Six Angry Girls

by Adrienne Kisner

“Who’s that kid, and why hasn’t he been in theater?” she whispered to me.

  That was practically a standing ovation coming from her.

  After we were done, Ms. McClain and Mr. Darr left the room.

  “That was … something,” said Brandon.

  Raina’s face got red, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Fear doesn’t look good on you, boys,” said Veronica.

  Jeffrey glanced over. “You know, it’s really a waste of resources to have two teams.” He stretched out in his seat. “You could come back, Millie.”

  I blinked.

  “Come back to the team?” I said. “Your team?”

  I had to admit, it wasn’t an unattractive offer. Sure, they’d dumped me and treated me like crap. But it would be a lot easier to bring my girls over and join forces.

  Brandon yawned. Jeffrey rolled his head back on the desk behind him. It reminded me of all the other practices where they were all bored out of their minds and I did everything to make us successful.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “No, thank you, ever.”

  Jeffrey didn’t even bother to look up.

  Ms. McClain and Mr. Darr came back into the room.

  “We consulted, the bailiff and me. And there were strong points on either side. And places that can be improved. Which we will be discussing.”

  “We have decided to declare a mistrial,” said Ms. McClain.

  Everyone groaned.

  “You just don’t want to determine a winner!” said Mike or Chad.

  “Maybe there was no winner, teams. You both clearly have work to do. But the burden of proof lies with the prosecution to convince me beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty. Can’t say we had that. Reasonable doubt.” Ms. McClain winked at me.

  Mr. Darr grimaced and my heart soared.

  No one was dumping on these angry (or motivated) girls today.

  FEBRUARY 18: NATURE OF ACTION

  The high from our win (or at least our nonloss) in the scrimmage kept me calm and happy for the first half of the week. But we were facing Squirrel Hill Prep in two days for the first trial, and I knew they’d come prepared. They lived and breathed this stuff, and most of their team members graduated and went prelaw to an Ivy. It’d be an uphill battle under the best of circumstances, and I felt our witnesses were underrehearsed and our arguments underprepared.

  No amount of breathing could calm the fear of humiliation at the feet of Squirrel Hill, so I decided to try to download some new affirmations. When I opened up my computer, a screen popped up, alerting me to new messages in my inbox. My breath caught in my chest. It was from Ohio State. Decisions were to go out before the end of March, and it was only the beginning of February.

  Another box popped up. And another. I might have overdone it with the alert settings. My hand hovered over the touch pad. Maybe I should just leave it alone. Better not to know. Stay mindful of the here and now, as the therapist and apps and affirmations and meditations and sleep stories often advised.

  But how could you keep your mind in the here and now when tomorrow was freaking out all over your lock screen?

  I tapped on Ohio State. I didn’t really want to go there anyway. That one was a reach. It was for Mom. Who cared if they were always in the top ten college Mock Trial power rankings? Rankings didn’t matter. Best to forge ahead with a calm and cool …

  Wait, the first line preview said Congratulations.

  I called Claire immediately.

  “Oh my gosh, Claire, oh my gosh!”

  “Did you win a competition I didn’t know about?” she said.

  “No. I GOT INTO OHIO STATE. RANKINGS MATTER. WHO ARE WE KIDDING?”

  “I … What?”

  “Ohio State. I was accepted. Mom lives in Columbus now, you know.”

  “Wow! Holy shit! Congratulations.”

  “Yeah, actually…” I opened my other notifications. I clicked over to my applicant portals and all three of them had switched statuses. Instead of pending, they read accepted.

  “HOLY GOODNESS, I GOT INTO ALL THE SCHOOLS!” I was yelling now.

  “OF COURSE YOU DID. OF COURSE.” Claire could always match the energy of any given situation.

  “But this means I have to choose someplace,” I said. “I didn’t really think that would be a thing.”

  “You didn’t think you’d get in? Are you kidding? You’re, like, number eight in our class.”

  “Yeah, but our school isn’t that big. And I’m out of state. I don’t know. I honestly didn’t think it would be on the radar. Mom had been talking about it, so I just … kind of did it.”

  “Listen. You’re sitting for your Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and I haven’t even auditioned for my top school yet. Do you have to sign a legal thing that says you’ll go to one of these schools?”

  “No. It’s not binding. You just find out sooner.”

  “Oh. When do you have to decide?”

  “I have a month or two. I’ve been saving birthday money in case I have to deposit at more than one school,” I said.

  “Wow,” she said. “Okay, Your Honor. I gotta go. My mom is calling for dinner.”

  We hung up.

  It was kind of true, what I’d said. I’d really been saving it in case I got into a school I didn’t want to tell my dad about. Which was pretty much all of them. His vision, which he laid to me out every month or so now, was that I’d live at home. Go to Penn State Steelton or maybe Pitt Fogton. He thought it was a waste of money or dangerous to send me off on my own. Dad would never dream of depositing at more than one school until I decided. He would think that was irresponsible.

  He’d also freak if he thought I wouldn’t be commuting. But as far as I knew, his dream schools didn’t even have a Mock Trial team. The main campuses in State College or Pittsburgh did. I’d applied to those. Penn State was in the top fifty in the power rankings. And they had a creamery that made the best known ice cream in the universe.

  But Penn State was still too far. I wouldn’t be home for meal prep and to do laundry.

  Possibly to find his shoes and blue and green folders.

  Because Dad lived in 1950.

  A shudder shook me right then, just a little. Poor Dad. I loved him. He hadn’t left me. And he held down a job and paid for my braces and made sure I had a credit card for Schwan’s deliveries. But for an adult, he required a lot of … something. What? What had Mom called it?

  Nurture. Dad needed nurturing.

  It wasn’t a good look.

  I wouldn’t have to nurture anyone but myself if I moved. Though, I didn’t know how I’d pay for school, either. I’d be giving up a lot if I didn’t follow Dad’s plan.

  A part of me knew that I’d be giving up more if I did follow it.

  Just then, I heard Dad open the front door. I snapped my laptop closed out of instinct. Dad wouldn’t look at it, even if he came into my room. But I felt guilty for all the less-than-nice things I’d just been thinking. I went downstairs.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said.

  “Hey, babes. Any dinner going?”

  “No, sorry. School stuff. But why don’t I make a quick pasta salad?”

  “That’d be great. I’m going to get in a quick run and shower. Think it will be done in a half an hour or so?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He was already on his way to his room to change into his workout clothes.

  I opened the cabinet and unearthed the pasta I’d bought on my last trip to Giant Eagle. Then I unwrapped the vegetables and the chicken I’d broiled over the weekend in case this exact situation arose.

  I filled a pot with water and heavy as it was, I slammed it down on the burner hard enough for water to splash all over the stovetop and drip onto the floor. I should probably clean it up. Someone could slip and fall. That’s what a team player would do.

  But then again, maybe everyone in this house could just look out for themselves for a change.

  11

 
RAINA PETREE,

  :

  IN THE COURT OF

  :

  REVENGE OF CAMBRIA

  Plaintiff,

  :

  COUNTY

  :

  v.

  :

  :

  CLAIRE FOWLER,

  :

  Case No. CMURBST2025

  :

  :

  Defendant

  :

  FEBRUARY 20: DISCUSSION SECTION

  I was usually nervous before a show. I had rituals. I made sure to be prepared. But this felt different, our first official meet. Sure, we’d faced off with the boys’ team and Brandon had been there, but that wasn’t real. That wasn’t competition. I hadn’t tried something new in forever and now I had knitting and Mock Trial. Every time I’d seen Brandon question a witness or a witness give a compelling performance, I’d tingled with want. Why hadn’t I done this before?

  What else had my single-mindedness about Brandon kept me from doing?

  Mom dropped me off at the downtown courthouse on her way to work.

  Grace arrived at the same time.

  “Morning.” She yawned. “Didn’t feel like carpooling from the school?”

  “Had a rare ride today. Hope they have coffee,” I sympathized.

  Grace held the door open for me. We were both early, so only a few others from other teams milled around inside.

  “I am so ready,” I said.

  “We’re prepped. I feel our win just sitting here waiting for us. It’s just Steelton and the nearby borough schools. I doubt anything that interesting will happen.”

  “Pardon me, girls,” said a male voice just then. “Mind if I sweep past you here?” Grace and I turned and moved out of the way of the courtroom door we’d been blocking.

  “Here for Mock Trial?” said the man. He looked familiar.

  Grace’s eyes widened. “Um. Yes, sir. We’re assigned to this room and waiting for everyone.”

  The man winked. “Splendid. I’ll see you in there. I’ll be the one on the bench.”

  The man opened the door and went inside the courtroom.

  “Do I recognize him?” I said. “He’s been on TV?”

  “Judge Herman T. Wise of Dropped Stitch infamy.”

  “Yup.” The situation took a second to sink in. “Well,” I said, staring at the door with Grace. “Let’s hope Carla doesn’t show up with some vaginas to throw at him.”

  “Agreed.”

  FEBRUARY 23: FIRST SET OF REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION

  As it turned out, I killed it as defendant Chris Banks on Saturday. I was born to be fake sworn in and embody Chris-the-embittered-inventor, if I did say so myself.

  And I did. Say so. To Megan about forty times and everyone else within a twenty-foot radius.

  “That’s nice, dear,” said Gretta, tying off the last strings of her uncircumcised penises. “Were you out on bail this whole time?”

  “What? No?” I said.

  Gretta looked at Grace. “You seem a little young to be a lawyer.”

  “I’m in high school,” she said.

  “Yes, that’s what I thought. Did you get an online degree?”

  “This is Mock Trial. Emphasis on the Mock,” I said. “I was never really accused of killing anyone. Grace was just acting as my lawyer. Pretending, if you will. The laws and things are real. We could win or lose. But we won.”

  Brandon’s team had been there, too, of course. They went up against Fogton Creek High and won. They were up against Squirrel Hill, and we were up against Fogton Creek for the second trial on March sixth. After our scrimmage, I knew we could take them. But we didn’t get to find out in the real competition.

  “Your performance was inspired,” said Grace.

  “And you were brilliant. You all were,” I said. I glanced at her, seeing the moment to reveal a secret between us to the group. “Even the Honorable Herman T. Wise said so.”

  The whole room stopped after I spoke his name aloud. A few people glanced up from knitting ambiguous genitalia. Carla and the rest of the crew stared at us.

  “What did you just say?” said Carla.

  “We won at Mock Trial,” I said.

  “After that.”

  “The judge thought we were good?” I was hoping she’d missed that part. Grace and I had expected him to eat us or at least tell us off, but he’d been nothing but kind and fair.

  “Judge … Wise … thought you were good?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Carla considered that. “He’s not all bad. I heard he volunteers most of his free time, a lot of it with schools and at-risk youth. I just wish his guiding legal beliefs weren’t so archaic.”

  “We aren’t going to see him again,” Grace said.

  “I found his courtroom barely tolerable,” I said.

  Carla grumbled something under her breath. Louder she said, “He came over here after the yarn bombing, you know.”

  “What?” I said.

  “After the courthouse. We yarn bombed it because of him, and he knew it. He’s always in the paper these days. Didn’t even take the bench long ago but has had enough time to make people’s lives difficult. Women’s lives difficult. Delays hearings. Suppresses evidence. Heaven forbid you’re a mother who commits a crime. He sets bail higher or denies it all together. There are any number of indignities that you can inflict on a family. And he finds a way to do that. And the burden of proof in assaults. The list goes on.”

  “He didn’t do that at the trial. He was friendly,” said Grace. “It wasn’t real.”

  “He came here the day after the yarn bomb and said if he caught wind of any more ‘vandalism,’ we’d be ‘in for it.’ He didn’t say what ‘it’ he meant, but it was probably the business end of his misogyny. Did he recognize either of you?” said Carla.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “No,” said Grace.

  Carla grumbled again. But she didn’t say anything else about it after that, so I thought we were likely in the clear with her.

  After knitting, Grace gave me a ride home.

  “Are we consorting with the enemy in our resume-building activity?” I said.

  “We didn’t know he’d be there. And even if we did know, what choice did we have? Besides, he was neutral up there.”

  “True. There were three separate courtrooms. Three judges who could have gotten our trial. Funny we had him of all people.”

  “Yeah. Maybe the guys will have him next,” said Grace.

  “Megan overheard Brandon bragging about it. He probably did it near her on purpose. Their judge loved them and praised their witnesses’ acting. I know he was talking loudly on purpose.” I hadn’t said Brandon’s name out loud in a while. It felt strange. Lips together, rolling the consonant cluster br that isn’t softened at all by the harsh short an. The don is softer, almost delicate. I used to love saying his name, much to Megan’s chagrin. I wrote it in little hearts in the margins of my script. I thought it constantly. But now it just felt wrong in all contexts.

  “I was kind of hoping they’d lose, mostly for Millie’s sake,” said Grace.

  I rolled my eyes. “Assholes,” I said. “I should knit them colons.”

  “Do it! We could put them on their lockers!”

  “They probably wouldn’t get it. Why waste the yarn?”

  “Agreed.”

  Grace dropped me off at home, and I was greeted by a sleeping mother in front of the television. I turned it off and tried to cover her with an afghan. It only had enough material to cover half of her. I resolved to crochet a blanket big enough to cover her, once I could do more than make a fallopian tube with my crochet hook. Unless I knitted her one made out of square vulvas.

  That I could start making today.

  FEBRUARY 27: MINOR TALENT RELEASE AGREEMENT

  Mom was up bright and early the day of my Carnegie Mellon audition.

  “How are you like this at five o’clock in the morning?” I asked.

  �
��I have to go into work anyway. I might as well see you off since I can’t take you. Have you kissed your bears?”

  “Maybe,” I said. I had a preshow ritual where I kissed all the bears Dad had gotten me over the years. I hadn’t played with them since I was about ten, but you could never mess with something that brought you luck.

  “I thought you had to get them all or else it would go wrong. Snowy. Bear Bear. Pinky. Binky. Bunky Wunky…”

  “Why do you remember their names?”

  “Smile Face. Cutie Butt. Pepper. Jakey. Ice Cream Cone…”

  “All right, enough. I keep them because Dad bought them.”

  “Uh-huh. Sure.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “I hear a car out front. Must be Claire. Gotta go.”

  “Wait, not the Claire? Can I meet her?”

  “Bye, Mom!”

  I checked my bag for the twelfth time to make sure I had my pieces printed and prepped to practice for the car.

  “Hey,” I said to her as I slid into the front seat.

  I’m in a car with Claire Fowler right now, I texted Megan.

  Break a leg today! And not Claire’s! she texted back.

  Claire and I sat in the front seat pretending we were not ignoring each other. I studied my newly painted nails, and she mumbled her monologue to herself.

  I cleared my throat. It would be a long ride if we sat in silence the whole time.

  “So. What piece are you doing?” I said.

  “Scene from Twelfth Night and one from Arsenic and Old Lace,” she said. “You?”

  “Also, Twelfth Night. And Arsenic and Old Lace,” I said.

  “Funny,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Drama teacher suggest that?” she said.

  “Well. Kind of. He mentioned it last year when I started looking at schools. I hadn’t thought about it in a while, so…” I trailed off. I looked out the window. “I do still care about getting into CMU. It’s all I’ve wanted since I was a kid. But I think I wanted it at least partly because of Brandon. That idiot always encouraged me to just focus, focus, focus. Once I had some space to breathe, I realized there’s other stuff I like. Law. Knitting. Activism. And now I don’t know if I should spend all this money on one path if I really want to do something else. Or more than one thing, you know? I loved Brandon so much. So much. When he left it felt like he took part of me with him. But now, a couple of months out, I think maybe that there were some things I didn’t really like about myself when I was with him. I was too dependent on him. So it still sucks, having someone you loved crap on you, but on the other hand, I have this freedom to do whatever I want.”