by Amy Reed
“Isn’t that about a whale?” says a guy in the front row.
“It’s about obsession and man’s eternal struggle with himself and God,” says Mr. Baxter. “Among other things. But yes, there is a whale. Is that all right with you, Clemons?”
“Yes, coach.”
“Good. After Moby Dick, we’ll move on to selections from American greats like Mark Twain, Henry James, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck. Then we’re in for a real treat with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which most intelligent people consider the greatest American novel. If we have time at the end of the semester, we’ll hopefully be able to read selections from a few great living authors, including my personal favorite, Jonathan Franzen.”
“Now,” he says. “Open your textbooks at the beginning, and we’ll go around the room taking turns reading. Page four: What is a novel? Who wants to start?”
Grace opens the textbook on her desk to a pencil-drawn doodle of a penis wearing sunglasses.
* * *
Grace gets lost trying to find her locker, so by the time she gets to the lunchroom it’s nearly full. She looks around for Connie and Allison, the girls from her homeroom, but they must have a different lunch. She searches the room for other potential friends—not too pretty but not too ugly, somewhere in the middle of being nobodies and somebodies, the kind of friends she could dissolve into. For a moment she considers turning around and finding a hidden spot under a stairwell to eat.
But then a table catches her eye. In the corner of the lunchroom, near the hallway that leads to the library, is an island in the sea of high school hierarchy. Sitting there are Erin, the bald girl from the school office, and Rosina, the girl she met in front of her house yesterday, equally strange but in a different, louder, way. The two girls seem unaware of the world around them, as if they don’t even know they’re sitting in the middle of a high school cafeteria. How nice it would be to be that free, that unencumbered by the whims and weaknesses of other people.
Rosina looks up and catches Grace’s eye. Erin turns her head to see what Rosina’s looking at. The two girls look at her, not exactly smiling, but with a curiosity that is not unkind.
Is it true that this decision—where to sit at lunch—could define Grace for the rest of her high school career, quite possibly for the rest of her life? Is life that senseless and absurd? If her previous experiences are any indication, the answer is yes.
Grace had a plan, but maybe that plan was wrong. Maybe decisions should not be made out of fear. Maybe the goal isn’t to blend in. Maybe Grace has been approaching this game all wrong, and the goal isn’t to play it safe and try to stay in the middle. Maybe she doesn’t have to play the game at all.
“Hi,” Grace says when she reaches the lunch table, her heart pounding. “Can I sit with you?”
Erin tilts her head in a way that reminds Grace of either a cat or a robot. “Why?” she says.
“Erin,” Rosina says. “Remember how you’re not always supposed to say the first thing that comes to mind?”
“But I want to know why she wants to sit with us,” Erin says, with no trace of cruelty. “No one ever wants to sit with us.”
“Good point,” Rosina says. “Why do you want to sit with us, New Girl?”
“I, um, I don’t know? I guess I just met you both before, and you seemed nice, and I’m new and don’t know anybody yet, and—”
“It’s okay,” Rosina says. “I was kidding. Of course you can sit with us.”
“We’re not nice,” Erin says.
“Speak for yourself,” says Rosina. “I’m nice.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m nice to you.”
“I’m the only person you’re nice to.”
“Well, maybe I’m going to want to be nice to New Girl, too. So far, she’s being nice to me, so I’m definitely considering it.”
Erin shrugs. “You’re lucky,” she says. “This is the best table in the cafeteria.”
“Why’s that?” Grace says as she sits down.
“It’s the quietest,” Erin says. “And it has the quickest escape route to the library.”
Grace notices Erin’s lunch in a small tin container with three compartments. It is not the lunch of an average teenager, not a sandwich or chips or anything resembling cooked food. Erin notices her looking. “This is called a bento box. It’s from Japan. My mom got it for me because I don’t like my food to touch.”
“Are you on a diet?” Grace asks.
“Not on purpose.”
“Erin’s mom feeds her leaves and sticks so she won’t hit herself anymore,” Rosina says.
“Rosina’s tone of voice implies sarcasm,” Erin says flatly. “But the content of her statement is close to the truth. Except these aren’t leaves and sticks.”
“Okay, time to change the subject,” Rosina says. “What’s your name, New Girl?”
“Grace. We met yesterday, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. You live in Lucy Moynihan’s old house. Shit!” Rosina fake slaps herself. “I promised I wouldn’t utter her name again.”
“Why not?” Grace asks.
“I do not want to contribute to this town’s unhealthy obsession with that girl. It’s been a whole summer and people are still talking about her. Get a life, Prescott.”
“Was she your friend?”
“You’re looking at my friend,” Rosina says. “This bald girl eating rabbit food.”
Erin looks up from her lunch of shredded vegetables. “People aren’t going to stop talking about her until they stop feeling guilty,” Erin says. “They can’t let it go because it’s still weighing on their consciences. Conscience. What’s the plural of ‘conscience’? I should know this.”
“That was a very astute observation,” Rosina says.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What exactly happened to Lucy?” Grace asks. “Did she say someone raped her? Who’d she say did it?”
Neither Rosina nor Erin says anything. They take a bite of their lunches in tandem.
“Did you believe her?” Grace says.
Rosina sighs. “Of course we believed her. Most everybody did, but they’ll never admit it. Probably half the girls in this school have had some kind of run-in with one of those assholes.” Rosina looks up from her barely-eaten sandwich. “But it doesn’t fucking matter.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?” Grace says. “Of course it matters.”
“On what planet?”
Grace has no idea how to answer.
“I would like to talk about nudibranchs now,” Erin announces, kneading her hands together anxiously.
“Go for it,” Rosina says. Grace looks to Rosina for a clue, but Rosina takes a bite of her sandwich as if this is a completely normal turn for the conversation to take.
“Nudibranchs are sea slugs,” Erin says. “Which is a misleading name, because they are in fact some of the most beautiful and graceful creatures in the sea. Nudibranch is Latin for ‘naked lung,’ because their lungs are on the outside of their bodies, like feathers. They are gastropods, like mollusks and octopi. Gastropod means ‘stomach foot.’ ”
“Gastropod,” Rosina says, ripping the crust off her sandwich. “Great name for a band.”
Then Grace hears a familiar kind of laugh nearby, the kind she got so used to at the end of her time in Adeline, the kind of laugh that has a target, a victim. Mean girls getting ready to be mean.
“Don’t get too close to the freak table,” a girl says in a fake whisper to her friend as they walk by.
Rosina’s arm shoots into the air, her long middle finger outstretched. “Fuck off, pod people,” she says calmly. “I don’t want to catch what you got.”
The girls roll their eyes and laugh as they walk away, and Grace feels something inside her collapse. A familiar pain surfaces, along with the fear that she picked exactly the wrong table.
“Fucking cheerleaders,” Rosina says. “Can the
y be any more of a stereotype?”
“I’m leaving,” Erin says, standing up abruptly with a pained look on her face and swaying slightly on her feet. She throws her things into her bag.
“See you,” Rosina says as Erin turns and walks quickly down the hall.
“Wait,” Grace says. “Where’s she going?”
“Probably the library.”
“Why?” Grace asks.
“Fucking cheerleaders,” Rosina says, shaking her head, but Grace doesn’t know if that’s supposed to be an answer to her question or a comment on the state of the world. Either way, Grace is not feeling very optimistic.
US.
This girl joined the cheer squad because she loves dancing and the game of football. She didn’t know that’s not why most girls join the squad. She didn’t think much about the uniforms, didn’t think about the Fridays she’d be required to wear them to school, how the performance lasts way beyond the games, how it is part of her job to obsess about the cellulite on her upper thighs that no number of squats can get rid of, how the entire school has a right to judge her ass in close-up.
She holds her head high as she struts down the hall. It is her job to be confident and cheerful. So what if people are starting to talk about how she never seems to have a boyfriend? Someone so pretty should have a boyfriend.
The girl smiles so no one will suspect what she’s thinking: What if this wasn’t my life? What if I didn’t have to think about my body all the time, if I didn’t have to be on display? What would it be like to be a different kind of girl?
* * *
Prescott High’s student body president wonders if maybe at Stanford girls are allowed to be more than one thing. Since everyone there has to be smart by default, maybe it’s something you get to stop trying to prove all the time, so then you get to try being other things. Like maybe she can try wearing her skirts a little shorter, her shirts a little lower. Maybe she can wear some of that makeup her mom keeps buying her that she refuses to wear out of fear that people would stop taking her seriously. Maybe she can do something with her hair besides tying it up in this tight ponytail every day.
What would that be like, to be noticed? To be looked at? To be wanted as something besides a lab partner? To not have to choose between pretty and smart?
* * *
What guy wants a jock for a girlfriend? What guy dreams of hooking up with the school softball star, with her thick arms and legs, her drab orange ponytail, her see-through eyelashes and perpetually sunburned nose? They don’t even see her in the locker room as she collects dirty towels from varsity football practice—a girl, in the locker room. She thought signing up to be team manager would help her meet guys, but the only time they ever talk to her is to ask her where Coach is or if she can get grape-flavored Gatorade for next practice.
So they certainly don’t notice her in the corner disinfecting mouth guards as they towel off. They certainly don’t know she’s listening to their discussion comparing how many girls they slept with over the summer. Of course they’re all probably lying. It’s primal, their need to compete, this need to fight over territory.
“Let’s make a bet on who can bag more this year,” Eric Jordan says. No surprise there. Even if he hadn’t been one of the guys Lucy said raped her, everyone can agree he’d certainly be capable of something like that. “Virgins count double,” he says. Most of the guys laugh. The ones who don’t laugh look away or roll their eyes but say nothing. “Start with the freshmen. They’re the easiest.”
“Knock it off, man,” one guy says. “My sister’s a freshman.”
“Is she hot?” says Eric Jordan.
The guy says a halfhearted “Fuck you,” but it can barely be heard above the laughter. Maybe not all the guys are participating in the conversation, but certainly none of them is stopping it.
She knows the thought is wrong as she’s thinking it, but she wishes, just once, a guy would try to take advantage of her.
* * *
If Erin DeLillo tolerated figures of speech, one might say she could do her homework with her eyes closed. Literally, of course, this is not true, but she does her homework quickly and with ease, even AP Calculus and AP Chemistry. Mom always reminds her how lucky she is to be so bright; few Aspies are so exceptional, so special. As if they need to be. As if that’s the only way to be forgiven for the rest of what they are.
She sits on the couch with Spot and a snack of carrot sticks and homemade raw cashew “cheese” spread, having earned today’s episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Episode 118, “Cause and Effect,” starts with the senior crew playing poker. Data is particularly good at poker because his face shows no emotion. He has no tells. His poker face is permanent.
Erin has been working on her poker face. She doesn’t cry as much in public anymore. She’s gotten better at hiding when she’s hurt. The worst of the bullies have mostly gotten bored with her and moved on to other unfortunate victims. But there are still the looks when she says something weird, the snickers when she trips or does something clumsy, the ignoring, the exclusions, the talking to her like she’s a child or hard of hearing—and that’s from the nice people.
This is the episode of TNG where the Enterprise gets stuck in a time loop and keeps repeating the same day over and over and over again, and no one knows how to make it stop.
GRACE.
“Prescott, I am honored to meet you!” Grace’s mother says from the pulpit with her arms open wide, as if she’s embracing the entire congregation. She’s got her magic smile on, the one that wrinkles her eyes and makes you feel hugged even if you’re across the room. Grace looks around and sees people smiling, absorbing Mom’s warmth. They feel it—her sincerity, her passion, her love. Just one sentence in, and Mom’s a hit.
Grace remembers when their old church used to look at Mom this way, before she started talking about itchy stuff like social justice and the hypocrisy of conservative Christianity. Even the old curmudgeons who could never quite forgive her for being a woman couldn’t help but be charmed by her infectious warmth. She was a feel-good kind of preacher, the kind that spent a lot of time on Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and the pretty parts of Psalms, talking about God’s love and comfort and grace. The head pastor was the guy who did the fire-and-brimstone sermons; he was the guy who talked about sin. Mom warmed up the crowd with good news so they’d be ready for his bad.
Right now she’s up there telling jokes. Their old church wasn’t into funny. “A teacher asked her students to bring an item to class that represented their religious beliefs,” she says in her thick Kentucky drawl. “A Catholic student brought a crucifix. A Jewish student brought a menorah. A Muslim student brought a prayer rug.” She pauses for comedic effect before delivering the punch line. “The Southern Baptist brought a casserole dish.” Everyone laughs.
“Yes, y’all, I come from a Southern Baptist tradition. My faith evolved, and I moved on. But I still love me a good, cheesy casserole.” Laughter all around.
“We have to be able to laugh at ourselves,” she says. “We must question ourselves, our most firmly held beliefs. We have to evolve and change and become better. The very fact of Jesus, His very existence, shows us that change is necessary, that change is God’s work. Jesus came to change things. He came to make things better. We cannot insult Him by refusing to keep doing His work.”
She never got to talk like this at her old church. “Change” was a dirty word, a sinful word. Their old, white, blue-eyed Jesus was a totally different guy from the one she’s talking about today.
Grace has never heard her mother speak with this much passion, with this much joy. She can feel the electricity buzzing through the congregation. They are hearing her, feeling her. She is reaching inside and touching the parts of them where a little piece of God resides. Grace’s father sits next to her, his phone lying next to him on the pew, recording the sermon. The church makes its own recordings to post on the website, but that won’t go up until tomorrow at the earliest,
and he will want to listen to this right away, to make notes, to find pull quotes, to scour Mom’s words for new angles to make her famous. They will sit at the dinner table tonight while Grace finishes the week’s homework, talking late into the night about their two favorite subjects: God and business.
Grace is in the front row, but Mom seems miles away. Grace is just one of many, just a member of her audience, her flock. Grace’s heart aches with yearning. Just look at me, she thinks. Make me special. But it doesn’t happen. Mom is everybody’s, not just Grace’s.
Mom walks back and forth, abandoning the confines of the pulpit, taking up as much space as possible, reveling in this freedom she’s never had before. This church isn’t nearly as big as the megachurch they came from, but it’s still big enough that she has to wear a mic on the collar of her robe. And the congregation is hers in a way she’s never had before. All hers.
As they rise to sing, not out of the hymnal but from a photocopied handout of an old protest song from the sixties, Grace realizes her face is wet. She wipes her eyes and mouths the words of the song without making a sound. There is so much room inside her, so much space to fill. So much emptiness. Even here, she feels it. Even here, where God is supposed to make her whole.
After the service, Mom is like a rock star signing autographs for fans. She stands in front of the big, colorful mural decorated by Sunday school kids that says JESUS DIDN’T REJECT ANYONE—NEITHER DO WE. Half the congregation is lined up for a turn to talk with her, to shake hands and get a hug, to tell her how much they loved her sermon, to tell her how honored and grateful they are that she chose this church to be her new home. Grace still doesn’t quite understand how getting kicked out as an underling at a rural megachurch skyrocketed her mom to rock-star status, but here they are, and there she is, amassing her groupies. Dad’s standing beside her, as always her devoted handler. Grace is standing in the corner between the wall and the foldout tables of snacks, shoving cookies in her face.