Moxie

by Jennifer Mathieu

  I think he’s nervous.

  “So…,” he says. “Some walkout, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It was pretty crazy.”

  “Really crazy. But really cool, too.”

  I scoot a little closer to him. I nudge him gently with my shoulder. He manages to look at me.

  “Thanks for walking out with us,” I say.

  He nods slowly, slides his mouth into a soft grin, remembering.

  “You should have seen Mitchell after you followed Emma out and other girls got up to join you,” he says. “He looked like someone had just puked up rotten eggs right in the middle of his lap.”

  “I really wish I could have seen that,” I tell him. I inch the teeniest bit closer.

  “If I had to describe it, I would say it was the look of someone who’s always been told he’s untouchable finally fucking realizing that he isn’t,” says Seth. “It was pretty glorious. And after that I just got up and walked out.”

  I slide my hand toward Seth’s. I graze his knuckles with my fingertips.

  “Is this okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” says Seth.

  I snake my fingers through his. His palms are sweaty. I don’t care. Every follicle on my scalp perks up as our hands touch. My heart speeds up. I glance at him and smile, and he smiles back.

  “I’m sorry if I acted like a dumb ass,” Seth blurts out.

  I smile. “You’re not a dumb ass,” I say.

  “I shouldn’t have doubted what the flyer said. I should have tried to understand better what Moxie was all about.”

  “Well,” I say, “I shouldn’t have expected you to be perfect.”

  “Nobody is,” says Seth. “Especially not me. But I promise that from now on I’m going to try to listen better about the stuff I can’t totally understand because I’m a guy.”

  “See, there you go,” I whisper, our eyes meeting. “You say you’re not perfect, but that answer makes me think you’re pretty close.”

  We are millimeters apart now. I can smell his boyness. I can count the three freckles on his right cheek. I reach out with the hand that’s not holding his and touch them. Then I lean up and kiss them, too.

  “Your mom’s in the back bedroom,” Seth says, his voice husky, his dark eyes glancing over my head for a moment.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Okay what?” Seth says.

  “Okay then we’ll have to kiss very quietly,” I tell him.

  “Like super stealth quiet?” he asks, leaning into me. My cheeks warm up, and my body thuds with anticipation.

  “Like super intense, extra level stealth quiet,” I answer. Or rather, I try to answer. Because by the third or fourth word Seth is kissing me, and I’m kissing him, and all I can hope is that my mother stays in her bedroom for a while, because from the way Seth’s kisses make me feel, I don’t know how we’re ever going to stop.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The last day of school is always a half day, so the last class of my junior year of high school is English with Mr. Davies, who has announced this week to extremely little fanfare that this will be his final year at East Rockport High School. He’s told us that he’s retiring to spend more time fishing.

  I didn’t realize they allow fishing at Hunter’s Pub, which is where everyone in town knows Mr. Davies hangs out. But anyway.

  So due to his impending retirement, Mr. Davies is spending these last hours packing up a few boxes and letting us talk and count the minutes to summer break. Lucy, Seth, and I have pushed our desks into a loose circle.

  “God, how much longer?” Lucy announces as she doodles hearts and stars all over her hands with a blue ballpoint. “Hey, Viv,” she says, holding her hand up, “take you back?”

  I grin a little and so does Seth.

  “Yeah, it does,” I say. “I still remember how excited I was when I saw your hands that day.”

  “What about me?” asks Seth, wounded.

  “Oh, she flipped out about you doing it, trust me,” Lucy chimes in, and Seth cracks up and I roll my eyes.

  The intercom crackles to life and Mr. Henriquez’s voice comes through the speaker. We half listen as he reminds us about cleaning out our lockers and leaving the school in a timely and orderly manner at the final bell.

  “I want to close by thanking you once again for welcoming me to East Rockport High during these last few weeks of school, and I look forward to leading our school community in the fall,” he says. “Now go on and have a safe and productive summer!”

  Amid a few sarcastic whoops and forced applause from our classmates, Lucy asks whether we think he’s really coming back.

  “At the very least, Wilson won’t be back,” Seth says. “We know that much.”

  After all the news coverage and Moxie becoming an Internet sensation, not to mention Principal Wilson’s actual attempt to expel more than half the girls in the school, it didn’t take long for the school board to get involved. Two weeks later, the fair citizens of East Rockport discovered the principal of their fine high school had spent the past few years funneling funds into pet projects like the football program and away from things like updated chemistry lab materials and sports equipment for girls’ teams. Some deal was struck and the details were kept hush-hush, and all we knew was that by mid-May Principal Wilson and Mitchell Wilson were both long gone. Mitchell deserved to have charges to be pressed against him, but they were never investigated, which pissed us all off. Overnight, the Wilson house was emptied out and a FOR SALE sign sprouted up in the front yard. The morning my mom walked into my bedroom reading the news that Principal Wilson was being replaced, I jumped up off the bed with such excitement I actually fell off. I didn’t care. I just laughed.

  Of course, there had been the grumblings in school and around town about how the events probably ensured a losing football season this fall. But it was easy to ignore them with so many girls on Moxie’s side. And when Meemaw and Grandpa told me they were proud of me, I considered it an especially hard-won victory.

  Mr. Shelly quit, too, along with a few other administrators who’d been close to Principal Wilson. And then Mr. Henriquez, the principal of one of the middle schools, was brought in to finish the year. So far he seemed okay. No dress code checks at least.

  “Just five more minutes,” Lucy says, eyeing the clock. She caps her pen and shoves it in her backpack. “I have to go home right after school and finish boxing up my room.” Lucy’s mom and dad have finally found a place of their own, and Lucy is already planning a Moxie sleepover for the following weekend. She was sure to invite Kiera and Amaya, too, and Marisela and Jane and a few other girls. Lucy said she wanted to strategize for next year. Even if Mr. Henriquez turned out to be as okay as he seemed, she said, it was important to be prepared. “I mean, the patriarchy is more than one guy, right?” Lucy informed us at lunch. Claudia agreed and offered to bring lemon bars to the sleepover.

  As the classroom clock ticks down the final moments, I glance at Emma Johnson sitting in her desk reading a paperback novel. Since the walkout, in many ways she’s still been Emma Johnson. Still gorgeous. Still perfectly groomed and organized and high achieving. The MOXIE she wrote down her forearm in Sharpie eventually faded, and she kept quiet for the last few weeks of the year. But I noticed that not long after the walkout she wasn’t eating with the cheerleaders as often, sometimes choosing to sit on the outskirts of some other group. After the accusations against Mitchell were swept under the rug, she seemed to distance herself even more.

  When Emma saw me in the hallways or in class, she would look me in the eyes. Smile. We’d even said hi once when we ran into each other in the bathroom. But after that heady, explosive moment on the front steps of East Rockport High, we’d retreated to our own camps, not really talking to each other much again.

  Emma must sense me looking at her because she meets my eyes. I blush slightly, but Emma raises her hand a little in a brief hello and smiles. Something inside tugs at me.

  Then, with
only seconds left, a few students start a countdown. “10 … 9 … 8 … 7…” and soon the room is erupting in cheers.

  “Want to go eat somewhere?” Seth asks, getting up from his desk.

  “I think I want to go talk to Emma,” I say. “Okay?”

  “Yeah,” says Seth. “Let’s hang out tonight maybe?”

  “Definitely,” I say with a smile, and after giving me a quick kiss, Seth offers to drop Lucy off at her house. I scoot between the desks and hurry out the classroom door to catch up with Emma. When I call her name, she turns to look at me.

  “Hey, Vivian,” she says. Some guy pushes past her in the crowded hallway, jostling up against her shoulder. She frowns and presses herself against the wall.

  “Lately, I’m not sure if that’s on purpose or by accident,” Emma says. “There’s a certain faction that’s pretty pissed about what I did.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” I say. I ignore the part of me that finds it odd to be talking to a girl I once considered so elite that I imagined her locker to be lined in gold. “You okay?”

  Emma’s cornflower-blue eyes peer up at the ceiling for a moment, then back at me. Her eyes are glassy. She blinks and one fat tear escapes. She catches it with a perfectly manicured finger.

  “I’ve been better,” she says. “I mean, I’m not falling apart or anything. But I’ve been better, too, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know what you mean.”

  The squeaks of shoes on cracked linoleum floors, the slams of locker doors, the shrieks and shouts of teenagers finally acquiring freedom after months of imprisonment—the noises surround us as we stand there, looking at each other.

  “I have to head to my locker, do you?” Emma asks.

  “No, I cleaned mine out already,” I tell her. “But I’ll come with you if you want.”

  “Okay,” she says, her lips parting into a smile. “Thanks.”

  Emma’s locker is mostly empty, but she has a neat stack of pastel-colored spirals and loose papers on the top shelf. She pulls a mirror with a pink frame off the inside of the locker door and places it on top of the stack, then takes everything out. My eyes spy the first issue of Moxie.

  “Hey,” I say. “I recognize that.”

  “Yeah,” says Emma, “I have them all.”

  My face must read incredulous because Emma says, “I was curious. I was too chicken to admit it at first since my crowd wasn’t really into it.”

  “So you didn’t want to speak to all of us at that assembly after the bathrobe thing?”

  Emma wrinkles her nose. “No, I didn’t. But Principal Wilson sort of bullied me into it, I guess. Just like he’d bullied me into running for vice president instead of president of student council the year before.”

  “Wait, are you kidding me?” I ask. But Emma shakes her head no, then tells me how Principal Wilson told her having a boy as head of student council would give the council more authority overall.

  “He said vice president was perfect for a female leader,” says Emma. “And I didn’t want to cause trouble, so I did what he said.” Then a tiny smile works its way onto her face. “I did something else, though,” she adds.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I was the one who put the Moxie stickers on his truck.”

  She grins wide, revealing her model-perfect teeth. My own mouth drops open in shock.

  “You seriously did?”

  “I really did!” she says, giggling. “And the asshole never found out either.”

  Witnessing Emma Johnson curse reminds me of the one time I overheard Meemaw say shit. (She’d dropped an entire Stouffer’s chicken enchiladas dish on the floor and it had spilled everywhere.) It’s equal parts weird and hilarious and awesome.

  Emma closes her locker. The hallways have cleared out by now, and we start heading down the mostly empty main hallway toward the front doors. It’s the same hallway we marched down side by side, weeks ago during the walkout. I remember Emma and me walking together, tears flowing down her face, my heart pounding, something really happening.

  “You got plans for the summer?” I ask.

  “I’m lifeguarding at the pool again,” says Emma as we walk. “And working on my college essays. What about you?”

  I shrug. “Not sure, really. I might help out at the urgent care center where my mom is a nurse. They need someone to work in their records room. It’s a little extra money anyway.”

  “And you’ll spend time with your boyfriend, yeah?” Emma asks, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yeah,” I say, grinning. It’s easy to talk to Emma Johnson, I realize. She’s just a nice girl who goes to my high school. That’s probably all she’s ever been.

  We finally reach the main doors of East Rockport High, and my skin gets goose bumps like it can still sense the energy of the walkout all these weeks later. Like the energy has been caught in the school’s atmosphere. Like Kathleen Hanna and the Riot Grrrls said, it’s an energy that is a revolutionary soul force made by girls for girls.

  I hope like hell it’s here to stay.

  I push on the heavy door, and Emma and I head out. “Hey,” I say, shielding my eyes from the Texas sun, “next weekend my friend Lucy is having a sleepover at her house.” We’re standing on the front steps now. Emma slides a pair of fancy sunglasses out of her purse and slips them on.

  “Lucy’s the new girl who put everything online, right?” Emma asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “I like Lucy,” says Emma, grinning.

  “She likes you,” I say. “Anyway, we were wondering if maybe you want to come? There’s going to be some other girls there, too. Girls who were involved in Moxie this year. We’re going to, like, figure out a way to keep things going next year. I mean, even though Wilson’s gone…”

  “Oh, yeah,” says Emma, nodding like I don’t even need to finish the sentence. “Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean there isn’t still work to do.”

  “So you’d be into it? Coming to the sleepover?”

  “You want me there?” Emma says. “Even though I’m, like, head cheerleader?” And the way she asks it—the way her voice is full of longing and doubt and just a touch of self-deprecation—is all I need to predict that Emma Johnson and I are going to become good friends.

  “Totally we want you there,” I say. “Moxie is for every girl. Cheerleaders, too.”

  “Okay, cool,” says Emma. “That would be really cool. Actually, to be totally honest, I have some ideas if you want them.”

  “You mean Moxie ideas?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” says Emma, her cheeks reddening. “But whatever. You can hear them at the sleepover. Or never. I mean, well, when I was planning the walkout, I made, this, like, Excel spreadsheet with some basic plans.”

  Of course she did. She is Emma Johnson after all.

  “I would love to see this spreadsheet,” I tell her, grinning.

  “Yeah?”

  “I really would,” I say.

  “Well, I have my mom’s car,” Emma says, motioning toward the student lot. “You want a lift? Maybe we could go eat. I mean, if you have time.”

  I smile at Emma. Of course I have time. It’s the summer, with long, lazy days ahead of me. Ahead of us. Perfect for dreaming. Perfect for scheming. Perfect for planning how Moxie girls fight back.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Dearest Reader,

  When I first became interested in feminism and the women’s movement back in the dark ages of the early to mid ’90s, the Internet was not available to the average person. Were it not for Sassy magazine (look it up!) and my college experience, I might have remained clueless for too long about how inspiring, rewarding, and, yes, how joyful it can be to live your life as a feminist.

  Now we have the Internet, which, in addition to providing many cute videos of kittens and puppies who are BFFs, also provides info about feminism. Following, in no particular order, are some resources I personally love. I have taken care to choose resources that support an intersec
tional feminist viewpoint and welcome all ladies, including girls of color, girls with disabilities, queer girls, and transgender girls.

  feministing.com

  rookiemag.com

  bitchmedia.org

  therepresentationproject.org

  bust.com

  thefbomb.org

  scarleteen.com

  If you want to get a good old-fashioned book in your hands, I highly recommend Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists. If you want to watch an interesting documentary, I recommend She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry.

  And if you’d like more info about Riot Grrrl, check out the documentary The Punk Singer or read Sara Marcus’s Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. There’s lots of fun stuff online that’s easy to find, too, including interviews and videos. Just search for Riot Grrrl.

  If you’re interested in living your life as a Moxie girl and meeting other girls like you, check out moxiegirlsfightback.com or send an email to moxiegirlsfightback@gmail.com.

  And finally, if you or someone you know needs information about sexual assault, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline operated by RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) at 1-800-656-HOPE. You can also go to rainn.org for more information or to use the online hotline.

  Thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to get to know Viv and her friends. Always remember that Moxie Girls Fight Back!

  xoxoxo,

  Jennifer Mathieu

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank my mother for buying the book Girls Can Be Anything by Norma Klein and reading it to me when I was little.

  I would like to thank all the Moxie girls and women I have met along the way who inspire me daily.

  Thank you to Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill for creating songs that I love as much at forty as I did at twenty. Especially “Rebel Girl” and “Feels Blind.” xoxoxoxo