Z, Y, X, W, V—
Erin doesn’t try to stop her rocking. It’s the only thing keeping her from running out of the room.
“That’s wonderful, dear.”
This is where logic has led Erin: she did the actual stealing of e-mail addresses. While everyone else in the Nowhere Girls is guilty of minor things, few of them probably even illegal, Erin is the only one so far who has done an actual serious crime. Rosina and Grace have tried to convince her that it doesn’t matter, that the school can’t actually prove the e-mail addresses were stolen. Because all student e-mail addresses follow the same format, the Nowhere Girls technically could have figured out every single one and typed it in by hand—no stealing necessary.
While Erin will admit this is a reasonable explanation, it is also a lie. Lies get caught and liars get punished. The e-mails are school property and Erin stole them. Erin broke a rule, a law.
Erin reminds herself that lying isn’t always bad. Even Lieutenant Commander Data lied in Season 4, Episode 14, of Star Trek: The Next Generation (episode title: “Clues”). In order to protect his ship and everybody on it, Data had no choice but to allow the Paxans to wipe the memories of the entire crew of the Enterprise and feed them with a false story of what happened, leaving Data with the responsibility of carrying the truth, alone. His lie saved everyone he cared about. (That is, if he had the capacity to care.)
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, Erin,” Principal Slatterly says. “Would that be all right with you?” She’s speaking slowly, enunciating each word. Slatterly thinks Erin’s an idiot. If she actually took the time to look at her IEP files, she’d know the opposite is true.
“Okay,” Erin says, realizing she can use Slatterly’s ignorance and sterotypes to her own benefit.
“You’re friends with Rosina Suarez, aren’t you?”
Erin shrugs. What would an idiot do? “Rosina lets me sit by her at lunch,” Erin says as she sticks her finger in her ear.
“And she’s your friend,” Slatterly says. If this were Law & Order, Erin would say, Objection, your honor. Leading the witness.
Erin twirls her finger in her ear a little. “I don’t know. We don’t really talk to each other or anything. Do you have to talk to someone to be their friend? Maybe we’re not friends. I wish we were friends.” Erin stares into space and lets herself rock as much as she wants to.
Principal Slatterly sighs the sigh that means frustrated. Erin is not giving her the answers she wants. The anxiety in her chest is turning into something else, something not quite painful. She is a better liar than she thought. Maybe she will add acting as one of her interests. Maybe that is something she can talk to Sam Robeson about, since that is Sam’s main interest, in addition to sex.
“It must be hard for someone like you to make friends,” Slatterly says. “Maybe you’d be willing to do things you normally wouldn’t do, in order to make a friend. You might be persuaded by someone like Miss Suarez to do something bad. Something only you could do because of your work in the office, maybe? Because you have access to certain information other students don’t have?” Slatterly stares at Erin for a moment, to make sure she understands. Erin must still look like an idiot because Slatterly keeps talking. “I know Miss Suarez can be very convincing, Erin. Very charming. There’s no shame in being taken advantage of by someone like that. You’re vulnerable, Erin. You have . . . limitations. It’s not your fault.”
Slatterly pauses to let that sink in. Erin knows she is supposed to feel safe now, supposed to trust the principal because she gave her permission to be vulnerable. She’s good; Erin will give her that.
“We failed to protect you,” Slatterly continues. “That’s our job. That’s on us. It’s reprehensible for someone to take advantage of you like that, to make you do their dirty work. To make you steal for them. But you can make this right. You have the power to do that. This could all be over in a second if you turn the troublemakers in. You’d be a hero. You know that? Everyone in the school would love you for ending this crazy disruption, and everything could get back to normal. Wouldn’t you like that? Wouldn’t you just love to be a hero?”
“Like Superman?” Erin says. “Would I get to wear a cape? I would really like to wear a cape.”
“Sure, honey,” Slatterly says with a smile that seems close to genuine. She thinks she’s getting somewhere. “You can wear a cape.”
“A red cape?” Erin says. “A shiny one?” She never knew lying could be so fun. She never knew she’d be so good at it. How is it possible she is so in control right now? The old Erin would be in full meltdown mode by now. Since when is there even a new Erin? When did that happen?
“Whatever you want, dear. You’re the hero.”
Erin stares at Principal Slatterly, her jaw slack. She tilts her head to the side the way Spot does when he’s confused, the way actors do when they’re playing stereotypes of people like her. “What are we talking about again?”
Slatterly’s breath comes out in a big huff. “What is it you do in the office exactly?” Her voice is sharp. She is done playing nice.
“I type the letters and numbers in boxes on the computer screen. I move the papers from one pile to another pile. I refill Mrs. Poole’s coffee cup sometimes.”
“Do you do anything with student e-mail addresses?” Erin can’t tell if Slatterly’s on the verge of screaming or the verge of crying.
“Are those the words with the A in the middle with the circle around it?” Erin says.
Slatterly’s face is red and bulging. Erin suspects her anger is contributing to a serious medical condition. Hypertension. Heart disease. Ulcers. Erin wonders what Slatterly eats, if her diet consists of foods low in sodium and refined sugars and high in fiber and antioxidants, as it should. Mom could probably help her with an appropriate nutrition plan to reduce inflammation.
Erin’s smile is not part of her act. She is not scared. She feels too much of something else, something close to triumphant. Playing dumb has made her feel pretty damn smart.
“What do you want to talk about now?” Erin says, looking Principal Slatterly in the eye for almost a whole second. “I have a special interest in fish. Would you like to talk about fish? I can tell you all about hagfish. They are spineless and jawless and covered in slime.”
“No, I would not like to talk about fish.” Erin can almost hear the word “retard” at the end of Slatterly’s sentence. She can feel her want to say it. “You can go now, Erin.”
So Erin goes back to her desk in the back of the office, where she could do so much damage if she wanted to.
* * *
“We’re partners!” Otis Goldberg says as he pushes his desk toward Erin’s in AP American History.
“I hate group projects,” she tells him.
Today the hair tie around his boy-bun is purple. The classroom is noisy with moving desks, which would normally make Erin agitated, but she still hasn’t come down from the high of her meeting with Principal Slatterly. She is less annoyed with Otis than usual.
“This is going to be great,” he says. “What luck, huh? The two smartest kids in the class get to be partners.”
“I don’t believe in luck.”
He scoots his desk closer. His desk is practically on top of Erin’s now.
“Do you believe in fate? Like, destiny?” he says.
Erin scoots her desk three inches away from his.
“So what have the Nowhere Girls been up to lately? Anything cool planned, like some kind of subversive action? Can I come?”
“You talk too much,” Erin says.
“All right, class,” Mr. Trilling says. “Let’s stay focused on the task at hand.”
Otis pushes his desk against Erin’s again. He doesn’t even seem aware that he’s doing it. It’s like he has some deep, subconscious need to always be touching someone. He is the exact opposite of Erin.
“Do you have any ideas for our project?” he says. Erin shrugs. “Because I was thinking we could
do something about Manifest Destiny and westward expansion, how if you analyze the ideology in psychological terms, it’s like certifiable narcissism, probably borderline personality disorder, maybe even sociopathic.”
“I don’t think that’s the kind of project Mr. Trilling wants us to do,” Erin says.
Despite today’s events, Erin feels surprisingly unagitated. Lying to Principal Slatterly wasn’t nearly as hard as she thought it should be. The noisy classroom. The group project. And now this, whatever it is. This talking to Otis Goldberg that is not completely unpleasant. She does not have to look him in the eye to notice the pleasing symmetry of his face. And even though he talks far more than is necessary, his voice is not as grating as most people’s.
Today is a strange day. Erin feels strange. But maybe strange is not necessarily the same as bad.
Erin feels so many things, but she doesn’t know how to classify them. When she asks herself what Data would do, all she hears is silence.
US.
A yellow construction-paper poster reads WE BELIEVE LUCY MOYNIHAN! Someone has written SLUT across it in thick red marker.
Another sign reads FIGHT RAPE CULTURE AT PHS! Someone has added WHORE to that one.
“That is so fucked up,” a guy says next to Elise Powell as he stares at one of the defaced posters. Benjamin Chu. He’s in Elise’s calculus class, perpetually late, but possessing a smile that consistently convinces the teacher to not punish him. Elise waits for him to arrive every day and fills with relief when he falls panting into his seat across the aisle from her.
“What’s fucked up?” Elise says, ready to either get defensive or fall madly in love.
“What some assholes wrote on these signs,” he says. “What is wrong with people?”
“You like the signs?” Elise says. She has pitched tied games in the fourteenth inning. She has pitched the state semifinals. She has pitched games that were regionally televised. But she has never been so scared as right now.
“Hell, yeah,” Benjamin says, smiling his detention-evading smile. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Elise says. “I do.”
Elise feels her face burn and she knows it’s red, she knows her freckles are popping out like they always do when she’s embarrassed. But this is a different kind of embarrassed, a different kind of being seen, and it is not entirely horrible. And the not-horribleness of it turns her desire into a brief, giddy moment of courage.
“Hey, um, Ben?” Elise says. “Do you maybe want to hang out sometime? With me?”
He says yes way too quickly. Elise waits a moment to give him time to realize he made a mistake. But instead he smiles, his face almost as red as hers.
* * *
The bell rings in Grace’s homeroom. Connie Lancaster rushes in, breathless. “Holy shit!” she says, falling into her seat. “You guys totally just missed a major fight.”
“What happened?” Allison says.
“I don’t know all the details,” Connie says. “I got there just as the security guards were breaking it up. But Elise was there and said she saw the whole thing. She said Corwin Jackson was talking to this girl in the hall and she kept trying to walk away but he wouldn’t let her, then these two freshmen guys totally stuck up for her and started telling him to stop bothering her, and Corwin got up in their faces and shoved one of them, and then the girl hit Corwin with her purse, and then shit got crazy and they all ganged up on Corwin, and that’s when I heard everyone in the hall yelling and ran over to see what was happening, but by then everything was pretty much over, but Corwin had his hand over his eye and his lip was bleeding and he was totally crying.” Connie fans herself with her hand. “It’s like a war zone out there.”
“I wish things didn’t have to get violent,” Grace says.
“They already were violent,” Allison says.
Coach Baxter enters, shoulders hunched, face clouded with anger. He doesn’t bother trying to quiet the class down. The football team everyone had such high hopes for has lost every one of its games so far this season. They are the laughingstock of the greater Eugene metropolitan area and the entire Willamette Valley.
“Poor Coach,” Connie says in a fake whisper, which elicits more than a few giggles. Yes, Coach Baxter is a sexist jerk with a whole team of guys who look up to him that he’s doing nothing to lead in the right direction, but Grace can’t help but feel a little sorry for him. She can’t help but feel a little sorry for whoever this Corwin guy is, even if he is an asshole, even if he started it. It’s hard for her to see anyone suffer, even if maybe they deserve it a little. She wonders if all growth has to hurt. She wonders if change always requires some kind of pain from someone.
She wonders about Jesse, if what he said about his own change is true. She wonders why she’s so afraid of believing him.
“Attention, Prescott High School,” booms Principal Slatterly’s voice from the ceiling speakers. No “Good morning,” no “Hello.” She sounds as grumpy as Coach Baxter looks.
“I want to make something very clear,” Slatterly says, her voice serious and gruff. “I am implementing a zero-tolerance policy for the kind of disruptive activity that has been going on recently. This is an institution of learning, and I will not tolerate any behavior that makes Prescott High School an unsafe environment for learning. This escalating hostility between students is unacceptable. Anyone caught posting things on school property without administrative approval will be immediately suspended. Computer techs have been hired to investigate the theft and illegal use of school e-mail addresses. We will discover who is behind all the recent upheaval, and they will be brought to justice.”
“Yeah, right,” a girl says in front of Grace.
“Justice, my ass,” says the marching-band guy.
“That is all,” Slatterly says. “Oh, and the chess club is meeting in Room 302 this afternoon, not Room 203. Go Spartans.”
“Well, that was depressing,” a guy says a few seats away, one of Sam Robeson’s friends from drama club.
“Shut up, faggot!” says one of the football players.
“You shut up!” the guy says right back.
“Don’t call him that!” usually quiet Allison yells at the football player.
“Everyone shut up!” yells Coach Baxter. “You’re all giving me a headache.” He sits down at his desk. “Independent reading time,” he says. “Get out your books.”
* * *
“Do you think it’s for real?” Melissa Sanderson says. “Do you think Slatterly really has people checking the Nowhere Girls’ e-mails?”
“She’s totally bluffing,” Rosina says. “Even if she could access the e-mails, we don’t have anything to worry about. I’m sure whoever started this thing was smart enough to keep any personal info off their e-mail account.”
“Yeah,” Elise Powell says. “Plus the e-mails stopped days ago. And I’m pretty sure they always went out to everyone, so no one was singled out or anything. They can’t punish all the girls of the school for just receiving e-mails.”
“I don’t know,” says Krista, whose hair is now purple instead of blue, while Trista has changed hers to orange. It is getting easier to tell them apart. “Can’t they trace the e-mails back to the sender, even if it’s an anonymous account? Like triangulate where the message was coming from, and send like a SWAT team there or something? I think I saw that on a show one time.”
“That’s cell phones,” says Trista.
“Shhhh,” Elise says. “Security guard, one o’clock.”
All heads turn toward the large man in blue who has inched closer to their table over the course of the conversation. Rosina flashes him a big smile and waves. He takes one step away, pretending to not have seen her.
“We’re being watched,” Erin says severely. Rosina tries to stifle a laugh, but that just makes the whole table crack up. Even Erin smiles. The security guard looks away.
“I saw Sam in the hall this morning,” Elise says. “She has second period with Eric. She
said he was barely conscious and totally reeked of booze.”
“I guess that’s one way to deal with it,” Rosina says.
“Has anyone read The Real Men of Prescott blog lately?” Melissa says.
“Why would we?” Rosina groans.
“We have to see what we’re up against,” Melissa says.
“Whoever’s behind it sure is pissed at us,” says orange-haired Trista.
“You know it’s Spencer Klimpt, right?” Melissa says.
“No!” Trista says. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Melissa says. “I thought everyone knew that.”
“No one knows for sure,” Elise says. “It’s not like he’s admitted it or anything.”
“But it’s pretty obvious,” Melissa says.
“But didn’t he graduate last year?” Krista says. “Why would he care what’s happening here?”
“Because he hasn’t gone anywhere,” Melissa says. “He’s still working at the Quick Stop, still hanging out with his old friends. High school is the best life he’s ever going to have.”
“What a loser,” Rosina says.
“A loser with four thousand one hundred seventy-two followers,” Erin says, looking at her phone.
“Jesus,” Rosina says.
“The stuff he says really resonates with some guys,” Melissa says. “It’s scary.”
“The same kind of guys who think immigrants are ruining the country and stealing their jobs,” Rosina says. “They have to blame someone for their lives sucking. So why not pick someone whose life sucks more than yours?”
“Exactly,” Melissa says. “These guys can’t get laid, so they hate women. Couldn’t possibly be something wrong with them.”
“Wait,” Trista says. “That means those girls on the list he posted, the girls he slept with? Some of them must go to this school still. They’re, like, people we know.”
“Yeah, but no one’s going to come out and admit it,” Rosina says. “Can you imagine? ‘Oh, yeah, number whatever is me. I’m the ugly one who was bad in bed.’ A couple of them are pretty obvious though.”