Moxie: A Novel

by Jennifer Mathieu

  “If the Pirates don’t win, do we all have to drink spiked Kool-Aid, or what?”

  The other girls and I take time to catch Lucy up on all the town gossip, pointing out the half dozen former Pirates football players in the stands who were going to be big NFL stars until they suffered injuries or got kicked out of college for too many DUIs. Now they’re old men with potbellies that stretch out their orange East Rockport Booster T-shirts, and they watch every move on the field with expressionless faces. During halftime when all of us make our way through the crowd to the Booster Booth to get popcorn, we run into Meemaw and Grandpa, and Lucy smiles and introduces herself and looks them in the eyes and shakes their hands, and I know Meemaw will describe her later as “that lovely Spanish girl who was so darn charming.”

  I spy my mom way down at the front of the bleachers, behind the team bench, watching the game but not clapping or shouting or anything. She doesn’t see me. I purposely ignore looking too carefully at the mass of men and boys on the East Rockport sideline. I don’t want to spot John.

  The Pirates win, so we don’t have to kill ourselves, and even though I’ve had a lot of fun with Lucy, once Claudia and I drop her off and she waves and thanks us for inviting her, like, five times as she gets out of the car, I’m grateful it’s just me and my best friend since forever.

  “Wanna spend the night?” I ask Claudia. I’m not crazy about going home to an empty house, the emptiness forcing me to imagine my mom and Republican John at the Cozy Corner.

  “Sure, why not,” Claudia answers, and the fact that she doesn’t have anything with her doesn’t matter, because we spend the night at each other’s houses so often that we keep toothbrushes and extra sets of pajamas there.

  Later, after we’ve changed and spent some time catching up with stuff on our phones and eating pretzels dipped in peanut butter and talking about how John is all wrong for my mom, we collapse into my double bed. The glow-in-the-dark star stickers light up for a little while before the room slips into darkness.

  “I like Lucy,” I say, staring at the fading stars.

  “Yeah,” Claudia agrees, yawning. “She’s cool.”

  “I think that game was, like, culture shock.”

  Claudia rolls toward me. “Yeah, she hasn’t been indoctrinated since birth.” We both laugh.

  In the dark I can’t see if the hearts and stars on my hands have faded. It seems like so long ago that I tried to wash them off in the bathroom sink at school. “You know,” I say, “I think it’s kind of cool that she calls herself a feminist.”

  Claudia doesn’t answer right away. For a second I think she’s already fallen asleep.

  “Yeah, I guess,” she says, and I can tell she’s being really careful about what words she uses.

  “You mean you’re not sure it’s cool?” I ask, choosing my words carefully, too.

  “I mean, I just think you don’t have to label it,” Claudia says. “Like the word feminist is a really scary, weird word to people. It makes people think you hate men. I’d rather just say I’m for, you know, equality.”

  “But isn’t that what feminism is?” I say. “Equality? I don’t think it means you can’t want to go out with guys. I mean, I’m not trying to be difficult or whatever.” The truth is, I hate disagreements. Especially with Claudia. Which is why we’ve literally never had a single fight in all our years of being friends.

  “No, no, I get it,” Claudia says, and I know she wants this conversation to end. “I mean, I think you can call it humanism or equalism or peopleism or whatever.” She yawns again, louder this time. “I just think girls and guys should be treated the same.”

  “Me, too,” I say.

  “So we agree,” Claudia says.

  “Of course,” I say, even though I don’t actually think we do.

  Claudia yawns one last time, and, after we wish each other good night, I hear the gentle, even breathing of my best friend, signaling to me that she’s drifted off. All of a sudden, my mind is wide awake even though I thought I was tired. It replays through the day, and I find myself thinking of the hearts and stars on Lucy’s hands. On Kiera’s hands. On Seth’s.

  Lying there, staring at the ceiling, listening to Claudia breathe, I realize I’m waiting. Waiting for what, I’m not sure. Maybe for the sound of my mother’s keys in the front door. Or maybe for something important to start for real.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As October stretches on, Lucy Hernandez starts eating lunch with Claudia, me, and our other friends. Sometimes when she gets to the lunch table first, she pats the empty chair next to her and says, “Viv, sit here!” Once I catch Claudia rolling her eyes at this, but she does it so slightly I think I’m the only one who notices. With her sincere, bubbly personality, Lucy fits in pretty easily. And I make sure I sit next to Claudia as often as I sit next to Lucy.

  Just as Lucy has joined us at lunch, it seems like Republican John is joining my mom’s life, whether I like it or not. One evening, a few weeks after my mom goes to the Pirates game with him, they have dinner plans, and my mom gives me a heads up that he’s coming over to meet me officially. (“He’s nice, Vivvy, and I think you’ll really like him!”) My mom’s in her room getting ready when he rings the doorbell, so I have to let him in. He’s dressed in some dumb button-down shirt and khakis. At least his scruffy, red beard is trimmed for the occasion.

  “Hey, Viv,” he says, smiling way too big.

  “Hey,” I answer back. I smile, too, to be polite. Then I lead him into the kitchen as my mom hollers, “Just a sec!” from down the hallway. Standing there, John examines the refrigerator and the dishwasher like they’re the most interesting appliances he’s ever seen. I lean against the kitchen counter, my face neutral. Maybe the polite thing would be to offer him a glass of water. But I’ve already smiled at him, so I figure I’m okay.

  “So how’s school treating you, Viv?” John asks, finally cracking the awkward silence.

  “Oh,” I say, pushing out another smile, “you know. The usual.”

  “Yeah,” he says, crossing his arms and immediately uncrossing them. “I’ll bet.” What can John know about my school anyway? He grew up in Clayton, not East Rockport, but if he’s the kind of doctor who wants to work with the football team, I’m willing to bet his high school experience was nothing like mine. He was probably president of the Young Conservatives and sat at the jock table.

  Just then my mom walks out wearing this gorgeous green dress and strappy sandals. This is no casual dinner.

  “Hey!” she says, her eyes bright. John grins back at her, and I wish I could disappear.

  “Hey!” he says. Then he slips a paperback out of the pocket of his pants. “Before I forget, I have that Faulkner novel I was telling you about. I mean, if you were serious about wanting to borrow it.” I guess he’s trying to wow her with his intellectual prowess, but my mom just thanks him in that high, tinkly voice and says, “We’ll see if this is the one that gets me to change my mind about his work.”

  “I promise, you’ll love it,” John says. Gag. Why is he trying to get my mom to like an author she told him she didn’t like?

  After some goodbyes and a quick kiss on the cheek from my mom, I shut the door after them and head back to the den to curl up on the couch. With the house empty, it almost feels like my mom is at work. Almost. But she’s not, and so I feel lonelier than I would if she were busy taking temperatures and checking blood pressures. I watch television but whenever a kissing scene comes on, I change the channel. Finally I give up and go to bed. Later that night when I hear my mom coming back in the house alone, I make sure the lights are off and I’m buried deep under my bedspread even though I’m still awake.

  The date with John is still on my mind Monday morning as I make my way into school. The hearts and stars from the first issue of Moxie are long gone from the hands of the few girls who drew them. It was cool that the drawings gave me and Lucy a chance to meet and Kiera and me a moment to talk for the first time in years,
but nothing has really changed at East Rockport. Mitchell and his buddies are still gross and the football team still rules all (even though their record is only 3–2). Yesterday while my mom was at work I spent the afternoon digging through her MY MISSPENT YOUTH box, but this time, even when I held the zines and flyers in my hands, they felt like something I couldn’t touch.

  They are artifacts from a different time and I’m a girl today, right now, in East Rockport, Texas, and I’d better just accept it.

  As I walk toward the main building shrouded in my sour mood, I hear a “hey” very clearly directed at me. A guy “hey,” not a girl “hey.” I look up to see where it came from.

  He’s standing in the doorway of the school like some modern sort of James Dean, a phone in his hand instead of a cigarette.

  Hearts-and-Stars New Boy Seth Acosta.

  “Oh!” I say, jumping a bit. “Hey.” All the other students milling around East Rockport High’s front walkway disappear into the ether. I don’t hear them or see them.

  Seth’s eyebrows dart up and hold there for a minute. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Oh, you didn’t scare me. Just rendered me mute. Give me like five years, and it should wear off.

  “I’m fine,” I manage.

  “That’s good.”

  SILENCE. Awkward silence. Please, God, don’t let me be getting those freaky hives on my chest and neck like I sometimes do when I’m nervous. I glance down to check.

  My chest looks like a strawberry farm had a bumper crop.

  Dang it.

  “We’re in the same English class, right?” Seth asks. He shifts his weight a little. He doesn’t seem to notice the hives. Probably he’s just too cool to say anything.

  “Yeah, I think we are,” I say, faking uncertainty.

  “Do you remember what the homework was for last night?” he asks. He bends over and fumbles through a few binders and notebooks, finally pulling out a slim green assignment book. His actions are so weirdly pedestrian and normal that I find myself relaxing a little bit.

  “Uh, he assigned the grammar exercises on page 250 and 251, the stuff on adjective clauses,” I say from memory before I have a chance to worry if my ability to memorize homework makes me look like a total weirdo.

  “Yeah, that’s what I had written down,” Seth says, shutting his assignment book and sliding it into his backpack. That’s when I notice a Runaways sticker on the corner of one of his binders, sticking out of his backpack like it’s waving hi.

  “You like the Runaways?” I ask. “They’re so cool.”

  Seth’s eyebrows pop up again, then he looks down and notices the sticker.

  “Oh, yeah. That. My mom put that on there. They’re okay, I guess.”

  “So your mom likes them?” I try. I can feel the strawberry field in full bloom. It’s probably super impressive to Seth that I like the same music as his mom.

  “Yeah,” Seth says, and he cracks half a smile. “She used to play them for me when I was a kid. Like, constantly.”

  Standing there listening to Seth, it’s almost as if I can visualize myself in the future relating this conversation to Claudia, reviewing point-by-point the brilliant ways I kept conversation going.

  For instance: 1) My mom is also into the Runaways, and she would also play them for me as a kid or 2) Why did you move here? or 3) So what do you listen to other than your mom’s old music? or 4) Hey, do you want to make out?

  Okay, maybe not the last one. But any of the others would have worked.

  Instead, this is what I say:

  “That’s cool. Well, see you later.”

  That’s.

  Cool.

  Well.

  See.

  You.

  Later.

  And I walk away. I just stroll off, like I can’t be fucking bothered. I can’t decide if I’m the biggest idiot ever or if my anxiety levels are so high they decided to do me a favor and just end the conversation before I turned into one giant pink hive.

  Either way, my neck and chest and even my cheeks are still burning as I walk into school. It’s been this way for me with guys ever since I was the tall girl in middle school and never got asked to dance by boys at the sock hops, so I’d hide in the bathroom during the slow songs, practicing my excited face in a stall so I wouldn’t look jealous or fake when Claudia told me about dancing with Scott Schnabel.

  Heading down the main hallway, I spot Claudia by her locker, and she tucks in next to me as we make our way to first period American history.

  “Listen, you will never believe the shirt I just saw Jason Garza wearing,” she says. I’m grateful she doesn’t seem to notice how worked up I am so I don’t have to explain my stupid social faux pas with Seth.

  “Does he have on the one about what time a girl’s legs open?” I offer, still a little jittery.

  “No,” Claudia says. “This one is worse. There’s a big red arrow on it pointing to his junk, and it says Free Breathalyzer Test Blow Here.”

  I scowl. “God, really?”

  “Yes,” Claudia says.

  “Gross.”

  “Yup.”

  We slide into American history and take our seats at the back. As the bell rings Mrs. Robbins announces a pop quiz on our reading from last night, and all of us collectively groan, like we’re actors in a bad sitcom about high school.

  “If you read the chapters, you have no reason to be worried,” Mrs. Robbins says, playing her part perfectly.

  As she starts handing out the papers, there’s a knock on the door, but the knocker doesn’t wait for Mrs. Robbins. The door pops open, revealing Mr. Shelly, one of Mr. Wilson’s assistant principals. Whereas Mr. Wilson actually wields legitimate—if ridiculous—power over the high school, Mr. Shelly is just some second-in-command worker ant. But he walks around with a pathetic amount of swagger like he gets off on ruling a bunch of captive adolescents. Probably because he does.

  “Doing a dress code check, Mrs. Robbins,” Mr. Shelly barks, letting his eyes skate over us. Mrs. Robbins sighs and waits, then jumps a bit just like the rest of us when he says, “Lady in the back. Is that you, Jana Sykes? Stand up, dear.” He’s got a piggish little face and beady eyes, and it’s hard to imagine him ever looking any different. Like his mother gave birth to a fiftysomething assistant principal with a hair loss problem and rosacea.

  Of course we all turn and look, and Jana Sykes stands up uncertainly, shrugging her shoulders. As it turns out, her shoulders are the problem.

  “Jana, those straps on your shirt are pretty thin, aren’t they?”

  It’s super likely that Jana is so high right now she doesn’t know what she’s wearing. She peers down and blinks hard once, then twice, at her black top pulled lazily over her boy jeans hanging low on her thin hips.

  “Um, they’re … straps?” Jana says. There’s the tiniest ripple of giggling. I’m wondering when Mr. Shelly is going to clue in that the bong rips Jana did in her pickup before school are a larger concern than her outfit, but he doesn’t.

  “Jana, come with me. We need to get you changed.”

  “They’re about to take a quiz,” Mrs. Robbins says.

  “I’ll have her back in a jif,” Mr. Shelly insists, and soon Jana is making her way out of the classroom and Mrs. Robbins is handing out the quiz, which she clearly printed off the Internet, and probably this morning, too. At least it’s easy. But Jana never does come back.

  All throughout our morning classes, girls get pulled out by administrators. Sometimes it’s Mr. Shelly who does it and sometimes it’s other assistant principals and counselors. In my second period math class, Jasmine Stewart and Kelly Chen get pulled out for their pants being too tight even though they don’t seem extra tight to me. In fourth period chem, Carly Sanders gets told her shirt is inappropriate. It’s just a T-shirt with a scoop neck, but maybe the fact that Carly’s boobs aren’t the smallest in the school have something to do with it.

  I glance down at my boring jeans and pla
in gray T-shirt. Each time a girl has been called out by an administrator, she’s been forced to stand up like some doll on display as the administrator scans her carefully. When Kelly Chen had to stand in math class, her cheeks pinked up so quickly that I felt myself blushing out of sympathy. I’d rather die than have the whole class’s eyes on me analyzing my clothes and body.

  When I walk into English, I see two girls in the back row practically drowning in oversized East Rockport High School gym gear. The bright-orange-and-white shirts drape almost to their knees, and one of them tugs at the collar like it itches. That must be the clothes that girls who break the rules have to change into.

  “What the hell is going on?” Lucy asks as I slide into the seat behind her.

  “With what?”

  “With the Hester Prynnes over there,” she says, nodding her chin toward the back row. “You know, those weird dress code checks.”

  “Who knows,” I answer. “The administration gets all excited about the dress code every once in a while.”

  “It seems totally arbitrary,” Lucy says, but I don’t get to answer her because the bell rings, and Seth Acosta walks in. I watch as he makes his way to his seat, wondering if he’ll acknowledge our conversation this morning, but he doesn’t. Mitchell Wilson and his crew crowd through the door a few minutes late, but of course Mr. Davies doesn’t say anything to them.

  Then a soft, sweet voice rings out from the doorway.

  “Mr. Davies, sorry to interrupt, but I got a schedule change into this class?”

  The boys in the back hoot a little as Emma Johnson saunters over to Mr. Davies and hands him a pink slip of paper. She slides into her seat like a bird to its nest, delicate and lovely, each movement perfectly coordinated. She ignores the hoots of Mitchell and his friends until the last possible second, when she flips her honey-colored hair over her shoulder and gives them one of those looks Emma Johnson has been giving to boys since we were in the fifth grade. A look that seems irritated and inviting at the same time. I’ve always wondered how she pulls it off.