Who's That Girl

by Blair Thornburgh

  “Thanks.”

  And then Sebastian Delacroix reached out and touched my face.

  Everything in my inexperienced body freaked out. All at once, my hands started to tremble, my feet felt stickier than ever before, and my mind blazed with a giant neon sign that said “This Is It” and also “Why Did You Wear the Duckling-Print Underpants.”

  But then he let go. No kiss, nothing. Just ten seconds of his fingers on the space between my chin and my ear. Six silent blocks later, I was dropped off without so much as a wave.

  And that was the last I’d heard of Sebastian Delacroix. Or so I thought.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Where are the spoons?”

  Mornings in the McCullough-Schwartz household had never been an organized affair, but the following Friday was especially bad. Sam Huang was standing, confused, at the kitchen cabinet, with a bowl of cereal in one hand. Mom, who was pouring a mug of coffee, leaned back and frowned.

  “They’re not in the silverware drawer?”

  Sam Huang shook his head.

  “Nattie?” Mom said. “Why don’t we have any spoons?”

  “I don’t know,” I said without looking up, because I didn’t, and I was also preoccupied with doing my Latin homework, which I definitely hadn’t left for the last minute. For the beginning of the fall semester, Dr. Frobisher had started us off reading Catullus, a Roman poet who wrote a lot of really sexy stuff, a lot of really angry stuff, and a lot of really sexy, really angry stuff, to this woman named Lesbia—well, nicknamed, anyway, because we don’t know who she really was. Catullus just thought she was as smart as the lady poets of Lesbos, like Sappho, so he called her that. I usually just looked up some words and winged it in class, but now Dr. Frobisher was making us do these worksheets about theme and poetic devices to prove that we actually understood the mechanics of the poetry and weren’t just copying English translations from the internet.

  I turned to my worksheet and wrote Natalie McCullough-Schwartz across the top—or tried to, anyway. The pen died by the second u.

  “Shoot.” Mom was stooped over by the dishwasher. “Someone forgot to run it last night.”

  “It wasn’t me,” said Sam Huang.

  “It wasn’t me, either. My day’s Tuesday.” I scribbled a few million times in my notebook to no avail. “Where are all the pens?”

  “Probably with the spoons,” Mom said. She dumped two packets of fake sugar and a glug of half-and-half into the mug. “Nattie, eat something. Your father’s going to be down any minute. Sam, just use a—oh, okay.”

  Sam Huang had started to eat his cereal with a ladle.

  “Normal people,” I said, “keep pens in the house.”

  “Okay!” Dad strode in, briefcase in hand and tie hanging around his neck. “I’m here. What time have we got?” He kissed Mom on the cheek and she started doing his tie.

  “It’s—oh.” She dropped his tie and frowned. “I have no idea. Why isn’t that right?”

  The radio next to the coffeemaker was blinking out 3:43, the inaccurate result of all of us forgetting to reset the clock a few power outages ago.

  “Well, we’ve got to leave soon. Probably.” Dad rummaged around for a travel mug as Mom jabbed at the front of the radio, presumably attempting to reset the clock but only succeeding in turning up the volume.

  “Excuse me!” I yelled from my notebook. “Some of us are doing homework.”

  “Nattie? Doing homework the morning it’s due?” Dad acted shocked.

  “Sounds like your daughter, all right,” Mom murmured. “Do you want me to make you some oatmeal, Nattie?”

  “Yes, please.” I ignored both of them and focused on my Catullus, where I had made some almost useless notes. Across the counter, the microwave chimed in tune with the song on the radio. The music was kind of catchy, I guessed, the kind of upbeat song that didn’t risk its indie cred by getting too exuberant, with lots of flourishing guitar riffs and synthesizer sounds. Not terrible. I looked around for something to stir my oatmeal with as the lady DJ with the sultry voice came back on.

  “—that’s a new group from Brooklyn called the Young Lungs. Pretty catchy stuff—”

  I froze, and then immediately unfroze, because the oatmeal bowl in my hand was very hot.

  “Shoot!” I dropped the bowl on the counter. The DJ was still talking.

  “And if you’re up for being on the cutting edge, they’re playing tonight, an all-ages show in downtown Philadelphia at Ruby’s, so—”

  “Are you okay, Nattie?” Sam Huang peered over at me from across the counter.

  “I’m fine,” I said, rubbing my hand. “Just, um, surprised.”

  The radio had switched to something piano-y and soft. I drummed my pen against the notebook. Sebastian wasn’t just in Philadelphia for fun—he was here to play a show. With his band. That actually existed. Either it would be awesome and cool and kind of sexy, or it would be the Talent Show Incident all over again. Either way, I was solidly intrigued.

  “Can I go to a concert tonight?” The words flew out of my mouth without even having taken full shape in my brain.

  Dad frowned. “A concert?”

  “Yeah.” I shut my notebook, Latin homework having been officially abandoned. “It’s this one band, and, um, Tess says that they rock, so we were thinking we might go. . . .”

  Dad and Mom exchanged a look.

  “They rock?” Mom said. “Do you even like rock music? I thought all you listened to was my Joni Mitchell album.”

  “I like rock,” I said, thinking back to the thirty seconds of rhythmic guitar I’d just heard on WPHL. “It’s great. And I promise to be safe and responsible and everything. I just want to go listen to music.”

  Mom lifted an eyebrow. “Where is this concert?”

  “Ruby’s,” I said. “It’s in Center City.” Somewhere.

  “Oh yeah,” Dad said. “I went there to see a Steely Dan tribute act a while back. Called themselves Deely Stan.”

  “Is it an acceptable place for our daughter?”

  “Stan.” Dad chuckled. “What? Oh, sure. She’ll be fine. Hey, maybe Sam can go with her, too.”

  Sam Huang shook his head. “Can’t. A Cappella.”

  A Cappella at Owen Wister Prep was like the football team, in that it was competitive, obsessed with its own importance as the wellspring of school spirit, and involved matching outfits. The fact that Sam had made the cut at the end of last year despite being only a sophomore was kind of a big deal and a responsibility he took very seriously, which came down to attending thrice-weekly top secret evening rehearsals and hanging out with only A Cappella kids at school.

  Mom didn’t look convinced. “Well, I don’t want her going alone. You say Tess is going, Nattie?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I mean, yes.” I made a mental note to ask or bribe or threaten Tess into coming with me. Mom looked at Dad.

  “I feel like we should have rules in place,” she said. “For concerts and that sort of thing.”

  “Like a curfew?” Dad asked.

  “No drinking,” Mom said. “Do not drink any alcohol.”

  “That’s a good one,” Dad said. “No getting anyone pregnant.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Dad.”

  “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” Dad was on a roll now. “Stay away from the brown acid.”

  “Robert.” Mom sighed. “Nattie. We just want to be sure you’re going to use good judgment—which includes keeping your phone on, by the way. We gave you that phone as a privilege, but if something happens and we need to get ahold of you—”

  I was only half listening, partially because I’d heard Mom’s speech about Phone Responsibility and the Privilege of the Family Plan about once per billing cycle, and partially because Dad was looking at me funny, like he was going to sneeze, or cry.

  “Wow,” he said. “Our little girl’s all grown up.”

  “Dad,” I said. “I’m just going to a concert, not getting married.”

&n
bsp; “I know,” Dad said with a sniff. “But still. I feel like I blink and suddenly you’re a whole new Natalie.”

  “Is he crying?” Sam Huang asked, peering over with his backpack on.

  “So . . . does this mean I can go?” I said. Dad was too busy dabbing at his eyes to answer. Mom took a long, deep breath and handed me a fork.

  “Just eat your oatmeal, Nattie.”

  Sam Huang and I made it to school only a cool six minutes late for homeroom, not late enough to warrant a demerit but not early enough for me to find Tess before first period. If I was going to convince her to come to a last-minute rock concert with me, I’d have to do it after our normal OWPALGBTQIA meeting at lunch. Well, if OWPALGBTQIA meetings could ever be described as normal, anyway.

  “Humans! People! Everyone!”

  Tess was sitting on the edge of a desk in Alumni Building Room 104, alias Dr. Frobisher’s Latin classroom, alias base camp for OWPALGBTQIA meetings, which we had picked only because it was so far away from the rest of campus that none of the bigger, more populous clubs would ever challenge us for it. Since the fall, when we’d basically started from scratch after all the seniors left last year, the club consisted of mostly underclassmen, who were sporting a variety of creative haircuts and colors, picking at food brought in from the cafeteria, and not paying attention.

  Tess, understandably, was not happy being ignored. She rapped her knuckles on the edge of her desk, to little effect, and then jumped off onto the floor and put her hands on her hips, which, combined with her serious-business combo of vest, studded jeans, and red lipstick, made her look downright intimidating.

  “Hello?” It barely cut through the murmur. To my right, Tall Zach had stretched out his long legs and was languidly unwrapping a Fruit by the Foot. Behind him, crouched against the wall with his laptop on his knees and his headphones plugged in, was the tiny kid I recognized from Moonpenny’s. Zach the Anarchist was probably somewhere toward the back of the room, eating a hummus sandwich or something. Personally, I was just trying not to get pizza drippings on the budget stuff that I had somehow ended up in charge of.

  In front of us, our fearless leader’s eyes were narrowing, and I was just beginning to steel myself for some kind of bigger explosion when one came.

  “Hey, shut up!”

  I jolted in my seat, and everyone obeyed. The command wasn’t from Tess, but from across the room, where, of all people, Zach the Anarchist had jumped to attention. Tess beamed, and I watched as Zach sat back down with a look of mild surprise on his face, like he couldn’t believe he had yelled at everyone either.

  “Thank you,” Tess said. “Now. We have actual business to discuss today. Treasurer, if you would.”

  No one moved.

  “Nattie!”

  I froze in my seat, a bite of pepperoni halfway to my mouth. “Sorry. If I would what?”

  “The budget stuff,” Tess said. “The only actual responsibility you have as an officer of this club?”

  “Oh. Right.” I got up, shuffling the pages of the spreadsheet I’d printed out last night. “So, after a thorough analysis of our finances, it looks like the OWPALGBTQIA is not, at this point in time, fully solvent.”

  “We’re broke,” Tess said flatly.

  “We are, pretty much, broke,” I agreed. It was true: even though our main expense for the last school year had been tie-dyeing supplies for the end of pride week in the spring, we hadn’t exactly made any money since then.

  “Right now, our assets stand at”—I looked down at my printouts—“about thirty dollars and a box of extra-extra-small white T-shirts.”

  “This is a problem,” Tess said.

  “Yeah,” Tall Zach said. “Those things would only fit a baby.”

  Tess rolled her eyes. A girl with pink bangs raised her hand.

  “Yes?” Tess said. “You don’t have to raise your hand, uh—”

  “Chihiro,” the girl said. “And, um, why does it matter if we don’t have money? What do we need the money for?”

  “Well,” Tess said, “for one thing, we have to maintain a balance of at least two hundred dollars to stay officially registered as an extracurricular student organization. Right, treasurer?”

  “Uh, right.” This was about all I knew about our club’s money: we had to have some, or else no more club. I tried to look officially nonplussed.

  Tess nodded her approval. “And also, according to the Wister Prep bylaws, or whatever, all registered student organizations must maintain a membership of at least fifteen students, or else we are considered ineligible for meeting space and they can give our room away.”

  The room went silent as we all mentally tallied heads and realized that there were only eleven of us.

  “Without a meeting place, we’re nothing!” Tess cried. “Trust me, there are groups that would love to have this room. The knitting club is breathing down our neck to get at this space.”

  “Boo, knitting club,” Tall Zach said, and hissed supportively. Everyone else glanced around at the peeling posters of the Acropolis and the scarred actual-chalk-and-wood chalkboard in a way that suggested they wouldn’t be too broken up if they never had to come back to Alumni Building Room 104 again.

  “This is serious!” Tess thumped the desk. “People, we have a problem. And that problem is that nobody knows who we are.”

  There were murmurs of assent. Or murmurs, anyway.

  “Look at this!” Tess held up a copy of last year’s yearbook, Wister Remembers, which everyone but the yearbook kids called Wister Wemembers, for obvious reasons. “This is the recognition A Cappella group got in last year’s yearbook.”

  She opened it up to a two-page spread crammed with clip-art music notes and color photos of A Cappella kids frozen midbounce, belting out some ba- and da-inflected song, the guys in matching ties and the girls in matching headbands.

  “Hero worship!” Tess cried. “And for what? They’re the most exclusive, insular, and elitist club in school!”

  More murmuring, a little more animated this time. Tess did have a point: being in A Cappella had given Sam Huang more popularity and name recognition in a year and two months at Wister Prep than I had gotten in my entire life (well, my entire life from kindergarten onward). His tenor-section status meant that random people in the hall were more likely to think of me as “Sam Huang’s host sister” than the other way around. Not that I really minded, of course—anonymity was fine by me.

  But it was not, apparently, fine with Tess, who was now flipping to a spot farther on in her Wister Wemembers.

  “And this”—she held it open a second time—“is what we got.”

  Over a caption that said Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual alliance (on two lines, because it was kind of a long caption), there was a giant gray box that said “Photo to Come.” That was it.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” said Tall Zach. “Wister Wemembers gets tons of stuff wrong.”

  “Yeah,” Zach the Anarchist agreed. “Remember how last year every sports team had captians instead of captains?”

  “No,” I said. “But they did call me Natasha on our class page.”

  Across the room, Zach the Anarchist laughed.

  “Anyway.” Tess closed the Wister Wemembers with a snap. “A public profile is important. We graduated half our membership last year and we’re in danger of nonexistence. We can’t get money without people, and we can’t get people without some awareness. So. Let’s brainstorm. What can we do to get people to know who we are? How can we get public attention? How can we swell our ranks?”

  Silence.

  “Don’t everyone speak at once.” Tess rolled her eyes. “Think, people! I know that traditionally we’ve done our one event—”

  “What event?” A girl with an elaborate nose ring whispered not very quietly in the equally decorated ear of the guy next to her.

  He shrugged sleepily. “Uh, pride week?”

  “We have a pride week?” nose-rin
g girl asked.

  “You can’t change pride week!” cried Chihiro of the pink bangs.

  “No one is changing pride week!” Tess said.

  “Good,” said Chihiro.

  “I think pride week should go on for longer,” said nose-ring girl. “Like for maybe ten days, or something, so that people actually know it exists.”

  “Then it wouldn’t be a week, Alison,” sleepy guy explained. “They’d have to change the name.” Alison looked pissed. Zach the Anarchist snorted into his cup of tea and tried to regain a straight face by looking in my direction, but that almost made me crack up, which made Tess sigh.

  “Guys, listen. Pride week remains as is, for now. It’s not until May, anyway. I’m talking about something new. I want us, the beautiful humans of the OWPALGBTQIA, to stage a revolution.”

  “I can play all of Ultramix 4 on heavy mode,” came a voice from the corner by Tall Zach.

  “What?”

  It took a few seconds for the laptop kid to realize that he and Tess were not talking about the same thing, since he’d spent most of his time clicking around and making weird sounds on his keyboard.

  “Dance Dance Revolution?” he said. “Video games. Never mind.”

  Tall Zach sat up in his seat. “Oh, sorry, I’m the worst at introductions. Everyone, this is Endsignal. He’s a freshman, and his real name is Eric Something, but Endsignal’s his handle for the internet and stuff and that’s what he says everyone calls him.”

  “Hi. Um, hi.” Endsignal pushed his glasses up and looked with trepidation at the collected OWPALGBTQIAers. “Yup. Hi.”

  Zach the Anarchist and I waved. Tess looked torn between the duty of welcoming a new member and her desperate need to retain order in the meeting, but she managed to smile.

  “Excuse me?” Alison waved her hand. “Why are we doing this again?”

  “Because it’s important,” Tess said. “We need to make our voices heard.”

  “Isn’t that what pride week is for?” Alison said.

  “You didn’t even know what pride week was until a minute ago,” said Chihiro.