Ms. Bee still seemed pleased. “I want to help you.” She started pulling books off of her shelf. “You should read The Feminine Mystique. And of course The Beauty Myth, which will be highly relevant to your discussions. Oh! Flip through The Woman’s Bible. And The Second Sex—I based my master’s thesis on the work of Simone de Beauvoir.”
As the books piled high on the corner of her desk, I tried to look excited, but really, I felt completely overwhelmed. I guess Ms. Bee could tell, because she furrowed her eyebrows. “And Spencer, she is helping you, correct? That was part of the deal.”
“Yes,” I lied. I mean, I knew Spencer would help me. We just hadn’t had time to sit down with each other yet. Really, if that was anyone’s fault, it was mine. I was the busy one.
“I’m concerned because I’ve seen Spencer flitting around school, happy as can be with all the newfound attention she’s brought to herself. That is not the attitude of someone who regrets her behavior. Frankly, I’m at a loss as to why you’ve chosen to take someone like her under your wing.”
I felt embarrassed. Why did Spencer make this so difficult on herself? “I babysat Spencer a long time ago,” I explained. “So I guess I feel some responsibility for her. She’s definitely making some stupid choices. But she’s a good girl, deep down.”
If Ms. Bee understood me, she didn’t show it. “Wait! I forgot the most important book of all.” She went to her shelf. “This one is just for you, Natalie.” I took it from her hands, unprepared for its weight. A girl graced the cover, smiling into the wind, a leather cap and goggles perched on the top of her head. The title was East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart. “I devoured this over my vacation. I think you and Amelia have a lot in common. Have you heard of the Ninety-Nines?”
“No.”
“Well, Amelia founded the Ninety-Nines as an organization just for female pilots. In fact, she became its first president. It helped legitimize the women who pursued such nontraditional careers, providing them with opportunities. Strength in numbers and all that. It completely reminds me of this girls’ night. And, of course, I found the significance with the number nine all too fitting.”
“Thank you, Ms. Bee.”
“I’m proud of everything you’re trying to do here, Natalie. I’ve always known you were special. Other girls your age, well…they get so silly over the boys. You, my dear, are fiercely independent. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and frankly, you give me hope that feminism won’t die off with your generation.”
I smiled and pulled my book bag up onto my shoulders. It weighed about a million pounds. Though, honestly, it felt nothing compared to the pressure behind Ms. Bee’s smile.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The following week, Spencer and I arranged to meet before school to finalize our plans for the girls’ night and get our sign-up materials prepared. Autumn came, too.
I divided up the readings from Ms. Bee between the three of us, with the instruction that we should look for inspiring quotes or messages we could give away to girls in the hall on slips of paper, like the ones in fortune cookies.
Spencer bit the end of her pencil. “Natalie, do you have a boyfriend?”
Autumn laughed, which pissed me off. I didn’t like Autumn hinting at my inexperience, and giving Spencer more opportunities to lord her expertise over my head. Anyway, it was none of Spencer’s business.
“No, I don’t,” I said proudly. I thought for a moment how I could have shocked both Spencer and Autumn if I told them how Connor had been paying me attention. Ever since the bonfire night, I’d caught him watching me. Not that I cared. He was free to look at whomever he wanted. And I was free to ignore him.
“I bet you only date college guys.” Spencer drew hearts instead of bullet points in her notebook. “Some completely brilliant boy who’s going to be a neuroscientist or a foreign policy adviser. He probably wears glasses, but not nerdy ones. The thin metal kind that models wear. Ooh! And I bet he’s from somewhere overseas, like London. I could totally see you with a guy who has an accent.”
I put my pen down. “I’m not discussing this with you,” I said. But if I’d wanted to date anyone, he would have been exactly like the guy Spencer had just described. Except not from London. Paris. And we would have spoken French to each other. After all, I’d been studying it for three years of high school. It had to come in handy for something.
“How about you, Autumn?” Spencer went on. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
Autumn’s eyes went to the table. “Oh, me? No.”
I shot Spencer a look to quit it, but unfortunately, it didn’t register. She turned her chair so that it faced Autumn. “Okay, that makes absolutely no sense. I mean, Lisa Prince has a boyfriend, and she’s practically got vampire teeth. But you…you’re one of the prettiest, nicest girls at this school. I don’t understand how you aren’t, like, a shoo-in for Prom Queen.”
“I…sort of have a history.”
“What do you mean?”
Autumn and I shared a grimace. Autumn didn’t want to be my guest speaker at the girls’ night, and I had to accept her decision. Still, a part of me hoped Autumn might open up to Spencer.
Autumn took a deep breath and closed the book in front of her. “Do the words Fish Sticks mean anything to you?”
Spencer looked utterly perplexed. “Umm…a disgusting food made only slightly less disgusting by ketchup?”
Autumn smiled. And then she told Spencer her story. She said it frankly, almost without emotion. It was strange how controlled she suddenly seemed to be about the whole thing. Spencer was the exact opposite. Her smile sank lower and lower and lower.
“So the last guy you were with…” Spencer’s question hung in the air.
Autumn bit her lip and nodded. “It’s fine. There’s no way I’d have the grades to get into a good school if that whole thing hadn’t happened. I’m probably better off. I mean, I know I am.” Autumn sounded only half-convinced. I gave her arm a friendly pinch to make up the difference.
Spencer had a different take on things. “No!” she cried. “Autumn! That’s probably the worst thing you could have done. You shouldn’t let one dumb guy make you feel bad about yourself. And closing yourself off from guys is completely unnatural. I mean, why else would teenagers be swimming in hormones if we weren’t supposed to use them?” She gritted her teeth. “We should go hunt down Chad Rivington and cut off his balls.”
I shook my head. Spencer was missing the point. Big time. “There’s not a single guy in this high school good enough for Autumn. For any of us, really.”
“Oh, I know I’m too good for any guy at this school. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still have fun with them in the meantime. Because what college guy is going to date me? Hello! I’m only fourteen, and I’m not looking to shack up with some pervert.”
Autumn cracked up. “I don’t think that’s what Natalie meant, Spencer.”
Spencer still wasn’t getting it. I knew I had to pull out the big guns. I closed my book and turned to face her. “Look, I never told you this because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but I overheard Mike Domski and the other guys saying some pretty nasty things about you after the Rosstitute incident.”
“Natalie,” Autumn warned me.
At first, Spencer didn’t seem fazed. “Oh, yeah, like what?”
“Well…someone called you a stripper. And I think James was the one who said that you weren’t even that pretty. After Connor made it clear that he wasn’t interested in you, Mike claimed he’d easily get you to do stuff with him, and said none of the other guys could touch you.”
I watched it all register on Spencer’s face. It was one thing to hear what happened to Autumn, but there was no playing this off. I’m sure it was hard to know what people were saying about her behind her back, but my hope was that it would finally make her understand that how she was acting was just bringing trouble.
“Unbelievable,” she said. “That’s why Mike Domski’s been practic
ally stalking me. He’s always walking by my locker or bumping into me by accident. If he thinks for a second that he can lay claim on me, he’s got another thing coming.”
This, I felt, was the right attitude to have. “Look. We’ve got to get cracking if we’re going to get everything ready for sign-ups. We’ve only got about an hour.”
After we finished up the quotes, we made a list of activities for the girls’ night. I’d gotten most of them off the internet and from the pamphlet Ms. Bee had given me. It felt like things were coming together.
“We’re missing something,” Spencer said, shaking out her curls. “Something essential.”
I gave our list a quick rundown, but it seemed good to me. “What?”
“Fun, Natalie! There’s absolutely nothing fun on this list!”
I pointed to number six. “What about the trust falls?”
Spencer made a goofy face. “You want this to be full of girls from school, right? Well, then we need to give them a reason to spend Friday night with us, rather than having a good time somewhere else.”
I wanted to tell her that the girls’ night was less about fun and more about learning, but Autumn cut me off. “Spencer’s right,” she said. “It can be educational, but we need something entertaining, too.”
Spencer twirled a curl around her finger. “I’ve got an idea.”
I sighed. Deeply. Then again, Spencer actually wanted to be involved. I knew I should encourage that. “Okay. Shoot.”
“Well, we used to do this thing at my old dance studio. We called it Sweatpants Dance. We’d invite all the girls to the studio for a dance party. But only girls. No boys allowed. Everyone would show up in sweatpants and tank tops. And you didn’t have to worry about guys or looking good. One of the girls would DJ and we’d play corny, embarrassing boy-band music and everyone just danced it out together for a couple of hours. We could do the same thing, only in our pajamas. Plus, we could kill a bunch of time that way.”
Autumn clapped. “I love it!”
They both turned to me, to hear what I had to say. I smiled. “It’s a great idea. Spencer, you’re a genius.” Which was a little much, but I wanted to be encouraging.
In response, Spencer surprised me. “I just want to say sorry for what happened on pep rally day,” she said, her tone suddenly serious.
“You don’t have to apologize to me,” I told her, and was happy that it felt true.
“Yeah, I do. Because of my stunt, we’ve been forced into this punishment.”
“This isn’t a punishment,” I clarified. “Suspension is a punishment. This is a summit, a chance to—”
“Whatever you want to call it, I’m sorry. And, Natalie, I really do appreciate what you did in Principal Hurley’s office. Standing up for me like that.”
“That’s what friends do for each other.” It was the first time I’d said those words to someone other than my best friend, but I meant them just as much.
We set up a table in the main hallway with a sign-up sheet, and a bunch of literature and inspiring quotes by female leaders. Spencer insisted on making her iPod play pop songs sung only by female artists. A nice touch for sure.
People started showing up for school and a bunch of girls stopped by our table right away. The big draw seemed to be Spencer’s Pajama Dance Party idea, but a few girls seemed to really like the quotes Spencer and the rest of the Rosstitutes handed out, too. In about fifteen minutes, we had thirty girls sign up. It was going really, really well, until Mike Domski grabbed a pencil and tried to add his name to one list.
“Put that down,” I told him. Honestly, you had to talk to Mike like he was a three-year-old.
“Why? Shouldn’t boys be allowed, too? If you exclude us, isn’t that sexist?” I tried to take the pencil back, but he pulled it away. “Oh, I get it. This girls’ night is more of a vaginathon. No dick allowed.”
I wanted to spit back some biting retort, but Spencer beat me to it. She put her hands down on the table and leaned into Mike’s face. “That’s right, Mike. No dicks, no dickheads, no cocks, no penises, no wieners, no wee-wees, no boners, no dongs, no dill weeds, no scrotums allowed. Which, I think, are all adjectives used to describe you.” She yanked the pencil right out of his hand. “So, yeah. Looks like you’re not invited.”
Mike’s response? He gave Spencer the finger and walked away.
“Point: Spencer,” I whispered, and drew a line in the air.
“Trust me. I know how to deal with guys like Mike,” she said. “In fact, I think I’m going to break him. Just for fun. Just because I can.”
I threw my arm around her. Not because I cared about what kind of psycho mind games she could play on Mike Domski, but because Spencer was finally listening to me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There’s no way Spencer actually wears that to sleep.
That’s what I thought, anyway, when she appeared in a navy-and-green-plaid baby-doll nightgown, with white ribbon trim where the hem grazed her thighs. Her wool coat hung open, belt ends skimming the gym floor, as if she’d worn a party dress too pretty to keep under wraps. It could have maybe passed for one, if not for the pillow puffing out from under her arm and the sleeping bag dragging behind her.
“Natalie!” she squealed. “I made the most awesome playlist for tonight!” She did a little shimmy out of her coat, which caused one of the delicate spaghetti straps to fall off her shoulder. “Got me checked off, right, Ms. Bee?”
“Spencer Biddle,” Ms. Bee recited from her folding chair, her pencil scratching against a clipboard. “How could we have missed you?” I felt like Ms. Bee had made the joke for my benefit, but really, I couldn’t laugh.
Spencer scurried over to meet up with the rest of her friends. There were about fifty girls present, plus the Rosstitutes and a few other student council girls that I guilted into coming. I had hoped more would have signed up, but I guess Mike Domski scared them away with his disgusting jokes. Still, it was a halfway decent turn out.
“All right, Natalie,” Ms. Bee said, “I think you can get started. I’m going to be in my office for a while, catching up on some paperwork. Plus, I think if I’m not around, the girls might be more inclined to open up and discuss things.”
“Great. I’ll grab Spencer and—”
“Natalie, I’d like you to be more of the facilitator tonight. I know Spencer helped in the planning, but this is your wonderful idea. And you have the leadership experience. I don’t want tonight devolving into some tittering sleepover. You’ve got actual, important work to do.”
I nodded. “Sure. Of course.”
I walked across the gym to where everyone was mingling. It felt strange to be in pajamas at school, especially because, unlike Spencer, I wore what I actually slept in. My dad’s old hospital scrubs used to be maroon, but they’d turned a lighter pink, having been washed so many times. I also had on a white tank, an oversize hooded zip-up, and my slippers.
I paced the bleachers and gave the girls a chance to quiet down. “Okay. Hey, everyone, thanks for coming tonight. We’ve got a lot of snacks and munchies that we’ll tear into later, but I wanted to go over a few things first.” I took a deep breath, and made sure to smile. That’s when Spencer stepped right in front of me.
“I have a statement I’d like to make, before we get started. I want everyone to feel like this is a safe place for us to talk about what’s been going on, to share our feelings and thoughts. This should be a judgment-free zone.”
I smiled over at Ms. Bee, who headed out of the gym. “Of course, Spencer. That’s a great point.” I pulled Spencer close and whispered, “Why don’t I get things started and then you can take over?” Spencer looked confused. And maybe a bit wounded. I nudged my chin toward an empty seat in the bleachers. “Don’t worry.”
Spencer sat next to Autumn. Begrudgingly.
“I think the perfect place to begin tonight is to discuss what happened in the senior hallway two weeks ago.” I’d barely finished before Spencer’s hand
shot straight up. I stared over her fingertips. “I expect lots of you have different thoughts and opinions and I want to make sure we hear from everyone.” Spencer started bouncing on her butt, waving her hand wildly. The more I tried to ignore her, the harder she tried to be noticed. “Spencer? Why don’t you start us off?”
Spencer stood up and faced the crowd. “I have to say, I felt shocked by people’s reactions to the T-shirts. I mean, why aren’t girls allowed or encouraged to show their sexuality?”
“I don’t think what you were doing was sexy,” I told Spencer as gently as I could. “You were trying to get attention.”
Spencer smiled. “See? That’s what I mean. That’s what we should be talking about tonight! Boys can mess around and do whatever they want to without consequence. But not us girls. We’re not allowed to have sexual needs.”
“Sexual needs? Are you serious? You’re fourteen.”
“I don’t know what my age has to do with anything.” Spencer pursed her lips. “I’m sensing a lot of negativity coming from you, Natalie. Isn’t this supposed to be a judgment-free zone?”
“Okay, let’s all calm down.” Which sounded ridiculous, because Spencer and I were the only ones getting heated.
“Look, I don’t do things I’m not comfortable with. I am always in control. And anyway, what right is it for anyone else to tell me what I can and can’t do with my body? I won’t be villainized because I happen to like being sexual. I’m not going to be embarrassed. It seems that this school has a real problem with that sort of thing.” Spencer gave a pointed look at Autumn, which everyone noticed. “Forcing girls to be ashamed for doing the things that come natural to them—it’s a ridiculous double standard, and we should all, frankly, tell anyone who judges us to screw off.”
A couple of girls nodded, including Marci Cooperstein, who was sitting directly behind Autumn. I watched as Marci reached out and gave Autumn’s shoulder a little squeeze. Autumn turned around, surprised. The two girls smiled at each other. And I wanted to throw up.