Jess Lourey - September Mourn

I was just about to scream when a brilliant sliver of light sliced through the absolute black. Someone had cracked a door.

We all sighed.

We were in a building, civilized humans.

Two more seconds, and every light in the building switched back on, washing the interior in a safe, yellow glow. At first, none of us in the Dairy building made eye contact. I think we were all embarrassed. No one likes to discover theyre two minutes of darkness away from crazy.

I kept moving forward and was beside the booth when a shriek, a long, continuous wail, escaped from behind the blue curtain to my left.

I was reaching to tug open the curtain when something in the butter-carving booth snagged my eye: a cherry-red hand sticking out between two felled blocks of butter in the spinning booth.

Had Milkfed Mary been crushed by falling butter in an ironically dairy-themed re-creation of the Wizard of Oz?

September Mourn 2018, 2009 by Jess Lourey. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Jessica Lourey except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Third Edition

First Printing, 2018

Cover by Steven Novak

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Prologue

S he cut a wide swath through the eleven other pretty young women. To a girl they had skin as white and creamy as lefse batter, blonde hair the color of sunlight on honey, and eyes as blue as a DQ raspberry slushie.

A brunette would have stood out like a turd in a salad bar in this bunch.

It didnt always work that way. Some years, a brown-haired girl could even win the Milkfed Mary, Queen of the Dairy title. But not this year. This year, the field was an Aryan army, with one Ashley Kirsten Pederson as its general.

Lana, did you use my lip gloss? Ashley pouted when she asked. She couldnt believe she was forced to spend another minute with these piglets, girls she definitely wouldnt hang with in her hometown.

Probably they were all farm girls, maybe even in 4-H. Not her. She was just drop-dead gorgeous. Her parents happened to own a dairy farm, but that wasnt her fault. I asked, did you use it? Because your lips are all glossy and it looks a lot like Cherry Sugar Kiss from here.

No, Ashley, I did not take your lip gloss. I have my own. Lana, for her part, was not a member of 4-H. Shed been involved in Hands, Health, Head, and Heart as a kid back when she had enjoyed riding horse and raising rabbits, but once she hit high school, she became busy with the demands of maintaining a 4.0 GPA, helping her mom run the farm, and keeping her new boyfriend, Bud, on second base.

Ashley gave her corn-silk hair one last fluff. Fine.

She wasnt going to waste her time worrying about these milk duds. She was the queen this year. And thanks to her dazzling victory, Battle Lake was now in the enviable position of supplying more Milkfed Marys than any other town in the state of Minnesota.

Ashley had made history.

A man wearing a pair of tiny headphones knocked before poking his face in the second-floor dormitory. Ms. Pederson? Ashley swiveled and flashed her best smile. Her teeth were white enough to trigger migraines. He couldnt help but smile back. Youll want to grab your snow pants and coat. Youre on in five.

Ashley took one last sip of her diet cola, her main source of nutrition. She sucked the straw delicately, ice clinking in the glass, as she imagined movie stars drank their pop. Smiling at the glory that awaited her, she set her drink down and grabbed her pine green Columbia parka and matching pants, both good to forty below, and floated down the cement steps that led to the massive cattle barn, which she pranced through and outside into the already steamy, late-August morning.

The sun sparkled off her tiara and turned the sequins on her strapless gown into a million glittering sapphires. She waved and the cameras flashed, clicking and popping like firecrackers. She didnt lose stride as she crossed the pavement, her right arm in constant motionelbow, elbow, wrist, wristand entered the front doors of the Dairy building, which were held open for her.

As she strode to the southwest corner of the edifice, she passed the House of Cheese on her right. It was a misnomer. There was no house, only a glassed-in display featuring the history of the cheese industry in Minnesota. On her left stood the Dairy Goodness concession stand, which had been selling malts, yogurt, cheese, cones, sundaes, and icy cold glasses of milk in three flavors since 1945. The line to the front counter already snaked outside the building, and those waiting for their calcium hit whispered excitedly as Ashley sailed past.

Overhead fans lifted Ashleys hair as she glided toward the refrigerated, glass-walled, octagonal booth. It was twelve feet high and nine feet across, rested on a four-foot base, and housed the most popular exhibit on the massive State Fairgrounds.

The clamoring crowd shoved and hustled to catch a glimpse of the queen nearing her icy throne, parting like an overweight white sea so she could float through. Ashley felt like a rock star. Ever the professional, she paused for one final photo shoot in front of the glass-sided gazebo before slipping behind to the curtained anteroom.

Organizers had recently spruced up the queens booth, and it carried the faint smell of new paint. The predominant color was white with red and blue trim. A single strand of scarlet twinkle lights crowned the top of the structure, and inside, twelve ninety-pound blocks of butter were arranged like a spreadable Stonehenge, eleven in a circle on the outside with one in the center: hers.

Her grin inched up to her eyes, and in a move she had practiced countless times in front of one of her full-length mirrors at home, she turned gracefully on her heel, showing just a hint of upper thigh through the slit of her gown, and slipped behind the blue curtain that separated the entrance of the booth from the excited crowd. The private area was really a small hall. To her left were the four wooden stairs that led to the door of the gazebo. To her right were about a million plastic spoons. Dairy Goodness, whose kitchen was at the other end of the hall, had run out of storage space.