Charm and Consequence

by Stephanie Wardrop

  Thank you to everyone who read SNARK AND CIRCUMSTANCE. And to Kevin Renshaw and Caroline Cranos, who have long been high bidders in my heart.

  Charm and Consequence

  Snark and Circumstance #2

  Stephanie Wardrop

  Hypocrites and a Hit and Run

  The hypocrisy at Longbourne High School is reaching toxic levels today. My article about ethical reasons to go vegan came out in the alternative paper this morning, and everyone is acting like there is something wrong with me because I’m the only one at this school who doesn’t think it’s just not a meal if some animal wasn’t tortured before landing on my plate.

  In homeroom, Blair Whittaker stops by my desk and asks, “Um, Georgia, does a carrot feel pain when you pull it out of the ground?” then laughs at his prodigious wit all the way to his own seat.

  In Spanish class, Caleb Colter meets me in the doorway and follows me to my seat, demanding to know if I have ever actually spent any time with a chicken. “They’ll peck your eyes out,” he warns me as he blocks my way to my seat.

  “I don’t blame them,” I mutter as Senora Baldwin tells him to “sientense, por favor.” I take my seat, relieved to be drilled on the past perfect tense for once, but before I can open my book to the right page, I notice some girls leaning over to scrutinize my shoes. I look at them with a raised eyebrow.

  One points at my ballet flats and whisper-gasps the word: “Leather?”

  “No,” I mouth back. “Synthetic.” She wrinkles her nose like I’d just passed gas. I don’t know which she would find more offensive—the fact that no animals were harmed in the making of my footwear or that I bought said footwear at Payless.

  Next period in bio class, Darryl Milken, a human block of cement, snorts as Miss Grogan writes something on the board. “Your article was such bullshit propaganda. How do you know eating meat is bad for you?”

  “You seem to be all the proof I need, Darryl,” I say before I can stop myself. “I mean, do you really want to ingest any more synthetic growth hormones—or are you trying to get big enough to become your own zip code?”

  A couple of kids gasp, then laugh, but before I can say anything else, Miss Grogan starts talking and I hear Darryl mutter, “Bitch” under his breath.

  Why are people so hostile? At my editor/friend Dave’s suggestion, I even took out all the really hardcore “slaughterhouses are like Auschwitz for the animals” stuff from the article, but so many people are still insulted by the simple suggestion that stuffing your face with dead flesh might show a lack of compassion. Others are just indifferent, like the members of the Science Club who are in the cafeteria when I get there, taping up really tacky-looking posters urging people to Save the Rainforest and chowing down on whatever mystery meat the lunch ladies have slapped on trays today. I’m fairly sure they would eat the coatimundis and marmosets they’re ostensibly trying to save if the hairnet brigade had served them on buns today.

  I have to get out of there. I tell Dave and Gary and Shondra that I need some fresh air, and when I get outside, I feel instantly better. This is my second New England fall, and I have to admit that the shades of russet and orange and red and yellow exploding all over town in mid-autumn are pretty spectacular. Some days there’s a snap to the air that makes just breathing in feel like you’ve taken a bite of a crisp, juicy apple. I sit under a skinny sapling held up by two taut wires, then hear my name being called. I look up to see my big sister, Tori, getting out of a car with her boyfriend. Trey is wholesome and athletic in an all-American way; he’d make the perfect pitchman for Teen Prozac if there was such a thing. But I like him anyway.

  “Hey, you two,” I say as they approach. Trey’s family just moved to Longbourne this summer, and Tori just met him about a week ago, but already they look like they belong together, a matched set of winsome blue-eyed blondes. “What were you doing?”

  “I left my physics notes at home so Trey drove me to pick them up,” Tori explains.

  “Great day for a picnic!” Trey enthuses and I offer him my bag of tortilla chips for the effort. I see Michael Endicott get out of his car and walk across the lot toward us. Both Tori and Trey wave him over like they’re bringing in an airliner on a foggy runway and only the sheer force of their good will can land the plane safely.

  I’m less enthusiastic about Michael Endicott’s arrival. Michael may be a new transfer from a snotty prep school, but his family founded Longbourne a couple hundred years ago—no doubt by swindling the natives out of it in exchange for firewater and some quilted floral handbags—and he never lets anyone forget it. When I first met him at the beginning of the year and found out that I would have to be his lab partner in bio and the year-long series of projects in AP English, I seriously considered taking night school classes and getting a GED just to avoid him. But since I promised my mom that I would try to give people more of a chance this year at school, I’ve sworn to focus on the good things in Michael.

  And he may actually be kind of okay, if you can get past the look of perpetual self-satisfaction in his eyes. On the list of Good Things about Michael Endicott: dark eyes that are kind of like melty chocolate chips and hair with all of these curls that he just can’t keep down. And when he laughs it sort of erupts up through his throat in a surprised rumble and makes you want to laugh, too. Plus, his report on Chaucer helped our group kick butt on the English presentation last week, so I guess I find him much more tolerable these days. Attractive, even. That’s a pretty solid list, right?

  I give him a little wave as he reaches the edge of the grass, and ask, “Where were you in bio today?”

  “Dentist appointment,” he explains, then smirks and points to my hemp lunch bag. “So, Georgia, you brought your ethically acceptable lunch out into nature today? What’s on the menu—braised tofu, mashed yeast, turnips sprouts?” On the list of Bad Things about Michael Endicott? The fact that no one finds my veganism more hilarious than he.

  “Ha, ha,” I say, raising one eyebrow at him, which I’ve found gets people to shut up sometimes, if for no other reason than they wonder how you did it. “You should consider going vegan, though. I’m assuming that all of the meat you’ve eaten in your lifetime is clogging the arteries to your brain. Something is seriously impairing your sense of humor.”

  “I promise to read your article in The Alt again and take notes,” he laughs, and actually winks at me. I thought only grandfathers did any winking these days, but for some reason, it actually feels kind of good to be winked at, like we’re co-conspirators. Like we share something.

  Tori leans into Trey a little, tosses her blond curls, and says, “I thought you guys worked out the lab partner situation?”

  “Oh, we did,” I assure her, smiling at Michael as I say, “He writes, I draw; he wields the scalpel, I’ve got the Sharpie.”

  Michael nods and adds, “And for our English class projects, Georgia’s agreed to allow the group to report on the occasional white male character as long as we acknowledge how heinously he has oppressed the female characters.”

  I roll my eyes and he smirks at me.

  “Sounds like you’re a perfect team,” Trey says, which proves my suspicion that he has a tin ear for irony. He adds, “Hey, Tori and I are going to a movie tomorrow night. You guys should come, too!”

  I look at Tori for a second to make sure that this is okay with her. She smiles like she just received a generous and unexpected gift and not at all like a big sister confronted with a pesky little-sister tagalong. I turn to Michael then, just as he says, rather sharply, “No.”

  Just, “No.”

  Not, “No, I have to wash my grandmother’s back that night.”

  Or, “No, I read to orphans at the library on Fridays
.”

  Or, “No, my religion strictly forbids the viewing of moving images.”

  Or even, “No, thank you.”

  He has the grace to add, “Sorry,” but it’s a few seconds too late. I can feel myself turning red and my body temperature has shot up to sub-Saharan levels. I duck my head and begin digging in my lunch bag as if something is in there that I desperately need—like a bigger bag to put over my head. Normally I’d feel indignant at his rudeness, and I do, a bit, but mostly I just feel mortified. I can’t even speak because I’m too busy concentrating on squelching that tingly feeling in my nostrils that comes before tears, and loathing myself for feeling it.

  “Some other time, then?” Trey says and puts a hand on Michael’s shoulder for a second. Michael turns to me and starts to say something but I turn my head and he just walks away.

  When he’s gone, I finally look up and say, “Well, I’m not offended. Not in the least.”

  The bell starts to ring and Tori stands up, eying me with concern. Trey laughs, though, and tells me, “Don’t mind him. I’ve only known him for a few weeks, and Michael is, like, one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. But socially …he seems kind of oblivious sometimes.”

  Tori giggles and Trey grins at her, pleased with whatever he did to produce the sound. “You can come with us anyway,” he tells me, which is awfully decent of him, and Tori nods so vigorously her curls shake.

  “No, you two crazy kids try to have fun without me,” I say as a horde of students approaches the double doors to push into the school before the bell rings. I get lost in the human surge, feeling a sickening combination of anger and humiliation roiling in my stomach.

  Much later at home, I’m sitting on my bed trying to get past number three on my calculus homework when Tori comes in, looking all apologetic and worried.

  “You know Michael didn’t mean to hurt your feelings this afternoon,” she says as she takes a seat on her bed. I don’t know what annoys me more, the fact that she presumes that I am still brooding about it or the fact that I actually am still brooding about it.

  “Oh, I’m sure Michael didn’t think about my feelings at all,” I say.

  “I mean,” Tori explains, “I don’t think he meant to sound so rude to just blow you off like that.”

  “Tor, don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal. I can accept that I am a mere mortal and therefore not good enough for the illustrious Longbourne Endicotts.”

  Tori sighs. “I’m sure Michael’s really not like that.”

  “Not like what? A self-satisfied dingwad? Because it seems that he’s exactly like that. He didn’t have to be repulsed by the idea of being seen in public with me. It’s not like it was a date or anything, right? Just four people going to a movie? Not a lifetime commitment. No need to start a gift registry, no engraved invitations. Just watching the same freakin’ movie.”

  “You really can come with us Friday, if you want,” she coaxes, reaching out a hand. I take it for a second and shake my head. “Absolutely not,” I say. “It will be bad enough hanging out here with Leigh and her Jesus Freak boyfriend. I don’t need to go out for humiliation.”

  Tori sighs again, walks over to the dresser, and pulls out her pajamas.

  She doesn’t mention it again.

  The Secret Perversions of Harry Potter

  Just when I think that the hypocrisy level in Longbourne has reached critical mass, I get home from school on Friday and find one of my younger sisters, Leigh, in the kitchen with a boy. Two things are so startlingly wrong with this picture that for a second I think I’ve walked into the wrong house. For one, it’s Leigh with an actual boy her own age, and for another she has on a bright berry-colored sweater and jeans and the front pieces of her hair are pulled back in a ponytail cascading over the rest of her long ,wavy dark blonde hair, while normally she looks like she shops the clearance rack of Amish R Us. I realize the new Jesus Freak would-be boyfriend must be really early for dinner. It’s too late to back out the door because they’ve seen me.

  “Hi, Georgia,” Leigh says brightly as she sets down a glass of milk in front of the boy seated at our little breakfast table. “This is Alistair Colwin.”

  “Oh, Alistair,” I say as I set down my bag. “Your dad’s the new minister at Leigh’s church, right?”

  At first he just nods because he has a mouthful of the cookies I baked last night, then wipes the crumbs from his mouth, and says, “Yes. We would like to see you there next Sunday, as well. You and all of your family.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Leigh sniffs when she takes the seat across from him.

  “Yeah, the rest of us Barretts are pretty much dyed-in-the wool pagans,” I say when he looks at me quizzically. “But I bake a mean chocolate chip.”

  The back door slams shut and someone squeals, “Oh. My. God. You look just like Harry Potter, in the movies!” The three of us look up to see Cassie, Leigh’s evil twin, in the doorway. The two of them seem to be the product of a psycho-biological experiment to see how different two human beings split from the same zygote can be. While Leigh is devoted to Jesus and living a life of good Christian example, Cassie’s devoted herself to Mary Magdalene. Or at least to dressing like a twenty-first century version of her.

  “I’ve never seen any of the Harry Potter movies,” Alistair informs us. “I avoid movies and books that glorify witchcraft.”

  Cassie snorts so hard that the Diet Coke she’s guzzling almost bursts through her nostrils.

  “Harry Potter’s about magic, not witchcraft,” she says, as if Alistair were an unusually stupid specimen of slug she found on the bottom of her rain boot.

  “Witchcraft and magic are both the work of the devil,” he tells us, and I almost laugh until I realize he’s not kidding. Leigh is starting to flush a little bit across her cheeks and Cassie bursts into laughter. I guess it’s not often she can feel superior to anyone in their critique of reading material—my dad’s an English professor, so we talk books a lot in our house. But since few people around here bother to analyze Cosmo Girl, Cassie is usually left out of the discussion. She jumps in now with the enthusiasm of one of our cats finding a long-lost mouse toy under the couch.

  “There’s no devil in Harry Potter!” she scoffs, tossing her blond hair for emphasis like a horse swatting a fly.

  “And there is no God in Harry Potter,” Alistair responds. He turns to Leigh and asks suspiciously, “Have you read these books?”

  “Just the first one,” she admits, though I’m pretty sure as they were passed down to her from me and Tori, years ago, that Leigh read all of them. At least once. .

  Cassie gives up talking to this uniquely unappetizing member of the male species and turns to me with a roll of her gray blue eyes, saying, “Mom is at her Ladies’ Aid thing now so she says you have to drive me to the game. Ten minutes? I’m going up to change.”

  When she leaves, I grab a cookie before they’re all gone and take a seat, even though Leigh is pretty much begging me with her eyes not to.

  “So is that what your family was doing in China, teaching the heathens in the field about the evils of teen movies?” I ask Alistair.

  “In part,” he says, setting down his half-drained glass of milk. “American pop culture is taking hold in China very rapidly. They need to be warned.”

  “Oh, no doubt. So you’re not just teaching them about virgin births and eating with forks, then.”

  He sits back in his chair and looks at me carefully over the round glasses that give him an owlish quality. He says, “We were taking God’s word where it had not been heard, just as we are doing here in Massachusetts now.”

  “That worked out so well for Cotton Mather, right? Please warn me before the next public burning so I can get out of town.”

  Leigh jumps up to get the milk jug and says to me, “Not everyone is as cynical as you, George. Some of us believe there is a better life beyond this.”

  “I’m counting on that, believe me,” I tell her.

&
nbsp; Alistair sits up then and leans toward me. “So you are ready to be saved,” he announces, and actually reaches for my hands. I pull them back, fast, like his anointed fingers might singe my heathen flesh, and say, “Saved from the boredom and hypocrisy of this town? Hallelujah!” I wave my hands in the air in my best approximation of a gospel singer.

  “Saved from a life of sin,” Alistair says patiently but I can hear an edge in his voice now.

  “I honestly don’t think I sin that much, Alistair.”

  “We have all sinned, Georgia,” Alistair says with a gnomish little smile that makes me feel like a spider is crawling across my shoulders. “But Jesus died so that we may be saved.”

  Fortunately, Cassie bounces in at that moment and distracts Alistair with her short red skirt and tight white cheer sweater with the big black LHS on it. I pick up the car keys from the basket by the door, grateful to be heading anywhere else, even if it is the parking lot behind some other school’s gymnasium to drop off my sister. I can feel Alistair’s owl eyes on us as we walk out the door, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the state of Cassie’s soul he’s assessing as he does.

  When I get home, Tori’s already out on her movie date with Trey and Leigh and Alistair are in the den watching something wholesome, possibly involving hand puppets, on television. For dinner, Mom makes enough spaghetti (with meat sauce) to feed a small nation, and gets so excited when Leigh mentions that the church is planning a Purity Ball for New Year’s Eve that she misses the crucial information that this event involves girls getting rings from their fathers and vowing that they will abstain from sex before marriage.

  “So they basically pledge their hymens to their fathers?” I spit out, just to clarify it for my distracted mother. Her excitement abates enough for her to worry out loud, “I’m not sure your father will agree to that,” revealing her uncanny gift for understatement.

  I turn to Leigh and ask, “Do boys make the same kind of pledge?”

  “No,” Leigh says, hazel eyes dull now, like I’m about to slap her, and I feel sort of bad then.

  “Just the girls,” Alistair confirms.