And then I remembered. We’d been so excited to come up with Phase Two of our plan, and today I couldn’t string two words together without them coming out as a burst of angry profanity.
I nodded at Sara. “We actually do have an idea,” I said, my voice still thick. “It isn’t going to make me feel any better about Kyle, I don’t think, because it has nothing to do with him. But it’s a good idea, and we don’t have much time. Sara?”
Now that I’d gotten the words out, I knew it wouldn’t make me feel better about Kyle, because the lump had returned to my throat. Nothing would, but especially not a plan organized around homecoming, which was the theoretical impetus for ditching me—because Leah “needed” a date. Asshole.
Sara rocked back down to the ground. “Okay, so.” She took in a deep breath. “Yesterday, after we agreed to get in touch with Miss Laurel Anne from Choices, Athena and I talked about what we could do to continue, especially if some of the teachers find a way to have the patches banned.”
“They won’t,” I interrupted Sara. “Sister Catherine said it was fine for me and everyone else to have the patches, as long as we don’t imply it says anything one way or another about abortion. She gave me a note—”
“I, uh, hate to tell you this,” Melissa said, interrupting me in turn. “But I don’t think whatever she said will last very long. Principal Richard told my dad when they were at the driving range after work yesterday that Mrs. Bonnecaze has talked with the other religion teachers in the school, and they put in a call to the diocesan school board. So now he’s getting pressure from the diocese to shut us down, and banning the So What? propaganda will probably seem like the easiest way. Mr. Richard is, after all, the laziest human on the planet.”
We heaved a collective sigh. Getting a break from Sister Catherine might stave off the inevitable for a day or two, but not forever. As soon as Mr. Richard let the teachers know that he approved of the ban, all the patches and buttons would vanish from the halls of our school.
“So what’s our next step?” Helen asked, taking a swig from her can of Coke. “If So What? gets banned, we’ve got to maintain our forward momentum. We can’t let them win.” She gave me a sympathetic glance. “Especially not now.”
Sara looked at me for approval again. We hadn’t told Helen about the student council plan yet, mostly because we were worried she might get upset. Homecoming was her dream, not ours.
“Well...umm,” Sara said, glancing back and forth between Helen and me. “I thought we could try to get you nominated for homecoming court anyway. And if that doesn’t work, because they won’t let you on it, we can try to stock it with the rest of us.”
“And then what?” Helen bit her lower lip, a small sign that she hadn’t yet made the decision to pout or to congratulate us. Homecoming mattered to her, and Mrs. Turner had yanked that possibility away. But whether she’d see the big picture of us trying to do some mass demonstration at homecoming or not... I never knew which way my sister would go.
Sara nodded to me. It was my turn.
“Well, we thought we’d figure out something dramatic to do at homecoming,” I said, looking at everyone in turn. Sara and I hadn’t worked out this part of the plan, and I hadn’t had time to brainstorm with Melissa, either. “I’ve been thinking about doing something with our slogans on the dresses, but I don’t have anything like a solid idea yet.” I paused, trying to work through what might work, and what would 100 percent get us expelled, or at least suspended, if the So What? ban became a concrete, diocesan-enforced thing. “I mean, they make the girls wear those sashes, right? And we have slogans. Might as well put them to good use. We can put the slogans on the sashes, and—”
“Bam! Flip them over when the girls are in front of everyone at the dance!” Sara finished. I’d been thinking that we’d do it at the game, but the dance was even better. At the game, it would be a silent protest, which could be effective. But the problem was, we’d be far enough away that a lot of people wouldn’t be able to see us. At the dance, we’d be within a few feet of everyone. The protest would matter.
Across the lunch circle from me, Melissa nodded in agreement. Her face told me that she was already thinking of how she might be able to spin this plan out, make it go further, because she knew it was a good start. But she wasn’t the one I needed to convince.
I hoped it was enough for Helen. The truth was, homecoming was a big deal, and even if our plans were for her benefit, she wasn’t going to get to participate in them.
“Part of me thinks that it’s going to suck if I don’t get to be on the homecoming court,” Helen said, weighing each word with a rounded importance. “And part of me thinks it’s brilliant. Actually, most of me thinks it’s brilliant.”
Sara’s shoulders drooped with relief. She’d worried that Helen would reject our plan outright. Sara pushed her overlong brown bangs back from her face, tucking them behind her ears. They fell in her face again anyway, but she spoke with too much excitement to notice.
“So the plan,” Sara said quickly, “is to get as many of our people onto the homecoming court as possible. Nominate you, if we can. If not, then me. For the sophomores, Cady Jenson. She’s wearing a ‘So what if she didn’t?’ patch right now, and she even handed out some So What? pins of her own design, which are really cool...but anyway, back to the point.” She paused for a moment, flashing a look to Melissa and me. “We’re not sure of the second person. I asked Erica from the pro-life club, who also has a ‘So what if she didn’t?’ patch, but she’s going to Disney World with her mom and stepdad on homecoming weekend, so—”
“Do we have any other pro-life people?” Helen asked. I could see her getting antsy. If she didn’t think we’d at least tried to find pro-life people, she’d never go for the plan.
“Yes!” Sara exclaimed. “I’m getting there. For juniors, Melissa and Missy Bordelon. We’re probably not going to be able to stop Leah’s nomination, but I thought our fourth nominee could be Angelle. And there’s a ton of seniors nominated, but their entire class seems to be pretty sympathetic anyway. Like, they’ve all got at least one patch of some sort.”
Nominating Angelle seemed like a terrible idea to me, but I knew the notion would appeal to Helen.
I snuck a covert glance at Melissa, who had been stunningly quiet about the Phase Two plan so far, which I could only guess was because she didn’t want anything she said to cloud Helen’s opinion. I could tell that holding back was killing her, though, especially now that Sara had mentioned both Angelle and the sympathetic seniors—who were all, coincidentally, friends with Jamie. Melissa kept inhaling these sharp little breaths, like she was going to launch into a long speech, and then, each time, stopped herself and returned her focus to Helen.
Helen did her lip-biting thing again. No wonder the girl had such perfect, bee-stung lips—they must’ve been swollen from all the chewing.
“The only definite pro-life person is Angelle?” she asked. “And we don’t know about the seniors?”
Sara’s eyes darted between me and Helen again. “Yes, and you... Or me, if they don’t let you. But we really don’t know what the seniors think, or why they’ve been so supportive.”
Melissa shifted uncomfortably, like she was holding back some really important news. I almost asked her why she was acting so weird, as a way to get her to spill, but it felt wrong. If my suspicions were right, the news she was sitting on shouldn’t be told without the right person’s permission, and that person wasn’t Melissa.
“The meeting’s Monday before school, right? And then the announcement’s during morning assembly on Tuesday?” Helen asked.
“Yeah,” Jennifer said. “And...um, Sara talked to me about it last night, and I think I can do it. I just...need some help coming up with a pitch for everyone else on the student council.” Her voice cracked slightly. “I shouldn’t have trouble convincing the girls on the council to vote for
the girls we’ve picked, but...I don’t know about the boys. They just vote for who they think is hot, and...”
Jennifer didn’t sound like she had a lot of confidence in the boys, or in her ability to convince them to vote for the extended So What? crew. She twisted the napkin on her lap into a tight rose, turning the stem over and over in her hand until the paper started to shred.
“Right,” Helen said. “Okay, Jennifer, we’re going to go practice. You’re going to give me arguments, and I’m going to pretend to be a jerk boy.”
Helen got up and signaled for Jennifer to follow her. Sara stayed behind, but that didn’t seem as weird as it would have a few weeks ago. Her staying with us seemed less like a further attempt to impress Melissa than a means of not violating Jennifer and Helen’s space.
“Helen always coaches Jennifer on her debates,” Sara told us. “She’s really good.”
“Helen or Jennifer?” Melissa asked. She’d said little the entire lunch. I think she had doubted Helen would go for our plan and didn’t know exactly what to do now that Helen seemed fine with it.
“Both—once Jennifer gets over her initial stage fright,” Sara said. She pushed her hair back behind her ear again in what I now recognized as a nervous habit of hers.
It did nothing to reassure me of our plan’s success.
28
On Tuesday, Sister Catherine paced in front of the two long folding tables from which the student council ruled every assembly. A red cloth with the school’s crest hung at the front of the tables, giving the student council an air of authority. Everyone else sat on the gym bleachers and awaited the news of the homecoming ballot.
Sister Catherine’s main function at these events was to legitimize the student council’s authority and to tamp down any rebelliousness from an audience with a significant percentage of slackers who might reject the decisions of sixteen people they viewed as even nerdier than I was. She did her job well, standing with her hands clutched at her waist, seriousness embodied in her gray veil, crisp white blouse, and below-the-knee gray A-line skirt.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Sister Catherine boomed into the microphone. “Please remember that this is a respectful process. I realize there has been some...controversy going around the school, and I want to remind you that the student council’s goal is to be accountable to the entire student body—not to any one student, or, for that matter, the faculty.”
Sister Catherine stepped away from the microphone, nodding toward the student council president, Eric Boileau, the preppiest boy in the history of prepsters. If this had been a free-dress day, he’d be decked out in so much Polo. He usually managed to pop the collar of his white Oxford uniform shirt, and—when he could get away with it—wore his regulation loafers without socks.
“Hi, everyone!” Eric’s voice carried a little too much enthusiasm, and he punctuated each sentence with an emphatic Bill Clinton–like hand gesture. I didn’t envy Eric’s job, because most assemblies involved some bit of heckling at him. But the homecoming announcements were the rare occasion where he had everyone’s attention, at least until the crowd decided if the girls were nomination-worthy. “Before we announce the 1992 homecoming court nominees, I want to remind everyone to get out and vote! Not just for the court, but also for our final mock presidential election tomorrow! Let’s see if our school’s votes match the nation’s!”
Half the student body groaned because they weren’t here for a Clinton/Bush debate. And anyway, they were all going to vote for Bush in the mock election, if they voted at all. In terms of the homecoming court, though, the student council was oligarchy in action, under the guise of representative democracy. They tended to nominate girls from within or adjacent to their social circle, which was why it was such a surprise when they nominated Melissa last year. People like Eric held our fate in their hands, and I couldn’t imagine any of them saying, “So what?”
Jennifer sat with the rest of the council, calm and serene, displaying none of the nervousness she usually exhibited around me and Melissa. Maybe she was in her natural habitat, or maybe the calm wouldn’t last, but for now, she exuded confidence. Her hair was pulled back from her face with barrettes, instead of her usual perky ponytail. Something about the hairstyle made her seem older and more mature, but that could have been wishful thinking on my part. I wanted to take her composure as a sign that our plan had worked, but I didn’t want to read too much into it, either.
“Now, without further ado,” Eric said, “the ladies of the student council will announce this year’s nominees!”
I crossed my fingers that the announcement would feature all our friends on the ballot. If anyone had told me a month ago that I would wind up caring so much about homecoming nominations, I would have laughed at them.
The girl representatives from each class walked in single file to the podium. The boys escaped the glare of the spotlight, but—if you included the officers—they actually made up the majority of the vote. Patriarchy in action went along with the oligarchy, I guessed. Jennifer approached the microphone first, slowly and steadily. If she was afraid, it didn’t show on her face.
“Darcy Kendall and Sara Lewis, please come to the podium,” she announced, steady and strong.
Okay, so Helen was out, but Sara was in. I didn’t recognize Darcy Kendall, and I tried to figure out from Sara’s reaction if she was a good or bad option. When she reached the front of the gym, Sara assumed one of the straight-backed poses she’d likely learned in modeling class with Helen. Her face held nothing but a vacuous smile that hid whatever she was thinking about Darcy Kendall.
Erica Johnson, a tall girl with frizzy strawberry-blond hair, walked to the microphone to announce the sophomores. I crossed my fingers that Cady Jenson made it through. I wasn’t sure how Erica felt about our campaign. She was treasurer of the pro-life club, but she’d been among the first to say that she believed Helen. She wasn’t a button wearer, though—“So what if she did?” didn’t represent anything close to her ideals.
“Cady Jenson and Athena Graves, please come to the podium.”
A wave of chills swept over me. I didn’t just hear my name. I couldn’t have heard that right.
But I had, and now everyone was looking at me. The feeling that coursed through me was closely related to the one I’d felt when I’d told Kyle that I’d heard his conversation with Aimee. I had to make myself get up, remind myself that I had feet and legs and that they provided mobility.
Somehow, I got to the front of the gym, and, pointing to her own faked grin, Sara signaled to me to smile. I tried, but the most I could muster was an uncomfortable grimace. Everyone was staring at me, and I felt like such an imposter. I wasn’t homecoming court material, and they all knew it. I wasn’t popular—I was just a proxy for a sister who was. How could the girls have done this to me?
I didn’t hear the rest of the nominations, but by the time the assembly ended, Melissa, Leah, Angelle, and Missy Bordelon stood to my left, along with a gaggle of eight seniors who stood with their arms interlocked, each wearing So What? buttons on their uniform skirts.
* * *
As I left the assembly to go back to class, I felt a hot hiss in my ear and sharp nails digging into my upper arm. “Athena Graves, in my office, now.”
There were no tortuous hugs, no pained faux concern, no “Now, Athena” this time from Mrs. Turner. She marched me toward the guidance office with a grip on my arm like she was afraid I’d bolt for the doors if she relaxed her hand for even a second.
“Sit,” she snapped, almost throwing me into the uncomfortable chair across from her desk. She fumbled for her own chair, knocking over her mug full of pens and pencils and skewing a stack of papers. Her round face was no longer the dangerous but sweet hamster, but a beet-red mask of rage.
I shrank back in my seat. I hadn’t done anything to provoke her wrath. Well, maybe that wasn’t true. She wouldn’t be the fir
st to be angry about our So What? buttons and patches. But this anger was far too immediate to have been inspired by a campaign that was last week’s news.
“Now, Athena,” she said, sucking in a deep breath. “When I said it was irresponsible for your sister to be on the homecoming court, I wasn’t implying that you should immediately take her place!”
“But I—”
“No, missy, you do not get to interrupt me,” she ranted. The red in her face was dangerously close to heart-attack territory, and her hands were clutched into tiny tight fists. “You are drawing far too much attention to yourself and your sister with all this plotting you’re doing.” She unclenched one fist long enough to point at me with her sharply manicured nails. “You should know better!”
With a swift jerk of her arm, Mrs. Turner opened her desk drawer. She pulled out a near-bursting accordion file and dumped its contents on her desk. In the pile were dozens of buttons and patches, most of which we’d made and some that other people had done, inspired by ours.
“Do you see this?” She held up one of the “So what if she did?” patches. “And this?” she added, gesturing to a So What? button.
“Now, Miss Graves—” that formality was new “—I fully expect you to be honest with me,” Mrs. Turner said. She tented her fingers and pursed her lips. “I know that you’re a smart girl. But you have no idea what kind of harm you’ve caused with this...this riot grrrl stunt!”
I blinked hard, pushing down a laugh that I knew would not make things better for me. I didn’t know what Mrs. Turner knew about riot grrrl, but whatever it was couldn’t be good or accurate.
“Yes, you heard me,” she spat. “I know all about that disgusting group of young women, and I cannot for the life of me understand why you would want to be a part of it.” She paused dramatically to hold up an illustrated pamphlet that looked like a Chick tract, only presumably not anti-Catholic, but with the same level of religious fervor. Its cover issued a dire warning against riot grrrl: The Dangerous New Movement Undermining Girls’ Piety. “You and your friends have the superintendent of diocesan schools looking at our institution with a sharp eye. And you have made your sister’s situation no better in my eyes, or in the eyes of many faculty at this school. Now, I know you have something to do with these—” she pointed to the patches “—and I don’t think your parents would approve of you using your position on the homecoming court to further an extremist political agenda.”
Rebel Girls Page 25