by Bridget Farr
After school I wait for Daniela right outside the school doors while she turns in an assignment for math. Kids push past me, already grabbing the contraband out of their backpacks—chips, candy, phones—as they head toward the buses. The breeze blows the hair off my cheek, and I’m grateful for the momentary break from the heat. I’m sweating because I’m nervous and because it’s over a hundred degrees. No wonder girls want to wear shorts and skirts. September in Texas is like walking on the sun.
“Let’s go!” I say the moment I see Daniela, no time to waste.
“Hold on, everybody!” our crossing guard, Officer Dominguez, shouts as she blocks our path, her voice too big for her body. She moves to the center of the street and waves us across with flags. Behind us a flood of kids heads for the 7-Eleven. The owner must be a millionaire.
The doorbell rings as we enter, and there’s already a line of kids down the counter past the hot dogs and the coolers of energy drinks. Gloria’s not in line, which is actually better since it would be weird to talk to her while she was waiting to check out.
“Is she here?” Daniela asks, and I shrug, looking down the first aisle. “What’s the plan when we find her? ‘Hey, Gloria, do you get dress coded a lot? Want to join our protest?’”
“I don’t really have a plan, but that works!”
“Margie! We’re going to sound like stupid sixth graders.” Daniela marches toward the coolers.
“Trust me. I’ll think of—”
Suddenly I spot Gloria at the end of the candy aisle. “That’s her!”
“I cannot believe we’re doing this,” Daniela mutters as I pull her toward Gloria. She is scanning the chocolate bars when we approach.
“Excuse me, Gloria?” I say, and she turns with a confused look.
“Yeah…”
“Hi. I’m Margie. We met in ISS a couple weeks ago?” Gloria tilts her head. It seems to take her a minute to recognize me. Daniela elbows my ribs. “This is my friend, Daniela.”
They both say hi and wait for me to keep this awkward conversation moving.
“I know this is weird coming up to you, but we’re working on this project, and we need your help.”
Gloria raises an eyebrow. “Help with what?”
“You said you’ve been dress coded a bunch of times, right?”
She nods, slowly, twisting quarters between her fingers. “So?”
She’s wearing a cropped white blouse over army-green cargo pants ripped at the knees. I wonder if she got dress coded today. Even if she didn’t, I know what the adults at school would be thinking: her clothes are inappropriate. She doesn’t look “ready to learn.” She’s a distraction. But she looks confident to me. And tough. And also beautiful, but that’s just an afterthought.
“Does it bother you that you get dress coded all the time?” I ask, leaning against the shelf of peanuts and trail mix.
Gloria shrugs. “I’m used to it.”
“You’re way braver than I am because spending seven hours in detention doing nothing was awful. Not to mention the gross gym shorts. It’s been bugging me ever since that girls get dress coded way more than boys at our school.”
Gloria scoffs. “Yeah, I know. That’s been happening since I was in sixth grade.”
“Right! And we want to do something to change it.”
Gloria looks at me and then Daniela. “Like what?”
I turn to Daniela for some encouragement, but she just looks at me like “Go ahead, this is your big idea.”
“We want to do a protest. Like a walkout or a march.” I grab my phone to show her the Instagram account. She leans forward to look at the picture. “We’re using #LiveOakCodeBreakers as a hashtag.”
“No manches, walking out of class will get you written up. You’ll get suspended,” Gloria says, crossing her arms.
“We know,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel. I haven’t really let myself dwell on the consequences.
“For something big like a protest, you might even get sent to ALC,” she adds. The alternative learning center. I heard about it when I was in ISS. Only the kids who’ve committed major crimes get sent there. It’s like boot camp and school mixed together. Gloria assesses me, probably wondering what I wonder all the time: Am I brave enough to do this?
“If it happens, it happens,” I say, and she half smiles as if she only half believes me.
“So what do you need me for?”
Daniela steps forward. “We’re having a hard time getting girls to join us because we’re sixth graders, and we don’t know that many people yet, and honestly, we’re sixth graders—”
“And, mija, you need me to help get people to do your protest?”
“It would be our protest, then,” I add. “There’s not a lot of time for things to change before you go to high school, but we could really use your help. If you want to. You can think about it. We’re on Instagram.”
Daniela grabs my elbow. “And now we have to go because we’re late for practice, but thanks for listening.”
“Yeah,” Gloria says, a bemused smile on her face. She grabs a Milky Way as Daniela and I burrow into the crowd of students clutching their snacks. I’m feeling good, hopeful but not certain, but also, I’m super sweaty from being nervous and hot. Outside, the streets are full of cars waiting for pickup.
“I think she might actually say yes,” Daniela says as we wait for the crossing guard to let us back across the street. Finally, she waves the flags, her whistle blowing three short bursts at the car speeding down the street.
“I hope so.”
“Now we need to run so we’re not even more late!”
“Beat you there!” I yell as I take off running down the sidewalk, certain Daniela will be by my side in seconds.
It comes in the middle of practice. While I’m taking a break from printing out new question packets on Mr. Shao’s dusty old computer, I get it. A new Instagram follower: @GlowGirl13. Daniela is in a practice round, her back to me. I whisper her name while Marcus flips through the cards. She doesn’t turn.
“Daniela!” I shout a little louder, and she flips around.
“What?”
I hold up my phone. “It’s Gloria!”
She mouths “cool,” but I can tell she’s really thinking “Not right now.”
A couple of seconds later my phone buzzes. A notification of a message from GlowGirl13.
I hide my phone under the desk and peek over my shoulder, just in case Mr. Shao decides to enforce the school’s no-phone policy. I confirm that he is still hanging up some student-made posters about World War I on the wall across the room. I open my Instagram to see the message: Dress I wore last week. Third time dress coded this year. Then, a photo of her in a tall mirror. She’s wearing a black-and-white-striped T-shirt dress with the sleeves rolled up past her elbows. The curved hem of the dress is a few inches above her knees: short, but too short? “Let’s do it” is scrolled across the picture in lime-green writing.
I send her a message. Really?
Por que no? she types again. What’s the plan?
Right. We need a plan.
Working on it. Let’s talk tomorrow?
Ok, Chica.
I set my phone down, realizing for the first time that this idea isn’t just in my head anymore. It’s not just Daniela and I scheming from my bedroom. Gloria knows, and soon the whole school will hear about it, too. It’s happening.
I hope we’re ready.
Chapter 16
Gloria is the baking soda to our vinegar-filled volcano. Once she joined, the protest erupted, pictures and comments and followers flowing around the school like magma. We’re up to one hundred followers on Instagram, and now I hear whispers about it at lunch and in the girls’ bathroom. Instead of laughing at the girls in the oversize T-shirts or gym shorts, people are angry, grumbling about the teachers and Mr. Franklin, our principal, as they pretend to complete assignments. Girls have even started sharing our new hashtag: #brainsnotbodies.
>
Gloria’s been livestreaming the different outfits she’s been dress coded in, commenting on why she liked the shirt or where she got the pants, telling the true story of the clothes and her fashion sense and not the one the school forced on her: that she was trying to be sexy, that she was focused only on her looks and not her education. Other girls have started sending us photos of themselves in their dress code outfits. It’s how we got the idea for the actual protest. In just over a week, we’re all going to walk out of class, changing into or revealing one of the outfits we had on when we got dress coded. People like Daniela, who’ve never been dress coded, can wear whatever matches their style because it’s not about wearing short shorts. It’s about wearing what we want.
Since Mr. Shao is out of the room making copies, the boys are louder than normal as they finish a second round of questions in preparation for tomorrow’s preseason match. Elman leaps out of his chair anytime his team gets an answer right. At one point, Marcus puts Mikey in a headlock. Daniela and Jamiya quiz each other on the latest question set while they wait their turn. No one bothers me as I scroll my phone.
Hazlo! Gloria sends again. No temes los haters. She’s been trying to get me to livestream, but I’m too embarrassed to talk on camera. On the Quiz Bowl stage, I know what kinds of things I’m going to get asked, but on a livestream, I just have to go with the flow, and I don’t flow. That’s what makes Gloria so great.
But I’ll be terrible! You’re so relaxed. I’ll just send a photo of me in my other dress code skirt.
Si puedes! Just talk and be yourself.
That’s much easier when you’re an eighth grader with a ton of confidence.
“You’ve gone viral,” Sean says as he slides into the desk beside me. I flip my phone over, hiding the chat, though I’m not sure why I’m suddenly so embarrassed that he saw it. I want people to see it. “It’s really cool what you’re doing. The dress code is trash. Look.”
He gestures toward the boys at the front: at least two have shorts that are questionably above their knees. He’s not telling me anything I don’t already know. Even though I don’t respond, he keeps going.
“I’m going to do it. Walk out with you guys. I heard about it from some of the eighth-grade girls, but I didn’t know it was you who started it. I thought it was that girl Gloria.”
“Gloria’s done almost all the posts,” I say, looking over at his clothes: khaki shorts and an orange T-shirt both safely within the dress code guidelines. “How’d you know it was me who started it?”
“Jamiya told us at lunch.”
Suddenly, Marcus is standing in front of me. He shoves his phone in my face.
“This you, Dress Code?” I look at the first photo Daniela and I so perfectly edited.
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” Marcus looks impressed. “You’re planning a walkout?”
“Uh-huh. Tuesday after next, right before seventh period, after eighth-grade lunch. The assistant principals and counselors should still be in the cafeteria then.”
“How many people you think are gonna go?” Marcus hops on the desk across from me, scrolling on his phone. Does he want me to answer?
“I don’t know. That photo has one hundred and fourteen likes. And people have been sharing it in their Instagram stories, too. Maybe a hundred. Maybe more.”
Marcus smiles. “And boys can do it, too?”
“Anybody who thinks the dress code is sexist.”
“What about people who just want to see more girls in short skirts?”
If I were braver, I would roll my eyes. Marcus laughs. “I’m just kidding. You got to fight the good fight. We get that. You should’ve seen how tough it was to be on this team back when Mr. Eiger was the coach. It was all white kids.” He turns to Sean, tousling his curls. “No offense, man.”
“None taken.”
Marcus sighs. “This school? It’s not cool what they do to girls.”
What they do? Apparently he doesn’t realize that the Quiz Bowl boys aren’t much better.
“We’ll do it,” Sean says, leaning so close I can smell the spice of his deodorant. “The whole team.”
“We’ll be like Mother Jones’s 1903 March of the Mill Children,” Marcus says.
“Or the Birmingham Children’s Crusade,” Sean adds.
“East LA Walkouts.”
“Black Lives Matter.”
“Parkland.”
Leave it to Quiz Bowl kids to geek out over protests, though I wonder whether these boys willing to march for the dress code realize they’re part of the problem.
Chapter 17
The school parking lot is almost empty when our bus pulls up to Cactus Canyon Middle School on Saturday morning. It’s our first Quiz Bowl match of the year, and even though it’s not part of the official season, almost everyone’s family is coming to watch. A few cars are already parked by the door. Most of the seats in our yellow school bus are empty since there’s only thirteen of us huddled in the back. Mr. Shao sits right behind the driver, sipping coffee from a thermos. Thankfully, Daniela sat with me, though she paused before sitting down and her eyes flicked to Jamiya’s seat three rows behind.
When the bus stops, Mr. Shao pops out of his seat, clutching his clipboard. “Don’t leave any trash on the bus!” he calls, even though none of us needed a snack on the ten-minute ride. We gather our backpacks, people sending quick texts to their parents that we’ve arrived, and pile off the bus. I grab the buzzer system, one of my alternate jobs for the day. Jamiya makes everyone line up beside the bus for a picture for the team account.
As we walk toward the entrance, I spot Daniela’s parents and her little brother, Miguel, waiting beneath the cement overhang. Mr. Jaimes waves Miguel’s little hand at us, and Daniela rushes up to tickle his round belly. His giggles fill the empty parking lot.
“Hola, Margarita,” Daniela’s mom says as she kisses both my cheeks. “¡Buena suerte!”
No luck is needed to be the alternate, but I still thank her. Mr. Jaimes pulls Daniela into a side hug in one arm while Miguel wriggles in the other. He kisses the top of her head, and I reach over to squeeze Miguel’s tiny foot in an adorably tiny sneaker.
“Is your dad coming, Margie?” Mr. Jaimes asks.
I shake my head. Dad still doesn’t know I’m an alternate so he thought I was actually competing today, but for the millionth weekend in a row, he had too much work to leave his computer. He apologized all morning and even promised takeout. As the alternate, there wouldn’t really be anything for him to see, but I’m still disappointed he’s missing my first Quiz Bowl match of middle school. Hopefully he’ll have more time next year when I actually make the team. If I make the team.
“We’ll cheer for you both,” Sra. Jaimes says, putting her arms around us. Her tasseled earring tickles my cheek, and I breathe in her spicy perfume. Even though she’s not my mom, her hugs feel just as good. The door behind us clicks, and a kid in a red Cactus Canyon Quiz Bowl T-shirt opens the door. “We’re in the library,” he says, and everyone follows him through the dark hallways. Apparently they didn’t turn the lights on for us.
As we walk, Daniela hands me a stack of note cards with questions. “Quiz me.”
“Me too,” Jamiya says, pulling out her earbuds.
I read the first card: “This opera, composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, explored the contentious relationship between social classes. The wedding plans of two servants—”
“Buzz, buzz, buzz,” Jamiya says. “The Marriage of Figaro.”
“Fifteen points!” I say, flipping to the next card. Daniela gives Jamiya a high five.
“This Egyptian pharaoh oversaw the completion of many building projects, including two pairs of obselisks… obelisks at Karnak and a mortuary temple, Djeser-Djesru.”
“How you doin’, Margie?” Daniela laughs as I struggle.
“Fine!”
“Keep going!” Jamiya says, but Marcus stops us with a “Huddle up!
” as we enter the library. Daniela hugs her parents goodbye before they go find seats. We all drop our backpacks in a large pile behind the nonfiction stacks.
“Hatshepsut,” Jamiya whispers, and I check the card I’d already stuffed in my back pocket.
“Another fifteen points.” She smiles.
“Phones off,” Marcus says, and everyone pulls out their phones. “Off, not silenced. No mistakes.”
Mr. Shao comes over. “You’ll compete first against Cactus Canyon, and then we have a break before you play the other team.”
“I thought it was only us and Cactus Canyon,” Marcus says, and Mr. Shao shakes his head.
“A private school asked to participate so they’re going to be here, too.”
The Cactus Canyon team huddles in the corner. It’s all boys. Every single one. I scan the library for the other team, but I only see one Hispanic boy standing with a woman I assume is his mom. He’s wearing a blue shirt that I can’t read from this far away. I wonder if his team is late.
“Here,” Jamiya says, handing me a scrunchie with an enormous blue bow. She hands one to Daniela, too. “My mom made these for us.”
I quickly pull up my curls into a high ponytail. I love bows.
“Thanks,” Daniela says, the bow still resting in her hand like a scorpion she doesn’t dare startle. “But I don’t do bows.”
Jamiya smiles. “I thought maybe.” She digs in her backpack and pulls out a button and hands it to Daniela. It has two brains, one with electricity buzzing all around it. It says “This is a brain. This is a brain on Quiz Bowl.”
Daniela laughs. “This is awesome! Thank you!”
Mr. Shao and the Cactus Canyon coach go talk in the middle of the room, and Mikey calls out the A team for the first match: Marcus, Jamiya, Elman, and himself. I sit at one of the library tables near the action, ready to take notes: categories we struggle in, opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. Knowing their strengths doesn’t change the questions, but it’s helpful to know where they’re strong so we can beef up our knowledge. Be ready to hit the buzzer faster. In Quiz Bowl, sometimes that’s all that matters. Daniela sits beside me studying a packet of questions while other kids read books. Xavier is secretly playing a video game on his phone under the table.
