The Nowhere Girls(60)
“I don’t think that’s the kind of project Mr. Trilling wants us to do,” Erin says.
Despite today’s events, Erin feels surprisingly unagitated. Lying to Principal Slatterly wasn’t nearly as hard as she thought it should be. The noisy classroom. The group project. And now this, whatever it is. This talking to Otis Goldberg that is not completely unpleasant. She does not have to look him in the eye to notice the pleasing symmetry of his face. And even though he talks far more than is necessary, his voice is not as grating as most people’s.
Today is a strange day. Erin feels strange. But maybe strange is not necessarily the same as bad.
Erin feels so many things, but she doesn’t know how to classify them. When she asks herself what Data would do, all she hears is silence.
US.
A yellow construction-paper poster reads WE BELIEVE LUCY MOYNIHAN! Someone has written SLUT across it in thick red marker.
Another sign reads FIGHT RAPE CULTURE AT PHS! Someone has added WHORE to that one.
“That is so fucked up,” a guy says next to Elise Powell as he stares at one of the defaced posters. Benjamin Chu. He’s in Elise’s calculus class, perpetually late, but possessing a smile that consistently convinces the teacher to not punish him. Elise waits for him to arrive every day and fills with relief when he falls panting into his seat across the aisle from her.
“What’s fucked up?” Elise says, ready to either get defensive or fall madly in love.
“What some assholes wrote on these signs,” he says. “What is wrong with people?”
“You like the signs?” Elise says. She has pitched tied games in the fourteenth inning. She has pitched the state semifinals. She has pitched games that were regionally televised. But she has never been so scared as right now.
“Hell, yeah,” Benjamin says, smiling his detention-evading smile. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Elise says. “I do.”
Elise feels her face burn and she knows it’s red, she knows her freckles are popping out like they always do when she’s embarrassed. But this is a different kind of embarrassed, a different kind of being seen, and it is not entirely horrible. And the not-horribleness of it turns her desire into a brief, giddy moment of courage.
“Hey, um, Ben?” Elise says. “Do you maybe want to hang out sometime? With me?”
He says yes way too quickly. Elise waits a moment to give him time to realize he made a mistake. But instead he smiles, his face almost as red as hers.
*
The bell rings in Grace’s homeroom. Connie Lancaster rushes in, breathless. “Holy shit!” she says, falling into her seat. “You guys totally just missed a major fight.”
“What happened?” Allison says.
“I don’t know all the details,” Connie says. “I got there just as the security guards were breaking it up. But Elise was there and said she saw the whole thing. She said Corwin Jackson was talking to this girl in the hall and she kept trying to walk away but he wouldn’t let her, then these two freshmen guys totally stuck up for her and started telling him to stop bothering her, and Corwin got up in their faces and shoved one of them, and then the girl hit Corwin with her purse, and then shit got crazy and they all ganged up on Corwin, and that’s when I heard everyone in the hall yelling and ran over to see what was happening, but by then everything was pretty much over, but Corwin had his hand over his eye and his lip was bleeding and he was totally crying.” Connie fans herself with her hand. “It’s like a war zone out there.”
“I wish things didn’t have to get violent,” Grace says.
“They already were violent,” Allison says.
Coach Baxter enters, shoulders hunched, face clouded with anger. He doesn’t bother trying to quiet the class down. The football team everyone had such high hopes for has lost every one of its games so far this season. They are the laughingstock of the greater Eugene metropolitan area and the entire Willamette Valley.
“Poor Coach,” Connie says in a fake whisper, which elicits more than a few giggles. Yes, Coach Baxter is a sexist jerk with a whole team of guys who look up to him that he’s doing nothing to lead in the right direction, but Grace can’t help but feel a little sorry for him. She can’t help but feel a little sorry for whoever this Corwin guy is, even if he is an asshole, even if he started it. It’s hard for her to see anyone suffer, even if maybe they deserve it a little. She wonders if all growth has to hurt. She wonders if change always requires some kind of pain from someone.
She wonders about Jesse, if what he said about his own change is true. She wonders why she’s so afraid of believing him.
“Attention, Prescott High School,” booms Principal Slatterly’s voice from the ceiling speakers. No “Good morning,” no “Hello.” She sounds as grumpy as Coach Baxter looks.
“I want to make something very clear,” Slatterly says, her voice serious and gruff. “I am implementing a zero-tolerance policy for the kind of disruptive activity that has been going on recently. This is an institution of learning, and I will not tolerate any behavior that makes Prescott High School an unsafe environment for learning. This escalating hostility between students is unacceptable. Anyone caught posting things on school property without administrative approval will be immediately suspended. Computer techs have been hired to investigate the theft and illegal use of school e-mail addresses. We will discover who is behind all the recent upheaval, and they will be brought to justice.”