The Nowhere Girls(63)
“But I’m too quiet,” Grace says.
“You don’t have to be loud to be a leader,” Margot says. “People respect you. That’s what’s important.”
Grace is light-headed. Her body, which usually feels so heavy and cumbersome, is suddenly made out of feathers.
There are so many things running through her mind, so many ways to respond. In her brain, new synapses are firing, working frantically to make connections where none had been before. They are trying to rewire her, trying to make sense of the disparity of how others see her versus how she’s always seen herself. They are trying to let Margot’s words in, trying to make them stick, trying to make Grace believe them.
A tiny spark ignites inside her, a soft voice finds its way through her depths, through the previously empty expanses that are slowly filling, through the place in her throat where so many thousands, maybe millions, of words have gotten stuck over time. The spark finds Grace’s tongue, her teeth, her lips, finds Grace’s voice, and opens her mouth: “Yes,” Grace says. “Yes, I’ll do it.”
“Great!” Margot says, and hugs her quickly before bouncing away. “You’re going to do great!” she calls when she’s halfway down the hall. Grace knows Margot is rarely wrong about anything.
But still, the question remains: Why her? Why Grace? Of all people? Margot could have asked Melissa or Elise, born leaders. Even Rosina would have been a stronger, though possibly volatile, choice. Was it because Margot was in a hurry and Grace was simply the first person she saw? Or was it something deeper, one of God’s mysterious workings, one of His miracles? Was Margot right? Is Grace a leader? Is there something of her mother in her after all?
Is there any use in asking these questions? If it’s God’s will, it’s God’s will, plain and simple. If it’s not, Grace will certainly find out when the meeting turns out to be a disaster and she lets everyone down.
Grace is shocked to realize this thought does not fill her with the usual terror. Somehow all the potential catastrophes of failure and humiliation she can imagine do not actually feel like the end of the world. Perhaps she will be embarrassed in front of a few dozen girls from her school. Maybe they will never want her to lead the meeting again. And so what? When she asks herself what’s the worst that could happen, the answers are not that scary. Because even if she fails, it is a small failure. Even if she’s embarrassed, it will not last forever. The girls will still be her friends. The Nowhere Girls will still meet, still plan, still make each other stronger. No matter what happens, she will still be part of them.
Grace stands alone in the empty hallway. It seems like just seconds ago that she was surrounded by hordes of students slamming lockers and running to catch their buses. She does not know how long she’s been standing here, feeling the ripples of Margot’s wake. Echoes of noise and movement fill the space around her, carry her down the stairs and out the door as she remembers what she was on her way to do before Margot intercepted her.
Grace goes the long way home. It is not her usual route through the carefully manicured front yards and white fences of the neighborhood around the school, into the more modest houses and smaller lots of her own neighborhood. This route takes her onto the busy street lined with chain stores and fast-food restaurants that leads to the highway. She inhales five blocks’ worth of exhaust fumes until she reaches her destination just before the street empties into the on-ramp.
Grace is nervous as she approaches the Quick Stop. It’s weird to have spent so much time thinking and talking about someone she’s never met. The distance has kept Spencer Klimpt somewhat hypothetical until now. She needs a face to attach to the stories. She needs to see him in the flesh, needs to remind herself that The Real Men of Prescott blog is more than words. It is the weapon of a man who hurts girls, of a man who teaches other men how to hurt girls. She needs to make him real. On her own. Alone.
When she finally sees him for the first time, the experience is anticlimactic. She expected a sadistic rapist to look a little more like a cartoon version of a bad guy than what she finds when she enters the Quick Stop. She imagined his face in a mug shot, his eyes dead and cruel, the lighting around him dramatic and sinister instead of these too-bright fluorescents. He just looks like a guy, the boy next door, someone who could even be handsome if his eyes weren’t so sunken, if his skin wasn’t so greasy, if he were wearing something besides a gas station uniform and a scowl on his face. Nothing about him says “rapist.” Nothing about him is particularly intimidating. There’s no clue to stay away from him besides his crappy job and unfortunate haircut. There’s nothing about him that screams evil. Someone like him could be anyone.
But still, Grace’s skin prickles with the knowledge of him. He is not just some guy behind a counter writing notes on a clipboard, taking inventory of the cigarettes. Grace knows what he did. She’s reminded of it every second she spends in her bedroom, Lucy’s pain scratched into the walls of a place she is supposed to feel safe.
“Do you need something?” Spencer says, and Grace jumps. She feels his eyes bore into her, and it makes her skin crawl. Just his gaze is a violation.
“No,” she mumbles. “I mean, yeah.” She starts to panic. She reaches for something, anything, to make her look like a normal shopper, not some weird girl who came just to stare. She grabs a pack of gum, a candy bar. She walks up to the counter, puts the items in front of him. His hands are dirty, scabbed at the knuckles, his chewed-up nails black with grime. Grace imagines those hands touching Lucy’s body, her friends’ bodies, her own. So unclean. So marked by violence.