I think about Emma Johnson winning Most Fuckable Girl when I see her in English, sitting at her desk taking notes as Mr. Davies speaks. I think about inviting her to Kiera’s thing and it’s like thinking about inviting a debutante to a drunken tailgate. Emma hangs with the elite, with the coolest football players and the most popular cheer squad girls. And she was the one who spoke out against Moxie at the assembly.
The reasons for not inviting Emma are good. But a passage from one of the Bikini Kill album liner notes about all girls being soldiers in their own way, even the girls with the big hair who go out with jocks, sticks in my mind. I unfold Kiera’s flyer again and see the words ALL GIRLS WELCOME. As the bell rings, I think about tapping Emma on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, I know we never talk and you barely know I exist, but I was wondering if you wanted to come to this thing for girls who are pissed about all this shit at East Rockport High that actually seems to work to your advantage?”
But I don’t say anything. I just catch the flip of her honey-blond hair as she makes her way out of class.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I pull open the heavy door of the VFW hall and am immediately overtaken by the scent of stale cigarette smoke.
“Phew, it smells like our den before my dad quit,” says Claudia, wrinkling her nose.
Lucy, Sara, Kaitlyn, and Meg are with us, too. We all blink as our eyes adjust to the semi-darkness of the wood-paneled room that hasn’t been renovated since the 1970s at least. Old Lone Star and Shiner Bock beer signs hang in the corner by an empty bar.
“Hey,” says Amaya, walking toward us. I look around. There are about twenty girls here. My heart sinks a bit. That’s a really small number of girls considering the size of East Rockport. But I remind myself that it’s still early.
“Five dollars,” Amaya says, opening a shoe box. We all pull out our crumpled bills, and Amaya thanks us for coming and tells us we can put the baked goods we brought with us on the bake sale table.
Most of the girls here are on the soccer team. Music thumps, and my friends and I clump together as we awkwardly walk the perimeter of the hall.
“Hey, there you are,” Kiera says, coming up. She’s dressed in dark jeans and a bright pink top. She’s wearing pink lipstick to match. “Glad you made it.”
“This is cool,” says Lucy, even though nothing is really happening. I know she wants Kiera to like her. To be glad she’s here.
“Thanks,” says Kiera. She looks at her phone. “I’m hoping a few more girls come. I just heard from my friends Maci and Charity that they’re on their way.”
“Cool,” I say, nodding.
Kiera smiles and heads off, and my friends and I walk around, clutching our paper plates full of lemon bars and chocolate chip cookies.
Around the room, girls have different stuff for sale, their wares spread out on card tables. Marisela Perez has dozens of tiny charm bracelets she’s made by hand, each for sale for five dollars. They’re delicate things, with tiny colored plastic beads lining them like gum drops.
“These are pretty,” says Claudia, reaching out to touch one.
“Thanks,” says Marisela, picking up one of her creations. “I just make them for fun and sell them to my cousins. This is the first time I’m trying to, you know, sell them to other people. But it helps me, too, since I’m on the soccer team.”
“I’ll buy one before the night is over,” Claudia says, and Marisela grins.
After we drop off our bars and cookies at the bake sale table, we keep exploring. We see jewelry, magnets, and stickers for sale. My heart wants to burst when I see a bunch of the Moxie zines—all the way back to the first one—laid out on a table in careful rows, free for the taking. I guess that Kiera made copies of existing zines because the images are a little blurrier and softer than in the copies I made.
I recognize Kiera’s table immediately. It’s full of her drawings—a row of leafless trees in winter, stretching out to the horizon. Two hands clutching each other, their fingers laced together. A single eyeball, staring steadily back. Her sketches are all black and white and really remarkable. She’s come a long way since our Diary of a Wimpy Kid days.
“This is … so cool,” says Lucy, barely able to contain herself. “It’s reminding me of my old GRIT club in Houston.” Claudia and the other girls seems a little less certain, but we decide to walk the perimeter in our awkward clump again—Claudia wants to get one of Marisela’s bracelets—and by the time we’ve made it around, a few more girls have spilled in. They look like underclassmen, uncertain and nervous. I lift a hand and smile hello, and they smile back.
The door keeps opening and more girls keep coming in, enough that we have to start shouting over the music. It starts to grow stuffy and hot, and Kiera and Amaya open the windows because the air conditioner isn’t working so well, but our thin sheens of sweat start to make us all glow a bit. My friends and I decide to go for some lemonade.
“Do you want regular or … fortified?” the girl behind the table says, eyeing us.
“Fortified?” Claudia asks loudly, and the girl shoots her a look. I recognize her as one of the soccer players. I think her name is Jane.
Lucy nudges Claudia with an elbow and all of us notice a paper bag on the floor with a slim bottle in it.
“Vodka,” Jane whispers. She winks.
“Fortified, please,” Lucy says without hesitation as she forks over her money, and soon we are clutching plastic cups of special lemonade. It’s not long before Claudia starts bopping around to the beat of the music, a sly smile spreading over her face.
“Claudia is way fortified,” she says to us, and we laugh. At this point the room is close to full, girls from almost every group at East Rockport High moving around and in between each other, handing over babysitting dollars and Sonic carhop dollars and weekly allowance dollars to buy Marisela’s bracelets and Kiera’s drawings and stickers someone made that read BOSS BITCH.
We yell hey and hi and ohmygod at each other, and we hug and we kiss on the cheek and we catch up with each other, for once ignoring the unspoken dividing lines of race and class and grade and popularity that we’ve always lived by. Some girls are dancing in the corners, moving their bodies with the freedom that comes when no boy is watching you. It feels buzzy and dizzy and sweaty and so, so, so joyful. I think this is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling like a Riot Grrrl, like my mom from way back when, but this is even better because it’s my own thing. It’s our own thing. The girls of East Rockport High. It’s Moxie, and it feels so real and alive and right now.
An hour or so into it, Kiera makes her way to a tiny stage at the back of the room, and she grabs a microphone and taps it.
“Uh, can I get your attention, please,” she asks. A lazy smile slips across her face and I’m pretty sure she’s had a fortified lemonade or two. I take a sip from my second one. My lips feel semi-numb.