Rebel Girls

by Elizabeth Keenan

  The backpack was just out of reach. I grabbed for it, before it floated away again in the Great Plaid Sea. Or before the two-minute warning bell rang for morning assembly, whichever came first.

  I tugged down on her backpack. “Hey, Mel—”

  The wearer of the backpack, a boy who was decidedly not Melissa, turned around and smiled at me. He wasn’t anyone I had ever seen before. He was tall and muscularly slender, with broad shoulders, almost stereotypically perfect in his proportions. His golden-brown, slightly messy hair flopped into his face. It should have made him look sloppy, but instead it drew attention to his eyes.

  Oh, his eyes. Anyone could have brown eyes. Most people, statistically, did. But his eyes were a warm amber, rimmed with dark brown, like deep caramel surrounded by dark chocolate. I ignored the fact that my brain had gone straight to a food simile that reminded me of Rolos—like, I didn’t want to eat his eyeballs, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I squeaked.

  How could I have ever mistaken him for Melissa, even in this crowd? I knew there was no way she’d ever admit to liking anything on K Records. At the start of last year, Melissa and I had been the only ones with buttons and patches of the alternative kind, until grunge became popular and suddenly weird was cool and we were almost popular—or at least Melissa was. I was more “the almost-popular girl’s nerdy friend.” But K Records was a step too far, and I didn’t know anyone aside from my summer friends in Eugene who even knew the label existed.

  He was cute—far cuter than any of the boys at my school.

  He had to be a transfer. At least I hoped he was—he couldn’t possibly be a freshman. That would be awful, because then I’d probably never see him again. It would be even worse if he was a senior. Then I would never see him, and he’d probably consider me beneath his attention.

  The boy melted back into the crowd with another smile before I had a chance to ask him. The dread of the first day of school had now entirely disappeared from my thoughts, replaced with something fluttery and disorienting.

  2

  Melissa yanked me into the girls’ bathroom with a totally unnecessary level of force. We hadn’t had time to talk this morning—hello, Cute Boy distraction—but it wasn’t like we hadn’t hung out on Saturday to catch up on the events of the summer, which we’d spent half a continent apart.

  For me, the summer had involved biking around and looking for cool record stores near my mom’s house in Eugene, drinking coffee, practicing cello, and ignoring Helen. Our mom was a classics professor at the University of Oregon, which meant that in theory, she should have had plenty of time to spend with us. And, most summers, she did, even if she often used that time to drive us to Mount St. Helens so we could better understand what volcanic damage looked like, after she spent a day boring us with Pliny the Younger’s letter about Pompeii. But this year, she’d needed every second of her summer off from teaching—or so she’d said—to finish the book she was writing about Catullus before she started her new job at New York University in the fall. It was a Big Deal, so Helen and I were mostly left to our own devices.

  So I’d decided to use my summer to become a riot grrrl, and not just someone who read about them in Sassy magazine. Over the past year, I had amassed a small collection of handmade, photocopied zines like Riot Grrrl and Girl Germs, all ordered through the mail. I knew what the riot grrrl ideals were. Support girls around you. Don’t be jealous of other girls. Avoid competition with them. Being loud and crying in public were valid ways of being a girl. Being a girl didn’t mean being weak or bad. Claiming your sexuality, no matter what that meant to you, was a good thing. And the revolution was open to anyone.

  That last one felt like a stretch to me because I never felt quite punk enough. And there were other barriers to entry, too. Writing about my life, or music, or whatever in a zine was great in theory, but what if no one wanted to read it?

  Besides, photocopies cost money, unless you scammed Kinko’s, and again, I wasn’t punk enough to get away with that. After working at nonprofits for years, Dad was inclined to give me and Helen money solely for things classified as potentially useful for college applications, like music lessons for me and art classes for Helen. He had balked at Helen’s modeling classes, which our grandmother paid for, so I didn’t think I could get money for a zine from him—or from Grandma, for that matter, who would die if she knew I wanted money for anything associated with punk rock or feminism. Mom gave us a small allowance during the summer, but I preferred to spend it on new music rather than copies of a zine I thought no one would read.

  Before the end of the summer, I’d had exactly one bit of riot grrrl success, which was tracking down Bikini Kill’s Revolution Girl Style Now demo cassette—the one I’d immediately copied and sent to Melissa. Other than that, I’d chickened out of going to all-ages shows in people’s basements at least six times and spent too much time hoping I looked cool enough at the coffee shop for someone to talk with me. In the end, I got so desperate I took knitting lessons, where, weirdly enough, I finally met a group of girls who listened to the same music I did. They told me all about the legendary shows I’d missed out on the summer before, like the International Pop Underground festival, where Bikini Kill played and Bratmobile had their first show. I tried to live vicariously through their stories, but I left Eugene feeling like I had missed my only chance to be a riot grrrl.

  Melissa’s summer in Baton Rouge had been far more intense. Instead of being a failed riot grrrl like me, she’d been a real activist. In direct violation of our Catholic school’s very pro-life policy, she’d volunteered as a clinic defender at the Delta Women’s Clinic, the only abortion clinic in town. Operation Rescue, a nationwide anti-abortion group, had selected Baton Rouge for its “Summer of Purpose,” a sequel to its huge protest in Kansas the year before.

  Baton Rouge made a lot of sense—after Louisiana passed a super restrictive abortion law last year, Governor Roemer had vetoed it. But then the state legislature overrode the veto with a two-thirds majority, and now it was winding its way through the federal courts. Operation Rescue wanted to drum up local support for the abortion ban, and Baton Rouge was an easy target, since it wasn’t liberal like New Orleans. Even the local Planned Parenthood didn’t do abortions.

  About a thousand mostly out-of-town protesters came to the city to try to shut down Delta Women’s Clinic the week after July Fourth. In response, pro-choice people like Melissa defended the clinic, helping to keep it open and protect the women who wanted to get abortions. It got a little violent—nothing major, just some pushing and shoving, but the cops put up a fence between the protesters and the clinic defenders. Lots of people got arrested, and it made national news.

  As I’d watched the national news from my mom’s couch, Melissa, with her wavy bright purple hair blazing in the July sun, was clearly visible on the inside of the giant chain-link fence, leading girls into the clinic with her arm hooked in theirs. She’d sent me more than a dozen long letters, each in her perfectly stylized handwriting, detailing the month of July.

  I didn’t know how she’d had time to write, with all that was going on. In one, she told me about the preacher who’d tried to grab her and pray the sin out of her as she covered the license plates of cars entering the parking lot so the protesters couldn’t track the women down and harass them later. Another featured a lengthy description of the swarms of television crews who had descended on the clinic after the protester count reached nine hundred. And in still another, she detailed how she’d seen a group of girls from our school drive slowly by, giving her a thumbs-up and waving, but clearly too afraid to get out of their car. She couldn’t decide if they were hypocrites or just saner than she was.

  When we saw the protests on TV, Helen wanted to head home to get in on the action—but on the opposite side. Last year, she was president of her middle school’s pro-life club, and as an incoming
freshman, she wanted to impress the powers that be at our high school with some pro-life summer activities. Mom, as liberal and pro-choice as they come, took Helen aside for an afternoon talk about reproductive rights and the long legacy of coat-hanger abortions. It didn’t sink in, but, then again, Mom wasn’t the best at being human. Her heart-to-heart with Helen was more like a lecture that also included some references to feminist theories of the body, and anyone would have tuned out at that point. After that, Mom ignored Helen’s pleas to go home and worked some more on her book.

  In any case, I was glad she hadn’t let Helen come back. I didn’t need a clash between Melissa and Helen about abortion rights. Not again.

  But right now, I didn’t have time to hang out, talk about abortion rights, or discuss the cute guy I met outside school. I had exactly five minutes between first and second period to get to religion class, and no way was I going to make it, because my next class was all the way on the opposite side of the school. I shuffled impatiently on the checkered bathroom tile and waited for Melissa to reveal whatever it was that she apparently thought was worth nearly tearing my arm off for.

  Melissa took a hard pack of Camel Lights from her backpack and smacked it against the heel of her hand three times. The extra time she took unwrapping the box, the careful selection of the cigarette, and the exaggerated first drag all seemed to be part of her plan of taking for-e-ver to tell me. She knew I hated the smell of smoke and thought smoking was a terrible idea, but I’d long since given up on calling her out on it. Her casual slowness made me painfully aware of how the smoke would cling to me, and also manage to waft through the crack below the door frame. Both could incriminate me for a crime I didn’t commit.

  “I have a present for you,” Melissa said, clenching the cigarette between her eggplant-colored lips. She rifled through her backpack and pulled out a small rectangle wrapped in purple foil paper and tied with a silver ribbon that formed curlicues. She handed it to me gently. Melissa was usually more of a casually-tossed-present kind of girl, so this was unusual.

  So was the fact that she was giving me a present for no real reason.

  “What’s this for?” It looked like a credit card. That made no sense. Melissa wouldn’t have gotten me a credit card.

  “It’s in honor of your dad finally letting you leave the house on Friday and Saturday nights.” Her smoker’s boredom switched to an eager, nodding anticipation. I felt her staring at me, like I should already know what was hidden in the foil. I didn’t.

  I ripped open the paper. Inside was a perfect fake ID, complete with my own learner’s permit photo, the fancy Louisiana seal, the little reflective bit, the lamination, and a believable name—“Allison Moore.” The birth date made me nineteen years old as of this past Monday. In Louisiana, that was old enough to get into bars, but not old enough to drink. In other words, I could finally—finally—see some good bands.

  Melissa looked at me expectantly, her eyebrows raised halfway up her forehead. She’d forgotten all about her cigarette, which rested heavy with a stack of granny ashes on the edge of the sink.

  “Will it actually work?” As always, I had my doubts about Melissa’s plans. They usually seemed to go fine for her, but somehow I always ended up getting grounded. Sure, Dad was planning to extend my curfew to eleven o’clock on weekends, but I’d get in a load of trouble for trying to use a fake ID.

  “My ID always works,” she responded reassuringly.

  “It’s your cousin’s ID. It’s real, even if it isn’t you.”

  “I cede you a point, madam. A slight family resemblance and the idea that Asians all look alike goes a long way.”

  It was true, not to mention kind of racist. None of the bouncers in the bars, clubs, and music venues around Louisiana State University seemed to notice the difference between half Cajun, half Vietnamese Melissa and her all-Vietnamese cousin. They barely even looked alike. Melissa had her Cajun dad’s wavy hair and hazel eyes, though her facial features were more like her mom’s.

  “Don’t you want to know how I got it?” she asked gleefully. “And how it got to be so awesome?”

  Melissa launched into an animated monologue complete with hand gestures, clearly delighted by the devious means she’d had to employ in order to obtain my permit photo from my room by lying to my dad. And then she had to tell me about discovering the perfect forger, a guy named Erik who’d dropped out of our school last year and now worked at Kinko’s.

  I only half listened as she rambled on. I kept thinking that I was about three minutes and fifty-five seconds into the five-minute break between classes. Even if the ID was so awesome that it would get me in anywhere, Mrs. Bonnecaze might send me straight to the dean of discipline’s office if I showed up late to religion. It wasn’t a good way to start the year.

  “And that’s why it’s going to be perfect when we go out—”

  The bathroom door slammed open, and I froze. Melissa quickly washed the cigarette down the drain, scooping water around the rim of the sink to wash away the ashes, and I slipped the fake ID into my backpack.

  “Girls, aren’t you running late for class?” I knew that voice. Mrs. Turner, the guidance counselor, stood behind me, sniffing the air through her upturned nose. I hoped I hadn’t gotten close enough to Melissa to smell like cigarettes.

  A clear-eyed earnestness overtook Melissa’s face as she looked beyond me to Mrs. Turner. The guidance counselor had been out to get her since last year’s Planned Parenthood/Suicidal Tendencies incident, because Melissa had illustrated exactly how out of touch Mrs. Turner was with, as she would say in a singsong voice, “today’s young people.” Mrs. Turner always reminded me a little bit of a long-haired hamster, with round dark eyes whose pupils were indistinguishable from her irises, and brassy dyed-blond hair that surrounded her round face in a puffy halo. She always acted warm and friendly, but like those cute, furry rodents, her cuddly exterior hid the fact that she could bite you.

  “Athena needed a feminine hygiene product.” Melissa pulled a box of tampons from her backpack. Between cigarettes and tampons and fake IDs, Melissa barely had room for her books.

  Since Mrs. Turner couldn’t see my face, I narrowed my eyes at Melissa. No one said “feminine hygiene product.” And it was massively unfair that I had to be the one who was supposedly on my period.

  Still, it was a stroke of genius. I turned to see Mrs. Turner’s reaction.

  “Now, Miss Lemoine and Miss Graves,” she said, her brown eyes widening with sympathy. It was her favorite trick and served her well when she was trying to get people to cry about their problems in her office. “I understand the urgency of the situation, but you really must hurry on to second period.”

  I almost choked at hearing her emphasis on the last word. Did she intend that as some double meaning? I didn’t stop to think about it, because she could easily change her mind about letting us go if she saw cigarette ash in the sink. I darted out of the bathroom to the hall, Melissa trailing behind me, as the bell rang.

  “Athena, wait up!” Melissa said, grabbing my shirt. “Close call, I know, but Mrs. Bonnecaze is, like, the most lenient teacher in school. In terms of lateness anyway. Tell her you had to stop in the guidance office, and you’ll be fine. She won’t ask for a note, and it’s true enough that you saw Mrs. Turner.”

  I slowed so she could catch up with me, and as we passed the glassed-in walls of the guidance office, I almost stopped completely. The Cute Boy slouched in one of the waiting room chairs, reading a book. He must have been waiting for Mrs. Turner to return and help him pick out his classes—standard procedure for transfers.

  “Oooh, new eye candy,” Melissa said, following my gaze. “Do you want dibs?”

  “Dibs? Are we in fifth grade?”

  “Yes,” she said, pausing for dramatic effect and nodding. “I think you should have dibs. I’ve never seen you look at a boy that way.”

&nbs
p; I didn’t think I ever had, either. He was so incredibly cute, with his hair just falling into his eyes as he read. He even made chewing on a pen cap look good, because it made me notice his full, kissable lips. Though he didn’t have much competition at our school, which wasn’t exactly awash in the finest specimens of the gene pool. Except for Sean, who had the most perfect dark brown skin and friendliest smile I’d ever seen. But while I recognized Sean’s attractiveness, it was in a way that you could objectively know your brother was the best-looking guy at school, but feel instinctively turned off at the same time.

  Melissa looked me up and down, her brown-green eyes appraising me. “Yep, you have dibs. Besides, I have a date with Jason on Friday night.”

  I knew it. She wasn’t being magnanimous—she already had a date with someone else. But if it worked out for me, did it matter?

  I stole one last glance at the guidance office and nearly jumped out of my skin, like a startled cat. The Cute Boy was looking back at me. He smiled, just like he had earlier, and I blushed furiously before hauling a cackling Melissa with me down the hall and out of sight.

  3

  Sean slouched back against the cast-off floral love seat that his mom had let him drag up to his room when she’d redecorated their living room, his dark brown eyes fixed on his issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. Nothing could come between him and Peter Parker, not even me being annoying and asking every five minutes or so whether he knew the Cute Boy. I described him in detail, but “sun-kissed light brown hair,” and “gorgeous brown eyes,” and “chiseled nose,” and “sculpted shoulders and the butt of a Greek statue,” and “the most perfect boy, ever” only made Sean roll his eyes at me.