Rules for Being a Girl

by Candace Bushnell

  Now that it’s the day of our first meeting though, I just feel like the host of a party nobody wants to come to: even Chloe begged off in favor of an extra shift at the restaurant, which probably shouldn’t have surprised me at this point but still sort of sucked. The fact that I couldn’t convince my own best friend that a feminist book club was a good idea doesn’t bode super well for its success.

  Ms. Klein shrugs. “So then no one comes,” she says. “You and I can talk about the book ourselves.” She nods at the Dunkin’ Donuts box on the desk beside her. “And eat twenty-five Munchkins apiece.”

  I laugh, which calms me down a little; I’m about to ask her if she’s read anything else by Margaret Atwood when a couple of nervous-looking freshmen I vaguely recognize as members of the jazz band sidle into the classroom. My heart leaps when I realize they’re both holding copies of the book.

  “Hey,” the taller one says, a white girl with her blond hair in two Princess Leia buns, looking around with no small amount of trepidation. “Um, is this the book club?”

  “Sure is,” Ms. Klein says. “Have a seat.”

  It’s a little bit awkward, but to my surprise, a handful of other people trickle in one by one: this kid Dave, an AV dude with carroty hair and a pale face full of freckles, and Lydia Jones, who’s black and works on the lit mag. Elisa Hernandez, the five-foot-tall captain of the girls’ volleyball team, shows up with a couple of her teammates.

  “You guys have a big game coming up, right?” Ms. Klein asks, and Elisa beams.

  “We were state champs last year,” she explains with a nod. “We’re defending our title.”

  “Seriously?” I ask. I don’t exactly have my ear to the ground around school lately, but I’ve heard exactly nothing about this. I think of how everybody—me included—always shows up to cheer for our sucky football team, even though they won like twice all of last season. “How come they’re not doing a pep rally for you guys?”

  “Are you kidding?” Elisa asks as her teammates giggle. “We can barely even get a bus for away games most of the time.”

  I frown. “That’s so obnoxious.” It’s like now that I’m looking for inequality, I’m seeing it everywhere, categorizing a thousand great and small unfairnesses everywhere I go. Why didn’t I really see this before?

  “Sounds like a great topic for your next op-ed, Marin,” Ms. Klein says pointedly, popping a Munchkin into her mouth.

  Which—huh. I look over at Elisa, raising my eyebrows.

  “You want to do an interview?” I ask, and Elisa grins.

  Eventually Ms. Klein steers us back around to The Handmaid’s Tale. I’ve never been in a book club before, and I printed a list of discussion questions off the internet in case there were any horrifying lulls in the conversation, but it turns out we don’t even need them: Lydia and Elisa are big talkers, and Dave is quietly hilarious, with a sense of humor so darkly dry it takes me a full beat to realize when he’s joking. We’re talking about the similarities between the Republic of Gilead and modern-day America when somebody knocks on the open door. I look up, and there’s Gray Kendall in his Bridgewater Lax hoodie, backpack slung over one bulky shoulder.

  “Uh,” he says, his dark eyes flicking around the room. “Sorry I’m late. Is this the book club meeting?”

  Right away I sit up a little straighter. “Why?”

  “Marin,” Ms. Klein chides mildly. “You’re looking at it, Gray.”

  “Cool,” Gray says. He looks at me a little strangely, then holds up a book—a battered paperback copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, a bright orange USED SAVES sticker peeling off the spine. “Can I, uh—?”

  “You did not read that book,” I blurt before I can stop myself. I know I’m being hugely rude, but he’s obviously got some kind of ulterior motive. For one insane second I wonder if Jacob sent him to mess with me.

  “Um.” Gray huffs a laugh, good-natured but slightly disbelieving. “Yeah, I did.”

  My eyes narrow. “The whole thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  I look at him skeptically, trying to figure out what on earth his game is. A random lax bro showing up here like some kind of Trojan horse who’s acting all interested to try and . . . what? Infiltrate my book club? That makes no sense.

  Everyone else is watching silently. Dave clears his throat.

  “Fine,” I say eventually. “You can stay.”

  Gray smiles then, saluting me with his tattered paperback and making his way to an empty seat across the circle. Ms. Klein asks a question about Offred and the Commander, and the discussion is pretty animated from there. I’m expecting Gray to try to dominate the conversation, but to my surprise, he mostly keeps his mouth shut; when I glance over in his direction he’s leaning slightly forward in his seat, listening to Elisa with a furrowed brow. He’s so quiet, in fact, that as we’re about to wrap up, Ms. Klein nods in his direction.

  “You’ve been keeping to yourself over there, Gray,” she says pleasantly. “Anything you took from the book that we haven’t covered?”

  “Um.” Gray clears his throat. “I mean, I’ll be honest, I thought it was terrifying. My heart was pounding the whole entire time. I almost peed my pants when that girl’s plane to Canada got stopped on the runway.”

  I frown. That definitely didn’t happen in the book, unless I somehow missed it. “Which girl?” I ask; Lydia and Elisa look at him curiously.

  “The main one,” he explains, for once in his life looking vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect of this much female attention at once. “You know, the one who was on Mad Men.”

  And there it is. “Uh-huh,” I say, satisfied. “That’s what I thought.”

  “All right,” Ms. Klein says, barely hiding a smile. “We should break up for today anyway, but I’ll meet you all back here next week.” We’re going to read mostly short stories and essays, we decided, for the sake of being able to meet more frequently. “Any of you who want to take leftover Munchkins home, feel free.”

  I pocket a couple of glazed and head out to the parking lot, where I’m surprised to catch Gray pacing back and forth in front of the building, stopping every few feet to frown down at what looks like his watch.

  “You okay over there?” I call out.

  Gray nods sheepishly. “Step counter,” he calls by way of explanation, waggling his wrist in my direction. “But it’s not working.”

  I laugh, I can’t help it. “Seriously?” I don’t know what it is about this guy that makes me want to heckle him.

  “What’s wrong with a step counter?”

  I shake my head, walking closer. “I mean, nothing, if you’re my mom.”

  “Is your mom extremely physically fit?” Gray fires back.

  “If Zumba counts, absolutely she is.” I nod at his wrist. “What’s your goal?”

  “Twenty thousand.”

  I raise my eyebrows and shrug my peacoat around my shoulders. “Every day?”

  He shrugs. “It’s not that much, really.”

  “You don’t have to have false modesty about your step count,” I say with a smile. “I’m not that impressed.”

  “Clearly,” Gray says, grinning back. I can’t tell if he’s flirting with me or not. Even if he is, I know it doesn’t mean anything. Gray is notorious for flirting with everyone.

  “So what were you really doing in there, huh?” I can’t resist asking, nodding my head back toward the building. “With the book club, I mean.”

  Gray makes a face. “College apps,” he admits. “I need to bulk up extracurriculars.” He tilts his head to the side. “I thought it was ballsy how you fought with Mr. Beckett though. So I came to support. Or like—” He frowns. “I guess ballsy isn’t the right word, huh?”

  “Ballsy is fine.”

  “Brave is what I meant.”

  I smile again, more slowly, and this time nothing about it is a tease. “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time in there,” I tell him.

  “It’s cool,” Gray says. “I get it.” The st
rangest part is how it seems like maybe he does. I think of his serious expression when Jacob made that stupid joke at Emily’s party, the way he always sort of seems to keep his distance from the rest of the lacrosse guys. Just for a moment, I wonder if possibly there’s more to Gray Kendall than I thought.

  My phone rings inside my backpack—the kicky little trill that means it’s my mom—but when I go for it the busted zipper on the bottom pouch catches again. I swear quietly, yanking with absolutely no success whatsoever.

  “It’s just stuck,” I explain, a little awkwardly. “I probably just need a new one.”

  Gray shakes his head. “You got ChapStick? Actually, you know what, never mind. I do.” He digs a tube of it out of his pack pocket and uncaps it with his teeth, rubbing the stick along the zipper until it slides open without a problem. “There,” he says, dimple flashing as he hands it back over. “Good as new, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, smiling back in spite of myself. “Good as new.”

  Thirteen

  “Hey there, Marin,” Chloe’s dad says, grinning at me from behind the bar when I come into Niko’s that night. “I read your editorial. Very good.”

  I grin back, rolling my eyes a little. “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious,” he says cheerfully.

  I’ve always liked Steve, with his thick eyebrows and beer belly and incessantly corny dad jokes.

  “You go, girl.”

  “Oh my god,” Chloe says, brushing by behind me and heading for the kitchen. “Dad, can you stay out of feminist politics for today?”

  Steve frowns, rubbing a hand over his bushy beard as he watches her go. I just shrug.

  I catch up with her back by the wait station, where she’s tying on her apron.

  “Hey.” I offer a sheepish smile. “I hardly saw you today. Everything okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Chloe says immediately, offering me a quick smile back. “It’s just been super busy.”

  I feel my lips twist; I’ve never not spent so much time with Chloe as I have this past week. “You sure?”

  “Totally,” she says. “How was your book club?”

  “Good!” I say, surprised to find that I mean it, and launch into a detailed description of our meeting. I’m telling her about our plan to make Nolite te bastardes carborundorum T-shirts for next week’s dress-down day before I realize she isn’t listening at all.

  “You should think about joining,” I finish weakly. Then, “Chlo, what’s wrong?”

  Chloe sighs. “Look,” she says, “this is probably going to sound bitchy, and I honestly don’t mean for it to, but like. You’re just so different lately. Like, where’s Marin? My fun, cool best friend Marin?”

  She holds her hands up, glancing over her shoulder toward the dining room. “I know you’ve had some . . . stuff . . . ,” she says meaningfully. “But I thought you were going to put all that behind you. And instead you’re just like . . . rolling around in it, I don’t know.”

  I blink. “Rolling around in what, exactly?”

  “Don’t get mad,” Chloe says. “I just—”

  “Ladies!” Steve calls, deep voice booming from behind the bar. “Tables, please.”

  We don’t talk for the rest of the night, orbiting around each other like two competing moons. Yes, I’ve had some stuff, I think to myself, a little bitterly. And I have put it behind me, obviously. I didn’t tell anyone. I’m still doing everything I was doing before. But I’m also thinking about things a little differently. Is there something wrong with that?

  By nine thirty, I’ve had enough. This is ridiculous, I decide finally. Where’s Marin? I’m right here. I drop the check for the last of my tables, two middle-aged guys I’m pretty sure were celebrating their anniversary. It’s me. It’s Chloe. I’ll see if she wants to get a late-night Starbucks on the ride home. We’ll listen to the new Sia album on Spotify and talk it out.

  When I stow my apron and head out into the parking lot though, I look around for a long moment before I frown. Chloe has driven me home from every shift since she got her license last summer, but I don’t see her SUV—a tan Jeep with a cartoon sloth bumper sticker affixed to the back window—anywhere.

  I yank my phone out of my backpack. Did you leave? I text.

  Her reply comes thirty seconds later. ACK I’M SO SORRY! Asked my dad to tell you, but he must have spaced. Kyra’s having a boy crisis so I said I’d go see her. Can you find a ride???

  If I think too much about the likelihood that Chloe has really ditched me for her dorky cousin Kyra, I might lose it, so instead I sit down on a bench outside the restaurant and consider my options for getting home: it’s too far to walk. My parents are at a scholarship fund-raiser Grace’s chess teacher throws every year all the way in Burlington. And I sure as shit can’t call Jacob. I scroll through my phone, trying to figure out which of my friends I haven’t alienated recently who might also have access to a car. Nothing like standing alone in the parking lot of a strip mall outside a Greek restaurant at ten on a Friday night to put your life choices in glaring perspective.

  I’m about to go back inside and throw myself on Steve’s mercy when a thought occurs to me. I bite my lip, swiping through my contacts until I find Gray’s name. He put his number in there himself after the book club meeting today, then texted himself so he’d have mine: “In case I need help with the big words,” he explained, handing my phone back to me with a flourish.

  Hey, I text now, hitting send before I can talk myself out of it. Are you busy?

  He shows up fifteen minutes later, pulling up to the curb outside the restaurant in a ten-year-old Toyota with a bobblehead dog affixed to the dashboard. “Somebody call an Uber?” he asks as I climb in.

  “Hey,” I say with a grateful grin. “Thank you. You’re totally saving me right now.”

  “No problem.” His car smells like cinnamon Altoids and a little bit like a gym bag; his phone is upside down in the cupholder, Kendrick Lamar echoing quietly from the tinny speaker. “No Bluetooth,” he explains, a little sheepish.

  “I’m going to have to dock you a star,” I tease, nudging aside a half-dozen empty Pepsi bottles and setting my backpack on the floor between my feet. “Seriously, though, I mean it. Thanks. I didn’t think you’d be around.”

  “Because I’m so popular?”

  I make a face. “I mean, you’re more popular than me right now, that’s for sure.”

  Gray doesn’t comment. “I was out with some friends,” he admits, glancing over his shoulder before pulling out onto the main road, “but I was tired of them anyway.”

  “You were, huh?”

  “Yeah,” he says easily. “I’ll be honest with you, Marin. I’ve been thinking I need a change.”

  He’s full of shit, clearly, but I smile anyway. I lean my head against the back of the seat rest. “You and me both.”

  “So, um,” he says. “Where to?”

  “Oh, crap!” I laugh and give him my address. “You can just drop me at the corner of Oak if you don’t want to deal with the roundabout. I can walk the rest of the way.”

  “Now what kind of Uber driver would I be if I did that?” Gray asks with a grin. Then: “Hey, are you hungry?”

  I literally just ate half a tray of spanakopita, but . . . “Are you?”

  “I mean, I’m seventeen,” he says, grinning crookedly. “I’m literally always hungry.”

  We stop at the Executive Diner on Route 4, following a stern-looking waitress to a booth by the window. I order a peanut butter milk shake while Gray gets a cheeseburger with onion rings and a side of chocolate chip pancakes. “I’ve never actually been in here at night before,” he says, looking around at the chipped Formica tables, the few schleppy middle-aged dudes posted up at the bar.

  “Oh no?” I ask, wrinkling my nose at him over my milk shake. “Too busy wining and dining the ladies of Bridgewater Prep?”

  “Or writing feminist op-eds,” he counters with a smile.

  “Or getting kicked out
of fancy schools for being a degenerate?”

  I’m teasing, but Gray flinches a little. “Is that what I did?” he asks, raising his dark eyebrows across the table.

  “Isn’t it?” I ask. “I mean, I heard . . .” I trail off. “Shit. I’m sorry. I’m an asshole.”

  “Nah, you’re fine.” Gray smiles, dunking one of his onion rings in a ketchup/mayo/hot sauce concoction of his own making. “I don’t know how that rumor got started. I mean, I do, I like to throw parties, but that’s not what I got expelled for.”

  “So what happened, then?” I ask, stirring my milk shake with a long metal spoon instead of looking at him. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me, obviously.”

  “No, it’s cool.” He shrugs. “I was too dumb.”

  My head snaps up. “You’re not dumb,” I say immediately.

  Gray waves a hand. “I mean, sure, not dumb, but . . . I’ve got, like, ADHD and stuff, and was not meeting Hartley’s, uh, rigorous academic standards.”

  I frown. “Don’t they have to accommodate you for that?” I ask. “It’s a learning disability, no?”

  “I mean, sure,” Gray says. “But you also have to like . . . do your work every once in a while.”

  “Ah,” I say, feeling my face relax into a smile. “Right. I can see how that would be part of the bargain.”

  “Yeah. Anyway,” Gray continues, “people are going to think what they want to think about you, right? So I just kind of . . . let them think it. It’s a better story, in any case.”

  “But don’t you ever want to set the record straight?” I dip my fork in his ketchupy sauce, tasting cautiously. Not bad.

  Gray shrugs. “Sure, sometimes,” he says, “if it’s somebody whose opinion I give a shit about. But mostly I feel like: it’s only a few more months, right? What do I care?”

  “I guess,” I say slowly. “Where are you headed next year, do you know?”

  Gray groans, pretending to upend his plate of pancakes and slither onto the floor underneath the booth—only then he almost does knock over his Pepsi, grabbing the big plastic cup at the last second. His reflexes are impressive, I’ve got to give him that much.