Snark and Stage Fright (Snark and Circumstance Book 5)

by Wardrop, Stephanie

  “I still think you should call the cops, but I understand why you don’t want to.” I couldn’t make Cassie take a stand for all womankind, and I shouldn’t blame her for not wanting to. “But maybe think about it?”

  She nodded and blew her nose.

  “We’re going to make this stop,” I promised, and she went back into the bathroom.

  I went right to the laptop I’d shared with Tori and typed so furiously I thought my fingers would break off and sent it to Dave before even proofreading it, let alone revising it. It was the eight-page equivalent of my screaming on paper, and I got an email back the next morning. Dave said he would later send some suggestions for tightening it and making it less threatening to any particular individuals so that “no one would sue our asses.” He advised me not to tell Gary about it until he did because Gary was likely to get all of his brothers together and randomly terrorize anyone connected with Longbourne football. While that seemed like a fine idea to me, I didn’t want to get Gary in trouble.

  I spent the day exchanging emails with Dave until I got the article down to a one-page scathing but non-libelous indictment of appalling alleged behavior. When I went to bed that night, I was still so angry I probably looked like a cartoon character with smoke coming out of my ears, and instead of practicing landscapes that night (I’d moved on from portraiture), I drew some really killer cartoons of cavemen in football jerseys, swinging clubs and dragging girls by their ponytails.

  But I guess there was one small benefit from hearing Cassie’s story.

  I didn’t think too much about the fact that Michael never called.

  13 The Trouble with Superheroes

  At lunch the next day, Dave and I told everyone about my article and Cassie’s revelation without mentioning her by name. Diana listened, stunned, her hand to her mouth, and I could see Michael’s jaw grow so tight as I spoke that I thought it would snap off.

  As expected, Gary went into berserker mode, pounding the table once with a fist. “I can’t even fucking believe those guys,” he roared, butting his head toward the table of football players as if he’d happily knock them all down with his skull like a bull in Pamplona, until Dave put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

  Michael finally put down the fork that had never quite made it to his mouth and asked me, “You’re absolutely sure about this, about what these guys did?”

  “Do you think I would make something like this up? Why?” I exploded. “Why would I libel a bunch of Visigoths for kicks?”

  “Don’t get angry. We just need to be really sure before we take any action.”

  “Yes, I am ‘really sure.’” I thought for a second, then added, “I cannot reveal my anonymous main source, but I can assure you she wasn’t just acting distressed. She’s a terrible actress. When she played a turkey in a fourth-grade Thanksgiving play, she was indistinguishable from the ones made out of cardboard.” I could see in Michael’s eyes that he had figured out that Cassie had told me about this, so I hurried to add, “And her story has been corroborated by others.”

  “Then we have to do something about this,” Michael agreed, glowering over at the table of (alleged) sex offenders who were guffawing over something. Somebody had probably given a freshman a swirly in the boys’ room earlier and they were now reliving the magic moment.

  “Yeah, Michael,” I said. “‘Doing something about this’ was the whole idea behind the article.”

  Diana said quietly, looking down at her tray, “This makes me miss my old school. A girls’ school.” But Michael seemed focused on me for the moment.

  “What do you have planned?” he asked me.

  “The article, which comes out Wednesday, if we rush it, which isn’t ideal,” I admitted.

  Michael nodded and poked a straw into his carton of juice. After a moment of contemplation, he told me, “I have an idea, okay? I just need to talk to some people.”

  There was something so authoritative in his tone, something that said, “Calm yourself down, little lady, and let the menfolk handle it,” that made me erupt.

  “Why do you think that I need you to handle it?”

  Diana gasped a little and Shondra, who was just about to sit down with us, took an involuntary step backwards and said, “Whoa.”

  Michael’s eyes got hard and black as obsidian; he smirked and leaned back in his chair.

  “Okay, Georgia, what else do you have planned besides the article that you still need to revise? Ritual castrations around a Wiccan bonfire tonight? Maybe you can make it part of Friday’s halftime show.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.” Gary laughed. “I’m in. I’m sick of fucks like those guys making all guys look like Neanderthals. Maybe we can tie them to posts and let some other team use them as tackle dummies.”

  Dave looked at me over his black horn-rimmed glasses and said, “Georgia’s article needs a little work, but it’s a much less violent plan. But … ” He paused here and looked at me a little sheepishly. “Michael has a point. There’s only so much even the best article in a newspaper can do.”

  “I think we need a plan of action,” Michael said, twiddling his spork between his fingers.

  “Right,” I snapped. “I’m all talk and no action, right? Just a tease.”

  “You said it, not me,” Michael sniped, looking at me, mouth open slightly, as he tried to calculate whether I had made an oblique reference to the cause of our breakup or not. I couldn’t believe I had done it myself, so we stared at each other as everyone else stared at us. Gary shook his head in confusion, Diana squirmed a little, and Shondra began folding her paper napkin into a tiny square.

  “I don’t know what the last thirty seconds of this conversation has been about,” Dave said after a while, “but a plan of action is a good idea.”

  “Well, once Georgia’s article comes out, the offenders will be called out and shamed, right?” Shondra reasoned. “Like last year, when Michael called out everyone for bullying Cassie.”

  “Or the offenders will just deny it. And then we look like bullies—or just ridiculously wrong,” Dave sighed. The bell rang for the next period and we all started gathering up our things as Dave said to Michael, “I’d be interested to see what you come up with.” Michael nodded as they both headed for the trashcans, taking my feminist revolution with them.

  Gary put an arm around me as we walked to the door with Diana and Shondra behind us.

  “It’s okay, George,” he said. “You and I bring the fire—and they keep us from committing arson. It’s a good system.”

  I nodded, but I hated to think that I needed anyone—especially Michael—to be my human fire extinguisher.

  Even worse to consider was how I’d obviously misread his puppy eyes and promise to call me after the Pigs show as a desire for reconciliation. Obviously he had not forgiven me for that last night on the Cape. Determined to prove Michael wrong in his assumption that I couldn’t raise the consciousness of my classmates on my own, I spent all the time I should have been doing homework rewriting and reworking my article. By the Wednesday morning it came out in The Alt, I was wishing that I could use it for my college application essay.

  But it was Michael’s article, an open letter titled “You Give Jocks a Bad Name,” printed next to mine, that got everyone’s attention. Even in my righteous anger at having a guy grab the wheel of the feminist juggernaut I had intended to pilot, I had to admit it was really good, though I’m not sure Michael intended the title to refer to a stupid Bon Jovi song from the 80s. Not everyone’s mother insists on singing along to classic rock on the car radio, after all. The letter called out members of the football team for their boorish and sexist behavior, said that the other male athletes at LHS were not going to stand for it, and intimated that if the football team pulled any sexist crap on the cheer squad again, they’d have to answer to the members of the cross country, lacrosse, tennis, and basketball teams that had signed the letter under Michael’s name. There were lots of names below his and all of the gu
ys who had signed the open letter were wearing armbands to school in solidarity with the oppressed cheerleaders.

  People loved it.

  Girls could speak of nothing but this feat of heroism and were touching the armbands and fawning a little over the guys as if the entire team of the Avengers had assembled in the halls of LHS just to protect them. After glaring at me in poli sci class, two guys on the football team said to each other that they wished they had signed the letter because they’d never been involved in the assaults and looked like sexist pigs anyway. I skipped lunch that day. I didn’t need to witness our classmates hoisting Michael onto their shoulders and declaring him Longbourne’s Savior of Women.

  He had even inspired others to heights of chivalry. At dinner, Cassie told me that Leo Haag was getting some guys from the basketball team to sign up to escort the cheerleaders on the bus rides to away games, a solution that Cassie thought would be a lot of fun.

  “I know he hurt you this summer and you’re still kind of mad at him,” she told me, “but I think what Michael did was awesome. Having bodyguards is going to rock!”

  I made myself swallow my bite of kale before I choked on it and pointed out, “You shouldn’t need bodyguards. You shouldn’t have to rely on one set of guys to protect you from another set of guys. Especially since Leo himself is not above hooking up at parties with very drunk girls—that’s just as creepy as what the guys did on the bus.”

  But Mom dismissed my righteous anger with a wave of her hand, saying, “Well, I think it was very brave and gentlemanly of Michael to do this,” then sighed, “I wish you two would work things out,” with a glance that told me for the hundredth time that she had no idea what happened between Michael and me and would never ask but she was pretty sure that it was my fault.

  “Leo is really cute,” Cassie retorted as if his physical gifts had been in question. Then she squealed to Mom, “Maybe he’ll pick me up and carry me onto the bus like the guy in that bodyguard movie you love.”

  “Oh my God, Kevin Costner,” Mom swooned, and they both floated away from the dinner table on dreams of chivalrous rescues.

  I threw down my napkin, saying, “I have a lot of homework,” and walked away from the table.

  A few minutes later Leigh followed me into the kitchen where I was loading the dishwasher—my turn—and sat at the little table in the breakfast nook, saying, “Are you really mad at Michael about the letter? He was only trying to help Cassie and the other girls. He did a good thing in writing it.”

  I spun around as if she were the cause of my fury.

  “Don’t you see that it’s awfully paternalistic of him to think guys have to solve girls’ problems? Can’t women solve problems for themselves?”

  Leigh considered this, chin in hand, then said, “Well, what do you think the cheerleaders should have done? I showed Alistair the article and he thinks Michael has a great idea.”

  “Yes! But then he’d approve of having the cheerleaders wear burkas, too, so their flesh doesn’t incite any hormonal boys to jump on them or stone them.”

  Leigh frowned and I felt bad for attacking her boyfriend when I was really mad at my own ex-boyfriend. But she didn’t back down. She got up and said, hand on hip, “The cheerleaders’ skirts are immodest. But I guess that’s tradition.”

  I slammed a pot into the bottom rack of the dishwasher and turned to her. “I am not going to argue in favor of those stupid, short, objectifying little skirts. Believe me. They’re a tradition of sexism in themselves.” I stopped, realizing that I was just ranting and not making my case at all. And Leigh was actually listening to me. So I said, “I just wish some boy hadn’t swooped in to the rescue, even if it was Michael, even if he did mean well. I wish the girls would rely on their brains and other resources to defend themselves. To command some respect without the help of a group of boys. Maybe they could all take Tae Kwon Do, or Krav Maga, or something. Learn to defend themselves. They shouldn’t need boys to come along and save them.”

  “Why don’t you write an article about that then? About how girls need to stick up for themselves?” Leigh suggested, and the idea was so simple and so right I stared at her in awe for a few seconds before tackle-hugging her and hurrying to my room to write it.

  It came out on Friday in a special issue of The Alt devoted to “The Bus Bully Sex Scandal.” This issue featured another long list of boys—this time from the marching band and the science club—announcing their willingness to chaperone the cheerleaders on the buses and I couldn’t help but think that these guys were motivated more by the chance to be seen as heroes and not hopeless band geeks and physics nerds by the cheerleaders, but when I mentioned this to Shondra in Spanish class, she just rolled her eyes. I couldn’t tell if she thought that they were being ridiculous or that I was.

  At the eighth period Alt meeting, Dave announced as the first order of business that Michael had even been invited to be interviewed on the local news.

  “Dude, you should so do it,” Gary said, clapping Michael on the back hard enough to make Michael wince.

  Dave nodded in agreement, saying, “I bet this is happening at other schools. You have a forum now to make some change that will matter.”

  “I don’t know … ” Michael said, and his face was flushed a bit.

  “So, like your childhood hero, Spiderman, you prefer to remain masked and anonymous?” I asked, sounding snippier than I intended. “You’d rather just swoop in and save the day and then fly back to your lair?”

  “Spiderman doesn’t have a lair, George,” Gary scoffed. “He lives with his aunt May in New York City.”

  Michael looked over at me, eyes darkened, but he didn’t say whatever he had intended because Gary and Dave would not let up on getting him to go on the news. Shondra joked about how stupid and sensational the graphics would be to announce the BUS WARS story and tried to get me to imagine the absurdly ominous music they would use in the ads for the exposé.

  “IF YOU THINK YOUR DAUGHTER’S SAFE ON THE BUS—THINK AGAIN! THE WHOLE STORY, TONIGHT AT 11!” Gary yelled in his best news promo voice, but I just sat in silence. I knew that all of this meant Michael’s solution to the harassment problem had actually been effective—so effective it had gained some interest outside the school, and might even become a model for other schools with the same problem. But as I sat there listening I felt all prickly inside like I had swallowed a cactus.

  When the bell finally rang and I could escape, I said my goodbyes and headed off to hang out with a bunch of younger kids who knew nothing about bus bullies or feminist heroes. But Michael caught my arm as I tried to walk out the door.

  “Do you have a problem with me?” he asked.

  I took a breath and replied, “Yeah. The problem is, Michael, you are not Spiderman. You can’t just swoop in and save the day and ignore everybody else.”

  He looked stunned for about two seconds, but then got his smirk back on. He shook his head as he readjusted the stack of books in his arms and said, “You know, George, I wouldn’t have to ‘swoop in’ if you could solve the problems yourself instead of creating bigger ones.”

  I felt hot tears behind my eyes but I was determined not to let him see them, so I bowed and announced, pretty loudly, “Well, on behalf of all of Gotham City, we thank you for your tireless service.”

  Gary stopped, put a hand on my shoulder, said, “Gotham City’s Batman, George,” and started laughing until he felt how tense my arm was and saw the fire in Michael’s eyes. He backed away, hands up, as Shondra and Dave appeared.

  “Let me get this straight,” Michael said. “You’re mad at me because I solved the problem. I solved the problem while you just got mad.”

  “I didn’t just get mad!” I yelled, right there in the hallway with half of the school swarming its way to the weekend. “I wrote an article for The Alt. And I don’t need you to solve my problems!”

  “It wasn’t your problem, it was a school problem.” He shook his head dismissively and that made m
e feel like I had lightning behind my eyeballs. “You’re angry because my article solved the problem and yours didn’t.”

  “No one would be aware of the problem if not for George,” Shondra said.

  “I didn’t even know you were writing one,” I sort of croaked as someone bumped past me and knocked my backpack with a lacrosse stick.

  Michael dropped his messenger bag to his feet and looked at me like he was just noticing that I had a mole or some birthmark he had managed to miss in all the times he had seen me.

  Dave stepped between us, saying, “George is right. I should have told you Michael was going to do the letter and that it would appear next to your article.”

  Shondra leaned her head on my shoulder for a second in support and said, “It is kind of ironic that you guys were in such a hurry to save a group of girls, you forgot about the girl who started the whole thing.”

  Gary nodded, gave me a brotherly punch on the arm, and said, “Can Dave and I walk you to the auditorium as an apology without being sexist assholes?”

  “Sure, and you guys are not sexist assholes,” I said, but I was looking at Michael, who was staring down at the bag at his feet.

  As we turned toward the auditorium hall, Dave asked Michael, “So what are you going to tell the newspeople when they call you?”

  “I should tell them to call George,” he said as he hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and disappeared around the corner to the athletics hallway.

  ***

  The next day at lunch, Dave and Gary were disappointed when Michael told them he had begged off of the interview, but I wasn’t surprised. Even if he had stolen the spotlight with his letter and campaign, Michael is the last person I know who would want someone sticking a microphone in his face, even if he had something smart to say.

  “Spiderman doesn’t do interviews,” he announced, looking at me over his sandwich. “I’m sorry, George. And those pink armbands were not my idea, for the record.”