my heart about the things I loved and people began paying attention.

I got tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month. I have over 100,000 followers on both Twitter and Instagram. Dollywould has been featured in Teen Chic, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Seventeen, and Garden & Gun. I’ve been invited to New York Fashion Week for the last two years and I’ve given an interview to the New York Times. I’ve been a guest judge on Project Design on the Bravo Network. I get packages weekly from designers giving me their pieces to feature on the blog.

My goal with Dollywould was to create a space that was empowering to young people—especially young women—who had tastes outside of the mainstream and felt lonely, like no one understood them. I can empathize. I have exactly two friends at my high school. One is the son of a defrocked snakehandling pastor who is currently serving a prison sentence. My other friend works at a lumberyard to make money to buy books.

A little Southern fetishism never killed anyone. Dill and Travis may have been off-brand for her blog, but they were resoundingly on-brand for her bootstrappy admission essay narrative.

Dill was in good spirits as he clocked out of work, took off his green apron, folded it, and put it in his backpack. Every year since he’d known Lydia, Dr. Blankenship had thrown them a back-to-school dinner on the first Friday after school started, before their Friday-night movie night. He always did it up right, with smoked pork shoulder, cornbread, collard greens, mac and cheese, sweet tea, and Mrs. Blankenship’s chess pie for dessert. It was generally the best meal Dill ate all year. In the interest of enjoying it to the fullest, he even resolved to allow himself the luxury of forgetting that it would be the last such dinner he’d ever have.