by Amy Reed
As he drones on about respecting authority, Trista thinks about how she’s been raised to always ask herself “What would Jesus do?” She says nothing to Pastor Skinner about how Jesus fought for what he believed in, how he stood up against corrupt people in power, how he showed women kindness and respect at a time in history when they received little of either. But that is not the Jesus who Pastor Skinner is talking about. In fact, the pastor isn’t talking much about Jesus at all.
Trista is being held hostage, and that’s not even teenage hyperbole. This is really, truly a hostage situation. But there’s nothing she can do. She’s a kid. She has no rights. Her parents get to decide what’s right and wrong for her, even if they’re wrong.
* * *
Elise Powell knows this suspension is supposed to be a punishment, but she’s lying in bed with a grin on her face, looking at the ceiling and not feeling particularly guilty about anything. She already made it through the initial terror of her future being destroyed like Principal Slatterly promised—her parents’ disappointment, getting kicked off the softball team, losing her scholarship to U of O. After their visit to the principal’s office, as Elise explained her side of the story to her parents, she swears she saw her mom fighting a smile. Most important, they believed her. And when Elise called her coach in tears begging not to be kicked off the team, after a short pause and what sounded like a door closing, Coach Andrews whispered, “Don’t tell anyone, but, girl, I am so proud of you. And I’m pretty sure my friends over at U of O will feel the same way.”
But there is something even bigger than all that, something more unexpected and magical and earth shattering, something she is happy to spend her weeklong suspension replaying in her head over and over and over again: She had a date. With a boy. A cute, awesome, wonderful boy.
Elise should maybe feel guilty that she skipped a Nowhere Girls meeting to hang out with Benjamin Chu, that she kept it secret. She should feel guilty about her priorities being skewed, about caring more about a boy than solidarity with her friends and the cause, how instead of joining everyone at that creepy old house on Saturday, she played video games with Benjamin in his den, how it was kind of hot and he kept apologizing for the thermostat being busted, how their glasses of lemonade were sweaty, how his upper lip was sweaty, how Elise was so distracted by wanting to taste the sweat on his lip that she kept dying in the video game in embarrassingly lame ways, how he teased her for it in a way that made her feel magnificent, how he looked in her eyes for so long he died too, how she barely registered the tiny voice in her head crying, “What about the strike?” as she leaned over and pressed her lips to his, how when they finally separated, he could barely open his eyes, how he mumbled through his dopey grin, “The strike is over?” and she said, “Don’t tell anyone,” and he said, “I can wait,” and she said, “No way,” and he said, “Are you sure?” and as she kissed him again, her body said I’m sure I’m sure I’m sure I’m sure.
Elise lies on her bed, remembering the salty-sweet lemonade taste of Benjamin Chu’s lips. She thinks maybe she should be a little sorry, but mostly she thinks not. Because maybe the Nowhere Girls would be happy for her. Because maybe sometimes saying yes is just as important as saying no.
ERIN.
Erin doesn’t know exactly what happened last night at the police station while she was at home with Otis, but clearly it was bad, and clearly the news spread to people who had no business knowing it. The three girls who came forward as being on Spencer’s list all had their lockers vandalized by the time they got to school. Someone stuck a bumper sticker on Lisa Sutter’s locker that said DUCT TAPE: TURNING “NO NO NO” INTO “MMM MMM MMM” SINCE 1942.
Principal Slatterly is on a rampage. Four new rent-a-cops have been hired to patrol the halls and lunchroom. Rumor is at least eight girls have received detentions or gotten suspended today so far, and it’s only fourth period. Because of some list Slattery got from Delaney of who showed up at the station last night, she knows just who to target, and she certainly knows how to come up with bogus reasons.
Erin knows she should feel bad for them. She should regret not being there last night. Those would be the right things to feel. But she is too busy feeling something completely different.
And now, on her way to class, she has reason to feel that different feeling even more. There, at the other end of the hall, is Otis Goldberg getting something out of his locker. Something inside her jumps. It feels reptilian—a darting snake, a lizard flicking its tail. Before she even has a chance to think, Erin has what feels strangely like the beginning of a panic attack but also the opposite of a panic attack, which leads to the thought that maybe she would like to say “Hi, Otis” out loud, which would catch his attention, which would make him smile, which would cause him to walk toward Erin and talk to her, which would make Erin feel even happier because, Erin now suddenly realizes, as clear and unclouded as a perfect geometric proof, she likes him. She likes Otis Goldberg. She likes Otis Goldberg in a way that is different from and bigger than how she likes Rosina and Grace. She likes Otis Goldberg as something more than a friend.
But then she sees Amber Sullivan next to him, standing very close. Erin has spent years studying body language and personal space, and she knows Amber is standing closer than a friend is supposed to stand. Erin knows friends do not tuck stray hairs behind each other’s ears. They do not rub their boobs on each other’s arms.
Girls like Amber are the ones boys like. Girls with curves and smiles, with compliments and eye contact. Not weird androgynous freaks like Erin. Not girls who only know how to feel too much or too little.
So, just like that, as quickly as Erin discovers her feelings for Otis Goldberg, she vows to shove them away, to make them not exist. She can will herself to stop feeling. Her mind is stronger and more stable than the volatile and unpredictable chaos of her heart. Not the actual organ, of course, but the mysterious muck around it, the oddly placed neural cells in the middle of her chest that connect to her brain and mysterious other things that cannot be observed or measured, the place in her body that feels panic and love and cannot tell the two apart.
Erin should have known better. She was not thinking like an android. She let feelings infect her. She was not doing what Data would do.
It is true that an android can get its wires crossed. It can perceive something without complete information and come to an incorrect conclusion, but these occasional inaccuracies should not lead to emotions, which may or may not lead to further conclusions that could lead to other, even stronger, emotions, and thoughts, and even actions, but then maybe another observation interferes with the first and throws the whole series of previous neural firings into question, and the wires get stretched and tangled and extremely uncomfortable, which may or may not lead to other, completely different, emotions, and everything turns into a big fat mess.
Erin wonders if this is a metaphor. Erin hates metaphors.
She just needs a little time, a little space. She will hide here behind this stairwell until the halls empty, until everyone is in class. She will use the silence to recharge herself. All she needs is a few minutes. She will be a little late for class, but she has weighed the pros and cons of that transgression and has come to the conclusion that it is more important that she be sturdy and in one piece than be on time for class.
There. Better. Otis and Amber are gone. Everyone is gone, even the ubiquitous security guards. It is now safe for Erin to emerge from her hiding place and make her way to class.
But then footsteps. A throaty laugh. Erin looks around to find Eric Jordan at the other end of the hall, more tired and bedraggled than she’s ever seen him. His sunken eyes are focused intently on her. His signature smirk has lost all charm.
“Stop looking at me,” Erin says.
Eric laughs. “I know you don’t mean that.” He keeps walking. He gets closer and closer. “You like me looking at you, don’t you?”
“No,” Erin says.
“Even s
omeone like you must have needs,” he says, nearly upon her. She can smell the stale liquor on his breath, his unwashed body.
Erin knows she should run. She should get away. But she can’t let him know she’s afraid. She can’t give him that satisfaction. She wants to hurt him back.
“Why are you even talking to me?” Erin says. “Now that you can’t get any of the girls here to talk to you, you’re talking to me, the school freak? You must be really desperate. How pathetic.”
Then something crosses his face, something terrifying, a look of such rage and hatred, and for the moment Erin sees herself reflected in his pale eyes, she forgets she’s even human. He is not looking at something human.
Erin feels the pressure in her chest and her feet leaving the ground as he shoves her across the hall and into the lockers. She feels a locker handle dig into the small of her back.
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that.” He spits the words in her face. She feels them stick to her skin.
“I can talk to you however I want,” Erin says. She doesn’t know where the words come from. Somewhere down deep, somewhere with the pain and memories and dark corners, but also with light that slices through the shadows, somewhere where fear turns into courage.
“You think I need the bitches at this school to talk to me? You think I want to talk to them?” He is half laughing, half choking. He is verging on hysterical. “I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to talk to you. I can get what I want without talking.”
He pushes her against the lockers with his left hand and grabs her crotch with his right. Through the thick denim of her jeans, Erin can feel his muscular fingers grabbing, tugging, trying to tear through her. It is not sexual. There is nothing sexual about it. He wants to hurt her. He wants to turn her into nothing.
She is back in Seattle. Casper Pennington’s distant eyes look through her. She disappears under the weight of his body. She stops fighting. “No” may have never left her mouth, but her body said it. It is Casper who chose not to hear.
Erin cannot move even though all she wants to do is move. She cannot make him stop. She cannot scream. She cannot cry for help. This is what it is to be caught, to be powerless and frozen, to be turned into nothing. This is when your own body, your own voice, becomes your enemy, when it won’t even listen to you because it’s his now, because he’s stolen it, because he controls it with your own fear.
First, you are an object. Then you are taken. Then you are destroyed and pounded into dust.
Then a sound down the hall, a walkie-talkie the security guards carry around. Eric lets go, but only part of Erin is free.
She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t look toward where the sound was coming from, doesn’t look anywhere. She just runs. She moves so fast she can’t think, she can’t feel. She runs out the door and down the street, and even though she isn’t breathing, even though she forgot how, and her bones feel like breaking, and her veins feel like knives, and everything in the world wants to hurt her, everything in her body is a threat, her mind violent static, razor blades, glass, even though her entire existence is a war zone, she runs and runs and runs until she falls through the door of her house, until she lands on her knees, a pile of bruises and broken skin, until she finds the corner where there is at least one thing in the world that is sturdy, and she backs up against it, and Spot arrives, ears erect, just in time to hear the moan escape from Erin’s broken-glass lungs, the sound like a whole soul deflating, a whole life imploding under the pressure of too much gravity, too much weight, elephant bones in a bird-girl’s body, breaking, breaking, breaking.
This is what happens when feelings are stronger than will, when everything that was stuffed away explodes out of the shadows. This is what happens when the feelings win and Erin loses.
She is rocking with the pulse of a bigger heart, her body a metronome, the back of her head banging against the wall as it keeps time, one two one two one two, and Spot to the rescue, nudging Erin with his nose, trying to put himself between her body and the wall, trying to make himself a pillow. She needs impact, something touching, something pounding, something marking the violence of her body existing in this world.
Spot softens the blow with his body. He is a living, breathing cushion. But Erin is not done hurting, not done breaking. She hits her face with her own hand. She hits and hits and hits. She hurts herself because she has to, because everything hurts so much already, because it is the only way to change the hurt, to move it somewhere else, so it will not swallow her up entirely. She has to fight, she has to fight something, and she is the only thing here to fight.
But Spot is there, his sharp teeth so gentle as he takes Erin’s hand in his mouth and pulls it away, like a mother with a wandering puppy and the loose, trusting flesh at the scruff of its neck, and it is this tenderness that ultimately wins, not Erin’s fighting herself, it is Spot wedging his eighty-plus pounds of dog into Erin’s lap, on top of her arms so she can do no more damage, so her only choice is to hold him, to feel the comfort of his weight on top of her, to be silenced and stilled by a creature who is programmed to do nothing but love her.
And that’s when Erin’s mother walks through the front door with her arms full of groceries. In this moment Erin cannot reach the world outside herself, cannot hear the grocery bags fall to the floor, cannot hear the cracks and splats of the eggshells, cannot hear her mother cry, “What happened? What happened?” In this moment Erin is only vaguely aware of her mother’s presence, and she knows nothing of the world inside her, the locked-up place where her mother is screaming too—helpless, powerless, tortured by love, as she kneels beside her unreachable daughter and knows there is nothing she can do to help. She knows she cannot touch her, cannot wrap her in her arms and rock her the way her instincts demand. And Erin cannot even consider that comfort in this moment, cannot see outside her body’s dense world of pain, cannot comprehend that there is anyone in the world who wants to help her, that there is anyone in the world who can.
Spot starts to whimper. He cannot escape Erin’s tight embrace. She won’t let go. She can’t. Her arms are vises that her mother has to carefully pry away.
ROSINA.
“Get over here right now,” Mami growls as soon as Rosina enters the restaurant kitchen.
“I’m not even late!” Rosina answers. In fact, she’s early. She didn’t even put up a fight when Mami told her to come in an hour early to help deep clean the walk-in fridge.
“Your principal called me today,” Mami says.
“What’d she want?” Rosina says coolly, despite the sudden panic in her chest.
“I don’t know yet,” Mami says, her eyes narrow, suspicious. “She left a message that she wanted to talk to me about something important. She said I could call her on her cell phone any time.”
“So why didn’t you call her?”
“I wanted to wait for you to be here.”
“How nice of you,” Rosina says, trying to act like the floor is not crumbling beneath her feet, like there is still ground for her to stand on. As Mami takes her phone out of her pocket to call Slatterly back, Rosina tries to look relaxed as she sits on a crate in the corner of the kitchen, but she can barely feel her legs.
“Hello? Mrs. Slatterly?” Mami says. “This is Maria Suarez, Rosina Suarez’s mother?”
As she watches Mami listen to whatever Slatterly’s saying, Rosina thinks she may know, just a little, what crucifixion must feel like—being tortured, unable to move, victim to the whims of whoever’s in power. With every uh-huh and yes Mami answers, her eyes fill with fire, they explode with rage and disgust, and Rosina shrinks, hardens, turns into ice.
“She wants to talk to you,” Mami says, the words barely able to make it out of her clenched jaw as she shoves the phone in her daughter’s face. Rosina stands up and lifts the phone to her ear, turns around and looks at a discolored patch on the wall, and wishes it could absorb her like so many years’ worth of grease stains.
“Hello?” Rosina sa
ys.
“Hello, Miss Suarez,” says Principal Slatterly with her fake sweetness. “How are you this afternoon?”
“Fine,” says Rosina. She can feel Mami’s eyes burning a hole into her back.
“That’s good to hear,” Slatterly says. “I’m going to be direct with you, honey. I’m worried about you. And I wouldn’t be doing my job right if I didn’t share my concerns about students with their parents.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“I’m sure she’ll tell you after we’re done talking. But I wanted to talk to you directly about certain things I chose not to tell your mother.”
Rosina waits. The silence nearly kills her. She knows Slatterly is purposely prolonging the torture, that she gets some kind of sick pleasure out of it.
“You know, Miss Suarez, I have nothing against you personally,” Slatterly says. “I appreciate your independent spirit. In some ways, I even admire it. But the truth is, I’m under a lot of pressure to bring you and your friends’ little club to an end.” She pauses. “You have no idea what kind of pressure I’m under,” she says with a strained, high-pitched voice. “No idea.” For a moment Rosina fears that Slatterly’s going to start crying. This is the voice of someone on the edge.
“I’ll admit it,” Slatterly continues. “I’m actually a little proud of you girls for how far you’ve taken this thing. But you’ve had your fun, and now I think it’s time to put it to rest. Some things are better left alone. Am I clear?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Slatterly’s heavy sigh blasts through the phone. “Miss Suarez,” she says. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but you’ve left me no choice.” She pauses, and Rosina wishes she could see Slatterly’s face right now so she could figure out what the pause is made of, if the tinge of remorse Rosina thinks she hears is real. “I’m aware that the immigration status of your grandmother is not—how should we say it—up to snuff?”