The Nowhere Girls

by Amy Reed

  She has an idea of what’s going to happen when she gets to school. She knows how small towns work. She knows how people talk, how information spreads, whether it’s true or not. In just a night, a true story can turn into something else entirely. And its subject can become something completely different from a living, breathing human being.

  It’s been only a month and a half since Cheyenne started at this new school, and she hasn’t made any real friends yet. She figures she’ll get through her day much the same as she did before, not really talking to anyone. Maybe people will stare a little. Maybe they’ll whisper. But there’s not a whole lot for her to lose.

  Cheyenne’s mom drives her to school and tries not to cry as she watches her daughter walk into the building, as she watches her disappear behind its doors, as Cheyenne enters a world where her mother can’t protect her.

  The halls are full of the usual noise. Cheyenne walks with her head down. All she wants is to make it to class without meeting anyone’s eye, without having to absorb their pity, their curiosity, their scorn. But she hears the hush that envelops the hall. She feels the eyes piercing into her. She senses movement, but she tries not to think about it. Just go forward, she thinks. Just make it past this.

  What she does not realize is the movement has a pattern. It has a focus. It has a destination. One by one, each girl in the hall moves toward Cheyenne. Like a school of fish, they communicate without speaking. They move together, falling into formation around her as she walks through the hall.

  Finally Cheyenne looks up. She sees the girls surrounding her. She meets their eyes, and it is not pity she sees, not judgment, not scorn. What she sees is fire. What she sees is eyes full of flame.

  She feels a tickle on her right fingers and realizes the girl next to her is holding her hand. She feels the heat of the bodies around her, shielding her from whatever might get in the way, holding her up, driving her forward. They walk like that all the way to Cheyenne’s first-period class. They take up the entire width of the hall. The sea of students parts to let the girls through.

  Because the girls are unstoppable. They are a force. They are a single body.

  LUCY.

  In a town somewhere a girl named Lucy Moynihan knows her parents are talking to their lawyer again. She knows her rapists have been arrested and her case will finally go to trial. She knows her ghosts have been turned into news.

  Of course, all this attention will die down as soon as there’s another story to take its place. Everyone will forget about the Nowhere Girls and Prescott, Oregon, and the shocking crimes of three boys who almost got away with it. Because of her age, Lucy’s name is protected in the media. But still, she knows people are talking about her. They are talking about a girl none of them knows.

  Who knows what will actually end up happening? Who knows what justice even looks like? What punishment is equal to those boys’ crime, equivalent to the permanence of what they did? Is there even such a thing as justice? Nothing can bring back the girl Lucy was. Nothing can undo what happened.

  Lucy is trying not to get her hopes up. Despite all the good news, there was still that case a couple of months ago about that boy who was caught raping a passed-out girl in his frat house’s laundry room. Even with eyewitnesses, even with video evidence, he still only got three months. Because he was rich. Because he was white. Because when jurors and judge looked at him, they did not see someone who looked like he was supposed to go to prison. Lucy remembers reading a statistic somewhere that only three percent of rapists spend even a day in jail. Those are not good odds.

  But maybe things are changing, Lucy thinks. Just a little, day after day, can add up to a lot after a while. The world is already a different place than it was last spring, when there was no way the Nowhere Girls could have existed. But now here they are, in the exact same impossible place she left, doing impossible things.

  Lucy sits in the bedroom that’s been hers for only a few months. She thinks about the desperate words she scratched in the walls of her old room, when she wanted to scream but couldn’t, when crying wasn’t enough. She wonders if anyone ever found them.

  RESOURCES

  National Sexual Assault Hotline

  800.656.HOPE and www.online.rainn.org

  En Español: www.rainn.org/es

  RAINN www.rainn.org

  RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is the nation’s largest anti–sexual violence organization. RAINN created and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline in partnership with more than 1,000 local sexual assault service providers across the country. RAINN also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help victims, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice.

  Planned Parenthood www.plannedparenthood.org

  America’s most trusted provider of reproductive health care and a respected leader in educating Americans about reproductive and sexual health.

  Our Bodies Ourselves www.ourbodiesourselves.org

  Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS) is a global feminist organization that distills and disseminates health information from the best scientific research available as well as women’s life experiences, so that the individuals and communities they reach can make informed decisions about health, reproduction, and sexuality.

  Advocates for Youth www.advocatesforyouth.org

  Advocates for Youth partners with youth leaders, adult allies, and youth-serving organizations to advocate for policies and champion programs that recognize young people’s rights to honest sexual health information; accessible, confidential, and affordable sexual health services; and the resources and opportunities necessary to create sexual health equity for all youth.

  Stop Sexual Assault in Schools www.ssais.org

  SSAIS is spearheading the movement for awareness of sexual harassment and sexual assault in K–12 schools in order to prevent it, support victims, inform students about their rights, and empower them to protect their peers.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First, as always, thank you to my tireless cheerleader and agent, Amy Tipton.

  My editor at Simon Pulse, Liesa Abrams. You are this book’s soul mate editor. I could not have gotten luckier. Your passion and devotion to this book were boundless. Thank you for believing in Grace, Rosina, and Erin. And me.

  Everyone at Simon Pulse and Simon & Schuster who went above and beyond the call of duty to advocate and care for this book. I know I had a whole army fighting for The Nowhere Girls, and even though I don’t know all your names, I am grateful for each and every one of you.

  My foreign rights agent, Taryn Fagerness, for taking my girls across the pond.

  The Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities Writer-in-Residence program, for giving me such a beautiful space to finish my first draft.

  Trudy Hale at The Porches writing retreat in Virginia, for being my home away from home, and for the silence.

  Thank you to my community in Asheville, North Carolina, for inspiring aspects of the resistance in this book. Readers may have heard of the event in September 2015 where the owners of  Waking Life, one of my neighborhood coffee shops, were revealed to be behind a misogynist podcast series and Internet postings, including a graphic and degrading list of sexual conquests involving local women, which inspired the Real Men of Prescott blog posts in The Nowhere Girls. The people of Asheville immediately responded by boycotting the business, sending a clear message that the men’s blatant sexism and abuse of women in our community would not be tolerated. Local businesses stopped carrying their products. Men and women stood together outside in protest. Within a couple of weeks, the owners left town, disgraced. Asheville made it clear that it will stand up for women, that it will stand up to misogyny and sexism. I am proud of my mountain town.

  Angélica Wind, Executive Director of Our VOICE, for reading an early draft of this book, and for the tireless work you do serving survivors of sexual assault and abuse in Western North Carolina.

  Immense gratitude to my beta and sensitivity reader
s: Emily Cashwell, Jennie Eagle, Kimberly Egget, Stefanie Kalem, Alison Knowles, Constance Lombardo, Natalie Ortega, Meagan Rivera, Michelle Santamaria, Kaylee Spencer, Nana Twumasi, and Victoria Vertner. Very special thanks to Stephanie Kuehnert, plot-whisperer. You all helped breathe fire into this book.

  Lyn Miller-Lachmann, for her wonderful book Rogue, and for steering me in the right direction. For invaluable insight about living with autism, and writing about life with autism, thank you to wrongplanet.net; L.C. Mawson’s blog, lcmawson.com; Tania Marshall’s blog, taniaannmarshall.wordpress.com; Samantha Craft’s blogs, everydayaspergers.com and everydayaspie.wordpress.com; and disabilityinkidlit.com, especially posts by Corinne Duyvis and Elizabeth Bartmess.

  My most profound and humble gratitude goes to Jen Wilde and Meredith McGhan, for the depth of their generosity in sharing their experiences with me, and for their honest (and sometimes hard to hear) feedback. You pushed me to be a better writer, and a better person. Everything I got right about Erin is due to the help of these fierce and brilliant women. Anything I got wrong is my fault alone.

  Thank you to Brian, for being my home. And Elouise, for being my hope. You are my light in the darkness.

  Always, more than anything, thank you to my readers and teens everywhere, who continue to inspire me with your courage and compassion. Keep resisting. Keep speaking your truth. The world needs your voices, now more than ever.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amy Reed is the author of the contemporary young adult novels Beautiful, Clean, Crazy, Over You, Damaged, Invincible, Unforgivable, and The Nowhere Girls. She is a feminist, mother, and quadruple Virgo who enjoys running, making lists, and wandering around the mountains of western North Carolina, where she lives. You can find her online at www.amyreedfiction.com.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

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  First Simon Pulse hardcover edition October 2017

  Text copyright © 2017 by Amy Reed

  Art direction and full jacket design by Jessica Handelman

  Front jacket design by Alex Robbins

  Jacket photograph copyright © 2017 by Daniël Douglas/creative commons 3.0

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  Interior designed by Greg Stadnyk

  The text of this book was set in Garamond.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Reed, Amy Lynn, author.

  Title: The Nowhere Girls / by Amy Reed.

  Description: First Simon Pulse hardcover edition. | New York : Simon Pulse, 2017. |

  Summary: “Three misfit girls come together to avenge the rape of a girl none of them knew and in the process start a movement that transforms the lives of everyone around them”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016044338 (print) | LCCN 2017020892 (eBook) |

  ISBN 9781481481731 (hc) | ISBN 9781481481755 (eBook) |

  Subjects: | CYAC: Rape—Fiction. | Conduct of life—Fiction. | Sex—Fiction. | High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Family life—Oregon—Fiction. | Oregon—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.R2462 (eBook) | LCC PZ7.R2462 Now 2017 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016044338