The Nowhere Girls(18)

“Eric has third lunch, I think,” Rosina says. “But Ennis is here. Over there at the troll table.” Rosina nods toward the center of the lunchroom, where the worst people sit. The girls who have been making fun of Erin since she moved here freshman year, the guys who don’t even bother lowering their voices around her when they brainstorm about what it must be like to fuck “someone like her.” Compared to the rest of them, Ennis is quiet, even soft spoken, the one you’d least suspect to be a monster.

“Ennis Calhoun is the one with the pubey goatee,” Rosina says. “And you’ve probably seen Eric around school. He always has a gang of trolls following him around. There was a third one, the ringleader, Spencer Klimpt, but he graduated. Works at the Quick Stop off the highway. Real winners, those guys.”

“I don’t think ‘pubey’ is a word,” Erin says.

“Is Ennis that guy sitting by Jesse?” Grace says. Erin recognizes the look on Grace’s face as disappointment, as if she expected that large, dopey boy named Jesse to be someone else, someone who does not sit by Ennis Calhoun at lunch.

“You know him?” Rosina says.

“He goes to my church.”

“He’s waving at you,” Erin says. “He looks like a stuffed animal.”

“You like that guy?” Rosina says.

“No,” Grace says. “Never.”

Everyone thinks Erin can’t read people. That’s what they’ve been telling her for her whole life. But Erin has no problem recognizing obvious emotions. She knows what crying means. She knows what angry shouting sounds like. She knows teasing. She knows the looks between people when she accidentally walks into the wall when rounding a corner, when she blurts out inappropriate things in class, when she rubs her hands together so hard they make a sound. It’s the more subtle things that get confusing. Things like irony, attempts to hide feelings, lying. For these things, Erin’s spent countless hours learning, getting tutored in reading facial expressions and interpreting body language. She has been trained to pay attention, to study human emotion and relationships with an intensity rivaled only by psychologists and novelists. Because it is not intuitive, because she is an outsider, sometimes she sees things other people miss.

For instance, she suspects Grace may have been considering liking this Jesse guy. If she didn’t like him, she’d have no reason to look so disappointed by the news that he may not be likable. Erin notices Jesse’s happy stuffed-animal face turn sad as soon as he sees the way Grace’s looking at him. Maybe he was considering liking her, too.

“They look so normal,” Grace says. “Those guys. You can’t even tell they—”

“Did you know that otters rape baby seals?” Erin says, knowing full well how shocking and inappropriate her words are, but she desperately wants to change the subject. Sometimes shocking people is the best way to get their attention. “People think they’re so cute and cuddly, but they’re still wild animals.”

“Jesus, Erin,” Rosina says.

“They can’t help themselves,” Erin says. “It’s in their natures.”

“Someone has to do something,” Grace says.

“About sea otters?” Rosina says. “Like sensitivity training?”

“About Lucy. About those guys. They can’t just get away with it. They can’t just sit there eating lunch like nothing happened.”

“You’ve seen the website, right?” Rosina says.

“What website?”

“Trust me,” Rosina says. “You’re better not knowing.”

Grace looks at Erin for her opinion, but Erin just shrugs.

“What website?” Grace says again. “I want to know.”

“It’s more of a blog, really,” Rosina says. “It’s called The Real Men of Prescott. Hey, Erin. Give me your phone.”

“You have a phone,” Erin says.

“I have a crap phone,” Rosina says. “I need yours.”

“Who writes it?” Grace says.

“Nobody knows for sure,” Rosina says, typing something on Erin’s phone. “But most people think Spencer Klimpt is the main one behind it. It surfaced right around the time Lucy and her family left town. The blog had a couple hundred followers last time I checked.” Rosina scrolls down the phone’s screen. “Shit! It has more than three thousand now.” She shoves the phone at Grace like she can no longer bear touching it. “Here,” she says. “See for yourself.”

They are silent as Grace scrolls through the blog. Erin hasn’t looked at it since she first heard about it at the end of last school year, but she can only imagine what Grace is reading. Stuff about how to pick up girls. Rants about how feminism is ruining the world. Degrading descriptions of women the author has supposedly slept with.

“Oh my God,” Grace says quietly. “This is horrible.”

“There are a bunch of links on the sidebar to other sites just like it, even bigger ones,” Rosina says with disgust. “It’s called the ‘manosphere.’ All these guys online, a whole network of assholes who believe this shit. So-called ‘pick-up artists’ sharing advice on how to manipulate women. They call it a ‘men’s rights movement,’ but basically they just hate women.”