Moxie: A Novel

by Jennifer Mathieu

  I roll my eyes at them and dig in for more meat loaf, dropping out of the conversation. When Meemaw asks me how Claudia is doing, I smile and answer, but inside, in a place no one knows about, in a place I think even I am just getting to know, the fire that reignited when I saw Lucy’s hearts and stars begins to roar. I think about Marisela’s retort this morning when Mr. Shelly came to remove her from class. I think about Sara’s crushed expression when she came to the cafeteria, humiliated. And I think about all the girls of East Rockport, living under the creepy gaze of administrators looking way too hard for something that’s not there.

  Later that night, after my mother has dabbed vanilla extract behind her ears, kissed me goodbye, and headed off to the Cozy Corner to meet John, I put Bikini Kill on and turn the volume up so loud that Joan Jett goes and hides in the hallway closet. My heart racing, my cheeks burning, my fingers working against the clock, I collect my supplies: rubber cement, black Sharpies, fresh sheets of white paper.

  And the anger that won’t fade away.

  Camping out in the middle of my bed, I start working, reminding myself to stop and breathe every once in a while.

  Maybe my mother is right. Maybe I’ll leave East Rockport one day.

  But first I need to set it on fire.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Frank at U COPY IT looks over my work as I slide my copies across the counter. I glance outside to where I’ve parked my ten speed. In East Rockport, you never know who might run into you and when.

  “Hey, Moxie girl,” he says, flipping through my finished pages. “Weren’t you in here about a month ago?”

  “Maybe,” I say, and I’m surprised at my own sassiness. Frank arches an eyebrow and grins.

  “Okay, I saw nothing, then,” he answers, handing me my change before putting Moxie #2 in a paper bag. “But if you see whoever made the first one, tell her these are even better.”

  “Really?” I ask, unable to catch myself. Blushing, I take my bag, pocket my money, and try to recover. “Okay, I’ll tell her if I see her.”

  On the ride home, my Moxie copies inside my backpack, I come up with a bunch of excuses for why I’m out so late in case my mom is already back from her date with John. Just my luck, I pull up to my house and see John’s car with his stupid DELOBE bumper sticker parked in the driveway, the engine running. The streetlights are bright enough for me to see my mom and John in the front seat. Kissing.

  Oh, God. Oh gross.

  I head around the house and dump my bike, then scoot in through the back door, praying my mother didn’t notice me. A few moments later, I hear her coming in through the front door.

  “Viv, was that you on your bike?”

  Damn.

  We meet in the kitchen, my backpack still strapped to my shoulders. Her cheeks are all pinked up and, God help me, her chocolate-colored lipstick is smudged. She frowns.

  “What were you doing out so late?”

  I stand there, mute. Then I remember our dinner conversation from a few hours earlier. How my mom told me she would never have to worry about me going wild.

  “I was at Claudia’s studying for a history test and it just, like, went late, I guess.”

  My mother eyes me carefully, then puts her purse on the kitchen counter. I can tell she 95 percent believes me. Being a good, not-wild girl has its advantages.

  “Okay,” she says. “But it is kind of late, you know.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” I say, walking toward my bedroom with my backpack. I need to busy myself both to hide my terrible lying face and to avoid talking about the John situation. I don’t want to talk about John.

  I change into my pajamas and head to our shared bathroom to brush my teeth. My mom wanders into her own bedroom, her eyes on her phone. Still pushing my toothbrush around in my mouth, I step out into the hallway and glimpse her flopping onto her unmade bed, tapping something into her phone with her thumb. Then she smiles faintly.

  Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to me either. Even though she said she did before dinner. My tooth brushing slows down, then stops entirely. I watch as my mom’s smile grows bigger and bigger while she stares into her phone. It’s probably a text from John. Maybe he’s replaying their kiss in the GOP Love Bug.

  I turn back into the bathroom and spit loudly into the sink, then linger there wondering if the noise will wake my mom out of her post-date stupor. Doesn’t she want to ask me more about my day at school or if I’m still upset about the dress-code thing? Doesn’t she want to bring up John with me like she said she did?

  But when I finally leave the bathroom and pause in her doorway to tell her I’m heading to bed, she only looks up and smiles.

  “Good night, honey,” she says, turning her gaze back down to her phone.

  “Good night, Mom,” I say. I pass on our usual good-night hug, go into my room, and close the door.

  * * *

  I follow the same plan as I did the first time. Wake up super early and race to school before the sun starts to rise on this finally-cool Texas-in-late-October morning. I slide into the first girls’ bathroom with copies of Moxie in hand. This time feels less dreamlike and more purposeful. I keep seeing Sara’s hurt face at our cafeteria table. I keep imagining the next gross T-shirt Jason Garza will get away with wearing.

  And I keep picturing getting caught and probably getting suspended by Principal Wilson. I visualize the entire school knowing Moxie existed because of me. I would go from being an under-the-radar girl to a school weirdo. No, that’s not totally true. I would become a town weirdo, too. Meemaw and Grandpa would be shocked. Claudia would think Lucy has too much influence over me. And my mom would … well, before John my mom would have thought Moxie is cool, but lately I’m not 100 percent sure she would back me. After all, getting into massive trouble at school doesn’t really lead to me getting out of this town and into a good college.

  I know Lucy would be cool with it. Which is something. But in the world of East Rockport High, it wouldn’t be much.

  I take a deep breath. I grit my teeth. I keep going.

  The first floor goes smoothly. Not another soul to be found. But as I venture out of the foreign language wing, my heart thrumming, I make a quick right turn and run right into someone. It’s a hard hit, enough that I shout and drop the rest of the Moxie copies. Honestly, it’s like something out of a bad rom com.

  My yelp of surprise still ringing in my ears, I step back and find my eyes resting on Seth Acosta.

  “Hey,” he says. And I can’t really decide what should be declared my cause of death—being caught delivering Moxie or running into Seth Acosta in the hallway before the sun is even up. Combine the two, and it’s possible I’m already dead and this is my weird version of the afterlife.

  “Let me help you,” Seth says, and he crouches down, his tight black jeans straining around his knobby guy knees, as I stand there, stunned. I watch as he picks up all the copies of my secret teen lady revolution zine.

  I can’t move.

  Seth’s coal-black eyes scan the front of Moxie, and then he stands up and stares.

  “Are you, like, passing these out?”

  I swallow. My cheeks are warm. I peer to my left and my right.

  “Yes,” I say. What else is there to say?

  He flips through a copy, then stares back at me, his face serious. His voice drops down a notch or two.

  “Did you … make these?”

  I take a breath. The pause has given me away already, I know it. So I stand there, quiet.

  “You did, yeah?” he asks very quietly. The way he delivers that yeah—all soft and yummy and reassuring at the same time. I find myself nodding, transfixed.

  “Yeah, I did,” I say, my voice a whisper. “But don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  Seth stares at me for a moment, then nods slowly, and I stand there, still in shock. It’s not Claudia or Meg or Sara or even a teacher or administrator who finds me out, but this strange boy. I can’t really believe it.

  “H
ey, maybe you can give me some? I’ll put them in the boys’ bathrooms.”

  I guess I’m not so out of it, because I laugh out loud.

  “Seriously, the boys here don’t care about this. I promise.” I stare at my shoes. “I mean, except maybe for you.”

  Seth hands the stack of Moxies to me. “Yeah, I definitely don’t want to mess with your plans or anything. I mean, maybe you just want this for the girls.”

  I hold the zines close to my chest in case someone appears. Then I force myself to speak.

  “I guess I do want it for the girls.” I pause. “But even though you’re a guy, you obviously saw the first issue, right?”

  Seth pops up one eyebrow. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “I saw your hands that day,” I answer, aware that I’m actually stringing words and sentences together and not passing out. “You marked them with hearts and stars.”

  “I did,” Seth acknowledges. “I found a copy in the hallway. I guess someone dropped it. To be honest, I thought it was pretty kick-ass.”

  Pretty kick-ass. Does that mean he thinks I’m pretty kick-ass? My chest feels like exploding. I decide that Seth Acosta deciding I’m kick-ass is even better than him thinking I’m pretty. Definitely better.

  “I mean, I can see why you’d want this to be a lady thing,” Seth says, dragging his hand through his hair. “You’re preaching Bibles full of truth.” He glances around, his eyes wide and his voice a whisper, then pronounces, “This school is fucked up.”

  I grin, glad to hear the words out loud. “It pretty much is,” I say. “It must be so different from Austin.”

  Seth nods, then frowns just a little. “How’d you know I was from Austin?”

  “Oh,” I stammer, “my friend Claudia? I think your family rents your place from her parents? She may have mentioned something about it?” Maybe if I make everything sound like a question, I won’t appear to be a total stalker.

  Seth just nods again. “My parents moved down here to work on their art or whatever. Like, a change of perspective.” He shrugs and rolls his eyes a little.

  “Like, they wanted the perspective of a suffocating small town?” I manage. Seth laughs, and my chest explodes again, only this time I’m not sure I’ll ever manage to rebuild it.

  “I guess,” Seth says. “Anyway, we live here now.” He says this definitively. With resignation. But then he grins again, and it’s quiet and awkward for a moment, and I hug Moxie to myself even harder. The last thing I said was witty, and if I say anything else, I might mess this all up. Whatever this is.

  “Hey, you should probably get going if you want to pass the rest of these out,” Seth says. “I have to go find my Spanish teacher. It’s why I’m here so early. I need to make up a test.”

  I nod, then feel the need to reassure myself.

  “Just … I mean … you won’t tell anyone about this, right?”

  “I really won’t,” Seth says, nodding hard. “But can I at least have an issue?”

  I slide a copy out of my pile and hand it to him. Our thumbs touch as I pass Moxie off. My heart slides out of place for a second.

  “Okay, I gotta go,” Seth says.

  “Yeah, and I have to hurry,” I answer, and before I know it he’s off down the hallway, and I’m slipping in and out of girls’ bathrooms, dropping off stacks of Moxie, my chest thumping and my mind racing, a Riot Grrrl soundtrack pounding through me as I move.

  * * *

  My phone buzzes next to me. I roll over onto my stomach, push aside my history homework until it falls off my bed, then glance at the screen.

  So you think you’re going to do it? The moxie thing next Tuesday?

  It’s Lucy. We only recently started texting. Not as often as me and Claudia text each other, of course, but often enough. Lucy’s texts never start with a hey or a what’s up. She always dives right in, like she doesn’t care about small talk. Sometimes after what feels like a few minutes of texting I glance at the time and find an entire hour has passed as we trade thoughts on everything from messed-up stuff at East Rockport to our families and even to me admitting I think Seth Acosta is cute. It’s easy to spill stuff to Lucy in my texts. Like I’ve known her for a lot longer than just a couple months.

  But talking about Moxie makes me anxious because it’s such a big secret. I feel the weight of it with every text I send.

  Are you gonna do it? I answer back. I need her to say yes.

  Hellz yes, Lucy writes back. I think it’s so brilliant

  In the safety of my own bedroom, I allow myself a big grin.

  If you will then I will … I just need to find my bathrobe

  They have cheap ones at the Walmart in case you can’t

  I chew on my thumbnail and count up the number of girls who were taken out of my classes today for dress code violations. Five. Principal Wilson and his friends aren’t letting up. Today I saw a freshman girl in an enormous, shame-on-you dirty jersey crying in one of the second-floor bathrooms, and when I tried to console her, she just shook her head and ran past me out the door.

  I’ll find my bathrobe or get one, I text back. I watch Lucy’s text bubble, wondering what her response will be.

  I wish I knew who was doing this because I so want to be BFFs

  Me too, I text back. I grin to myself before telling Lucy I have to go and finish my homework.

  * * *

  I set out the zines on a Thursday morning, but the bathrobe stunt is set for the following Tuesday so as not to be overshadowed by the buildup to the Friday night football game. The season is winding down, and I’m glad it looks like we’re not going to make it to playoffs so it will end even sooner. But even without the weekly pep rallies and the pre-game frenzy, I know Mitchell and his friends will reign over East Rockport High well into winter and spring. And senior year, too. Senior year will probably be the worst ever.

  I’ve seen Seth in class and a few times in the hallway since he discovered my secret, and we’ve nodded and smiled at each other. Today, Monday, he catches up with me as we’re walking out of English class.

  “You ready for tomorrow?” he asks.

  “I think so,” I answer.

  His breath smells like spearmint gum. I notice the slightest bit of stubble on his chin and wonder if he has to shave his face every day or just once in a while. I picture him shaving in his bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and his chest bare like an actual man would do, and my legs go all trembly.

  “Well, good luck,” he says, and he walks off suddenly, loping down the hallway.

  That night my mom is working late, and I skip dinner at Meemaw and Grandpa’s, insisting that I have a lot of homework I want to finish. But what I do instead is spend the evening on my bed, texting with Claudia and Sara and Meg and Kaitlyn trying to figure out if they’re going to do the bathrobe thing tomorrow, too, or if it will just be me and Lucy.

  I don’t want to get in trouble, texts Claudia.

  Me either, agrees Meg.

  But there’s no rule saying we can’t wear bathrobes, Sara chimes in. I remember how upset she was the day she got called out for dress code.

  I’m not sure what it will even do, Kaitlyn offers. But at the same time it feels like it might be kind of cool to see what happens

  So it’s two against and two in favor. Well, kind of in favor. My vision of every girl at East Rockport High showing up in a bathrobe and full of indignation fades from my mind. I should count myself lucky if a quarter of the girls at school go along with it. My stomach knots up, and I wonder, what would the lead singer for Bikini Kill do? Or a younger version of my mom?

  Look, I text, you can always bring your bathrobe and hide it in your locker if you’re scared and then if other girls are doing it you can take it out right? I mean I guess what I’m saying is I’m just tired of this dress code BS so why not try?

  There’s a pause and a few text bubbles pop up and then go away. Finally, someone responds but only to me. Claudia.

  You
do know the girls in their bathrobes are gonna have everyone staring at them tomorrow right? You don’t care about that???

  I frown. I’m glad Claudia can’t see me.

  Maybe … but if a lot of girls do it then there will be too many girls to stare AT right? Also Lucy is definitely doing it so we won’t be the only ones.

  Another pause. This time it’s longer. Then Claudia texts again.

  Of course Lucy is doing it … she’s into this stuff.

  What stuff?

  You know … this kind of making a big deal about stuff stuff …

  Yeah I guess … but maybe that’s just because she’s used to doing this sort of thing at her old school in Houston? You know?

  My texts with Claudia dissolve into back and forth statements that sound like questions? So we end on a nice note? And don’t rock the boat? At last we sign off and I’m 99 percent sure that Claudia won’t be wearing her bathrobe to school tomorrow.

  But then there’s me. After I toss my phone aside, I take out my turquoise terrycloth bathrobe that goes down to my knees and slide it into my backpack. I brush my teeth, wash my face, put on my old Runaways T-shirt, and cue up “Rebel Girl” on repeat. As I’m listening to the song through my headphones for the fifth time, I can make out the sound of my mom coming in the front door over Kathleen Hanna’s throaty yell. I reach up to slide the headphones off my head, but then I stop. Normally if I’m still awake when my mom comes home, I go out to the den to catch up, at least for a little bit.

  But tonight I don’t feel like it. I slide my headphones back on and turn up the music, drowning out every last thought.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It’s early November and chilly enough that my bathrobe over my jeans and T-shirt feels good and not too hot. But my cheeks are still burning from nervousness as I walk toward the front doors of East Rockport High. On my morning walk to school, I stopped half a block away to slip the bathrobe on over my clothes before immediately taking it off, then walking a few more steps, and finally stopping to put it back on again. Now that I’m getting closer to actually walking into school dressed like this, I have to fight the urge to rip the bathrobe off one more time.