The Nowhere Girls(106)

Someone’s giddy voice breaks through: “Holy crap, you guys. There are a ton of news vans outside.”

Then office doors open, one by one by one, perfectly timed: Spencer, Eric, Ennis. A silence even louder than cheers washes over the police station. It is the stillness at the edge of a cliff—so many eyes watching, so much breath being held—the moment before the fall.

As Spencer exits one office, he sees Ennis walking out of another across the room. “What did you tell them?” he snarls at his friend, breaking the silence.

Ennis’s head is down. He does not look up, does not respond, does not acknowledge anything that is happening. He is deflated, empty. He has said things inside that room that he can never take back.

“What the fuck did you say?” Spencer screams, then the whole room flinches as he lunges toward Ennis.

But an officer grabs Spencer before he gets anywhere and effortlessly pulls his arms behind his back, fastens his wrists into handcuffs. “Ouch,” Spencer says with a weak, high-pitched yelp. “You’re hurting me.” Who knew he was so easy to catch?

“Move it along,” says the officer, kicking Spencer in the back of the heel like chattel, causing Spencer to trip and fall flat on his face without his hands to catch him. No one moves to help him up. Tense giggles pepper the air as he squirms to pull himself upright. Spencer struggles, powerless, and the giggles turn into laughter, then into something else entirely, a sound without definition, something born out of so many weeks’, months’, years’, so many lifetimes’ worth of held breath finally expelled, so many clear voices restored, feeding one another, building and growing until the station explodes in cheers so loud there is nowhere left for silence to hide.

Eric Jordan stares out at the waiting area, his eyes blank, unreadable, gone. He sees a wall of young women, his classmates, the girls he has hit on and catcalled and demeaned for years. He sees them as he has never seen them—a group, solid and formidable, and so much bigger than him. Not just bodies, not just skin and softness, not toys or tamable creatures. He neither wants them nor hates them. He doesn’t know what he feels. He has been raised with the privilege of not being accustomed to fear.

But in this moment a spark of knowledge wedges itself inside him, the sudden realization of a world turned over—these girls are going to define his life as much as he has already defined theirs.

The girls are packed in so tight there is barely room enough to breathe, and still more are coming. Cheers turn to screaming, shouting, crying. The sound is deafening, primal. It is every feeling, all at once. It is all the girls, all their voices, calling out as loud as they can.

They burn through darkness. They brand the night.





CHEYENNE.


Mom said Cheyenne could skip school today if she didn’t feel ready, but Cheyenne is sick of staying at home. Even though she barely slept last night, even though everything feels tender—not just her skin, but her eyes, her mouth, her lungs. As if every piece of her is exhausted, as if every molecule has been twisted and kneaded and prodded for hours upon hours, days upon days.

But she is tired of her life being on hold. She is tired of hiding. And she is just the right amount of sleep deprived for adrenaline to kick in, just the right amount of foolish to be brave.

She has an idea of what’s going to happen when she gets to school. She knows how small towns work. She knows how people talk, how information spreads, whether it’s true or not. In just a night, a true story can turn into something else entirely. And its subject can become something completely different from a living, breathing human being.

It’s been only a month and a half since Cheyenne started at this new school, and she hasn’t made any real friends yet. She figures she’ll get through her day much the same as she did before, not really talking to anyone. Maybe people will stare a little. Maybe they’ll whisper. But there’s not a whole lot for her to lose.

Cheyenne’s mom drives her to school and tries not to cry as she watches her daughter walk into the building, as she watches her disappear behind its doors, as Cheyenne enters a world where her mother can’t protect her.

The halls are full of the usual noise. Cheyenne walks with her head down. All she wants is to make it to class without meeting anyone’s eye, without having to absorb their pity, their curiosity, their scorn. But she hears the hush that envelops the hall. She feels the eyes piercing into her. She senses movement, but she tries not to think about it. Just go forward, she thinks. Just make it past this.

What she does not realize is the movement has a pattern. It has a focus. It has a destination. One by one, each girl in the hall moves toward Cheyenne. Like a school of fish, they communicate without speaking. They move together, falling into formation around her as she walks through the hall.

Finally Cheyenne looks up. She sees the girls surrounding her. She meets their eyes, and it is not pity she sees, not judgment, not scorn. What she sees is fire. What she sees is eyes full of flame.

She feels a tickle on her right fingers and realizes the girl next to her is holding her hand. She feels the heat of the bodies around her, shielding her from whatever might get in the way, holding her up, driving her forward. They walk like that all the way to Cheyenne’s first-period class. They take up the entire width of the hall. The sea of students parts to let the girls through.

Because the girls are unstoppable. They are a force. They are a single body.