“No one knows,” Grace says, her face blazing red.
“This is weird,” says Allison.
Then one more girl walks in. Rosina gasps. It is not just any girl.
“Hello!” the new arrival says in a cheerful voice that seems exceptionally loud coming from such a small body. Sam Robeson. Head of the drama club. Lead in last year’s semiscandalous production of Cabaret, wearer of costume jewelry and endless expanses of scarves, and Rosina’s hopeless crush all freshman year after she dressed up like a boy-band pop star for Halloween, proving definitively that there is nothing sexier than a femme girl in boy drag.
“So, what’s up?” Sam says as she sits down. Rosina notices how her short pixie cut frames her perfect ears and jawline. “What are we going to talk about?”
“I think we’re supposed to talk about Lucy Moynihan,” one of the blue-haired girls says.
“I don’t really care about Lucy Moynihan,” Connie says, flipping her hair, reminding Grace that she’s the meaner half of the homeroom pair. “I just want Eric Jordan to stop staring at my tits all the time.” Krista and Trista giggle nervously. Rosina cringes.
“He totally groped me in the photography darkroom freshman year,” Allison says. “I told Principal Slatterly, but she basically told me it was my fault and I shouldn’t put myself in compromising positions.”
“That’s horrible,” Grace says. “I can’t believe she did that. Did you tell someone?”
Allison shrugs. “She’s in charge. There was no one else to tell.”
“You’re new, right?” Connie says. “So you probably don’t know yet that everyone in Prescott who’s in charge of something—they’re all friends. Principal Slatterly, the mayor, the police chief, city council, everyone. And they all go to Prescott Foursquare, the same church as Eric’s, Spencer’s, and Ennis’s families. Chief Delaney’s wife is cochair of the volunteer committee with Ennis’s mom. This whole town is totally corrupt. There’s a word for that, isn’t there?”
“Nepotism,” Erin says without looking up from her book.
“My parents go to that church, too,” says Krista, or maybe it’s Trista. “They force me to go. They’re total fascists.”
“Totally,” says the other blue-haired girl.
Erin looks up from her book, blinks a couple of times as she looks around the room, then returns to her reading. Other eyes scan the circle, then stare back down at their laps or into some dim corner of the room. Sam pulls her phone out of her purse and reads a text message.
“So I have something I’d like to talk about,” Elise Powell finally says. Eyes turn to her expectantly. “I’m the manager of the football team, and I overhear a lot of stuff in the locker room—”
“Oh my God,” says Sam. “Do you see anything? Is there, like, hot guy-on-guy action?”
“Um, no,” Elise says. “I’m not allowed in the actual showers.”
“Bummer,” says Sam.
“Anyway,” Elise continues. “The other day all the guys were talking about making bets on how many girls they could sleep with this year. They’re keeping track and everything. There’s even money involved. Eric Jordan is the leader of the whole thing. He told everyone to start with freshmen girls because they’re easiest. It was like he thought he was the guys’ teacher or something, like he was really helping them. Like he had this whole science about getting laid.”
“Castration,” Rosina says. “I’m telling you, that’s the only solution.”
“You’d think that after everything that happened last year,” Sam says, “he’d try to fly under the radar a little, maybe try not to be such an obvious douche bag.” She shakes her head and the beads of her dangling orange earrings clink together. “I can’t believe I used to think he was hot.”
“But maybe he feels even braver now that he got away with it,” Elise says.
“It’s kind of a tradition,” says Connie. “The guys competing about sex. Poor freshmen don’t see it coming. They actually think the guys like them. I almost fell for it once.”
“I did fall for it,” Allison says, lowering her eyes.
“We have to warn them,” Elise says.
Krista’s and Trista’s eyes are big and round as they nod their heads in agreement. “How?” one of them squeaks.
“Maybe put up signs or something?” says the other.
“That’s too dangerous,” says Allison. “Couldn’t they catch us with, like, forensic evidence or something?”
“CSI is not going to dust for fingerprints on a few construction-paper signs,” Rosina says.
“I think we should make signs,” Elise says. “And flyers maybe, too. We have to make sure everyone knows.”
“At least you don’t have anything to worry about,” Connie says under her breath, but it is a small room with only nine people in it, so everyone hears.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Elise says, her freckles even darker against her skin’s new crimson shade.
“I mean, like, you’re gay, right?” Connie says. “So you don’t have to worry about asshole guys like the rest of us.”
“I’m not gay,” Elise says, eyes on the floor, her enthusiasm snuffed out like a candle.
“Um, hello?” Rosina says. “Guys are still assholes to gay girls. Sometimes even worse.”
“You know what I mean,” says Connie.
“No, actually. I don’t,” Rosina says, leaning forward in her seat. “What exactly do you mean?”
“I mean, like, you’re pretty so no one can really tell, but Elise looks like a—”
“I’m not gay!” Elise cries. Grace reaches over and tries to comfort her, but Elise pulls her hand away, shaking and sniffling as she grabs her backpack off the floor.
“Not cool, Connie,” Rosina says. “What is your problem?”
“This is bullshit,” Connie says. “I have better things to do than sit around complaining about boys.” She stands up and Allison reluctantly follows, smiling apologetically as they walk out the door.
“Elise, wait,” Grace pleads.
“I have to go,” Elise says, fighting back tears as she leaves the room. The blue-haired freshmen duck out quietly behind her.
“Yeah, um,” Sam says, wrapping her scarf around her neck. “I have to go run lines with my scene partner.”
“Wait!” Grace says, but there’s nobody left to hear her.
“I guess the meeting is over,” Erin says as the door swings closed.
“Well, that was fun,” Rosina says.
“I think I’m going to go back to my regular life now,” Erin says.
“No,” Grace says weakly. “You can’t. We can’t give up.”
“Why?” Erin says.
“Because this is important,” Grace says.
“But what’s the point?” Rosina says. “We can’t actually change anything.”
“Maybe we can,” Grace pleads. “If we keep trying.”
“Lucy never asked us to do this,” Erin says. “It’s not our responsibility.”
“Then whose responsibility is it?” Grace says.
Rosina hangs her head. Erin shrugs. Grace looks at them, back and forth, but they do not meet her eyes.
“I have to go home,” Erin says. She looks at her phone. “I’m already six minutes behind schedule.”
“I gotta go to work soon,” Rosina says, picking up her backpack and standing up. “You coming, Grace?”
“I’m just going to sit here for a while,” Grace says.
“Are you going to pray or something?” Erin says.
“I just want to think.”
“Come on, Erin,” Rosina says. “Time to return to our regularly scheduled programming.” Erin follows Rosina out the door, leaving Grace to think or pray or whatever it is she does when no one’s looking.
GRACE.
Lucy speaks to Grace from her gouges in the wall paint. You failed me, she says. Nothing you did matters.
Mom and Dad are already gone for the day, having left
before Grace even woke up for school. They had to beat rush-hour traffic to get to the local NPR affiliate in downtown Eugene, where Mom is going to be interviewed on the morning talk show about progressive Christianity. She’s out there changing the world while her inconsequential daughter makes inconsequential toast in the empty kitchen, boxes still piled in the corner with things that may never get unpacked: a crock pot, cookie cutters, a fondue set her parents got for their wedding twenty years ago that has never come out of its box.
Yesterday afternoon, in the dull, dusty light of the library basement, after shedding some good old-fashioned tears of self-pity, Grace prayed for guidance. “Lord,” she said, “please show me my path. Show me what to do. Show me how to serve you and best help my fellow man. I mean, woman. I mean, girl. Girls.” She couldn’t even pray right.
Grace took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes tight. She pulled her hands against her chest, pressed the steeple of prayer against her heart. “Please,” she said. “I know I have a purpose. I just want to know what it is. I just want to know what I’m good at. If there’s anything I’m good at.”
Then she opened her eyes with a startle, surprised at her own words. She felt her body, but not what was inside it. She was something empty, something that had not yet been filled, something waiting to know what it’s made out of.
Overnight, the rain started. If Grace’s research is correct, it will not stop until sometime in May. The stained ceiling in the corner of her room started leaking immediately, just as she suspected it would. She woke to the sloppy percussion of drip, drip, drip on her floor, and lay there for a long time considering her options: 1) Get out of bed, find a bucket and towels, and take care of it; 2) Get out of bed, get ready for school, and pretend like it’s not happening; or, the most attractive option, 3) Go back to sleep.
Of course, she eventually went with the first option. At least she knows this one thing about herself: She is someone who does what she is supposed to do. She is someone who has been raised to always do the right thing.
Even with an umbrella and raincoat, Grace finds that by the time she gets to school, her shoes are full of water and her jeans are soaked from hem to knees, and they will stay that way for the rest of the day. The windows of the building are fogged with moisture; the halls are full of the sounds of wet clothes squishing and rubber soles squeaking on wet linoleum.
But there’s something else. Voices are louder than usual. More urgent. Electric. It can’t be the rain doing that. People are huddled in conversation, eyes wide and conspiratorial. They are looking at the walls, at lockers, at pieces of paper in their hands.
Grace walks fast to get a better look at a bright neon printout taped to a locker. WARNING! it reads. TO ALL THE GIRLS, ESPECIALLY FRESHMEN. BE CAREFUL WHO YOU TRUST! It goes on to describe the boys’ sex competition in every disturbing detail. It is signed THE NOWHERE GIRLS.
“Oh my God,” a girl says. She is young, probably a freshman. The girl turns to her friend. “Do you think that’s why that senior asked for my number yesterday? I knew there was something weird about it.”
A light burns in Grace’s core. A small flame flickers in her dark expanses. God’s wordless voice tells her this is the sign she was waiting for.
She turns around. She sees all these girls talking to one another, all these girls who normally wouldn’t mix. Grace wants to celebrate. She wants to hug somebody. A twinge of pride surfaces: She wants to tell them she did this. Then shame takes pride’s place. Does Mom’s ego ever rear its ugly head like this? Does her chest fill with pride when she looks around at her rapt congregation? Does she forget to be humble? Does she forget we are only ever vessels of God, of His work? Does she ever, just a little bit, want to take His place?
A commotion in the halls. Coach Baxter and his football cronies march through, tearing down the signs. “This is unacceptable,” Coach says, his face red, veins pulsing out of his neck. “Principal Slatterly will not condone these rumors. This is bullying, ladies. That’s what this is.”
Somebody coughs, “Bullshit.”
“Who said that?” one of the football boys barks. “Who the fuck said that?”
Then Elise Powell comes striding through the madness in the hall, a pure, beautiful smile on her freckled face. Grace catches her eye, and the warmth inside her grows and grows until she’s full, until it can’t be contained, until it bursts out of Grace’s skin and through the hall and wraps Elise up inside it, and their smiles light the hall with their secret.
We did this, their eyes say. We all did this.
* * *
By the end of first period, most of the posters were defaced. By the end of second period, they had all been torn down. Someone wrote THE NOWHERE GIRLS SUCK!!! with lipstick across the first-floor girls’ bathroom mirrors.
After the excitement of the morning, lunch is a letdown. Things haven’t changed. People are sitting at their usual tables. The trolls are still central, still as cocky as ever, their voices and laughter even louder than normal as they joke about the morning’s events.
How naïve to think one poster would change things. How stupid to think it would diminish their power.
“It’s like everyone forgot already,” Grace says.
“And you’re surprised?” says Rosina.
“I have exciting news about sea urchins,” Erin says, and begins a five-minute monologue.
Just as Erin starts to explain eversible stomachs, Elise Powell plops down next to her. Erin’s eyes go wide in shock. Suddenly the three girls’ tiny lunch table island is not so isolated. Suddenly they have achieved communication with the outside world.
“I just told Coach Baxter I’m quitting as manager of the football team,” Elise tells them. “To protest the sexist culture they propagate in this school.” She grins proudly.
“What’d he say?” says Grace.
“He was totally speechless at first,” Elise says. “His mouth just hung open for a while. Then he got pissed. His face got so red, I thought smoke was going to start coming out of his ears. Then he was just like, ‘Fine. Get out of my office,’ like he was trying really hard to control himself. So I got out of his office.”
“You go, girl,” Rosina says, but Grace can’t tell whether she’s being sarcastic or sincere.
“Thanks.” Elise smiles. “Well, I guess I’ll see you guys later.” Then she walks away to return to her usual table of girl jocks.
“That was weird,” Erin says.
“See?” Grace says. “Things are changing.”
“I hate to burst your bubble,” Rosina says, “but I don’t think Elise quitting as manager of the football team is a sign that we’re destroying the patriarchy.”
“Can you just let me have my moment, please?” Grace says.
But then something in the air shifts. Erin looks up in horror, as if she can smell danger. Grace can feel the presence behind her before the cruel voice speaks: “Oh, look, the two crazy bitches got a new fat friend.”
Rosina spins around and glares at Eric Jordan, who is standing behind her. “This isn’t your lunch, shitbird.”
He holds up a hall pass. “Just passing through.”
“Pass a little faster.”
“You’ve got spunk, I’ll give you that,” Eric says with a grin. “And I like a challenge.”
“Is that a threat?” Rosina says, standing up like she’s ready to fight him.
Eric laughs. “It was supposed to be compliment.”
“That was not a fucking compliment, you sexist piece of shit.”
“Whatever,” he says. He looks Rosina up and down one last time, like a wolf eyeing meat. “You’re not worth the trouble.” Then he walks away, laughing to himself as if the rest of the world is in on the joke.
Rosina is shaking with anger, her face red, her hands fists. “I feel homicidal right now,” she says between clenched teeth. “This is why people shouldn’t have guns.”
“Oh my God,” Grace says. She can’t think of anything else
to say, so she says “Oh my God” again.
“We have to get that fucking bastard,” Rosina says. “We’re getting together after school today, right? To figure out what to do next?”
“Absolutely,” Grace says. “Erin, what about you?”
But Erin is hunched over, rocking back and forth. She is somewhere inside herself, trapped. She is not with them.
“Oh, shit,” Rosina says.
“Erin, are you okay?” says Grace.
“I have to go,” Erin says with a tight voice. She starts gathering her lunch from the table.
“Wait,” Grace says. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I want to be alone,” Erin says, standing up. Her shoulders are so tense they’re practically touching her ears.
“But we can go with you—” Grace protests, but Rosina touches her arm gently and shakes her head.
“No,” Erin says, then turns around and shuffles away, her hip bumping hard into the edge of the table. They watch her make her way quickly through the hall, her shoulder against the wall, as if she doesn’t trust herself to walk without the support.
Grace stands up. “Shouldn’t we go with her?”
“Erin is one of those rare people who actually mean it when they say they want to be alone,” Rosina says.
“But what if she’s not okay?” Grace says. “What if something happens?”
“She can get to the library just fine on her own. The librarian, Mrs. Trumble, is good to her. I think she’s a little on the spectrum herself.”
Grace is not satisfied with that answer. Something about Eric scared Erin so badly she shut down. She had to run away. That’s not something to ignore. That’s not something going to the library and being alone will fix.
“She’s not helpless, you know,” Rosina says.
“I know,” Grace says. But just because she’s not helpless doesn’t mean she doesn’t need help.
* * *
“Erin went home after lunch,” Rosina tells Grace as they walk to her aunt and uncle’s house in the afternoon drizzle.
“And you think I shouldn’t be worried about her?” Grace says.
Rosina sighs. “You can worry if you want, but I’m not sure it’s going to do any good. This just happens with Erin sometimes. Things set her off and she gets overwhelmed, then she needs to recharge for a little while. She’ll probably be back at school tomorrow. She just needs things to be quiet and go back to normal for a while.”