The Feminist Agenda of Jemima Kincaid

by Kate Hattemer

  “A reminder of death.”

  “For, as Horace’s line reads”—as usual, Mrs. Burke didn’t bother to acknowledge the correct answer—“carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. Miss Kim, translate.”

  “ ‘Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.’ ”

  “Discuss, class. What does that mean?”

  “Do it now,” said Mack, “because you never know when things are gonna go to sh—to crap.”

  Mrs. Burke pursed her lips and surveyed us. She wore a shade of purple lipstick so retro I could imagine it on one of Gennifer’s edgier friends.

  “I give you my full attention,” she said frostily, “and I expect your full attention.”

  That had to be pointed at me. I was thirty percent here, max. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll—”

  “Don’t be so hasty to shoulder the blame for others, Miss Kincaid,” said Mrs. Burke.

  What?

  Jiyoon seemed as calm and focused as ever, and Mack, for once, was thumbing industriously through a Latin dictionary. But there were distinct traces of an upheaval. Victoria, Tiam, and Lacey were shoving phones back into their pockets. Larchmont and Lola straightened, as if they’d been leaning over those same phones.

  “Since one of the landmark odes of world literature holds so little interest for you,” said Mrs. Burke, “put away all materials besides a sheet of paper and a pen.”

  She laboriously moved to the projector—she was the only teacher in the building who had held on to the ancient overhead projectors, with transparencies and a lightbulb—and put up the Latin ode. “Number your paper one through five,” she said. “Question one. In what Aeolic meter is this poem constructed?”

  You know what else tipped me off that there was something going on? That nobody seemed to care. That Mrs. Burke gave us an evil, impossible pop quiz, and they were all so distracted, so disturbed, that they sat there and took it.

  * * *

  —

  Once I’d noticed the hum of agitation and excitement, it was everywhere. It felt like the afternoon before a sure-thing blizzard, when it hasn’t started snowing yet but everyone knows it’s going to happen. I walked past a huddle of girls, and I saw Julianna Johnson crying in the center.

  Uh-oh. I checked my own phone. It was blank, but as I held it, texts floated in from Gennifer.

  I assume you’ve seen

  We need to triage

  Meet in Edison’s at lunch.

  Seen? I responded.

  Then Gennifer:

  Oh god

  I waited. I was in calc now, and the warning bell sounded. Sixty seconds before Mr. Ulrich would collect our phones. He had a basket where we put them when the bell rang.

  A screenshot came in from Gennifer. And another. And another.

  I swiped through. My mouth fell open.

  Abbott, Rebekah:

  Martin Chowder

  Peter Li

  Andy Monroe

  Andrews, Lily:

  Tyler Donner

  Johnny Threep

  Avi, Robert:

  Jasmin Egbert

  Gennifer Grier

  Larchmont Kenney

  Heather McAuliffe

  Screenshots piled in. One. After. Another.

  The bell rang. Mr. Ulrich pounced, shoving the basket in my face. “Exit the phone world and enter the real world!”

  “It’s—I can’t—it’s an emergency—”

  “In an emergency, your parents would contact the main office.” He waggled the basket.

  “Mr. Ulrich…” I couldn’t rip my eyes from my phone. They were Last Chance Dance picks. The secret crushes of the senior class. They’d been hacked, and they’d been posted.

  Oh my God. How could this have happened? Who did this? Everyone would hate us. They’d think it was our fault.

  And everyone would know my only pick was Andy.

  Andy would know my only pick was Andy.

  “Jemima!” barked Mr. Ulrich. “Now!”

  The class was looking at me. Not sympathetically. Mr. Ulrich carried the basket of phones to his desk. I stared at it. We all stared at it. It was like he had a basket of bombs. “Parametric curves in the plane!” he said, clapping his hands vigorously. “Shall we?”

  I found my homework. My scrawled graphs, the problems I’d worked, like artifacts from another world.

  Why had I put only one?

  Paul’s voice echoed. Only a moron would put information like that into a website.

  Calc class lasted approximately a decade, nine years of which were spent dreading my lunch meeting with Gennifer and the guy everyone now knew I had a weird obsessive monogamous thing for. At the bell, I was first out of my seat. I rooted through the basket to find my phone and speed-walked down the hallway, avoiding all eye contact. My plan was to find a stairwell where I could text Paul (How did this happen?) and Jiyoon (What should I do?) and hide from the world as long as possible, but Gennifer caught me. “Jemima!” she called. “Tell Ms. Edison we need her room, okay? I’ll be right there.”

  I was stuck. Ms. Edison was alone at her desk. “A last-minute meeting?” she said, standing and gathering her papers. “Of course, no problem. Anything wrong?”

  “Nope, nope, not at all.”

  “You look a little frazzled, Jemima.”

  “Physics test later!” I squeaked.

  “Take a deep breath,” Ms. Edison advised.

  “Oh, right. Good idea.”

  “That always calms me down. Just seems to make my problems go away!”

  I wanted her problems. “Nothing like a deep breath!” I said wildly. “Air in the lungs! Mm-hmm!”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” she said, edging to the door. “You’re a second-semester senior!”

  Yes, I thought, that’s exactly what’s caused this pile of steaming shit into which I have trodden.

  “None of this really matters, right?” said Ms. Edison.

  It was one of those moments when it becomes utterly clear that every adult, even a youngish one, has forgotten what it was like to be a teenager. Maybe they don’t forget the woes, but they forget how important they are. They get all, This too shall pass. This will seem trivial when you’re a real person like me, and all the while they’re thinking, This doesn’t really matter.

  But it matters.

  I’m telling you, it matters.

  Ms. Edison left, and a second later Gennifer came in, her lips drawn. She got it. “Well,” she said, her voice clipped, “it’s a crisis. Emmie and Bryan have already broken up, and I think Julianna’s going to dump Kyle during lunch. And then there’s Jasmin, she’s distraught, but did she really think the slut-shamey culture here was going to let her get away with putting fifteen guys? And—”

  “Wait, wait, rewind, rewind,” I said.

  Gennifer swung down her backpack and looked at me impatiently. “Yes?”

  “Why are Emmie and Bryan breaking up? They’ve been together since freshman year.”

  “Because Emmie put Zack. Bryan’s best friend. Have you even looked at the lists?”

  “I haven’t had a chance,” I said, unlocking my phone. “Mr. Ulrich—”

  “Don’t bother.” She wrapped her thin, cool fingers around my wrist and dragged my phone out of my face. “I’ve already told you the highlights, and you’ll have plenty of time to analyze the details later. We both will, given that we’ll be ostracized for the rest of our high school careers.”

  For someone who had built a whole social life around avoiding ostracism, Gennifer had an odd serenity. Or was it odd? Maybe this was the natural serenity of the worst-case scenario, the one that you always thought might happen just because it was so bad. It was the serenity of seeing an iceberg on the Titanic. The ser
enity of being reaped in The Hunger Games.

  “Let’s discuss our plan.” Gennifer arranged the pleats of her skirt and opened her Triumvirate binder. Throw a disaster at her, she’ll throw an agenda back at you. “Our class morale is in shreds. As is the reputation of our Triumvirate, but that’s a lost cause. Should we even have prom?”

  “Wait,” I said, taking up my phone again. I knew what it’d look like (Kincaid, Jemima: Andy Monroe) but I wanted to see it.

  “We need to be leaders,” said Gennifer. “We can’t get hung up in the nasty details.” She made a swipe for my phone.

  “Just because you’ve already looked at the nasty details!” I snapped, pulling the phone out of her reach. “I haven’t even seen my own name!”

  “Weston Burgman, Tyler Donner, Bobby Flynn, Greg Hoffman, Lucas Yin,” recited Gennifer.

  “That’s not who I put.”

  “That’s who put you.”

  “What—wait—Tyler? But—Weston?” I shook my head to refocus myself. “I meant my own listing.” (Wait, I thought again. Five guys put me? Including Weston Burgman, the captain of the basketball team? Was this some twisted joke?) “I meant who I put.”

  “You didn’t hear?” said Gennifer. “God, Jemima. You truly have no idea how bad this is, do you?”

  I knew it was really bad, and I knew Gennifer thought it was really bad, but I could also tell that the tiniest bit of her was enjoying it.

  “We,” she pronounced, “were left off.”

  “Left off? Who’s we?”

  “You. Me. Andy. The Triumvirate.”

  “No way,” I said.

  Gennifer opened up her own phone and scrolled through the list to Greenhorn, Mitchell.

  “It’s blank for him,” she said. “Because he didn’t submit the form. But our names aren’t even there.”

  Andy walked in while I was still gaping at Gennifer. I gave him a giant grin—he didn’t know who I’d put! No one knew!—before I realized that joyful relief was pretty much the opposite of the feeling I needed to project right now. “Welcome to ground zero,” said Gennifer.

  Andy sat down heavily. “We need to figure out who did this.”

  “Maybe Paul can trace who infiltrated the website,” I said.

  “Do you guys really think that’s what’s important right now?” said Gennifer. “We need to focus on healing wounds. Repairing morale. Not finding a culprit.”

  “If we don’t find a culprit, we’re going to get all the blame ourselves,” said Andy. “Of course, maybe one of us deserves the blame.”

  I nodded. I’d been thinking the same thing. Anything can be hacked, Paul had told me. Anything can be leaked. We’d encouraged everyone to trust the system, but we hadn’t known ourselves how the system worked.

  “Start a suspect list,” Andy told Gennifer.

  She snapped shut the binder. “I’m not your secretary.”

  “Come on, you have paper right in front of you—”

  She stood. “I have friends to take care of. Very upset friends. You can waste your time with detective work, but you’re not wasting mine.” She left the room, giving the door a tidy slam behind her.

  “Whew,” said Andy. “Spicy.”

  “Maybe it was her,” I said. “That was kind of a suspicious reaction. Maybe she wanted to stir up drama.” I felt instantly guilty. Gennifer was more devoted to our class than anyone. “I don’t actually think it was her,” I quickly added.

  Andy met my eyes. My face went hot. The last time we’d been alone together, there’d been significantly less clothing involved. “Me neither,” he said. “But still. It’s weird that we aren’t on it.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I wonder what everyone’s saying,” he said. “I haven’t talked much yet with the hoi polloi—”

  “Hoi polloi,” I said automatically.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you said ‘the hoi polloi.’ But in ancient Greek hoi means ‘the.’ So you have to say—”

  Andy shoved his chair back. “Nope. Nope. Not doing this, Kincaid.”

  “Not doing what?” I knew that had been obnoxious, but, well, that was me: I was obnoxious. Andy knew that by now. “Now you won’t say it wrong in a college seminar.”

  “You think you’re so great,” said Andy, and not in a nice way. Not in a teasing way.

  “I do not.”

  “You think you’re too good for me. Too good for anyone.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” This was too much. “You? You’re saying that? I gave you—you’re the one I’ve been—and you won’t even be seen in public with me!”

  Andy’s cheeks went pink. “Says the girl who only talks to me when she wants a ride, and only wants rides when nobody’s around. You wouldn’t be seen at Tysons with me. You ignore me at Powderpuff, and you won’t even make eye contact in the hallway. I’m not the one who wanted to keep our shit a secret.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “I get it, Kincaid.” He shook his head. “I get it. This was all a setup, right? You get us to go with the Last Chance idea, get everyone to submit their crushes to the website—and then you publish the whole fucking thing.”

  I couldn’t believe this was happening.

  “It’s brilliant. I’ll give you that. But then again, the revenge scheme of Jemima Kincaid would be brilliant.”

  “The revenge scheme?”

  “We all know you hate us. So you set off a bomb in our class. Nothing’s going to be the same. Powderpuff, prom, Jamboree. Graduation. Fuck, our reunions. Our memories of high school. You’ve destroyed us. And you’re loving every second of it.”

  I had two more classes and I don’t know how I got through them. My mom wasn’t picking me up until an hour after school let out, but I couldn’t find Jiyoon anywhere. I spent the rest of the hour hiding in Ms. Edison’s room, not caring that I was doing all my physics problems wrong. As soon as I finally got home and closed the door to my bedroom, I called Jiyoon.

  I got voice mail. I hung up and flopped back on my bed and let tears leak out. But she texted me almost immediately: I’m bowling with Paul but you doing okay?

  I know you’re in the middle of Official Date #3 and I kind of hate myself for asking but can we talk for five min?

  Walking outside just a sec

  My phone rang. “The employees saw me duck out,” she said. “They probably think I’m trying to steal the bowling shoes.”

  “But they’re holding your regular shoes as collateral.”

  “But my regular shoes were Crocs.”

  “No. No. Jiyoon Kim. Tell me you didn’t wear your tie-dyed Crocs on a third date.”

  “Um.”

  “Why, Jiyoon? Why?”

  “I really want to continue defending my footwear, but I left Paul alone to safeguard our lane from eighteen fifth graders at a birthday party, so maybe tell me what you’re calling about?”

  “Right. Yeah.” I’d been smiling at her Crocs ridiculousness, but already I could feel a sob rising in my chest. “You must have heard the basics.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Everyone thinks it was me. Andy, and everyone else.”

  “Yeah. I heard that too.”

  “From who?”

  “Like…the usual rumor mills. Online, mostly. Private accounts, so I’m getting all these notifications that I’ve been tagged and then can’t see what they’re saying. But every once in a while it’s someone I follow. I can get the gist.”

  “But it’s about me?”

  “Well. And me. Because I’m your best friend, so I must be involved too, right? They’re saying I should quit the chairman campaign. Resign my candidacy.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I hadn’t thought it could get any worse.

  “Unless you actu
ally did the leak, you don’t have to be sorry,” Jiyoon said shortly. “I want to know who did it. Because right now it feels like it was meant to sabotage my campaign, but I know it was probably just some idiot trying to start a lot of drama.”

  “What does Paul think?”

  “Oh, he’s all, ‘What do people expect for posting their secrets on the internet?’ Which is kind of annoying, to be honest. I changed the subject.”

  “I know you should get back inside.”

  “No, you’re good. What?”

  “Just…” I rolled toward the wall. Quietly, so quietly that I wasn’t sure Jiyoon would be able to hear, I said, “Why does everyone think it’s me?”

  “Because you weren’t on the list.”

  “But neither were Andy and Gennifer.”

  “But—I’m not saying I endorse this, obviously—if they had to pick one of the three of you, who are they going to pick? You. You argue a lot, you rock the RBF….”

  “I cultivate the RBF,” I said, and Jiyoon laughed. “So,” I said, “if a girl looks anything other than one hundred percent decorative at all times, she’s a criminal?”

  “The patriarchy is definitely a factor,” said Jiyoon. “But it’s also—I don’t know how to say this—everyone kind of thinks you hate Chawton.”

  “I’ve been going to Chawton since kindergarten!” The tears were rolling, and I didn’t know whether it was because the rest of the school thought wrong or right. Did I hate Chawton? No. Yes. “I’ve been working my ass off for Chawton all year.”

  “Everyone kind of thinks you hate them.”

  “That’s because they hate me!”

  “You always say that.”

  They had hated me in kindergarten, when I’d read books on movie day. In middle school, when they’d called me the Jeminist. In high school, when they’d rolled their eyes every time I raised my hand. I’d found my niche of friends, and nobody else wanted me to be in their group or on their team or—

  Wait, I thought. I was on Triumvirate. I was the Tigers’ running back. Five guys—five fairly mainstream guys—had put me as Last Chance Dance picks.