On one hand it feels like a massive relief—that editorial was the riskiest thing I’ve ever written, and even though I might have been prepared to sacrifice what’s left of my future, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the consequences.
On the other hand, it’s hard not to feel a tiny bit disappointed too. Like, does seriously no one even care?
Chloe picks me up the following morning, the two of us listening to the latest episode of our favorite creepy podcast and taking the long way so we can swing by the Starbucks drive-through for iced coffees and slightly dry croissants. By the time we pull into the Bridgewater parking lot it almost feels like it did last fall before everything happened.
That is, until we actually get inside.
I’ve become something of an expert in gauging the energy in the south hallway the last few weeks, and this morning it definitely feels like something unusual is happening, that sharp electric bite in the air. Sean Campolo’s gaze cuts in between us. Allie Chao whispers something behind her hand.
“Oh, what the hell is this?” I can’t keep myself from muttering. It feels like my first day back after break all over again, right down to the icy feeling creeping down my backbone. I thought I was immune to this, to the shame of being singled out and stared at. I guess, even after all this time, I was wrong.
I’m about to bolt—directly to first period, or possibly right out the door again—but Chloe reaches down and hooks her elbow in mine.
“Relax,” she says, with all the easy intuition of seven years of best friendship. Her voice is perfectly level. “Whatever happens, we’re together, right?”
I force a nod. “Right,” I manage, and to my surprise, I do feel a tiny zing of confidence, my spine straightening the slightest bit. “We’re together.”
We head toward our lockers, gather our books; down the hall I can see a gaggle of book clubbers sprawled in the lounge outside the cafeteria, and as we weave through the crowded hallway in their direction, I can see that Elisa is grinning. Lydia lifts her chin in a nod.
“Okay, no, seriously,” I murmur, quiet enough that only Chloe can hear me. “What the hell is this?”
Before she can reply I spy Principal DioGuardi coming down the hallway from the direction of the admin suite in a blue button-down so shiny it’s nearly iridescent. He catches my eye and motions us over, popping his whistle into his mouth.
“Girls,” he says, pulling it out again as we approach him. “Can I speak with you for a moment?”
I take a breath. “Mr. DioGuardi,” I begin, just like we practiced in Chloe’s bedroom, “Chloe and I are happy to discuss whatever concerns you had about this week’s issue. But I should let you know that we looked at the organizational paperwork for the Beacon before we published, and it says very clearly that the administration shall not interfere with the editorial page unless there’s an egregious violation of—”
Mr. DioGuardi shakes his head. “It’s not about that,” he tells me. “Or it is about that, but—” He jams the whistle back into his mouth, looking visibly pained. “I just wanted to let you both know that Mr. Beckett has been removed from the faculty.”
For a second I just blink at him dumbly. That is . . . not what I was expecting him to say.
“Really?” I blurt.
Mr. DioGuardi nods. “Other students have already come forward,” he explains miserably. He looks exhausted, greenish bags under his eyes and a day’s worth of beard on his chin; if things had gone a little bit differently between us, I’d almost feel sorry for him. “It seems there was . . . well. More of a problem with Mr. Beckett than we realized, certainly. Both here and at the last school he worked at.”
The last school he worked at. I remember the first day Bex drove me home, that line about cooking dinner for students in his apartment, and can’t keep from shaking my head.
“He’s really gone?” I ask, still looking for the catch somewhere, but Mr. DioGuardi nods again.
“Effective immediately,” he reassures me. “He won’t be back.”
“Wow.” It’s more than I ever dreamed would happen, honestly. “That’s . . . wow.”
Chloe seems to consider that for a moment; to my surprise, she doesn’t actually look satisfied. “So, Mr. DioGuardi,” she says politely, cocking her head to the side, her eyes sharp and keen behind her glasses. “It sounds like what you’re saying is that you were wrong not to believe Marin when she came to you in the first place, hm?”
Mr. DioGuardi frowns. “Well, it wasn’t a question of belief or not,” he explains, his gaze cutting from her to me and back again. “The board was working with the information they had at the time—”
“Including the information she gave you, right?”
“I . . . yes,” Mr. DioGuardi admits. “But without corroborating—”
“So it almost kind of feels like you owe her an apology.”
For a moment Mr. DioGuardi looks like he’s going to argue, but in the end he just sort of sags.
“I’m sorry, Marin,” he says, the words as stiff and awkward in his mouth as if he’s trying to speak Klingon. “I know you’ve been through a lot these last couple of months.”
It’s not exactly stellar, as far as apologies go, and it turns out that I don’t actually give a shit if he’s sorry or he’s not. I told the truth. Bex is gone. And Chloe and I are friends again. All told, I could have done worse. “Thanks,” I say, cool as a glass of my gram’s iced tea on the hottest day of summer. “I appreciate that.”
Once he’s gone I look around the hallway, then back at Chloe. Her expression is a shocked, delighted mirror of my own. “You wanna skip first period and go to the diner for breakfast?” I ask her. “Just you and me?”
“You know,” Chloe says thoughtfully, “I think that is the best idea I’ve heard all year.”
We link arms again and head back out into the parking lot. The sun is warm on the back of my neck.
Thirty-Seven
I go by Sunrise after school on Friday and find Camille standing at the nurses’ station, humming quietly to herself while she fills out some paperwork. Her Crocs are hot pink today, her scrubs printed with toucans and flamingos. An enormous Dunkin’ iced coffee sweats at her side.
“I’ve got something for you,” I tell her, digging around in my backpack for a moment before pulling out an Amherst T-shirt.
Camille’s mouth drops open. “Oh, Marin, you didn’t have to do that!”
“A promise is a promise,” I say with a shrug. “I’m just sorry it’s not from Brown.”
“Are you kidding?” she says. Her grin is wide and white. “I’m so proud of you, honey.” She raises her eyebrows. “Are you proud of yourself?”
I consider that for a moment. “You know,” I say finally, “I actually really am.”
“Good,” Camille says, reaching out and squeezing my shoulder before nodding down the hallway toward Gram’s suite. “Let me know if you need anything, okay? She had a pretty good morning, but just in case.”
I nod. It’s the first time I’ve been back here on my own since the day Gram didn’t recognize me—Mom and I went together one morning, and Gracie tagged along with me the time after that—and I can feel my heart thumping unpleasantly as I make my way down the hallway.
It’s just Gram, I remind myself firmly. Whether she remembers you or not, it doesn’t change who she is to you.
“Hey there,” I say, knocking lightly on the door.
“Hi, Marin-girl.”
I let a breath out, relief coursing through me at the sound of my own name. Gram is sitting on the love seat with a biography of Katharine Graham in her lap. She’s wearing a linen shift dress and a pale pink cardigan, her hair pulled into a wispy knot at the base of her neck. The line of her lipstick is a tiny bit wobbly, but otherwise she looks like herself.
“Dad made a ciambellone,” I tell her once I’ve kissed her hello, hefting the Tupperware carrier up as evidence. It’s an Italian tea cake that she used to make when I was a
kid, lemony and dense. I remember wandering around her yard with a hunk of it in my fist, Grandpa Tony’s toy poodle Lola trying to nibble bits of it out from in between my fingers. “He used your recipe, so he said he wants your honest opinion about how it turned out.”
“Oh, that’s lovely!” she says, sounding genuinely pleased. “I got that recipe from my mother-in-law, did I ever tell you that? She was not a nice lady, your great-grandmother, but the woman knew her way around a kitchen.”
I laugh, cutting us both slices and bringing them over to the coffee table, running my thumb over the edge of the delicate scalloped plate. “You got a crossword around here anywhere?” I ask. “I’ve been practicing.”
We pass the better part of our visit that way, filling in the puzzle and catching up on my last few weeks of school. I’m telling her about the dress I got for spring formal when something about her expression, a wary uneasiness, stops me. “Everything okay?” I ask.
Gram nods. “You know,” she says, and it sounds almost like an accusation, “I used to make a cake just like this.”
I bite my lip, trying to keep my face neutral. “I know, Gram,” I say gently. “It’s your recipe, remember?”
She narrows her eyes then, and I know all at once that I’ve lost her.
“It’s delicious, isn’t it?” I ask, instead of trying to get her to remember. It’s better not to push her when she gets like this, Mom explained after that last disastrous solo visit; she’ll come back on her own when she’s ready. It might be this afternoon, or it might not be. At some point she might not come back at all. “It tastes like spring.”
I spend the rest of my visit chattering on, cheerful, keeping my voice light and full of air: about summer finally coming and the tulip beds in front of Sunrise; about Katharine Graham, who I know from Ms. Klein was the first female publisher of a major American newspaper. Gram, for her part, seems content to listen to me, nibbling at her cake and nodding politely at appropriate breaks in my monologue like I’m a particularly gregarious stranger in a train station. As I’m getting up to leave, she touches my hand.
“I like you,” she says, her smile warm but somehow completely unfamiliar. “You remind me of myself.”
I tilt my head to the side, swallowing hard. “I do?”
Gram nods. “You’re a good girl,” she continues, “but you don’t always have to be so good.” Then she raises her eyebrows, mischievous. “Lord knows I wasn’t.”
For a second she looks like herself again, Gram who bought me my first journal and grew prize-winning roses and taught me to separate eggs over her immaculately polished stainless steel sink; then she blinks and it’s gone. I turn my hand over and squeeze hers for a moment, just gently, before letting go.
“I know,” I promise. “I’ll remember.”
Epilogue
The year’s final meeting of the feminist book club is on a warm Thursday afternoon at the beginning of June, a breeze blowing in through the open windows of Ms. Klein’s classroom and the trees exploding into verdant green outside. Elisa’s mom sends homemade tamales. Grace and I baked seven-layer bars. We read Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, which was Lydia’s pick—and which comes with the benefit of letting us watch Beyoncé’s Lemonade, which is playing on a loop on a laptop at one corner of the room. Maddie and Bridget have an impromptu dance party going in one corner of the classroom, and I catch Dave singing along to “Formation” under his breath when he thinks no one is paying attention.
“You did something really good here, Marin,” Ms. Klein says quietly, coming to stand beside me with a paper cup of seltzer in one hand. The club is going to keep meeting next year, the underclassmen decided; Lydia nominated Elisa to be president, and she ran unopposed. I like the idea of the club continuing on without me—it’s dumb, maybe, but it kind of makes me feel like I’ll have a real legacy at Bridgewater beyond just being the girl who got Bex fired.
Of course, I’m not mad if that’s part of my legacy too.
Chloe and her parents pressed charges, which was hard for Chloe, but she felt like it was the right thing to do. The town paper ran a huge article on Bex, and Bridgewater caught a lot of heat for how they handled the whole situation. People were shocked by the administration’s actions—or lack thereof.
“How could something like this still happen today?” everyone said—but I guess that’s the reality, right? It does still happen.
Now I look around the classroom, my chest warm. Even Chloe came today, though she hadn’t read the book.
“Are you sure it’s okay?” she asked on the way over here, hesitating in the hallway. “To be crashing?”
“It’s not really about the book,” I promised, reaching for her hand and pulling her into the classroom. “I mean, it is and it isn’t.” Now I see her chatting with Elisa about the makeup artist who works on all Beyoncé’s videos, and I can tell she’s glad she came.
The only person who’s missing is Gray.
I sigh, smiling half-heartedly at Ms. Klein before drifting over to the food table. I thought he might show up for nostalgia’s sake—it’s our last meeting, after all—but I guess I chased him away for good. And sure, I apologized that day on the bleachers. But I know better than most people that sometimes an apology isn’t enough.
I’m just about to drown my sorrows in another tamale when I sense a movement behind me in the doorway; I turn around and there he is in his uniform and a Sox cap, smile as sheepish and crooked as the first day he joined the club. He catches my eye and grins.
I smile back, wide and honest.
It occurs to me that our story, whatever it might turn out to be, is far from over.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says, shrugging a little shyly. “I needed to finish the book.”
About the Authors
Photo credit © Wendy Carlson
CANDACE BUSHNELL is the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Carrie Diaries, Sex and the City, Is There Still Sex in the City?, Lipstick Jungle, One Fifth Avenue, 4 Blondes, Trading Up, and Summer and the City, which have sold millions of copies. Sex and the City was the basis for the HBO hit shows and films, and its prequel, The Carrie Diaries, was the basis for the CW television show of the same name. Lipstick Jungle became a popular television show on NBC. Is There Still Sex in the City? is in development with Paramount Television. Candace lives in New York City and Sag Harbor.
Visit her at www.candacebushnell.com.
Photo credit Jennie Palluzzi
KATIE COTUGNO is the New York Times bestselling author of Top Ten, 99 Days, 9 Days and 9 Nights, Fireworks, and How to Love. She studied writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College and received her MFA in fiction at Lesley University. Katie is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, and Argestes, among others. She lives in Boston.
Visit her at www.katiecotugno.com.
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RULES FOR BEING A GIRL. Copyright © 2020 by Alloy Entertainment and Candace Bushnell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019948010
Digital Edition APRIL 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-280339-9
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-280337-5
2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321
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