The Nowhere Girls(32)

“This is bullshit,” Connie says. “I have better things to do than sit around complaining about boys.” She stands up and Allison reluctantly follows, smiling apologetically as they walk out the door.

“Elise, wait,” Grace pleads.

“I have to go,” Elise says, fighting back tears as she leaves the room. The blue-haired freshmen duck out quietly behind her.

“Yeah, um,” Sam says, wrapping her scarf around her neck. “I have to go run lines with my scene partner.”

“Wait!” Grace says, but there’s nobody left to hear her.

“I guess the meeting is over,” Erin says as the door swings closed.

“Well, that was fun,” Rosina says.

“I think I’m going to go back to my regular life now,” Erin says.

“No,” Grace says weakly. “You can’t. We can’t give up.”

“Why?” Erin says.

“Because this is important,” Grace says.

“But what’s the point?” Rosina says. “We can’t actually change anything.”

“Maybe we can,” Grace pleads. “If we keep trying.”

“Lucy never asked us to do this,” Erin says. “It’s not our responsibility.”

“Then whose responsibility is it?” Grace says.

Rosina hangs her head. Erin shrugs. Grace looks at them, back and forth, but they do not meet her eyes.

“I have to go home,” Erin says. She looks at her phone. “I’m already six minutes behind schedule.”

“I gotta go to work soon,” Rosina says, picking up her backpack and standing up. “You coming, Grace?”

“I’m just going to sit here for a while,” Grace says.

“Are you going to pray or something?” Erin says.

“I just want to think.”

“Come on, Erin,” Rosina says. “Time to return to our regularly scheduled programming.” Erin follows Rosina out the door, leaving Grace to think or pray or whatever it is she does when no one’s looking.





GRACE.


Lucy speaks to Grace from her gouges in the wall paint. You failed me, she says. Nothing you did matters.

Mom and Dad are already gone for the day, having left before Grace even woke up for school. They had to beat rush-hour traffic to get to the local NPR affiliate in downtown Eugene, where Mom is going to be interviewed on the morning talk show about progressive Christianity. She’s out there changing the world while her inconsequential daughter makes inconsequential toast in the empty kitchen, boxes still piled in the corner with things that may never get unpacked: a crock pot, cookie cutters, a fondue set her parents got for their wedding twenty years ago that has never come out of its box.

Yesterday afternoon, in the dull, dusty light of the library basement, after shedding some good old-fashioned tears of self-pity, Grace prayed for guidance. “Lord,” she said, “please show me my path. Show me what to do. Show me how to serve you and best help my fellow man. I mean, woman. I mean, girl. Girls.” She couldn’t even pray right.

Grace took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes tight. She pulled her hands against her chest, pressed the steeple of prayer against her heart. “Please,” she said. “I know I have a purpose. I just want to know what it is. I just want to know what I’m good at. If there’s anything I’m good at.”

Then she opened her eyes with a startle, surprised at her own words. She felt her body, but not what was inside it. She was something empty, something that had not yet been filled, something waiting to know what it’s made out of.

Overnight, the rain started. If Grace’s research is correct, it will not stop until sometime in May. The stained ceiling in the corner of her room started leaking immediately, just as she suspected it would. She woke to the sloppy percussion of drip, drip, drip on her floor, and lay there for a long time considering her options: 1) Get out of bed, find a bucket and towels, and take care of it; 2) Get out of bed, get ready for school, and pretend like it’s not happening; or, the most attractive option, 3) Go back to sleep.

Of course, she eventually went with the first option. At least she knows this one thing about herself: She is someone who does what she is supposed to do. She is someone who has been raised to always do the right thing.

Even with an umbrella and raincoat, Grace finds that by the time she gets to school, her shoes are full of water and her jeans are soaked from hem to knees, and they will stay that way for the rest of the day. The windows of the building are fogged with moisture; the halls are full of the sounds of wet clothes squishing and rubber soles squeaking on wet linoleum.

But there’s something else. Voices are louder than usual. More urgent. Electric. It can’t be the rain doing that. People are huddled in conversation, eyes wide and conspiratorial. They are looking at the walls, at lockers, at pieces of paper in their hands.

Grace walks fast to get a better look at a bright neon printout taped to a locker. WARNING! it reads. TO ALL THE GIRLS, ESPECIALLY FRESHMEN. BE CAREFUL WHO YOU TRUST! It goes on to describe the boys’ sex competition in every disturbing detail. It is signed THE NOWHERE GIRLS.

“Oh my God,” a girl says. She is young, probably a freshman. The girl turns to her friend. “Do you think that’s why that senior asked for my number yesterday? I knew there was something weird about it.”