What We Saw(53)

I feel great about it.

There’s this little bubble of happiness floating around in my chest. I sense that telling anybody else about having sex with Ben would be letting some of the air out of this beautiful thing that happened—like somehow I’d be leaking away a part of my own joy. I’d probably tell Rachel if I didn’t have to risk her judgment. I don’t want to have to deal with anyone else’s feelings about it for now. I only want to enjoy my own.

If I think about it too much, a goofy grin appears on my face. I’m glad I have a paper to write and a friend to distract me. Otherwise, I’d be tempted to text Ben every twelve seconds and I think, technically, that is the opposite of playing it cool.

We work on our laptops, mainly in silence, for about an hour. Rachel asks about the video, and I’m not sure what to say. I see the fear on her face again, and she sees my hesitation, so she keeps talking.

“I mean, if there was a video, we’d know, right? There’s no way a bunch of feminist hackers would have it and we wouldn’t.”

She says the word feminist like Will did last night—with scorn and derision—as if she’s spitting something out.

“Why does everybody say ‘feminist’ that way?”

“What way?”

“The way Dooney kept saying ‘herpes’ after health class last year. Like it’s this terrible, unspeakable thing.”

Rachel blinks at me, blankly. “Feminists are women who believe in evolution and just don’t want anybody to tell them what to do. They want to be able to abort their unborn babies.”

She says this as if everyone else on the planet knows these facts to be true, and I have clearly missed the memo. I frown and search “feminism” on my laptop, turning it around so Rachel can see the screen when the definition pops up. I read it aloud: “The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of political, social, and economic equality to men.”

Rachel sighs. “All I know is that you can’t be a feminist and believe the Bible.”

“The Bible talks about feminism?”

“It talks about families,” Rachel clarifies. She sounds more and more like her mom now. “God created women to be good helpers for men. It’s just better for families that way.”

“Not for Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”

“Huh?”

“Her dad disinherited her for marrying the man she was in love with. They were broke for years because back then a father could just decide who his daughter married and take away her money if she did otherwise.”

Rachel shakes her head. “It was a different time then. It doesn’t really affect us now.”

I want to tell her that this issue affects everything. Even our friendship. I want to be able to tell my best friend about my first time having sex with the guy I love, but I can’t risk it because I don’t want her to get all snooty about me losing my virginity—as if somehow she and her mom and the youth pastor at her church should have a say about that. I want to tell her that I don’t think a book from the Bronze Age is a good-enough reason to relegate women to the role of “helpers” for all time.

But I don’t know how.

We go back to our papers, but something between us is strained. I can feel us slipping away from each other. After a minute, I can’t stand it any longer, and put down my computer. I reach over, and pull Rachel into a hug.

“Get off me,” she huffs.

I hug her harder, and she squirms. I squeeze her until we’re basically wrestling on the floor. She tries to get away, and I try to hold her closer until both of us start laughing so hard we can’t struggle anymore.

We lie on my carpet for a minute, staring up at the ceiling fan.

“Whatever you think of UltraFEM,” I tell her, “there must be a video of something.”

“I know,” she says. Her voice sounds tiny and far away. “But I wish I didn’t.”

When I wake up on Monday morning, it’s still dark outside, and there’s a single thought on repeat in my brain:

Will something be different when I see Ben at school today?

I can’t seem to lower the volume on this idea, which makes catching another hour of sleep impossible. I can hear Dad downstairs making coffee. I get up and take my laptop to the little desk in the corner of the kitchen to print out my report.

“Mornin’, early bird.” Dad smiles, pouring coffee into his big travel mug and thermos. “Fresh outta worms today, but I can offer you a cuppa joe.”

“Sure.” I smile and cover my yawn as I wait for the printer to spit out my pages. Dad pours coffee into a mug that reads WORLD’S GREATEST DAD and places it in front of me on the counter. He points at the words and I laugh as he goes back to spreading peanut butter on bread. When Mom went back to work after the factory flood, her only stipulation was that everyone was on their own for lunch.

As the printer delivers page number five, Dad pauses behind me and plants a kiss on the top of my head. “First practice today?”

I nod, impressed he still keeps track of little things like this.

“Bring me home some Happy Joe’s.”

It’s a tradition we started in junior high. After the first practice of the season, Rachel, Christy, Lindsey, and I go get pizza. Our parents used to come along, but last year, we started driving ourselves.