Rory is spotting some guy on a bench press. The guy grunts as he lifts a giant dumbbell into the air. When he drops the dumbbell into its holder and turns his head to the side, I realize the guy is Theo.
Theo mops the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. “Hey,” he says to Rory, “look who’s here.”
Martie is doing push-ups at the back of the gym.
Rory shows us where the locker room is so we can change. “Don’t look so worried,” he tells Phil. “We’ll start you with five-pound weights.” Then he looks over at me. “Maybe the two-point-fives.”
Theo is friendlier than I’d expected. “Don’t worry about how much weight you’re lifting,” he says. “What counts is your form.” He demonstrates a set of curls with the five-pound dumbbells. “You want to exhale while you’re lifting. Like this…”
Martie joins us, adjusting his shoulders to give us a better view of his biceps. I catch my reflection in the mirror. I can’t help noticing how scrawny I look. I wonder how many push-ups it would take for me to look like Martie.
“Speaking of form,” Martie says, “how’s your friend Daisy doing?” Martie licks his lips, which makes Rory and Theo burst into laughter.
I guess they expect Phil and me to laugh along with them, but I’m not in a laughing mood. Don’t they see they’re being jerks?
Phil answers Martie. “Eric went to Daisy’s house after school yesterday. Her parents want to transfer her out of Lajoie.” Maybe Phil is nervous. He can’t stop babbling. “Eric said her mom thinks she needs a stricter environment. I bet you anything they’ll send her to Queen of the Mountain. The principal there makes the Germinator look like Mother Teresa…”
Martie flexes his forearm. “We can’t let a girl that hot be transferred out. We gave her butt a perfect sco—”
That’s the moment I decide I’ve had enough. “Don’t talk about Daisy like that!” I snap.
Even Phil looks surprised—and slightly worried. “Martie was kidding, weren’t you, Martie?” Phil says.
“Yeah sure, I was kidding,” Martie says, though I don’t believe him. “I didn’t mean to tease you about your girlfriend, little guy.”
Now I know Martie is looking for a fight. Why else would he call me little guy? If this gets physical, I don’t stand a chance. But even if Martie beats the crap out of me, I’m glad I’m standing up to him. I’ve had enough.
I think of how Germinato and the other students on the Student Life Committee ignored me and how I’d had to turn Daisy in. I did not stand up either of those times, but I am standing up now. Even if it’s gonna hurt.
“Daisy isn’t my girlfriend,” I tell Martie. “And you know what else she isn’t?” The strength in my own voice takes me by surprise and gives me the courage to go on. “She isn’t an object. And that’s what you guys are doing. You’re treating them like objects. Girls weren’t made for us to ogle. They’re people. And in case you haven’t noticed, Daisy is a really interesting person.”
Theo wags his finger in the air. “I’m a little confused,” he says. “Weren’t you rating girls’ butts in the cafeteria too?”
I feel my ears heating up. “I did,” I say. “But I didn’t feel good about it. And I apologized to Daisy and Rowena afterward.”
Theo rolls his eyes. “Poor baby didn’t feel good about it.” Then he sticks his thumb in his mouth and wails like a baby.
“I didn’t feel good about it either,” Phil says softly. Then, in a louder voice, he adds, “Eric’s right. We need to stop objectifying girls.” Phil looks into Theo’s eyes. “D’you have a sister?”
“So what if I do?” Theo asks.
“A younger sister?” Phil asks.
“She’s in fifth grade.”
“How would you feel if you heard guys talking about her the way we’ve been talking about girls?”
Theo doesn’t answer right away.
“You wouldn’t like it, would you?” Phil says.
“Okay, okay, we’re getting it,” Martie says. “What do we have to do to show you guys we see your point?”
That’s when the lightbulb goes off inside my head. “You can join the Leggings Revolt,” I tell him. “It’ll be a way for us to help Daisy and every other girl at Lajoie. And our participating will show we don’t believe in treating girls like objects.”
“Did you say Leggings Revolt?” Phil asks.
“That’s exactly what I said.”
Rory and Theo are laughing again, but they stop when Martie extends his palm in front of them. “Leggings Revolt,” Martie says. “I like the sound of that. We’re in, right, guys?”
“I guess,” Rory says.
Theo nods. “We’re in.”
After our workout, Theo wants to stop at the store for a carton of milk.
“Milk?” I put my thumb in my mouth the way Theo did before. “Now who’s being a baby?”
As we walk toward the store, Theo tells Phil and me that drinking milk helps build lean body mass. Rory and Martie are discussing the Leggings Revolt.
I hold the door for someone leaving the store with a brown bag.
“Hey, did I hear someone say Leggings Revolt?” the person asks. That bossy voice can only belong to one person—Rowena.
The others have recognized her too. “You heard right,” Rory tells her. “Eric came up with the name Leggings Revolt. All we need now is a plan of action.”
Rowena sets her brown bag down on the sidewalk. Something tells me she is about to boss us around. “We should start a petition,” she says.
Chapter Fifteen
By the next morning, Rowena has come up with the wording for the petition. We, the undersigned, object to the Lajoie High School dress code on the grounds that it is sexist and targets female students. We believe the new leggings rule is totally arbitrary and therefore unfair. We insist the leggings rule be abolished, and we also insist the entire dress code be rewritten, with input from every student at the school. Furthermore, we want Daisy Fung’s suspension to be struck from her record.
Rowena has made a dozen copies so we can start collecting signatures. She hands me her pen and points to the first blank line on the sheet.
“Shouldn’t you be the first to sign?” I ask her. “It was your idea. And you did all the work.”
“I’d rather not be the very first one.” When I ask why, Rowena folds her arms across her chest and says, “It’s complicated.”
Collecting signatures is more fun than I expect. Because there are still fifteen minutes before homeroom, I start in the hallway, tapping kids’ elbows and telling them about the petition. Soon there is a thick crowd of students pressing in on me. Everyone wants to sign.
“Great idea!” a girl says as she adds her name. “It’s about time we stood up to the Germinator.”
“Do you really think this’ll work?” Dandelion-Hair asks as he scribbles his signature.
“It’s worth a try,” I tell him.
The girl from Life Sciences class tugs on my sleeve. “I can’t believe Daisy Fung got a three-day suspension for wearing leggings,” she says. “I w
ant to sign.” When she signs, I learn her name is Maude.
An older boy claps my back as if we are good friends. “Hey, do you think you could add something about getting our baseball caps back? The Germinator confiscated my Expos cap two years ago. That thing is worth big bucks on eBay.”
“You’re Eric, aren’t you?” another kid asks.
“Sure am,” I tell him. For the first time since I started coming to Lajoie High School, I feel like I belong. Had I known political activism could make a guy popular, I’d have stood up sooner! Even older students who usually treat seventh-graders as if we’re air are treating me with respect.
My sheet already has thirty-five signatures. It’s a good thing Rowena printed lines on both sides.
I tap the elbow of the person next to me. “Would you like to sign this petition to make changes to the school dress code? I’ve got a pen if you nee—”
The elbow I tapped belongs to Ivan from the Student Life Committee. Vicky is with him. They have the same sour expression on their faces.
“What are you thinking, Eric?” Ivan grabs the petition from my hand. “We, the undersigned,” he begins reading in a high-pitched nasal voice.
“Give him back the petition,” the guy who lost his Expos cap tells Ivan. Ivan holds the petition up in the air for a second, and then he throws it back at me.
The final bell rings. We have three minutes to get to class. The crowd around me disperses as quickly as it formed. Only Ivan and Vicky are left. “When Germinato finds out you’re involved in this, he’ll kick you off the Student Life Committee,” Ivan says. “Don’t you realize how this will affect your résumé?”
“There’s more to life than résumés,” I tell Ivan. “And in case you haven’t noticed, your Student Life Committee is a joke. All we do is carry out Germinato’s orders. Doesn’t it bother you that the dress code is sexist?”
Vicky has not said a word, but now she points to the petition. “Let me see that.”
“You’re not going to tear it up, are you?” I ask her.
“Of course not.” Vicky’s eyes move across the top of the page. I expect her to scowl or say something sarcastic, but instead she plucks the pen from my fingers and adds her signature to the list.
Ivan shakes his head. “That petition isn’t going to do any good.”
“How do you know?” Vicky asks him.
“My older brother graduated from Lajoie six years ago. He and his friends put together a petition. They wanted Germinato to let them use the gym one Friday a month for school dances. They were even going to give the money they raised to a homeless shelter.”
“What happened with the petition?” I ask Ivan.
“He read it, and then he put it in a folder at the very back of his filing cabinet. He didn’t even have the good manners to say he’d think about it,” Ivan says.
I look down at the petition. It has forty-six signatures. Phil, Rory, Theo and Martie have been collecting signatures too. But even if we get every student at Lajoie to sign our petition, it may not be enough to get Germinato to rethink the dress code.
It’s time for more radical action.
Chapter Sixteen
Am I the only kid who gets his best ideas in the shower?
I am soaping my pits when it comes to me. What if, for one day, every single kid at Lajoie High School wore leggings—even the boys? Germinato couldn’t suspend everyone! The more I think about it, the more genius my idea sounds.
I want to run it by Rowena, but I don’t see her on my way to school.
Germinato is not at school either. I know because there is no car in the Reserved for Principal parking spot. The other clue is that Miss Aubin is humming to herself. She never hums.
Mr. Farrell is wearing a tie. “What’s up with the formal wear?” Rory asks him when we walk into Life Sciences.
“I’m filling in for Mr. Germinato today,” Mr. Farrell says.
“Did Mr. Germinato get suspended?” Maude asks.
I can tell Mr. Farrell is trying not to smile. “Mr. Germinato needed the day off to deal with some personal issues,” is all he says.
Mr. Farrell makes us work in pairs. I partner up with Maude. Mr. Farrell hands each pair a section from a map of the world. We get China. We are supposed to add drawings of the animals that are native to our country. Maude is trying to draw a panda bear. I decide not to point out that the animal she is drawing looks more like a cat than a bear.
Maude is the first one I tell about my plan. “I like it,” she says. “A lot. You’ll need to go viral—spread the word on Facebook and Twitter. Rowena can help with that.”
“Too bad she isn’t here today,” I say.
Maude shakes her head. “I hope everything’s okay at her house.”
“Maybe she’s got the flu.”
“Yeah, but her dad’s away too.” Maude puts her hand over her mouth.
“Her dad?”
“Yeah. I probably shouldn’t have said anything. You’ve got to promise not to tell anyone else, okay? The Germinator—he’s Rowena’s dad.”
I slap my thigh. “No way.”
“Yes way,” Maude says. “Rowena doesn’t like people knowing. That’s why she uses her mom’s last name—Johnston.”
No wonder Rowena didn’t want to run for the Student Life Committee!
“We used to live around the corner from the Germinatos,” Maude says. “My mom thinks Germinato’s so strict because of all the problems they’ve had with Luanne, Rowena’s older sister.”
“Problems?” I ask.
“She dropped out of college,” Maude says as she puts a black spot on the catbear’s belly. “And now she’s pregnant.”
“Pregnant?” For the first time, I find myself actually feeling sorry for Germinato. Maybe he thinks that if he had been stricter with Luanne, she might have stayed in school and not gotten pregnant.
Mr. Farrell announces that he needs to leave the classroom for ten minutes. “I’m counting on you people to continue working together quietly,” he tells us before he goes.
Maude gives him time to get to the other end of the hallway. Then she puts two fingers in her mouth and whistles to get the class’s attention. “Eric and I need to ask you guys something. Are you ready to join the Leggings Revolt?”
I explain my plan, and every single kid in Life Sciences wants in. Even Rory is willing to come to school in leggings. “I’ll borrow a pair from my sister,” he says.
“When are we going to do it?” someone else asks.
Maude thinks we should give ourselves a few days to get organized, and to make sure Germinato will be in the building. We settle on Friday. That will give us time to put the word out on social media.
One student is standing guard by the classroom door. “Mr. Farrell’s on his way,” he tells us.
When Mr. Farrell walks into the classroom, we are working on our illustrated maps. He surveys the room. “It’s nice to see such focus in here,” he says. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you guys were up to something.”
Chapter Seventeen
Word spreads quickly about the Leggings Revolt. I am at my locker when a tenth-grade girl hands me a bag. “For the cause,” she says. Inside are three pairs of black leggings. I can use a pair, and I’ll give the other two to guys like me, who don’t have leggings or a sister to lend them some.
Rowena has set up a Facebook page that already has over two hundred Likes. That’s impressive when you consider enrolment at Lajoie is just under six hundred. “You’re good buds with Miss Aubin,” Rowena tells me. “I bet you could sweet-talk her into giving you a list of email addresses for all the students.”
Before, I’d have tried to talk Rowena into doing it, but now that I know Germinato is her dad, I don’t bother.
At recess I am back in front of Miss Aubin’s desk. Miss Aubin waves me away. “Can you give me five minutes?” she whispers, pointing at her computer screen. I tilt my head, expecting to see words on the screen. Instead, there is a grainy image of Daisy, looking sad, and her mother waving her arms in the background. I have interrupted some kind of online meeting.
I mouth the words no problem to Miss Aubin. I consider waving to Daisy, but then decide that would be dumb. Especially since I hope to eavesdrop. I grab a seat about six feet from Miss Aubin’s desk. Because I have my World History textbook with me, I flip it open and pretend to study.
Miss Aubin’s eyes flit toward me, then away.
“Mrs. Fung, I believe it would be a mistake to transfer Daisy out of Marie Gérin-Lajoie High School,” I hear Miss Aubin say.
From where I am sitting, it’s hard to make out Mrs. Fung’s answer, though I manage to catch the words rules and metro. The Fungs must know about Daisy’s habit of putting on makeup at the metro station.
Now Miss Aubin addresses Daisy. “I’m all for freedom of expression, but I wonder if you’ve thought about the sort of image you present when you dress in a way that draws attention to your body.”
Leggings Revolt Page 5