Rebel Girls

by Elizabeth Keenan

  She snatched my jeans from the bench and whipped them across her arm. The louvered door slammed behind her, shaking the dressing room stall.

  Helen was trying to help me. I should listen to her. I took a deep breath and resolved to be nicer. This was for the Gang of Five—it wasn’t about me.

  I dropped the dress I was holding and grabbed the midnight blue dress instead. I slipped it over my head, sending up a silent thanks that it had a side zipper I could manage on my own. Smoothing down the sides, I turned to gaze at myself in the mirror.

  Wow. Helen was right. This was the one. The dress hugged close to my rib cage and then glided down over my legs. On my back, the straps crisscrossed in a diamond pattern. I looked like a 1930s film star, my pale skin contrasting with the inky color of the dress, and my red hair looking supersaturated against the satin.

  I could hear Helen and Melissa debating the selection of homecoming dresses as they walked into the dressing room area.

  “I might have to wear the Prom Dress of Doom that I never got to wear,” Melissa said. She’d been all set to go to prom with Mike Thibodeaux, who was a senior last year, but he’d gotten suspended for punching a guy during a basketball game. Melissa was only a sophomore, so she couldn’t go on her own. She’d said it was okay, but I don’t know what bothered her more—that her date would have been a hotheaded jerk, or that she’d spent money on a dress she never got to wear. “But it’s not a fall dress, so—”

  Helen pushed the door open without knocking. I’m sure she expected me to be wearing the short black dress and a look of baby-faced petulance. Melissa and Helen angled into the narrow doorway, each trying to push the other out of the way. No way all three of us could fit in the room at the same time, but they tried.

  “See?” Helen gloated.

  A smile widened across Melissa’s face. “I see you came to your senses. That jerk Kyle will be dying of regret and unactionable horniness.”

  A few weeks ago, I would have blushed, but Kyle’s horniness was a topic I had now shoved to the far recesses of my brain. I wanted to forget that anything had ever happened between us—that I had kissed him, or that anything else near second base had happened. I knew Melissa meant to make me feel better, but she didn’t. Instead, I felt a little like throwing up, and a little like crying.

  I pushed Kyle out of my head and concentrated on the fact that I looked good in my dress. Though I didn’t want to seem vain, I couldn’t stop looking at my reflection in the mirror.

  “Out. To the three-way mirror.” Helen shoved me into the hallway. I pulled up the skirt of my dress so that it didn’t drag the ground, like a Victorian lady walking over a puddle.

  In the large area in front of the dressing room’s three-way mirror, Helen looked me up and down, pulled at the fabric, and turned me around several times, all while squinting and frowning. I held my breath, waiting for her to say something critical or mean. Finally, she stopped and turned to me with her face beaming.

  “Oh, who am I kidding? I can’t torture you anymore with suspense,” Helen said, throwing her hands up. “This is the perfect dress for you.”

  She danced a little bouncy jig around me, and then gave Melissa a high five. They both looked at me with giant grins. I couldn’t stop smiling, either, though some small part of me felt ridiculous for being this happy over a dress. I told that part of me to shut up, because this dress was awesome.

  “In case you’re worried, I have an excellent tailor,” Melissa said. “Otherwise known as my mom. She can hem it for you.”

  I didn’t want to change out of the dress, but it covered my feet and I couldn’t really walk in it. It felt so perfect against my skin, though, the satin shiny but not too shiny, and I kept touching it to see if it was real. I jumped excitedly, but carefully—a little hop in place so I wouldn’t hurt it.

  “I love it,” I said. “Can I wear it home?”

  Helen’s eyebrows knotted together, like she was worried about something.

  “I’m joking!” At least I thought I was joking. I really, really didn’t want to take it off.

  “I know, but I have to figure out where I left your jeans,” Helen said. “I’ll be right back.”

  She darted out of the dressing room area, leaving me with Melissa, who continued to nod approvingly. She almost never looked like that when surveying my clothes. The only time she came close was when I borrowed hers.

  “Even if she can’t find your jeans, you’ve won for the day,” she said. “That’s the best dress ever.”

  At the cash register, I nearly threw up when I saw the price tag.

  One hundred and ten dollars. More money than I had with me. More money than I had, period. Dad had given fifty dollars each to Helen and me, and I had thirty more of my own. My heart broke. I could borrow money from Melissa, but that would be embarrassing—and, no matter how perfect the dress was, I couldn’t justify spending that much.

  Then Helen handed me her fifty-dollar bill. Or, rather, shoved it into my hand and closed hers over it with a firm grip.

  “I don’t need it,” she whispered. “But don’t tell Dad you went over budget.”

  “What?” I asked, startled. “Why don’t you need it?”

  Helen smiled slyly. She leaned casually against the counter at the cash register while we waited for the clerk to return from the back room, where she was getting Melissa a different color of the hideous leopard-and-lace dress.

  “Oh, I have my ways.” Great. The old, immature, annoying Helen had been replaced by a new, annoyingly adult version who offered me money. I wasn’t sure I trusted this new Helen, with her world-wise face, and her generosity surprised me. A few months ago, she would have pocketed the extra fifty dollars for herself.

  “Just tell me.” Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to take the money. I’d be too worried about what she had done to get it.

  Her back slid farther down the counter, and she looked straight at me, her hair shaking in a blond wave.

  “You. Are. Zero. Fun.” She emphasized each word. She stood up and shrugged. “I’m wearing the green velvet dress from the fashion show. Something happened with the returns, and Mrs. Brouillette got the clothes donated to the modeling school. I persuaded her I should get the dress, since it was too long for everyone else.”

  Machiavellian, my sister was. I was impressed with her initiative and her maneuvering skills. She looked great in that dress, and if mine was expensive, I couldn’t imagine the scaling up of economy I’d have to do in babysitting in order to pay for Helen’s.

  “You don’t mind wearing it again?”

  “Why would I care?” she said. “That dress was, like, five hundred dollars! And it’s not like anyone but you and Sean and Sara and Jennifer saw me in it.”

  I clutched the blue dress to my chest. I wouldn’t have to put it back on the rack or beg Dad for extra money. I didn’t have to scramble to find a babysitting job in the next three days or put it on layaway. I wouldn’t have to try on thirty-seven more dresses in order to find one half as good as the one in my arms.

  “I’ll pay you back.” I would find that babysitting job, just not this week.

  Helen’s eyes dropped to her shoes. I couldn’t see her face through her thick hair.

  “This is totally dorky to say,” she said, “but you already have. You believed me. And you figured out how to make other people think so, too. Fifty bucks is a way cheap price to pay.”

  I had the sudden urge to hug my sister. And so I did. But carefully, so I wouldn’t mess up my dress.

  * * *

  I carried my dress out of the store delicately, careful not to let it touch the ground, even though it was wrapped in a plastic garment bag. I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. It was perfect, and I wouldn’t allow a single speck of dust to get anywhere near it. Helen and Melissa beamed at each other, proud that they had finally taught th
eir fashion student something valuable. If I hadn’t been so happy about the dress, I might have been annoyed with them, but I didn’t think that anything could possibly bring me down from the high of buying the most beautiful, most perfect dress in the history of homecoming dresses.

  I was wrong.

  As we walked back through the mall to the car, Melissa stopped next to me.

  “Column left, girls,” she hissed. “Now!”

  It was too late. I saw what she saw, and I could feel my smile fading.

  Leah. Of course.

  “Ooh, Athena, let me look at your dress,” she cooed, as if we weren’t mortal enemies by this point. “I’m really looking forward to seeing what’s on the sale rack at Mervyn’s.”

  Helen growled and lunged forward. I’m pretty sure she was thinking of the fifty bucks she’d loaned me, that she’d never be caught dead in Mervyn’s—the least fashionable department store in the mall—and that any insult to me was also an insult to her fashion expertise. Adding this to her already well-deserved hatred for Leah, and I was sure Helen was about to punch Leah in the face.

  I grabbed one of Helen’s arms while Melissa gripped the other. I nodded toward her in thanks. Between us, Helen squirmed, kicked, and fumed.

  “Look, I don’t care what you think about my dress.” I clutched the garment bag closer with my left arm while tightening my hold on Helen with my right. “I’m sure you’ll see it the night of homecoming, like everyone else.”

  Leah smiled, evidence that I had zero ability to burn anyone.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” she said, punctuating the sentence with a slight giggle. “I’m not sure any of you are going to be at that dance.” She leaned toward a struggling but silent Helen. “But I’m sure you’ll love what’s going to happen after the announcement on Monday.”

  She crossed her arms smugly, turned, and walked away. About fifteen feet from us, she turned back. “Oh, I forgot! Since you won’t be seeing us, I wanted to remind you that I will be going to the dance with Kyle. And you’ll be stuck at home, probably grounded, with only your imagination to keep you company. And, believe me, what we’ll be doing will be far more interesting than anything you ever did with him.”

  32

  On Monday, we all waited in our usual lunch circle with jittery nerves—except Jennifer, who was off with the rest of the student council counting homecoming court votes in a corner of the lunchroom. Everyone voted in homeroom, and then the student reps from each class went around to each homeroom to pick up the ballots. From second period on through lunch, they sorted and counted them, and then we’d all have a quick end-of-day assembly to hear the winners announced.

  Suddenly, I felt someone standing behind me, blocking the sun. Next to me, Melissa sucked in a tense breath, but Helen beamed up and waved. I couldn’t think of many people who’d cause that reaction. Or any, actually.

  “Oh, hey, Angelle!” Helen patted the step next to her, indicating that Angelle should sit down with us.

  Angelle gingerly crammed herself into the space between Sara and Helen. It might have been my imagination, but it looked to me like Sara intentionally didn’t move to make room for Angelle.

  I was really starting to like that girl.

  “I, um, don’t want to interrupt y’all,” Angelle said, which would have been a more appropriate statement if she’d said it before squeezing herself into our circle. “But there’re two things I wanted to tell y’all.” She balanced her lunch tray delicately on her lap, looking either unsure of how to eat outside, or nervous to be around us, or a combination of both. Either way, her pause left a space so large that I could feel Melissa leaning toward her with curiosity.

  “The first is...” Angelle took a bite of today’s cafeteria lunch, a rubbery-looking hamburger, and chewed, leaving us all in suspense. It didn’t feel like she was intentionally keeping us on edge—she was likely either nervous or just plain hungry—but the effect was the same. Melissa tensed up, likely with the same fear that I had, that Angelle was about to ruin the delicate balance of our group.

  Helen gestured for her to go on. “The first is?”

  Angelle nodded, then swallowed. “The first is that Miss Laurel Anne confirmed that Melissa and Athena didn’t take any posters.”

  Helen sank back, collapsing against the step like relief infused her whole body. “I knew it, but I’m so happy to hear her say it!”

  Melissa gave me a silent look that said, Are you kidding me? And believe me, I got it. It felt incredibly unfair that Helen would need reassurance after all we’d done for her, after all this time. Helen had basically decided that we—or at least I—had nothing to do with the posters in her locker, so her relief was a little outsize in comparison to whatever doubt she might have had left.

  I shrugged a silent response to Melissa. I could get mad at Helen for underestimating us, but what would be the point? I’d been the one to ask—actually, sort of bully—Angelle into making the call. Besides, having everything cleared up would let us move forward, and there wouldn’t be another fight three weeks from now that brought up the possibility that we’d done something unspeakably cruel to her.

  The rest of what Angelle might say was the real dirt. I had no idea what the second thing was, but the way she was acting made me scooch to the edge of the step I was sitting on.

  “And what’s that second thing?” Melissa asked coolly, almost covering the fact that she was insulted that Helen required backup proof of her innocence.

  Angelle swallowed her bite of burger, hard, a gulp of fear as much as anything. Her lunch tray shook a little on her lap as her knee bounced up and down. She definitely hadn’t mastered the eating-outside business.

  “I, um... Well, I don’t know if I should tell you this,” she said, looking at her burger instead of us. “Because I don’t know if I agree with your campaign, totally. But I...I also know I didn’t do the right thing by Helen. And I don’t think it’s pro-life, what Mrs. Turner is doing to her. It’s not fair for her to be punished for someone else’s abortion.”

  Next to me, Melissa was a coiled cobra, waiting for the right moment to strike, to shout out that no one deserved to be punished for an abortion. I grabbed her arm in warning. I wanted to hear what Angelle had to say, and she wasn’t going to say it if we yelled at her self-righteously for being a self-righteous jerk. She might not have apologized to Helen enough for that whole business with the pro-life club, and she might be half insulting us with ambiguous intentions, but the girl was sitting on something big. Our self-righteousness could wait until after we got the information we needed.

  “Umm, well, so...” Angelle hesitated. She moved the tray from her lap, unable to control her nervous leg bouncing. “There’s something going on with Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Bonnecaze. I’m... I don’t know, exactly, but it seems like... Well, Mrs. Turner is taking over advising the pro-life club, basically, but Mrs. Bonnecaze is kind of going along with it? They’re coadvisors now, which was never a thing before, and something feels off about it.”

  She paused for a moment and glanced toward Helen. “And, well...after that gross stuff was found in your locker, we—me and Chad, the vice president—called a meeting of all the officers to see if we could reinstate you as a member, with an apology. And we voted unanimously that we should.” Helen’s face flooded with gratitude, but Angelle’s expression remained uneasy. “Mrs. Bonnecaze said she agreed, too, and she said she’d talk to Mrs. Turner, because apparently she’s the one who asked Principal Richard to bar Helen from all clubs, not Sister Catherine, and Mrs. Bonnecaze thought that she could explain everything that had happened. But I guess it didn’t work.”

  Helen’s jaw clenched. It wasn’t news to us that Mrs. Turner had been the one to intervene against her, but it was infuriating that Mrs. Bonnecaze’s appeal failed. And that fury made me hate myself all the more for falling into her blackmail trap. I a
lmost regretted not campaigning for myself—there was nothing I wanted less than to be on the homecoming court, but it burned to give Mrs. Turner any kind of victory.

  “What did you do then?” Helen asked, sounding frustrated. I was frustrated with Angelle, too. Angelle was supposed to be her friend, but had sucked at basic human decency until about five minutes ago. Or maybe that was just my judgy perspective.

  “Nothing,” Angelle said, and Helen’s whole body sagged with defeat. Angelle must have picked up on it, because she rushed to elaborate. “I mean, I tried. Really. But whatever conversation Mrs. Turner had with Mrs. Bonnecaze wasn’t good, at least not for Helen. Mrs. Bonnecaze came back from it saying that she’d changed her mind. Not about Helen’s guilt—” Melissa cringed at the word guilt, and so did Helen. Melissa because she didn’t believe anyone should be guilty for having an abortion, Helen because she didn’t believe that guilt applied to her “—but that because of the So What? thing, she couldn’t support having Helen back in the club, because it would mean that she wasn’t sufficiently pro-life.”

  Helen let out a strangled yowl, not unlike the one that a cat lets out when you accidentally step on its tail.

  “Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me?” Helen never swore. Maybe being around Melissa was starting to rub off on her. The weariness was gone, replaced by a fury that was barely contained and entirely understandable. “First I get punished for something I didn’t do, and now I’m getting the same punishment for pointing out that I didn’t do it?”

  I worried for a second that Helen would turn her anger on me and Melissa because we’d been the ones who’d come up with the slogans in the first place. And one of them was definitely more pro-choice than the other, which was why Mrs. Bonnecaze had sent me to Sister Catherine’s office.

  Angelle shrank back from the anger radiating from Helen. “I know, it’s awful, and that’s not even the worst of it. Mrs. Turner is planning...something. I’m not sure what, exactly, but I know she’s gone around Mrs. Bonnecaze and Sister Catherine and Principal Richard for whatever it is. I overheard her saying she was going to the diocese, and maybe someone even bigger.”