by Amy Reed
There are only two benches in the waiting area, so most of the girls sit on the floor. Grace confers with Lisa Sutter, Abby Steward, and the two other girls mentioned on the blog, to go over what they’re going to say to the police chief. Some girls do homework. Others mess around on their phones. Rosina avoids repeated phone calls from her mother.
A buzzer rings as the door opens.
“Hey, everyone,” says Elise Powell, who is soon tackled with a barrage of hugs by half the room.
“I can’t believe your parents let you come,” someone says.
“They don’t exactly know I’m here,” Elise says. “I’m supposed to be at the library studying.”
“I can’t believe parents still fall for that one,” Sam says.
But Elise is not the only new arrival. A large, sheepish figure emerges behind her in the doorway. “Look who I found in the parking lot,” Elise says.
Jesse Camp smiles and waves awkwardly. “Hi,” he says. “I heard about what you guys were doing and I wanted to help. I thought I could come and give a statement about Spencer’s character or something, since I’ve heard him brag about this stuff for years.” He looks down. “I don’t know,” he says. “Do you think that could help?”
“Yes,” Grace says, stepping over her friends on the floor to get to him. She puts her hand on his arm. “Of course that will help. Thank you for being here.”
“They make a cute couple, don’t you think?” Rosina whispers to Melissa.
“Does she like him?” says Melissa.
“She won’t admit it, but yeah. She totally likes him.”
Rosina’s phone buzzes. “Dammit,” she says. “This is like the tenth time my mom has called in the past twenty minutes.”
“Maybe you should answer,” Melissa says.
“Stop being so reasonable.”
Rosina grimaces as she looks at her phone. “Here goes,” she says, and she answers.
Melissa can hear Rosina’s mom screaming. The words are unintelligible, but the anger behind them is clear. Rosina holds the phone away from her ear and winces. “She’s threatening to throw me out if I skip work anymore,” Rosina says.
“I’m sure she doesn’t mean it,” Melissa says.
“Oh yes she does,” Rosina says. “She’s been trying to get rid of me for years.”
“Don’t say that.”
Rosina’s eyes are suddenly shinier than usual. It’s almost like they’re wet. It’s almost like there are tears forming.
“Mami,” she says into the phone, her voice breaking slightly. “I’m sorry. It’s an emergency. Please trust me.” Then she hangs up.
Melissa reaches for Rosina’s hand. They don’t speak, but their fingers stay entwined, their shoulders pressed together, for the next five long minutes, until Police Chief Delaney comes bursting through the door.
“Jesus,” he grumbles at the mass of girls blocking his way to the front desk. “Is it a full moon or something?”
“Chief Delaney,” Grace calls. “We’re ready to make a statement, sir.”
“Are you the leader of this?”
“No,” Grace says. “We don’t have a leader. I’m just helping to organize things a little.”
“Well, isn’t that noble of you,” he mutters. “So you want to talk to me? Who else? I’m not taking all of you back into my office.”
“It’ll be me, Lisa, Abby, Juna, Lizzy, and Jesse.”
“Jesse?” the police chief says. “Jesse Camp? Aren’t you one of Prescott High’s linebackers?”
“Not anymore, sir,” Jesse says. “I quit the team.”
“Might as well,” he says. “This year’s gone to shit anyway.” He looks at his watch. “I’m missing the kickoff for this, you know? Seahawks versus the Patriots. You’d better make it quick.”
Grace and the five others follow Chief Delaney to his office. Everyone else waits.
It is only twelve minutes before they come back out.
Chief Delaney makes it out the door before the waiting room full of girls has a chance to register that he’s leaving. Grace, Jesse, and the handful of Spencer’s victims emerge from behind the front desk. Tears are falling down Lisa Sutter’s cheeks. Abby Steward’s face is red with fury.
“What happened?” Elise asks.
“Nothing,” Abby spits. “I knew this was a waste of time. I can’t believe I let you talk me into this, Lisa. I fucking sat there telling him what Spencer did to me, and he wasn’t even listening. He was reading Spencer’s blog. He was fucking laughing.”
“He said there isn’t sufficient proof that the website belongs to Spencer,” Grace says flatly. “And even if there was, there’s nothing on there that’s prosecutable.”
“That’s bullshit,” Elise says.
“I told him I’ve heard Spencer talking about some of these girls,” Jesse says. “But Delaney said it’s just gossip. He said he couldn’t arrest people based on rumors and the word of a bunch of disgruntled ex-girlfriends.”
“ ‘Disgruntled ex-girlfriends,’ ” Lisa sobs. “Like that’s all we are. Like that makes everything we say useless.”
The room is silent, seething. The air is made of teeth.
“He didn’t even take a statement,” Grace says in disbelief. “He said it wasn’t worth it. He said it wasn’t worth his time.”
“So what now?” Rosina says. “He’s just going to wait to do something until those bastards rape again? Or maybe someone has to die before he gives a shit.”
“He’s just trying to save his own ass,” Melissa says. “If the police start looking back into what happened last year, they’ll find proof that Delaney totally screwed up the case, maybe even on purpose. He’d be ruined.”
“Fuck, you’re right,” Rosina says. “He’s never going to be on our side.”
The cop behind the front desk has mysteriously disappeared. There is no one with any authority anywhere to be seen. Just a roomful of outraged girls and one boy. They are teenagers. They’re just kids. They are not worthy of being listened to.
“Fuck it,” Abby says. “No one cares. I don’t care.” And she walks out the door.
“I have to get home before my parents suspect anything,” Elise says. She hugs Grace. “This isn’t over. I’m not giving up.”
Within minutes, the station is empty. Everyone is on their way home, where they will have to pretend today was any other day, where they will have to decide if it’s worth it to keep fighting, where they will sit through dinner wondering what you’re supposed to do when the person you ask for help says no.
Melissa drives Grace and Rosina home. “You did a really great job today,” Melissa says as she pulls up in front of Grace’s house.
“Not good enough, though,” Grace says.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Rosina says. “That asshole made a decision to not help us before he ever set foot in the station.”
“Yeah,” Grace mumbles. “Maybe.” But all the fight in her is gone. She’s exhausted. She wants nothing more than to sit on the couch watching TV and eating ice cream out of the carton with her mom. She wants a world where that is enough.
ROSINA.
Rosina doesn’t get out of the car when Melissa pulls up to her house. The sky has exploded into a full-on thunderstorm, and the car reverberates with the pounding rain. “I’m not going in there,” Rosina says. “I’m running away.”
“Don’t you need more than your school backpack if you’re going to run away from home?” Melissa says.
“Good point.” Rosina leans her head back and closes her eyes. “I am so fucked.”
“Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think. Maybe you’re not giving your mom enough credit.” Melissa reaches over and takes Rosina’s hand in hers. “It’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that.”
The car is full of the thick echoes of raindrops and the warmth of their bodies. Thunder shakes them, pulls them closer together.
“So, are you, like, gay?” Rosin
a says. “Or are you going to realize next week, ‘Oh I was just experimenting, let’s just be friends’? Because that would be really lame. Because the more I know you, the more I don’t want to be your friend. I mean . . . You know what I mean.”
Melissa takes off her seat belt, leans over, and kisses Rosina. Not a peck. A long, slow, soft kiss. Not a friend kind of kiss at all.
“Rosina,” Melissa whispers. “You are not an experiment.”
It takes Rosina a few moments to open her eyes.
“Okay?” Melissa says.
“Okay.”
“Call me and tell me what happens with your mom.”
“Okay.”
Rosina enters her house, floating. The usually irritating sight of Lola watching TV on her couch doesn’t even bother her.
“Is Abuelita sleeping?” Rosina asks her.
“You owe me twenty bucks,” Lola says.
“Hello to you, too.”
“I had to watch her because you skipped work so my mom had to go in.”
“Yeah, looks like really hard work.”
Lola sticks out her hand. Rosina sighs and fishes in her wallet for a twenty. Normally, Rosina would fight, but she’s saving her energy for Mami. Just one minute with a member of her family, and it’s like Rosina’s kiss with Melissa never even happened.
Rosina goes up to her room and waits. She doesn’t bother trying to go to sleep because she knows Mami will wake her up as soon as she gets home from work. She picks the strings of her guitar softly for a few minutes, mindlessly experimenting with various chords and rhythms and patterns, until that mysterious force she cannot name and never talks about seems to speak through her fingers, directing Rosina, making decisions for her. Thirty minutes later she is somehow playing the loose structure of a new song—three arpeggiated chords of a verse and another three of a chorus. She is humming the beginnings of a melody as she thinks about Melissa, about her lips, how Melissa seems to glow whenever she enters a room, how the light of her makes Rosina’s shadows bearable.
But then knock, knock, knock, knock. Rosina’s room shakes with Mami’s fist on her door. Before Rosina has a chance to say “Come in,” the door swings open and Mami barges in.
“What the hell were you doing that was so important?” she growls.
“I can’t tell you,” Rosina says. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” Mami says, shaking her head so violently Rosina thinks it might fly off. “That’s not acceptable. You do not get to do that.”
“I’m sorry” is all Rosina can think to say.
“Who do you think you are?” Mami says, marching closer. She grabs Rosina’s guitar out of her hands and throws it on the floor. The wooden frame knocks and the strings chime dully as it hits the floor. Rosina’s eyes go wide. Not her guitar. Anything but that.
But Rosina suddenly feels a strange calm. She stares at her mother’s red, furious face, and she almost feels sorry for her, sorry for her angry, lonely life. What’s the point of meeting her rage with more rage? What’s the point of fighting someone who’s always angry no matter what happens? Rosina could have dropped a plate on the floor. She could have been two minutes late. She could have killed someone. And Mami would still be the same kind of mad.
Rosina skipped work tonight and won’t tell her mother why. She knows Mami has a right to be angry. But Rosina also has a right to own her decision. She accepts her mother’s anger, but she does not have to fight it.
Rosina says nothing. She looks into her mother’s eyes, her face blank, free of defiance, free of shame.
Mami is the one to look away first. “You make me sick,” she spits. She spins around and walks out of Rosina’s room. The door simply closes behind her because it is too light to slam.
Rosina’s room is silent in Mami’s wake. She picks up her guitar to inspect it for damage, and finds that it just needs a slight tuning adjustment.
Her instinct is to be alone. But there is something new, something stronger than instinct.
Rosina picks up her phone and calls Melissa. It’s nearly midnight, but somehow she knows Melissa is still awake.
“Hey,” Melissa says after two rings.
“I just had a fight with my mom. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, Rosina. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s actually kind of okay,” Rosina says, confused by her own words. “I think.”
“Yeah?” Melissa says. “That’s great.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” Rosina says. “Let’s pretend nothing sad happened today.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I just want to hear your voice.”
“Oh, okay.”
Silence.
When Melissa giggles, it feels like butterfly wings fluttering everywhere in Rosina’s body, blowing the pain away.
“Say something,” Rosina says.
“Do you want to come over to my house for dinner sometime?”
The butterfly wings stop fluttering. The butterflies are stunned stupid. “Like, with your parents?” Rosina says.
“Yeah.”
“I’m supposed to say yes, aren’t I?”
“I hope you say yes.”
“Okay, yes,” Rosina says. “But I’m a little terrified.”
“It’s okay to be terrified.”
“I’m peeing my pants a little.”
“You should probably get that checked out.”
“What’d you tell your parents about me?”
“I told them you’re awesome.”
“Oh.”
“I also may have told them that I kind of want you to be my girlfriend,” Melissa says.
And that’s it—there are now officially too many feelings to fit inside the confines of Rosina’s ribs. Her heart explodes. She’s a goner.
US.
Amber Sullivan is in Graphic Design, her best hour of the day. It’s her chance to fool around on a decent computer and feel halfway good at something. Who knows what she’d be capable of if she actually had one at home to practice on.
Not only is this her best class, it is also her best seating arrangement. She is assigned to a computer right next to Otis Goldberg, who is usually on the other side of the school in the smart-kid classes, and who, at this point in her life, is the only person whose company Amber actually enjoys.
“What are you working on?” Otis asks her, as if she’s an actual person.
“Oh,” she says. “Um.” He is the only boy she doesn’t know how to talk to.
“That looks cool,” he says, leaning sideways to better see her screen, his shoulder touching hers. “Is it animated?”
“Yeah,” she says. She presses the button to start the animation. It’s nothing, really. It took her fifteen minutes to create.
“Wow,” Otis says, and he seems genuinely impressed. “How’d you do that?”
“It’s really easy programming,” Amber says. She switches to the screen where she wrote it.
“You wrote all that code? How’d you learn how to do that?”
Amber shrugs. “I guess I just taught myself.”
“You’re really talented,” Otis says. “You could do this professionally if you wanted to.”
Amber has to look away from his searing eyes. He’s the only one who’s ever told her she can do anything.
“Slut,” Olivia Han fake coughs as she walks by, knocking Amber’s computer with her hip.
“Shut up, Olivia,” Otis says. “Not cool.”
Olivia looks at Otis for a moment, dumbfounded. When has anyone ever stood up for Amber Sullivan? “Whatever,” Olivia finally says, and walks away.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Amber says. “I’m used to it.”
“That doesn’t give her the right to do it,” Otis says. “You don’t deserve that.”
The strange thing is, he actually seems to believe it.
The strangest thing is, for a brief moment, looking into Otis’s eyes, so does Amber.
> * * *
Someone sits in the desk designated for Adam Kowalski, but that is just the name on her birth certificate. Her real name is Adele now, but nobody knows it yet. Just one more year, she thinks, the mantra on a constant loop in her head.
She watches a group of girls in a huddle, whispering. Something yanks inside her chest, wanting to join them. She knows they’re talking about the Nowhere Girls; that’s all anyone talks about these days. She yearns to be a part of it, but would they even let her in? Is someone like her allowed? If she showed up to a meeting, would they scream at her to leave? What is her claim to womanhood if it isn’t in her body?
* * *
Of course Margot Dillard has already finished the homework Mom picked up for her at school. She has already had an encouraging conversation with the dean of admissions at Stanford, who waxed nostalgic about her own trouble with the law protesting apartheid in the eighties. Certain that their daughter can do no wrong, Margot’s parents are preparing to sue the school district over her suspension, and they have a very good lawyer.
Margot does not think about her great luck, about this privilege of being trusted. She is sitting in front of the mirror applying makeup. She replays the YouTube video about how to create a smoky eye, which she’s already watched six times because of course it has to be perfect. She looks in the mirror and pouts out her plump red lips.
Sexy, she thinks. Holy shit, I’m sexy.
* * *
Trista’s father installed a new doorknob on her door that locks from the outside. She can’t come out except for once every two hours to use the bathroom. Mom brings her food and prays with her. After dinner the family has the incredible honor of being visited by Pastor Skinner. Trista is let out of her room to sit with him in the living room to talk about honoring her parents and the church.