Margie Kelly Breaks the Dress Code

by Bridget Farr

  I smile, relief fueling me. “That’s great. Thank you. But what about the other girls in ISS?”

  Mr. Franklin rolls his shoulders, sending a crackle down his spine.

  “Again, I can’t describe specifics about the school’s disciplinary decisions—”

  “You don’t have to tell me what happened,” I argue. “I know what happened. Not all girls got in trouble. Ms. Scott let me go free while my friend Gloria got three days’ suspension. Why did she get in trouble when I didn’t?”

  “We strive to treat all students fairly,” Mr. Franklin says, his mustache scrunched near his nose.

  “But you didn’t!”

  Mr. Franklin looks at me and I wonder what he sees. Does he see a girl who never breaks the rules? A girl who always does the right thing? A girl who’s polite? A girl no one thinks is dangerous? Is my skin color the reason he believes all those things?

  “I’m wondering if maybe the reason I didn’t get in trouble when Gloria did was because I’m white, and she’s Latina.”

  Mr. Franklin swallows, his eyebrows furrowed.

  “That’s a big accusation to make, and something the school will definitely look into. But for future concerns, I ask that you join Student Council. I meet with them once a semester. That’s why students get eight hall passes per grading period now, instead of six.”

  “Maybe, but I can’t wait for elections. We need to make changes now.”

  “You can always submit a suggestion to the box in the front office. I review those weekly.”

  Mr. Franklin glances over at the clock on his computer.

  “How about now?” I say, feeling the same surge of confidence I felt yesterday as we marched through the halls.

  “We can start,” Mr. Franklin says with a slight sigh. “You’re my last one of the night anyway.”

  “And could you also have a meeting for other girls to speak up? Like at lunch? I’m here now, but this doesn’t just affect me.”

  Mr. Franklin sinks back in his chair. “We probably can work that out. For now, why don’t you start from the beginning?”

  I reach for my courage, realizing it was closer to the surface than I expected it to be. I’m more confident now than I was that first day of school. I press my hands down into Quiz Bowl ready position.

  “Did you know that our dress code unfairly targets girls, especially girls of color, labeling us a distraction? On my first day here, I wore this skirt.…”

  Chapter 25

  The next day I race to practice so I can meet Daniela before it starts. She wouldn’t talk to me all day: she ignored my glances in Ms. Scott’s class and picked a new seat in Ms. Anthony’s. I couldn’t even find her at lunch. Now, I wait beside the door, welcoming the team like Grandma and I do when she signs us up to be greeters at mass. “Hello, hi,” I say with a nod, and mostly the boys just walk by looking confused, but Mikey does nod and call me Dress Code as he passes.

  Finally, I spot Daniela on the stairs with Jamiya. Their heads are tilted together as if they’re sharing a secret, and I ignore the pang in my chest. Jamiya checks her phone and winks at me. She already knows what I’m about to do. She finally called me last night after she got her phone back. It was confiscated during the protest, but in the meeting with Mr. Franklin, her parents demanded its return. We talked for over an hour last night, and I told her everything that happened with Daniela, my ignorance and her silence. Jamiya even shared about the fights she’s had with her best friend, who’s in high school now. Jamiya gives me a look as she walks into the room, leaving Daniela by herself.

  “Daniela, can we talk?” I say, stepping in front of the door.

  “Practice starts in five minutes.”

  “I’ll be quick.” I pull three bags of Skittles from my backpack: regular, wild berry, and sour. Not the tropical flavor she hates. “I brought you these.”

  “You’re bribing me?”

  “It can be either. If you want to talk to me, they’re just an apology gift. If you’re still mad and ignoring me, then, yes, they’re a bribe.” I shake the bags. “So?”

  She rolls her eyes before grabbing the regular and wild berry. “Keep the sour ones. I don’t need my tongue burned before Saturday’s competition.”

  “Right! I should have thought of that. Maybe we can get the competition to eat them. Send them a whole bunch of sour Skittles before the match. They won’t be able to answer a single question because their tongues will be sore.”

  Daniela lets out a small laugh, and I reach for her hand.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t have time for this right now, Margie. We have practice.”

  “Please! I’ll be fast. I just need to explain. Not to make excuses, but I get it now. I got so obsessed with the dress code that I ignored that Quiz Bowl was your priority. It wasn’t fair to ask you to be in the protest if it meant losing your chance to compete this weekend. I just didn’t want to do it alone.”

  Daniela twists the end of her braid. I continue.

  “Things felt different, too, like I was being left out. You were on the Quiz Bowl team and I was just the alternate. You and Jamiya are best friends now—”

  “She’s not my best friend.”

  “Really?”

  Daniela rolls her eyes. “We’re friends, yes, but it takes more than a few weeks for someone to become your best friend.”

  I smile, not able to help the geyser of joy rushing through my body.

  “Excuse me. Coming through,” Mr. Shao suddenly says as he balances an enormous slice of pizza on top of a teetering pile of copies. I open the door for him (he doesn’t bother to say thank you) and then close it quickly. I need just a few more minutes.

  “What was I saying? Right. You don’t get a best friend that fast, but it felt like we were growing apart, like we weren’t going to be the Queens of Quiz anymore, and I… I was afraid to do the protest by myself.”

  “It was your wild idea,” Daniela says, crossing her arms.

  “It was my idea, and that was part of the problem. I made the whole protest about me and what I wanted, and I didn’t think about the risks for you or Jamiya or Gloria. I get it now, what you said about me not getting in trouble. Girls aren’t treated fairly at our school, but girls of color are treated even worse.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Daniela says as she rolls her eyes, and I reach for her hand again.

  “No! I didn’t mean you didn’t know. I just meant that I finally get what you’ve been saying all along. I need to think about how my actions affect other people, and how if I want to make things better at our school, I need to make sure everyone’s voices are included.”

  Daniela twists her finger around the end of her braid.

  “Oh, and Gloria told me that she and the other girls got out of ISS today. Mr. Franklin canceled their suspensions and even invited them to a meeting to hear their points of view. He told her she should run for Student Council.”

  “I am.”

  “What?”

  Daniela smiles. “I signed up with Ms. Anthony two weeks ago when this whole protest thing was really getting started. I told you there is more than one way to change things.”

  “I will totally vote for you.”

  She smiles, and I let go of the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

  “I am really sorry.”

  “I know,” Daniela says, letting go of my hand. “But now we have to get to practice.”

  “Right. Queens of Quiz.”

  She shakes her head. “Not yet, but we will be. And even if we’re not the Queens of Quiz, we’re still best friends. That’s cool, too.”

  I smile, grabbing my backpack off the floor and following her into Mr. Shao’s room.

  Chapter 26

  On Friday, Daniela and I race down the hallway with our lunch trays, headed to Mr. Franklin’s first sixth-grade student forum in the library. No one knows what’s actually going to happen when we get there, but during the announcements this morning he i
nvited all students wanting to talk about the dress code to the library during their lunch period. Ms. Scott turned it into a “learning opportunity” and made us all look up “forum” in the dictionary. Of course, Daniela already knew since government structures are part of her skills.

  Down the hall, more students climb up the stairs with the same blue tickets we have in our hands. Anyone wanting to come had to get a ticket from the security guard in the cafeteria to make sure we didn’t try to skip lunch. We probably could have taken our ticket and gone anywhere, but Daniela and I want to be in the library today.

  “Ask me one more quick question before we go in,” Daniela says, and I respond, “Dates of major US wars.”

  “American Revolutionary War, 1775 to 1783, War of 1812…”

  I open the door to the library. There are so many kids inside. At the front is a huge TV screen with a PowerPoint titled LIVE OAK STUDENT FORUM in bold white letters on a blue background. Mr. Franklin is standing by the screen shuffling some papers. We wave to Jamiya, who is scanning books on the shelves with a little scan gun. All the tables are filled up except the one next to Mr. Franklin. It’s mostly girls, definitely over half, but still lots of boys. Over by the computers, Xavier sits with some boys I don’t recognize.

  “Should we sit up front?” Daniela asks, scanning the library for any other seats. “We might not want to be…”

  “He knows, remember?”

  “Right. Up front it is, then.”

  Daniela and I sit side by side at a table just to the left of the screen where we can see the entire room. Normally everyone would be talking and laughing and checking their phones under the table, but we all watch Mr. Franklin. A few kids are eating, but most seem to feel like me. Too excited to eat. The girls at the table across from us start to whisper, their eyes on us. It’s no secret anymore that Daniela and I were the protest creators.

  “Give me five,” Mr. Franklin says, lifting his arm high above his head, our signal to raise our own hands and be ready to listen. He clears his throat a few times. Unlike fifth grade, everyone raises their hands right away and soon the room is silent. We’re not better behaved now; we’re just ready for answers.

  “Thank you for joining me today in our first student forum. We’re going to have these once a month until the end of school to make sure students feel their voices are heard, by me. Your principal. Mr. Franklin.”

  We all stare at him, waiting. He clicks for the next slide, but nothing happens. He mutters something about technology before going to the computer and pushing the forward button himself. CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY appear in the same white letters.

  Mr. Franklin clears his throat again. “As you know, some students had a disagreement about the dress code and took actions this week that did not fit with our school policy of civic engagement”—he gestures toward the screen—“and social responsibility. Today I would like to talk to you about these two valuable skills.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see a hand shoot up in the back of the room. I can’t see who it is because they’re blocked by a girl, Sulema, from my math class.

  “Um, yes, you in the back,” Mr. Franklin says. Up pops a petite Latina girl with two long black braids that go down to her waist. She adjusts her purple glasses before speaking. “Are you going to tell us why our school’s dress code is sexist to girls?”

  Ten hands shoot up around the room. I look at Daniela with wide eyes, and she tries to hide her smile.

  “We will talk about the dress code situation after—”

  Five more hands shoot up.

  “Yes, you in the pink,” Mr. Franklin says, stretching his neck side to side.

  A white girl from my soccer league a few years ago, Kate or Katie, stands up.

  “It seems like the dress code is only enforced against girls because we get in trouble for skirts and shorts, but boys don’t.”

  More hands go up. At the table next to us a girl is bouncing in her seat, extending her arm higher and higher.

  Mr. Franklin flicks to his next slide. DRESS CODE.

  “Live Oak’s dress code is intended to create a safe learning environment for all students—”

  The room erupts. Students start whispering: “No way.” “Not for girls!” “He just thinks that because…”

  I lock eyes with Jamiya across the room. She mouths, “This is awesome” before returning a book to the shelf. Daniela nudges me. “You started a revolution.”

  “We did. This is amazing. Look at Mr. Franklin.”

  His round cheeks are turning red, and he brushes away the sweat collecting on his forehead. I wonder what will happen when Jamiya, Gloria, and the other eighth-grade girls show up for their forum. They have three years of anger ready to release on him.

  “We will be reviewing the dress code policy to see if corrections need to be made,” Mr. Franklin continues, flipping his slide to STUDENT VOICE—GET INVOLVED. It lists joining Student Council, putting suggestions in the box in the office, telling a teacher. I guess he didn’t want to add “protest march” to the list.

  At the table across from us, a Black girl with a clarinet in front of her holds a hand up in quiet determination. Her eyes drill into Mr. Franklin, daring him to call on her.

  “We don’t have time to discuss changes to the dress code now, but I invite you all to review the list of ways to get involved.” Mr. Franklin looks at the crowd of lions as if he feels more and more like a gazelle. He tosses a steak into the crowd.

  “I’ll take one more question. Yes, you with the clarinet.”

  The girl stands, her hands on her clarinet case. “Mr. Franklin, I’m Naomi Davis and I want to know how you are going to address the fact that the dress code is unfair to girls, yes, but specifically biased toward girls of color. My neighbor told me that only certain girls got suspended during the protest, and that isn’t right.”

  That was exactly my question two days ago! I wonder if he has a better answer this time. We wait, circling closer to our prey.

  “The dress code has the same requirements for all girls, regardless of skin color.”

  Naomi’s hand is back up, stretching even higher this time.

  “Yes, Naomi.”

  “The words might be the same, but who gets in trouble and how often—that’s what I’m talking about. That’s prejudice and discrimination.”

  More hands are up around the room.

  “That’s something we will take into consideration as an administrative team. We want to be sure that all teachers and staff are enforcing the dress code equally.”

  “But what are you going to do about it?” someone calls from the back, and the room grumbles like a giant waking up from a centuries-long sleep. Soon students are calling out questions from all around the room.

  “Will students be able to dress according to their gender identity and not what’s listed in the school records?”

  “What about hoodies?”

  “The choir uniforms are sexist: dresses for girls and suits for boys. What about nonbinary kids? Why don’t we have a gender-neutral option?”

  “What’s wrong with leggings? Why do we have to wear a skirt or dress over them?”

  “I can’t answer questions if you’re all talking at once,” Mr. Franklin says, trying to shout over the crowd. Their questions are like helium to our original protest, expanding it, filling it up, lifting it higher than it did when I only thought about the dress code as boys versus girls. I hadn’t thought about the ways the dress code harmed all these different people. I bet Mr. Franklin is realizing the same thing. If I really want to be an activist, I’m going to have to do a lot more listening.

  Buzzzzzz, the bell rings, and Mr. Franklin sighs before jumping into principal mode.

  “Put your lunch trays in the large trash bins beside the door! Push your chairs in! Jason, pick that up!”

  As the students file out of the library, I look at Mr. Franklin’s screen. STUDENT VOICE—GET INVOLVED. Seems to me we alre
ady are.

  Chapter 27

  The overhead lights are off in Ms. Scott’s room, but sunlight still streams in from her open windows. The door was open so I didn’t knock. Ms. Scott sits at her computer, pop music playing loudly on her speaker, as she flips through a stack of papers on her lap and glances at her screen. Her lips move along to a song, and her black pumps tap the tile floor.

  “Ms. Scott,” I call as I step into the room, my hand brushing the tulle of my perfect first-day-of-school skirt. I changed in the bathroom after school before coming here. I only have a few minutes before practice, but I have to do this.

  “Tutoring has been canceled for the day,” she says, her eyes still on the paper in front of her. “I’ve got an appointment.”

  She grabs a Diet Coke beside her and looks up. “Margie?”

  “I’m not here for tutoring.”

  “I didn’t assume so. I just put your grade in, and you’ve got an A.”

  Ms. Scott takes a sip of the soda, her eyes surveying me. She sets it down and shuffles the papers on her lap. Somehow, standing in front of Ms. Scott, I don’t feel as brave as I did marching in the hallway. Maybe because I wasn’t alone then. Maybe because we were yelling the hard questions out into the world instead of saying them in a quiet classroom.

  “Did you need something?” Ms. Scott asks. She pops the lid back on her red pen and sets it on the papers.

  “I have to ask you a question. About the first day of school.”

  Ms. Scott crinkles her nose. “I’ll do my best, but that was weeks ago.”

  My skirt should jump-start her memory. I step between the desks so she can see all three of its perfect tulle layers.

  “Why did you dress code me that day?”

  Ms. Scott smiles an exasperated smile. “Because you were out of dress code.” She tips her head toward my skirt. “As evidenced by the skirt you’re wearing now. Even you can see how short it is.”