Rebel Girls

by Elizabeth Keenan

  Except we didn’t really see each other at school, I wanted to say. We’d now gone on three legitimate dates, plus the Melissa-arranged coffee-shop meet up, but barely spent any time with each other at school. He was always going to lunchtime photography club meetings or had some other excuse not to sit with me and Melissa. Though I kind of understood not wanting to sit with us, because Girltown, USA, could be a little overwhelming. And it wasn’t like we could talk in class. But I knew it would be wrong to point all that out—it would make me seem paranoid. And jealous, which, again, was something a self-professed riot grrrl should be weeding out of her personality.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said, trying to emulate the kind of girl I wanted to be. “I’m just a little bummed that we’re delaying our songwriting a bit.” I grinned up at him, projecting as much confidence in myself and our relationship as I could. “But I’ll get over it.”

  “You’re the best,” he said, squeezing me in a tight hug. “Thanks for being such a cool girl.”

  “No problem,” I said, returning his hug. Maybe if I kept acting like a cool girl who wasn’t jealous for no reason, I would eventually turn into one.

  22

  The next day, Jamie Taylor, a senior girl I barely knew, grabbed my hand and pulled me into the girls’ bathroom. As a senior, Jamie moved in a completely different world than I did, even though I was in calculus with her. She was one of those girls who managed to be smart and nice and pretty and popular, all at the same time. Everybody liked her, to the point that Leah and Aimee wouldn’t even try to go after her with gossip, because no one would believe them.

  Jamie gripped my hand as she pushed open the door, as though she was afraid that I’d be swept away into the crowd of everyone rushing home after school. Then, like Melissa feening for a cigarette, she checked under the stall doors to make sure that no one else was in there with us. Even while she was performing such an undignified task, Jamie’s chestnut hair fell in a perfect, elegant cascade over her shoulder.

  Finished, she let out a sigh and briefly closed her eyes. A bit dramatic, I thought, but with the way my week was going, not entirely unexpected.

  “Athena, you’re one of the Gang of Five, right?”

  “The what?”

  Jamie sucked in a deep breath and her brown eyes flew open, frozen in fear.

  “So you’re not?”

  “Jamie, I have zero idea what you’re talking about,” I said, shaking my head. “The Gang of Four was a name for either an English post-punk band or a group of four people during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I’m obviously not part of either of those.”

  Jamie frowned, and then she nodded, like she’d suddenly thought of something.

  “But you’re friends with Melissa, right? And your sister is Helen, that girl who got the abortion?”

  Helen would hate the way Jamie said that, like it was so certain. Not “the girl those rumors were about,” or “that freshman whose locker was plastered with anti-abortion propaganda,” but “that girl who got the abortion.”

  As pro-choice as I was, I felt the need to offer a bit of correction.

  “Uh, no.” Jamie started looking even more confused, so I continued quickly, “I mean, yes. Melissa is my friend, and Helen is my sister, but she’d just about die if she thought you actually believed she had an abortion.” Jamie flinched. I didn’t know what I’d said to provoke that reaction, so I continued, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that—it’s just she and I don’t exactly see eye to eye on the issue, you know?”

  Jamie gave me a half smile—the kind that is part of a conversation, like a like or an um, but that doesn’t exactly indicate happiness—and nodded.

  “So you are part of the Gang of Five,” she said. “At least, that’s what everyone’s calling you... Melissa told me that you had some patches I could get. You know, for my backpack.”

  This was the first time I’d heard us being called anything, or that anyone cared about who I was in relation to other people. Since she was into post-punk and constantly annoyed when people mistook her for being Chinese—or worse, called her a Chinese commie for her liberal political activism—Melissa had probably created the name as some kind of ironic homage. But while the Gang of Five clearly had her fingerprints on it, other people were embracing it, too, including girls like Jamie, apparently.

  A small thrill ran through me at the thought. I was part of a gang—a girl gang. Maybe not riot grrrl, but definitely something great.

  “Yeah, that I can do,” I said, excited that I could help her out. Jennifer had given me a stash of patches and a bag of buttons in a clandestine hallway handoff between sixth and seventh periods. She’d muttered something about being freaked out by the demand and ran off before I could thank her. It didn’t exactly make me feel confident in Sara’s assertions that Jennifer was our great hope for finding a way to stock the homecoming court with Helen’s supporters.

  I fanned out a selection of patches on the tile ledge of the bathroom window. There were gingham ones, and some on T-shirt fabric, and a few on white muslin with a border of our school’s uniform fabric, to emphasize the connection. Those were all “So what if she did?” Melissa’s idea of pushing the political envelope.

  Jamie’s hand hovered among the choices. Her pink-lipsticked mouth was back in a frown, and I had a flash of fear for a minute that she was going to change her mind and maybe even rat me out to Sister Catherine. So far, the dean of discipline had left us alone, and I wanted her to be blissfully unaware of our plans.

  “How much do these cost?” She studied the piles of patches.

  “Cost?” I blinked. We’d been giving them away for free—that was the whole purpose of propaganda, right? To get everyone to do it. I’d never thought we could charge for them, even though that would help with costs for more supplies if we ran out. “They’re free, of course.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, nodding slowly. “Like the buttons at the protest last summer.”

  I nodded back, confused. Melissa hadn’t said anything about anyone else from our school being at the protest. While Melissa liked being a leader, she wasn’t the type to erase anyone else’s work. Plus, someone else from our school being a clinic defender—well, that was major news. “You were there?”

  Jamie pursed her lips again. “Yeah. Melissa really...showed me the ropes, I guess you could say.”

  That surprised me. Miss Super Nice National Honor Society President didn’t seem like she’d put herself in danger at the clinic. Melissa liked riding the edge of what she could get away with in terms of out-of-school activities. Jamie, from the little I knew of her, seemed like the exact opposite.

  “Wow. I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah. It was intense.” She was looking at the patches, not me, lost in thinking about last summer. I hoped she’d pick her patch soon—I had to go find Helen. I put out a tidy pile of buttons next to the patches, in case she wanted one of those, too. Maybe she would get the picture and pick something already.

  “I guess you’re happy to hear the good news, then, right?” Yesterday, the federal court had struck down the state’s abortion ban. It was all Melissa had been able to talk about at lunch today.

  Jamie stared at me blankly.

  “The law? It was struck down. Operation Rescue’s protests didn’t work.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, addressing the patches again. “It was hard, you know.” Her voice echoed around the bathroom. “There were so many protesters. So many. Screaming about killing babies and holding signs like the ones in Helen’s locker.” She looked up at me, and I was surprised to see that she was on the verge of tears. “I saw that yesterday. No one deserves that, whether or not they’ve had an abortion.”

  “Yeah, and a fetus at that age doesn’t really look like any of those posters...” I trailed off. Jamie didn’t need to hear my scientific, biological explanation. Sh
e’d been in the trenches, on the front line, and any other military analogy I could think of. All I’d done was make some ambiguous buttons and patches with my friends.

  She shrugged. “Yeah. I guess. Anyway. It wasn’t an easy experience, but I’m still happy I did it.”

  “Yeah, Melissa said it was rewarding to help everyone.”

  Jamie gave me a strange look for half a second. Then she smiled wanly. “Oh. Yeah. Definitely. It was.”

  Something about the way Jamie was talking about the protests itched at my brain. Melissa’s letters to me in Eugene had been filled with incandescent, righteous anger and a sense of obligation to the girls and women she’d escorted. She’d written about how the patients coming to the clinic were all types of women, some young, like us, and others who were older. All races, from all walks of life. She knew that she was helping them get what they needed, and she’d worked hard to be a kind face for them in the sea of protesters. She’d been there to protect the patients, and whatever epithets the protesters had yelled at her became fuel for the next day of helping patients.

  Jamie’s reaction...wasn’t like that. It was more like she’d felt the protests were directed at her.

  Things clicked into place in my mind. If she felt that way, and Melissa had never mentioned her, could she have been a patient at the clinic? The question was too big for me to handle—not something I could ask a relative stranger, and not something I needed to know. I wouldn’t feel right asking Melissa, either, because she obviously hadn’t told me about it for a reason. But I cringed at my earlier fetus-poster talk. If Jamie had had an abortion, I probably reminded her a little too much of how she was treated on the way to the clinic. But she couldn’t have...could she?

  She picked up our most risqué model, the one with the school-uniform trim. “I think I’ll take this one.”

  “Good choice,” I said encouragingly. “Be bold.”

  “You know it. Thanks, Athena.” Jamie squeezed my hand and, as quick as she’d pulled me in there, she was gone. I shoved everything else into my backpack and headed out to find Helen.

  23

  The next morning, I was startled to find Sean waiting at my locker before homeroom, slouching in such a way that I could practically hear Mrs. Estelle’s voice in my head telling him—and me—to stand up straight. Come to think of it, she said it to me far more often than to him.

  “Hey, Athena.” He inhaled a sharp breath, like he wanted to say more, but didn’t.

  I scowled. I’d moved beyond feeling like I’d been the one to mess up our friendship and now firmly believed that Sean wasn’t being at all fair to me. I wasn’t the one who couldn’t talk about my feelings until things exploded all over the place.

  Like now. Why couldn’t he just say what he was going to say, instead of making me ask him what was wrong? When had he asked me what was wrong lately? And beyond me—us, our friendship—why had he stopped caring about Helen, who’d always been like a little sister to him, too?

  No, I’d moved far past feeling like I was at fault to feeling like Sean had been beyond unfair.

  “Hey,” I said with more than a little bit of impatience. “I’m going to be late for class.”

  “I just—you know, I—Leah and I...” He paused and looked at his feet. “You know what, never mind.”

  “Why do you always have to be this way?” I asked, all the anger I had at him bursting out at once. Which didn’t make me much better than him, honestly. “You want me to ask you what’s wrong, and that’s not fair!”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, I couldn’t believe I’d said them. That’s not fair. No matter how true it might be, I still sounded like a five-year-old whose toys had been taken away during dinner.

  Sean looked at me like I’d slapped him. “I’m not always—” He stopped himself. “Okay, that’s fair. I do take forever to talk about the things that really matter. But this is...important.”

  I could feel my resolve fading. I never ignored Sean when he had something big to say—mostly because he almost never shared his feelings about certain things with me, or really anyone else.

  But he’d been such a jerk. I could still feel the shame and embarrassment of him telling me off in front of everyone. Of making it seem like I’d been out to get Leah, and not the other way around. I blinked back tears, trying to steel myself for whatever he was going to say. I couldn’t get any words out, so I just nodded for him to continue.

  “I wanted to explain to you what happened,” he said. “The last time we saw each other—it made me realize a few things. And I don’t like how I acted... And Leah...”

  He stopped, and I waited. When he didn’t continue, I could feel the anger building up again inside me.

  “An explanation isn’t an apology, Sean,” I said through gritted teeth. If I ungritted them, I knew I’d collapse into tears.

  His eyes met mine, and I could see the genuine regret in his gaze. “I know. I just—look, I want you to know that I am sorry. I got into a huge fight with Leah afterward, and—”

  “So now that you’ve gotten into a fight with her, that’s why you’re apologizing?” I swiped my hand up my cheek to push away the tears that started rolling down. “That’s not a great reason.”

  “I—you’re right.” His shoulders sank. “I guess I’ll just see you around, then. Okay?”

  “Fine.”

  He turned and walked down the hall.

  I told myself I didn’t care. He owed me much more than he’d offered just now. But guilt crept into the back of my mind, making me wish for a moment that I’d tried to be more patient with him, tried to listen.

  I shook my head and pushed the guilt away. No—he was in the wrong, and he needed to find a way to make things right again between us.

  I needed a real apology before I could find it in myself to forgive him.

  24

  Another day in physics, another tightly folded note tapping on my shoulder. After our last note-passing debacle and the impromptu locker inspection, I was surprised Melissa would risk Mrs. Breaux’s wrath. It must be something urgent.

  I quickly grabbed the note and sent a surreptitious glance toward the front of the room, where Mrs. Breaux was bent over with her back to the class, busily fiddling with the VCR. She was trying to rewind a videotape about Galileo and Copernicus, but it seemed to have gotten stuck in the VCR. We’d already watched it once, but she seemed to have forgotten. Everyone around me was half-asleep.

  I unfolded the paper as quietly as possible and saw that it wasn’t a note from Melissa after all—it was a gift certificate to Michaels for craft supplies. I flipped it over, completely puzzled.

  Thought you could use this.

  —Lissa

  I turned around. Lissa Jaubert, one of the seniors in the class, waved from the corner of the room. She gave me a thumbs-up and pointed to her backpack. She had one of everything from our campaign, like a mini advertisement for our line of protest wear.

  I mouthed thanks and stuffed the gift certificate in my backpack before Mrs. Breaux had the chance to notice and take it from me. It was dangerous to have anything that might give her certain proof that I was part of the Gang of Five.

  The kindness of Lissa’s gesture was enough to buoy me through the rest of physics. Someone outside our tiny circle cared about our campaign, enough to give us twenty-five dollars. That was five dollars more than my grandma usually gave me for my birthday. It could buy us a lot of buttons, and plenty more screen-printing paint.

  When the bell finally rang, I rushed over to Melissa so we could walk to lunch together, as usual. As soon as we were in the hall, I proudly showed her the gift certificate from Lissa.

  “I almost want to thank the assholes who did that to Helen’s locker,” Melissa said, looking at the gift certificate in my hand. “It’s only been forty-eight hours since Mrs. Breaux went nuclear, and I�
��m completely out of patches.”

  I’d never had a huge stash to begin with, but mine were gone, too. A couple random freshmen had asked for my last patches when I was waiting in line to pee in the girls’ bathroom earlier. If Leah and Aimee had meant to ostracize Helen further, their plan had certainly backfired. The meanness of it all had generated a wave of sympathy toward Helen, and the Gang of Five—which everyone really was calling us, despite its dubious connotations—was now an open secret.

  “I wonder how the kids are doing,” Melissa said, nodding toward where Helen, Sara, and Jennifer were waiting for us in our now-usual lunch spot in the amphitheater.

  I bristled a little at her calling them “kids,” because they were only a year younger than me. I was dangerously close to being tarred by the same underclassman brush.

  “Hey, girls!” Melissa said as she sat down. “Looks like our revolution is working. I know we planned to make more patches and pins tonight, but I think I have a better idea. Who’s up for a field trip? Athena, show ’em what you’ve got!”

  I held the gift certificate up proudly, like a riot grrrl Vanna White.

  “Y’all in? We could go to Michaels after school, and...” Melissa trailed off. “Helen...is something wrong?”

  I turned to my sister, who was glowering at the two of us. She remained silent, chewing her veggie-and-cheese sandwich angrily, which for Helen meant slowly, deliberately, and silently. Meanwhile, Jennifer stared at her lap and Sara shrugged at us like she didn’t know what was going on.

  I couldn’t see a reason for her to be upset, especially since things were now in our favor, but I didn’t have a lot of patience historically for her silent treatment.

  “Okay, spit it out,” I said. “Why’re you mad that we’re succeeding?”

  She put her sandwich down—again, slowly, deliberately, silently—and swept her gaze across Melissa and me.

  “What. Do. You. Two. Know. About. My. Locker?” Anger simmered in each syllable of her question. Next to her, Jennifer picked at the chicken nuggets on her cafeteria tray while Sara pretended to read from her lit textbook.