Rebel Girls

by Elizabeth Keenan

  It was an awkward way to leave things, and that applied to Dad’s conversation with Principal Richard as much as it applied to right now. Helen and I exchanged our umpteenth glance of the past few minutes. A lot could happen between now and Monday.

  “Oh, and that’s not the only good news I have for you,” Dad said, like he suddenly remembered something he should have told us last week. He was also ignoring the fact that neither Helen nor I looked super happy at his previous news, which wasn’t bad, but couldn’t exactly be described as “good,” either. “It’s been a real pain to coordinate with the Ford Agency, but...” He let out a heavy sigh, and Helen straightened up at the mention of Ford. “Your mother and I have managed to figure out a week when we can go up there for Helen’s callback.”

  Helen jumped up from the couch and threw her arms around Dad. After being grounded—or put under my guardianship, basically—she hadn’t asked Dad about the progress of the Ford callback for weeks, because she didn’t want to irritate him. But this was her dream, finally coming true, and I was so thrilled for her.

  When Helen eventually backed out of her hug, I saw that she was crying. Not sobs like at the mall, but enough to make her eyes wet.

  “Um, Helen?” I looked at Dad’s shirt, where there was a giant smudge of her mascara. “I think you need to fix the work of art that is your face,” I said, echoing her earlier words.

  * * *

  Trip and Sean arrived promptly at seven, wrist corsages in hand. Sean gave me a thumbs-up before swooping over to Helen, leaving me standing awkwardly in front of Trip Wilson. He towered over me, a solid mass of muscle and bulk, topped by a shock of blond hair. Despite all the time the football players spent in the sun, Trip’s skin was pale and covered with freckles. When he took off his helmet at games, his face was always flushed the same deep red as when he was having trouble with his algebra homework. Or, for that matter, the same red it was now.

  “Hi, Athena,” he said. “Helen told me you were wearing a blue dress, so I got you a light blue flower. I don’t think it matches, but...”

  Trip’s voice trailed off, and he looked down at the corsage in its plastic box, so tiny in his large hands.

  “Oh, no, it’s beautiful.” It was the first time a boy had ever given me a flower. My sister might have told him to do it, but in my book, it still counted.

  “You look...” His face flushed deeper, like a badly painted Santa Claus whose cheery red cheeks approached the level of satire. For a menacing football player, Trip seemed awfully scared of me. He’d never been afraid of me before.

  “He means to say that you clean up real nice,” Sean said, leaning between us.

  I punched his arm. Some things did not—and never would—change.

  “You-look-really-pretty,” Trip said, like it was a German compound word. Then he looked at the corsage again.

  “Thanks, Trip,” I said, smiling up at him genuinely. “You look very nice, too.”

  He blushed again, and I took the corsage box from his hands. I was afraid he would fuss with it until he finally decided that the flower didn’t match my dress closely enough and then collapse in the hallway under the weight of going on a date with me.

  As I slipped the corsage onto my wrist, Dad stepped into the hallway, camera in hand—just in time to save me from the awkward situation of awkwardly dealing with someone as awkward as I was. He smiled at me and immediately got to work lining us up against the staircase.

  We must have looked like the most unbalanced set of people ever: giant Trip and tiny me, standing next to the most well-proportioned couple ever, Helen and Sean. But I didn’t care. Trip had saved me from the embarrassment of having to go to the dance by myself. And who knew—maybe he would get over being afraid of me in time for us to have a real conversation.

  36

  The student council had done its best to turn the gym into a romantic destination, complete with mood lighting and strings of white Christmas lights that crisscrossed the gym floor in a suspended arbor. They might not have been seasonally appropriate, but they softened the gym’s similarity to a very large aluminum can with a shiny wooden floor. That floor, too, was covered tonight, with a layer of taped-down brown paper to spare it from sharp heels and dress shoes. The brown paper was the only thing that detracted from the overall ambiance, but it was a condition that allowed us to have our dances in the gym instead of the cafeteria, which reeked permanently of grease.

  Trip held my hand with a gentle clamminess that surprised me. It made me feel like an ass, too, because I was hardly paying attention to him at all, almost like he was my giant pet hamster. It wasn’t fair, and I probably should have talked with him about it.

  I didn’t have a chance to do much, though, because the moment I had been dreading finally arrived.

  Kyle.

  Walked.

  In.

  With.

  Leah.

  My breath caught. How could he still affect me so much?

  He didn’t look happy—he wasn’t wearing that goofy grin I liked so much—but he didn’t look miserable, either. I didn’t know what I’d expected. I’d imagined him striding up to me and apologizing, or walking in looking abashed, silently suffering on Leah’s arm. Or, in the worst of all imaginary scenarios, Leah would have somehow turned him into her undead spawn, and he would laugh and point at me with Leah and Aimee at his side.

  He didn’t do any of those things. He was just there with her, like it was the thing to do. Like a regular date with a normal person.

  Leah, however, looked exactly as I expected. Her fake blond hair was in a bridal updo, with the characteristic crunchy spiral curls descending on either side of her face. She smiled a fake triumphant smile with her fake white teeth as she held Kyle’s arm in a fake embrace. Her baby-pink dress offset her fake tan and her fake boobs and pulled in her waist to Barbie-like proportions. Fake, fake, fake, fake, fake.

  I hated her, really and truly, for the first time, with a sour feeling that bubbled up from my stomach into my throat.

  And she looked so airbrushed pretty, magazine pretty, which made me hate her even more. So what if her parents’ marriage was falling apart? She was an evil monster who’d tried to ruin the lives of everyone I cared about. Except Kyle, but she’d get him, too, in the end. But, unlike everyone else, he would deserve it.

  I clasped Trip’s hand tighter, willing myself not to give any sign that I cared. I shouldn’t, wouldn’t care anymore. I was at the dance with a much better human being than either of them.

  “Ow, Athena,” Trip said. “Breaking my hand isn’t going to make Kyle and Leah disappear.”

  “Oh, sorry.” I felt myself blushing as I dropped Trip’s hand.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Um, maybe I shouldn’t talk with you about this, but—”

  Trip sat down on one of the folding chairs that lined the dance floor and motioned for me to sit next to him.

  “There are a lot of things I’d like to say,” he said. “I’m much better on paper than in person, though.”

  Even in the gym’s cheesy mood lighting, I could see that Trip’s face had flushed red again. He took a deep breath.

  “I know you liked him,” Trip said. “And he seemed to like you a lot, too. I don’t know what happened, but I can tell you, no one thinks this thing with Leah will last. But I also think you should know that if you don’t want to wait for him...lots of guys have been waiting for a chance with someone like you.”

  Was Trip talking about himself, or was there a secret cabal of guys at our school who somehow all found me attractive? I couldn’t tell, but something about the way he said it made me think it was about him.

  “I don’t think it’s that I’m waiting for him,” I said with a sigh. “It’s more like I need resolution. Or maybe a funeral. Followed by a mourning period of an undetermined length.”

  Trip’
s face returned to its normal pale-and-freckled color.

  “I understand,” he said. “Would you like to dance at the funeral? We can pretend it’s a jazz funeral, New Orleans–style.”

  I smiled for the first time. He reached out for my arm. “I think that would be great.”

  “By the way, geometry is so much easier than algebra,” he said as we stood up to dance. “I wish you would’ve told me that last year.”

  “Really? I thought it was a lot harder,” I said. “Goes to show what I know.”

  And suddenly, Trip and I were on the dance floor, dancing to the worst song I could imagine, Extreme’s “More Than Words.” I didn’t want to creepy dance to a song where a guy was trying to coerce his girlfriend to have sex with him. But I ignored the song’s subject matter, since Trip hadn’t confessed his love for me, and I hadn’t had to let him down gently, and he hadn’t told me to go after Kyle. Instead, I reminded myself that I was there with a friend. And the more we danced and talked about school, the truer that became.

  After four songs, Melissa pulled me out of my dancing with Trip with a quick “Sorry, gotta borrow her for a minute.” He looked confused and a little disappointed, but he didn’t have much of a choice when Melissa was gripping my arm with such urgent force. She wore the Betsey Johnson dress from the mall—the one Helen had hated so much. Its animal-print-and-lace glory flounced around her as she marched me toward the girls’ bathroom.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Emergency meeting,” she said. “Our plans have changed a little.”

  In the girls’ bathroom, Helen, Sara, Cady, Melissa, Missy, and all of the eight seniors, including, most important, our homecoming queen, Jamie Taylor, crammed into the space between the bathroom stalls and the row of sinks. Cady and a few of the seniors were checking their makeup in the mirrors. Unlike the others, Cady seemed to be toning hers down—her mom had gone full-on pageant glitz, and Cady was carefully using a Q-tip with makeup remover to take off some of the excessive eyeliner and shadow.

  Before taking charge, Melissa pounded each stall open to make sure that no spies had entered the bathroom while she was retrieving me.

  “Okay, I first want to thank everyone for helping out with this,” she said. “You’ve all been amazing. When Athena and Sara started this plan, I didn’t think it would be as popular as it has been. And I didn’t think we’d get this far. I thought we would end up suspended for sure.”

  For the first time since we started the So What? campaign, Melissa looked nervous and tired. Her dark mascara and smoky eye shadow only partially covered up the fact that she looked like something had kept her awake last night—and not in a good way, like a hot college guy spending the night with her. Next to her, Helen was the picture of perfection. Despite her earlier tears, she looked poised, not a speck of makeup where it shouldn’t be.

  “I got word this afternoon that Aimee Blanchard, Josh Davis, and Cody Landry have been suspended for the vote violation.” Melissa pumped her fist, and everyone applauded. “Sister Catherine got Josh to confess, and he blabbed on Aimee and Cody. It seems Aimee didn’t inform on Leah, though, since she’s still out there in the gym.”

  The girls in the bathroom all booed at hearing Leah’s name, and I smiled wryly. Melissa would make a great hype man.

  Then she turned to Helen, whom everything had been for, but who hadn’t really been around the homecoming court very much, since she wasn’t allowed to be on it.

  “You’re up,” Melissa said.

  Helen took a deep breath. She looked like she had during her fashion show—fierce.

  “Today my dad told me and Athena that I’m being reinstated to whatever clubs I want to be in, that whatever Mrs. Turner did would be overruled,” she said. “But it feels like it’s a joke. Like they want to make things go away, so that no one talks about me anymore. But I don’t think it’s going to work, and I know if everything goes on as planned, and you all make a big scene where you say I didn’t do it, they’re going to be really mad.”

  Helen didn’t say who “they” were, but I suspected she meant Principal Richard or Sister Catherine, who were trying to calm things down just as we were going for our final display of solidarity. “But now that Aimee and those guys have been suspended, I think they’d view anything else as an interruption. That means anything we do might get us suspended, too. Or worse. I just...wanted to let everybody know that.”

  Jamie shook her head, jiggling the stiff hair-sprayed cascade of brown hot-roller curls framing her face. She took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and exhaled slowly.

  “No, we’re going to do this,” she said. “I want to. If I get suspended, it’s okay. Besides, I’m a senior.”

  Helen looked somewhat taken aback at Jamie’s stern reply. She hadn’t been addressing Jamie, specifically, but it was clear that Jamie was taking all this pretty personally. She looked as fierce as Helen.

  “Oooh-kaay,” Helen said, looking like Jamie’s response confused her, and I suddenly had a sinking feeling.

  Could I be right about Jamie? Was she the girl who had been Aimee and Leah’s inspiration for the rumors about Helen?

  Helen looked around at everyone in the bathroom. “Anyway, I just want to thank everyone for being so supportive this semester. I don’t know most of you very well, but it’s made something that was really hard a lot easier.”

  Everyone cheered, and Melissa pulled Helen in for a hug. Suddenly, the bathroom was a giant circle of hugging and support. I hugged Helen. Helen hugged Sara. I hugged Cady. I even hugged some random seniors that I didn’t know.

  After all the hugging, we filed out of the bathroom at random intervals, so it wouldn’t look suspicious. Of course, since most of us in the bathroom were on the homecoming court, it made sense for us to be in there, but Melissa was being overly cautious.

  As each girl left, Melissa handed out the She Didn’t sashes. Sara and I were the last to leave, along with Jamie. We both stiffened when Melissa pulled a different sash—not the ones she’d handed out to everyone else—out of her bag for Jamie.

  Sara looked at me, her look of worry all the more visible on her face because her hairdresser had pulled back her errant overgrown bangs into a smooth French knot.

  “Do you think Melissa’s up to something?” she whispered, tugging on my arm. “She didn’t give Jamie a She Didn’t sash, which is weird, right? If she’s planning something, we could be in detention until we die.”

  Sara didn’t have the same reasons for suspicion that I did, but she was nothing if not observant.

  “I don’t know, but—”

  The sound of music blaring through the bathroom door stopped suddenly, and a microphone popped and squealed. Sara and I ran, as fast as we could in our heels, to the dance floor.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your 1992 homecoming court one last time!” Sister Catherine said.

  I jumped into my place in line between Cady and Missy, my heels nearly slipping on the floor. The reverse side of my sash said She Didn’t, just like it was supposed to, and my stomach flipped with anticipation of what was going to happen. I couldn’t stop it now.

  Sister Catherine stood at the microphone, ready to announce our names, starting with the freshmen. She gave us one last once-over and a short sigh. I think she regretted having to announce sixteen names instead of eight, but, as far as I knew, that had been her decision.

  We were supposed to step forward and curtsy—yes, curtsy—when she called our names. Those of us in on the plan were supposed to flip our sashes when we stepped back, creating a wall of solidarity for Helen. I didn’t want to think about what was going to be on the news tomorrow if this didn’t work out.

  “Darcy Kendall, freshman.”

  Darcy stepped forward, the light blue froth of her dress swirling around her, and curtsied. Then she stood back and flipped her sash: She
Didn’t.

  Huh. I didn’t even know she was in on it.

  “Sara Lewis.”

  Sara stepped forward, curtsied, flipped her sash, and went back to standing in line.

  “Cady Jenson.”

  Ditto.

  “Athena Graves.”

  I stepped forward, curtsied, and flipped my sash. And so it went on: Missy, Melissa, no flipped sash for Leah, none for Angelle, and on to the seniors.

  I looked straight ahead into the dark gym. My eyes scanned the crowd for a reassuring face, but due to the mood lighting, I couldn’t see Helen or Sean or Trip. Or Kyle, not that I was looking for him.

  I heard a rustling to my left, along the line of girls. A heaving sigh soon followed. Then an angry, muttered “I cannot believe this.”

  “And now, your 1992 homecoming queen, Jamie Taylor!” Sister Catherine announced robustly, clapping her hands triumphantly.

  Jamie took a few quick steps toward the microphone. She took in a deep breath, like it might be her last.

  “Sister Catherine, can’t you see what they’re doing?” Leah said suddenly. “Can’t you see?”

  She stepped out of line, not curtsying this time. The hair spray–stiff, curled tendrils on either side of her face jiggled like giant springs as she moved forward. She waved toward Sister Catherine, first a small gesture, then larger and larger, alternating with moments of crossed arms and loud exhalations.

  “Can’t you see what they’re all doing?” Her voice was loud enough this time that the entire gym could hear her without the microphone.

  Sister Catherine looked us up and down. Thirteen of us had turned our sashes to the outside, all declaring, “She Didn’t.”

  “It seems they’re protesting unfair rumors about their friend,” she said, stepping away from the microphone so that her voice didn’t carry out to the audience. “And trying to make people think a little bit about judging others. I suggest you consider doing just that, Miss Sullivan.”