“We will,” I promise, and smile back.
I’m waiting in the bio lab Monday morning before first period when Gray appears in the doorway, looking around the empty room and back at me with confusion written all over his face. “Hey,” he says. “Am I early?”
I shake my head. “Nope,” I say. “Right on time.”
Gray nods slowly. “There was a note taped to my locker this morning,” he says, the faintest of smirks appearing at the very edges of his mouth. “Said there was an emergency book club meeting before first period. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
I tilt my head to the side for a moment, pretending to consider. “It’s possible,” I admit, holding up the Dunkin’ Donuts box I picked up on the way in this morning, “that you’re pretty much looking at it.”
“Ah.” Gray smiles a real smile now, all straight white teeth and sheepish expression. “You know, as I was coming over here I was wondering what the hell an emergency book club meeting could possibly be about. But I figured, what do I know, right? I’m new.”
“There could conceivably have been some time-sensitive literary issue,” I protest with a laugh. Then I shake my head. “I’m sorry I lost it like that the other day,” I tell him. “Outside Bex’s classroom.”
Gray snorts. “That was you losing it?” he asks, sitting down on the sagging sofa beside me.
I shrug. “You know what I mean.”
Gray nods. “You can tell me, you know,” he says, leaning his head back against the threadbare cushions. “If you need space. I know I can be, like, a lot sometimes. Just say, ‘Gray, with respect, go fuck off.’ Easy as that.”
I laugh. “With respect, obviously.”
“The key to any successful relationship,” he shoots back.
“Is that what this is?” I ask, before I can think better of it. The fluorescent lights overhead feel unforgivingly bright all of a sudden. “A relationship?”
Gray raises his eyebrows. “You tell me.”
I bite my lip. On one hand, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel something for him, that being with him doesn’t light a spark inside me, doesn’t fill my heart like a balloon inside my chest. On the other hand . . .
“I don’t think you’re a lot,” I tell him finally, which isn’t really an answer to his question. “Or I mean, okay, you can be. A lot, I mean. But in a good way.” I reach for his hand, the calluses on his palm scraping gently against my skin. “I would never tell you to fuck off. I mean, I’d never tell anyone to fuck off, let’s be real. But especially not you.”
Gray smiles. “Too polite, huh?”
“Something like that,” I tell him.
“Well,” he says, “you never know. You might surprise yourself. Maybe one of these days you’ll snap and start telling people to fuck themselves left and right.”
“Maybe.” I hold up the doughnut bag. “Peace offering?”
“There better be bear claws in there,” he says, and kisses me before I can reply.
Twenty-Six
I’m in the bathroom near the gym on Friday morning when the door to the stall beside me opens and Chloe comes out.
“Oh! Sorry,” I say, motioning at the sinks; there are only two in this bathroom, and only one of them has any water pressure. “Go ahead.”
Chloe shakes her head, blond hair bouncing; today the lapel pin on her uniform collar is shaped like a tiny palm tree. “No,” she says, “you can go.”
“No, really.”
“Marin,” Chloe says, an impatient edge creeping into her voice. “Just go, okay?”
“Okay. Sorry.” I wash my hands as fast as humanly possible, wrinkling my nose at the smell of the cheap green soap and grabbing a paper towel from the dispenser.
“So, um,” I try, sensing an opening. “How’s your day going?”
As an opening gambit it’s pretty pathetic; Chloe’s expression makes that much abundantly clear.
“It’s fine. No complaints.”
“That’s good.” I pull the sleeves of my uniform sweater down over my hands, wanting to howl at the thought of things being this awkward and impossible between us forever. It’s just me, I want to tell her. I’m still the same person I was before.
“Look,” I tell her, “I know this is a long shot, but there’s a book club potluck tonight, if you’re interested.”
Chloe blinks at me. “A potluck?” she repeats.
“I know,” I say, suddenly embarrassed by the earnestness of it—it’s the kind of thing we probably would have made fun of, three months ago. “It’s kind of like, very Midwestern mom of us? But it could be fun, right? And you don’t have to be in the book club to come, so . . .”
Chloe nods slowly. “Um, thanks,” she says. “I’ve got other plans, but . . . sounds fun.”
I wince. Other plans, like she’s some vague acquaintance on the T who doesn’t want to come to my weird church group and not the person who knows me best and longest, who always comes into a one-person bathroom with me when we’re out together and whose house I’ve thrown up in on two separate occasions.
“Sure thing,” I tell her. “Maybe another time, then.”
“Maybe,” Chloe says, leaning over the sink to reapply her lipstick. Neither one of us says goodbye before I go.
After Gray’s practice, we head over to the potluck together, his heavy hand on mine. I’ve always kind of liked being in school when it’s dark out, how it feels weirdly festive; Lydia and Elisa made decorations for the bio lab, brightly colored paper bunting hung up above the whiteboard, and a bunch of desks are pushed together and draped with a purple plastic cloth. Gray brought brownies one of his moms made, studded with walnuts and caramel chips and topped with flaky sea salt. Dave stopped at McDonald’s and got like five dozen Chicken McNuggets, and Chloe’s dad sent me with a huge to-go container of lamb meatballs with a yogurt dipping sauce from the restaurant. Even Ms. Klein brought something, though she’s always talking about how she doesn’t ever turn her oven on—tiny crostini spread with herby cheese and dolloped with fancy blackberry jam.
This is the first time we’ve all hung out where we didn’t have a specific book to talk about, and I was worried it might be as awkward as it was back at the very beginning, but to my surprise the room is echoing with conversations: Bri and Maddie, the jazz band freshmen who’ve been showing up since the very beginning, are debating whether cheerleading is inherently sexist, while Dave and Gray scroll through Gray’s phone, putting together a playlist of pump-up jams.
“My boyfriend is obsessed with this one,” Dave says, hitting play on what I think is the new Halsey. He dates a super cute guy on the track team who’s dropped in on a couple of our meetings and knew a shocking amount about feminist film theory.
“It’s also important to think about the ways that women of color are left out of the conversation,” Ms. Klein is saying when I drift over toward the dessert table. “Like when people say that women make seventy-seven cents on the dollar, what they mean is white women. For black women it’s sixty-three cents on the dollar. And for Latina women it’s even less.”
“It’s fifty-four cents,” Elisa pipes up from across the room, then goes back to talking with Fiona Tyler, a sophomore who joined the club a couple of weeks ago, about some musical show on the CW they both like.
“No offense,” Lydia says, crossing her ankles and leaning back on the desk she’s perched on, “but when it comes to feminism, or whatever, it feels like white ladies always kind of want to make the conversation about them. Like they’re the only ones whose ideas or priorities anyone should listen to.”
My first reaction is to feel defensive—that’s not what I’m doing, is it?—but then I take a breath, thinking about everything I thought I knew about feminism before I started the book club. I know that I’ve still got a ton left to learn.
“I can see that,” I admit. “Like I remember reading an article about the original name of the Women’s March being a rip-off of the Million Man March, an
d when black activists pointed that out a bunch of white women got all offended.”
“Yeah, that’s one example,” Lydia says, though from her expression I can tell it’s nowhere near the most important one. “But basically it’s just that a lot of white women have this idea that feminism can be separated out from race or sexual identity or ability or any of that—and it can’t. If you’re going to go in, you have to go all in, you know?”
“The Audre Lorde essay we’re going to be talking about next week is a great example of how different identities and marginalizations intersect and inform each other,” Ms. Klein says, nibbling the corner of a brownie. “And you guys put Her Body and Other Parties on the list of books you might want to tackle, right?”
“That book is awesome,” Gray says immediately. “And, like, super gory.”
I look at him in surprise. “You’ve read it?”
He shrugs. “My mom got it for me, ’cause I said I liked Stephen King.”
The conversation wanders from there—from Pet Sematary to who bought winter formal tickets and who they’re taking, to the new werewolf show that just went up on Netflix, to a short biography of Ida B. Wells that Fiona pulls up on her phone when Dave admits to not knowing who she is. She’s just finishing up when I notice Gray sneaking a look at his messages.
“You got another date?” I ask, nudging him gently in the side.
He shakes his head. “There’s a party at Hurley Dubcek’s,” he admits. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to go after this, but I didn’t want you to think I didn’t want to be here.” Gray looks around. “Because I do,” he says resolutely, like he thinks he’s running for political office. “Want to be here.”
“Okay, big feminist,” I say, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder. “We believe you.”
“I was going to swing by that party too, actually,” Lydia pipes up. “If anybody wants a ride.”
There’s a moment of awkward quiet then, all of us looking around at each other, none of us wanting to be the first to bail.
Finally Ms. Klein lets out a snort. “Get out of here,” she says, popping one last meatball into her mouth before snapping the lid back onto the take-out container. “Make good choices, et cetera. I’ll see you guys next week.”
Twenty-Seven
Hurley Dubcek lives in one of those quintessential Massachusetts houses that’s been around since the colonies, with a steeply pitched roof and no real front porch, like maybe they didn’t have time for things like that back then because there was too much butter to be churned. As we walk past an antique china cabinet in the narrow hallway all the delicate-looking dishes rattle ominously.
“I always feel like a frickin’ monster in places like this,” Gray murmurs over my shoulder.
I nod. “I was just thinking that exact same thing about you.”
He looks at me, mock horror on his handsome face. “Rude!”
I grin at him. “I’m kidding.” I reach back and take his hand, lacing our fingers together and squeezing once before releasing him. “Come on.”
We pull a couple of warm cans from a thirty-pack in the kitchen, watching as Elisa grabs Lydia a Diet Coke from the fridge before pulling Dave in the direction of the backyard. Gray lets out a low whistle.
“Check out book club,” he says with a smile. In the end almost everyone who was at the potluck wound up coming, all of us rolling down the windows in Lydia’s mom’s van and singing along to the radio at the tops of our lungs. “Ready to rage.”
“I was surprised they all showed up tonight,” I admit as we edge through the crowd into the living room, where someone has pushed aside what looks like a hundred-year-old leather sofa to make room to dance on the knotty wood floors. “To the potluck, I mean. Honestly, I’m surprised they show up at the actual meetings too, but you know what I’m saying.”
“Kind of.” Gray shrugs, tilting his head back against the wall in between two ancient-looking botanical prints. “They’re showing up because of you though.”
I laugh. “Maybe you are.”
“I’m serious,” Gray counters with a frown. “It’s not just me. It’s cool, what you started.”
“Well,” I say, suddenly self-conscious. I look out in the living room, where Dean Shepherd is attempting an extremely rudimentary pop-and-lock situation near the enormous stone fireplace. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” Gray lifts his chin. “You want to dance?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Do you?”
“Always.” He takes my hand, pulling me into the living room. “Come on.”
Gray is the most enthusiastic dancer I’ve ever met, which in no way means he’s good at it—arms and legs everywhere, a goofy, uncoordinated shuffle. I wonder what it’s like not to care about what people think—although, yes, it’s certainly easier not to care what people think when you’re a six-foot-tall lacrosse star with a reputation for getting a million girls.
Just for tonight though, I don’t want to worry about that. I close my eyes and shake my hair and let Gray twirl me around—liking the winter-woods smell of him, the feeling of his chest pressed against my back.
Eventually Dave comes and rounds us up for a game of book club beer pong; I promise to meet them outside before detouring toward the powder room tucked underneath the staircase in the front hall. I twist the creaky glass knob, pulling the door open—and almost trip right over Chloe, who’s sitting with her knees pulled up on the tile. “Whoops,” I say, holding up my hands to show I come in peace. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Chloe mumbles, tipping her head back against the peeling toile-patterned wallpaper. Her eyeliner is migrating down her face. “I was just leaving.”
She curls her fingers around the sink, pulling herself unsteadily to her feet. “I—whoops.” She stumbles a little, bracing her free hand against the wall.
I frown. So this was what she meant by “other plans.” I haven’t seen her this drunk since fall of freshman year, when we experimented with the peach schnapps at the back of my parents’ liquor cabinet and wound up throwing up all over my basement by 9:00 p.m.
“Are you okay?” I can’t help asking.
“I’m fine,” she snaps, then immediately turns and barfs up a stomach full of bright blue party punch. She makes the toilet, thank God, but just barely; I reach over and gather her hair back like an instinct, just like she did for me last year when I puked in the bushes behind her house after spring formal. Both of us can just barely fit in here at once.
When she’s finally finished I pass her a wad of TP to wipe her mouth with, tucking my hands in my pockets and looking discreetly away as she pulls herself together.
“Um,” she says, clearing her throat and swiping her thumbs under her eyes to wipe the makeup away. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” I say, with the kind of polite Don’t worry about it smile you offer someone when they’ve only got one item at the grocery store and you’re letting them cut ahead of you in line. “You got a ride home?”
I’m prepared for some variation of You’re not my fucking mother, but instead Chloe just nods.
“Emily is going to take me,” she says, and I nod back.
“That’s good.” We stand there for a moment, looking at each other. This is Chloe, I remind myself, who taught me how to do an understated cat eye and is allergic to apples unless you microwave them for ten seconds first and can recite the entire second season of Parks and Rec from memory. I know her like I know Gracie; I know her like I know myself. But it feels like I’m looking at a stranger.
“Okay,” I say finally. “Well. Have a good night, then.”
“You too,” Chloe says. She looks at me for a long moment, her eyes suddenly clear and focused. “Listen, Marin—” she starts, then abruptly breaks off. “Never mind,” she says, and it’s like I can see the moment she changes her mind about saying whatever it is she’s got to say to me. “I’ll see you.”
“No, hey, wait.” I’ve been edging out of the
tiny bathroom, but suddenly I stop. “What’s up?”
Chloe shakes her head. “It’s nothing,” she says, curling her fingers around the doorjamb for balance and brushing past me. “I’ll see you around.”
So . . . That’s that, I guess.
I pee and wash my hands and make my way out into the backyard, which boasts a statue of a gnome holding a gazing ball, a tiny wishing well complete with crank and wooden bucket, and one of those little decorative ponds you can fill with Japanese koi. In this case it seems to be mostly filled with muck, which isn’t stopping a bunch of people from playing catch across the diameter of it, one of those old Nerf footballs with the fin on the back of it sailing through the air. Gray and the rest of the book club are still negotiating the rules of this alleged beer pong tournament, though suddenly the last thing I want to do is play some dumb drinking game.
“I’m not having fun anymore,” I announce, and Gray frowns.
“Can’t have that,” he says. Then, more seriously: “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I offer him a smile; I want to explain about Chloe, but I don’t want to do it here. “You want to maybe bail though?”
There’s a part of me that’s expecting him to be kind of a dick about it, but instead Gray just nods right away, taking my hand as we turn to go. That’s when I hear a scoff off to my left, and when I turn I see Jacob. A bottle of Coors dangles from his fingers.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
“Just enjoying this little lovefest,” he calls from the edge of the mucky pond. He’s even drunker than Chloe, if that’s possible. There’s a mean, hard glint in his eye. He turns to Gray, his nasty smirk morphing into a faux-magnanimous smile.
“It’s cool if you want my sloppy seconds, dude,” he says, slurring just a little. “And Bex’s too, I guess.”
I take an instinctive step back, shocked as if he’d slapped me. There’s a moment when I feel, horribly, like I’m about to cry.
“What did you just say?” Gray asks. His voice is perfectly pleasant—friendly, even—but he lets go of my hand as he takes a step closer to Jacob, who squares his shoulders and holds his ground.
Rules for Being a Girl Page 13
