Neighborhood Girls

by Jessie Ann Foley

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Glad we’ve got that cleared up.” She planted a glossy kiss on my cheek.

  “More importantly,” said Sapphire, unwrapping a low-fat granola bar, “I filled my end of the deal, Kenz. Now it’s your turn.”

  “It’s impossible,” Emily sniffed. “You might as well just give up. Sister Dorothy has special nun senses that can detect testosterone from a mile away. You could never sneak a boy past her.”

  “It’s not impossible,” Kenzie declared. “Because I’ve already figured out how to do it. I just needed to find the right boy to agree. And now, I have.”

  “Evan?” Sapphire shot forward in her seat. “He actually agreed? I thought he was too scared of getting caught!”

  Kenzie smiled triumphantly. “It’s amazing what withholding sex will do to a guy who’s basically one big walking erection.” She licked a swath of pink frosting from her donut. “I told him that I wouldn’t sleep with him unless he agreed to let me sneak him into school. That changed his mind pretty quick.”

  “But how?”

  “Gym class. Soon. That’s all you need to know.”

  9

  I’M SURE THERE ARE SOME GIRLS out there—perky, athletic types with perfectly proportioned bodies absent of moles, birthmarks, and body hair—who actually look forward to the swimming unit in PE class. Then there’s the other 99.99 percent of the female population. For two weeks each year, a collective dread fills the ASH locker room as we are forced to trade in our knee-length cotton gym shorts and oversize red T-shirts for the exponentially more heinous school-issued bathing suits. These Lycra nightmares, with their weirdly thick straps and chokingly high necklines, are the most unflattering swimsuits known to womankind. If you get assigned one of the newer ones, the leg holes squeeze so tightly that your thighs ooze out like sausage casings. Get one of the older ones, and the leg holes are stretched out to the same size as the head hole, so that every time you jump into the water you run the risk of exposing your vag for all your classmates to see. The suits are all the same color—maroon faded to a dull pink by years of boiling in between units—but despite these sterilization measures, there’s always a couple unlucky girls who inherit a suit whose white cotton crotch bears a faded streak of a stranger’s menstrual blood.

  As an added layer of cruelty, Ms. Lally always begins the swimming unit in December. Snow is already on the ground, the sun sets at five o’clock, and here we were in the dank basement of Academy of the Sacred Heart, drifting around a sad net that sagged across the middle of the barely heated depths of the Sister Xavieria Schmidt Memorial Swimming Facility, pretending to play water polo. I say pretending because one of the worst-kept secrets at ASH is that Ms. Lally is a barely functioning alcoholic. Four days out of five, she’s either hungover to the point of being half brain-dead or flat-out drunk. She chomps on gum and wears heavy blasts of old lady perfume to mask the beery smell of her skin, but there are plenty of girls at ASH with alcoholics in their families, and we all know the signs. If she’s drunk, she’s usually pleasant enough, and can muster up the energy to organize us into squads or lead us, in warmer weather, out to the muddy softball fields for a pickup game. If she’s hungover, we usually receive some form of two-word instructions: “play dodgeball,” “run laps,” “shoot free-throws,” before she disappears into the athletic office, her track pants swishing sadly, and closes the door until the bell rings, where I imagine her sitting behind her little desk lined with its dusty softball trophies from the eighties, lapping away at her vodka, washing it down with a Tums, and praying for the three o’clock bell.

  According to my aunt Col, who was in Ms. Lally’s graduating class, she hasn’t always been like this. The drinking started fairly recently, when her only child, a daughter, went with her sorority sisters down to Fort Lauderdale for her college spring break and broke her neck falling off the third-floor balcony of a Holiday Inn. Sometimes I wonder what’s going to happen to Ms. Lally next year when ASH closes. Who’s going to want a depressed alcoholic gym teacher near retirement age who doesn’t know even the most basic rules of water polo? It wouldn’t surprise me if we started seeing her among the homeless people who drift around the outskirts of the Jefferson Park el station, shuffling through flocks of pigeons, wearing skirts over pants, talking softly with faraway eyes.

  But anyway.

  Since Ms. Lally doesn’t exactly have her eye on the ball, gym class is the one place at ASH where it’s easy to get away with stuff. It’s where girls text, sell weed, copy each other’s homework, pierce each other’s ears, and blast music with filthy lyrics without worrying about getting a JUG. So it only made sense that this was the class where Kenzie was going to carry out her dare, though none of us had the slightest clue how she was going to pull it off.

  That Friday, as usual, we changed into our hideous suits and put on our white swim caps so that when we stepped out of the locker room and into the dark, chlorinated reek of the Sister Xavieria Schmidt Memorial Swimming Facility, we looked like a gathering of large red penises. Rays of afternoon light spilled from the small, rectangular windows near the ceiling, illuminating the small square tiles etched in a thin layer of green fungus at the bottom of the pool. A filter gurgled quietly. Hanging on the cinder-block walls, among the swim team conference banners from ASH’s athletic heydays in the 1950s and ’60s, was a large painting of Saint Adjutor, patron saint of swimmers, boaters, and drowning victims. The severe expression on his bearded face and the large silver anchor he gripped in his fist like a dagger didn’t give the impression that he’d be much help if you were ever thrown into the deep end and couldn’t swim. The edges of the painting crept with lacy black mold spores, threatening to take over the whole canvas. Even if you liked swimming, this place would give you the creeps.

  As we climbed into the pool and awaited our instructions, I looked around for Kenzie. She wasn’t there, but luckily for her, Ms. Lally never bothered to take attendance. “Divide yourself into teams of seven,” barked our haggard gym teacher, peering down at us with bloodshot eyes while we hung on the sides in the water and shivered uncontrollably.

  “Um, Ms. Lally?” Gretchen Giddings raised her hand timidly. “There are only ten girls here.”

  Ms. Lally looked down at us with vague surprise. We were eye level with her squat, muscular legs.

  “Okay, teams of five, then.” She lifted the whistle to her lips and bleated on it halfheartedly. “Gretchen, you keep score. And if I catch any of you without a swim cap, it’s an automatic JUG—I found a hairball in the filter yesterday.” With a weak underhand, she heaved a water polo ball into the pool, sauntered back into the athletic office, and closed the door behind her.

  Gretchen, Marlo Guthrie, Ola Kaminski, and Alexis were the only ones who even attempted to follow Ms. Lally’s instructions. Veronica the Vegan, who’d had her mom write a note excusing her from the entire water polo unit because she could not, in good conscience, play a game that required the use of a cow-leather ball, did her homework in the bleachers. Imani Jenkins and Lisette Crawford watched YouTube videos. Me, Emily, and Sapphire floated on our backs and traded gossip.

  It was shaping up to be another dull, leisurely gym class, and Emily and I had just decided that we might join in on the water polo game just to pass the time when we heard a knock at one of the small, snow-covered windows near the ceiling that looked out onto ASH’s front lawn. Just as we realized it was Evan Munro’s face, red from the cold, smushed up against the glass, Kenzie emerged from the locker room. She was dressed not in her school-issued swimsuit but in a minuscule white string bikini. She tossed her long, black hair—Ms. Lally’s warning about swim caps be damned—winked at me and Emily, then jogged across the tiles, bouncing in all the right places. She stopped at the diving board, unhooked the metal ladder, and wheeled it over to the window. The girls who had been trying to play water polo had stopped what they were doing, and now everyone stared.

  “Kenzie, what are you doing?” Marlo
Guthrie demanded. Her voice, all shrill with valedictorian authority, echoed off the cinder-block walls.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “You can’t let that guy in. Don’t even think about it.”

  “Oh, shut up, Marlo,” Kenzie laughed lightly. “Live a little. It would be good for you.” She minced over to the window and lifted the long hooked pole. After a couple failed attempts, she caught the hook into the hole and the window creaked open, bringing a cold blast of winter air. Evan Munro peered inside.

  “Come on, Wendy!” Kenzie waved to me. “Help me sneak him in, okay?”

  I glanced first at the closed door of the athletic office, then at the goody-two-shoes girls who were looking at one another nervously.

  “You need to stop her,” Alexis hissed at me, holding the water polo ball tightly under one arm. “We could all get in a lot of trouble.”

  “I don’t know what you think,” I hissed back, “but Kenzie doesn’t listen to anyone, me included.”

  “Squeeze through, baby!” Kenzie was calling up at Evan, who had turned his body around and was now reaching with one leg, then the other, to the top rung of the ladder.

  “Where’s the teacher?” He twisted around to scan the pool for authority figures.

  “I told you,” Kenzie laughed. “She isn’t around! Now get down here!” Apparently satisfied with this explanation, Evan slowly made his way down until he was three rungs from the floor. He jumped the rest of the way, and just like that, there he was: the first boy in 113 years to ever set foot inside Academy of the Sacred Heart. Kenzie lifted her phone from where she’d stowed it beneath the strap of her bikini top and took a picture to commemorate the moment. Meanwhile, Evan looked around nervously at the hanging banners, the dour painting of Saint Adjutor, the crowd of anxious girls floating around the pool in tight swim caps and thick, sexless maroon bathing suits. He was wearing a crisp white dress shirt and a green Saint Mike’s tie, and he looked uneasy and a little bit embarrassed. His eyes cut to the athletic office doors. I think it was dawning on him just how much trouble he could get in if he got caught.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “Now,” Kenzie said, “we go swimming.” She placed her phone on the pool’s edge, wheeled the ladder back to the diving board, climbed it, took a delicate hop, then dove with perfect form and barely a splash into the deep end. That was what broke him of his nervousness. Evan, staring at Kenzie in her white bathing suit that was now see-through and showed the faint outline of her brown nipples, yanked his tie loose and pulled his shirt, still buttoned, over his head. When he unbelted his khakis and dropped them around his ankles, so that he was standing there in nothing but a very tight pair of boxer briefs, Alexis gasped audibly. She, Ola, and Marlo swam off to a corner of the pool to consult.

  “Wendy!” Kenzie, who’d surfaced and was now treading water, beckoned me over with a windmilling of her manicured hand. “Come on over here!” I could feel my swim cap cutting into the skin of my forehead, the maroon swimsuit pressing down my already unimpressive breasts. But it wasn’t even that I looked and felt gross. It was that having a guy see me in the middle of the day at my all-girls school somehow felt like an invasion. Everyone felt that way, I could tell. Sure, Sapphire had dared Kenzie to sneak a boy into school, but no one had believed she’d actually do it. Now that she had, it was like pulling up the curtains and letting a stranger spy into our secret, dying world. I stared at the door of the athletic office, not knowing whether I wanted it to stay closed or to swing open.

  “Kenzie, we could all get in trouble,” I called weakly.

  “Oh, don’t be a pussy!” She flipped over to float on her back, her hair fanned out across the top of the water like a big black lily pad. It was only when Evan climbed the ladder, and, with a joyful shout, cannonballed into the pool, that Alexis took action. She climbed out of the pool and walked quickly toward Ms. Lally’s office, her doughy legs trembling with every step.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Kenzie’s voice was quiet, but it carried over the echo-y expanse of the Sister Xavieria Schmidt Memorial Swimming Facility.

  Alexis turned to face Kenzie. She straightened her slopey shoulders. I could almost feel her gathering nerve as she lifted a hand and flipped Kenzie off.

  “You knock on that door,” Kenzie warned, “and you’re dead, bitch.”

  It was too late—Alexis was already pounding, the thump of her fists echoing across the tiles. And just as Evan had swum to the surface, grabbing Kenzie by the waist and spinning her through the water, laughing and beautiful, Ms. Lally, looking more sober than I’d seen her in my life, threw open the door.

  10

  HOLY CRAP. THE TEXT FROM EMILY came in at seven a.m., early for a Saturday morning gossip session, even for her. Did you hear what happened to Evan?

  What? I rubbed my eyes and curled up under the flannel sheets with my phone on the pillow next to me.

  He got suspended.

  So? I wrote. Saint Mike’s suspends people for tying their ties crooked.

  My phone rang.

  “You don’t understand,” Emily exploded the second I picked up. “Saint Mike’s is playing Mount Carmel next weekend in the Catholic League playoffs, and all these college scouts are supposed to be there, and since Evan’s suspended he can’t play!”

  “That sucks.” I yawned. Emily was always more interested in spreading the gossip than actually having a discussion, which was why I didn’t feel compelled to offer any commentary of my own.

  “Kenzie’s on the warpath,” she went on. “She’s ready to, like, murder Alexis Nichols.”

  That got my attention, though.

  “Why?” I sat up in bed. “It’s not Alexis’s fault. If you want to blame somebody other than Kenzie or Evan, blame Sapphire: she’s the one who dared Kenzie to do it.”

  “Are you serious? Alexis was the one who went and tattled on her, like a little second grader or something. If it weren’t for that, she would have totally gotten away with it.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Whatever. All I know is, I wouldn’t want to be Alexis Nichols right now.”

  Kenzie, Emily had gleefully informed me, was under a social media lockdown—her dad had taken away her phone and laptop. So we had to wait for Monday morning chapel to find out what had happened after Ms. Lally grabbed her and Evan each by the elbow, shoved towels in their hands, and escorted them to Sister Dorothy’s office, dripping water all the way down the Saints Corridor. I half expected not to see her at all—after all, if sneaking a boy into gym class while dressed in a see-through bikini isn’t an expellable offense, what is? But there she was, sitting in her usual seat in the back pew, nonchalantly unwrapping a frosted Pop-Tart as if it was just another boring Monday at Academy of the Sacred Heart.

  Before I could even sit down, Emily came crashing past me.

  “Kenzie! Holy crap!” She threw herself down in an empty wooden chair. “Are you in trouble? What happened with Evan? What did Sister Dorothy say?”

  “God, Emily,” Kenzie said, calmly biting into her breakfast. “You are a lot to take this early in the morning.”

  “But what about the Mount Carmel game?”

  “What about it? It’s one game he has to sit out for. You know how these jocks are with sports—they think football actually has a point. Besides, those college scouts will be back for the next game, anyway.”

  “Not if they lose,” Emily said breathlessly. “It’s a playoff game, single elimination. If they lose, they’re out.”

  “They haven’t lost all season,” Kenzie said. “Why would they start now?”

  “Um, because their star quarterback is going to be sitting on the bench?”

  “Shut up, Emily,” Kenzie said, taking another delicate bite of her Pop-Tart.

  “What about you?” Sapphire demanded. “Are you in trouble? What did Sister Dorothy say?

  “Ugh. That crazy old bitch. She put me on probation and gave me JUG
for the rest of the week. Totally ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous? You should be thanking God you weren’t expelled!”

  “Well, normally, I would’ve been, but Sister Dorothy said that since we’re closing at the end of the year anyway, she’s going to have mercy on me.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “Sister Dorothy? Not much. It was that idiot counselor, Ms. Bennett, who did most of the talking. About how I had ‘violated the safe space’ of our school, and that I needed to stop my ‘attention seeking behaviors,’ and that I have to start ‘finding approval from within.’ All Sister Dorothy said was that if I pull any more stunts before the end of the year, she will ‘personally see me out the door.’”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Oh, the usual threats. He said that if I don’t start acting like the daughter he raised, I can forget about going to Lincoln next year.”

  “But where would you go, besides Lincoln? What else is there?”

  “There’s some dump up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, that he keeps threatening me with. Here, I have a pamphlet.” She rifled through her backpack and pulled out a glossy booklet. On the cover, a circle of laughing, ponytailed girls sat on a green lawn before a large stone archway with a pile of textbooks spread before them. It all looked relatively picturesque and normal, except that they were wearing these weird starched white blouses and navy wool skirts that reached down to their ankles. CHERRYWOOD ACADEMY, it said at the top of the photo, and then, in smaller letters, “A THERAPEUTIC BOARDING SCHOOL FOR TROUBLED YOUNG WOMEN.”

  “Therapeutic boarding school?” I passed the booklet to Emily. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s where they send you when they decide that your soul needs to be crushed. The entire school is Wi-Fi disabled. You only get to leave campus twice a month, behavior contingent, and even then it has to be supervised. And you see for yourself the burlap sacks they make you wear to class.”