Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(17)

You’re such a boner-killer, you know that? she says. Come on.

Clarissa leads me to a classroom, Mrs. Vag’s. The lights are still on. Student government runs late here, and Clarissa is in charge of the key. I’ve run for student government twice—Don’t be saddened, Vote for Madden!—but never made the cut. Both times, my mother baked campaign cookies for the entire middle school that everyone devoured, mumbling, Who knew she could make cookies without fortunes inside?

Inside Mrs. Vag’s room, in this kind of light, Clarissa’s glitter and charcoal makeup looks exaggerated and clownish. I wonder if I look the same. She walks over to Vag’s desk and picks up a stapler. C’mere, she says, getting on her knees.

I walk over to her.

Take the shoes off, she says, I can’t even reach your ankle.

Shoes are the one thing I have on girls my age. Most girls in Middle are allowed one pair of starter heels for dressy occasions—strappy, kitten things only a half inch off the ground, the kind of shoes my veiny-calved grandma might wear. I’ve been wearing platforms and clogs most of my life—sample styles stuffed with padding—with cheetah patterns, leather tassels, sawtooth soles. They don’t match our uniforms, but they’re not banned from school yet.

Clarissa works from the top and works her way down and around, snapping the jaws of the stapler quickly, efficiently, like she’s done this before. She pop pop pops the metal teeth like bullets. She pulls the fabric together and squeezes. She reloads the stapler and works until my whole side looks silver.

An improvement, she says.

Clarissa can be cruel, a real bitch. She lies and taunts and she can’t be trusted, not yet, but here’s the thing: she loves me more than any other friend I’ve ever known. There is a tenderness between two people who desire so much more than what they can have, who reach for the cards they have not been dealt, two girls who will soon be ridiculed for exposing their hairy backs at a bar mitzvah service—Did you goats escape from the petting zoo?—who will spend the next few years quietly shaving each other down the spine in an empty bathtub, bleaching each other’s mustaches, helping each other vomit up cheese fries and pastries; these little tasks that seem, to us, to so many young girls, like the very membrane between a life of being seen and no life at all. My love for Clarissa is so strong it changes the temperature of the air around us—that’s how it feels—which is precisely the thing about losers, the thing that binds us here on Mrs. Vag’s floor, and the thing that will bind us even after we change, grow up, become new people, meet other former and current losers: losers stick together. We recognize one another. Eighteen years from this moment, when I watch Clarissa walk down the aisle on her wedding day, her skin is flawless as skim milk in a white, backless dress.

There are laser lights, black lights, and strobe lights. The gym is foggy and loud. The DJ blasts everyone’s new favorite song, “No Scrubs,” and the crowd sings along with their hands cupped around their mouths, Wanna get with me with no money? Oh no!

I recognize only some of the kids on the dance floor. The kids from my classes, the Honors kids, sit on the bleachers, chewing at hangnails. Clarissa and I scan this group, looking for Derek Jacobs.

Do you think he kept his highlights in? she asks, and we grab each other by the elbows, snort-laughing.

Derek sits in front of us in German class, and lately Clarissa and I have been untwisting our Milky Pens, running the pastel-colored ink through his black, curly mullet. Derek is a genius, and he doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him, and so we hate him. At twelve years old, he will be the youngest certified engineer employed by Microsoft. At fourteen, he will be the first person implanted with a microchip on national television. He will be honored by Oprah and Bill Gates. At eighteen, he’ll die in a motorcycle accident.

Are you ready for a new hit? the DJ asks. He instructs us to make a circle in the center of the room; he wants to see us move it move it. He plays Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up,” a song Clarissa recently downloaded and played for me.

Do you see Quince?

Not yet, says Clarissa. I’m sure he’ll find you.

The A-girls form a circle. It’s more shocking than I’d imagined, seeing everyone in their weekend clothes, no button-ups or sweater vests or pleats. The bass thumps wild, and Clarissa and I watch the girls take turns crawling on the floor, then moving flat on their stomachs. They slam their fists on the glossy gym wood as they hump up and down with their groins. They make faces like they’re in pain, or maybe it’s just that they’re feeling really good. I squeeze my thighs together.

That’s called the Cry Baby, says Clarissa. My sister told me about that move.

The boys take turns approaching the designated Cry Baby from behind. They move on top of the girls in a push-up position. They roll their bodies and hump the girls, and the girls keep banging the floor with their fists, kicking their legs like they’re about to start swimming. Everybody is fake crying, fake rubbing their eyes in exaggerated twists. Quince Pearson is one of these boys. I watch him hump the crying Skylar Fingerhut, the crying Claudia Greenberg, the crying Beth Diaz, the crying Harley Pelletier. After some time, one of the adult chaperones pulls Quince off of Addison Katz, shakes her finger. No, no, no, that’s enough.

Do you think he’s as nervous to see me as I am to see him? I ask Clarissa.

Of course, she says. And wait till he sees your outfit!