What Erin is specifically not comfortable with about Otis Goldberg is the fact that he keeps talking to her in class when it is obviously not academically required. She purposely sat in the back of the class to avoid situations like this. Also so no one would notice her stimming, which would make her self-conscious, which would make her anxious, which would make it impossible to pay attention. Sometimes she just has to flex her fingers or rub her hands together or rock slightly. Sometimes moving her body is the only thing that can still her mind. The “quiet hands” Mom always wants her to have are a meltdown waiting to happen.
Otis Goldberg is always doing strange things like asking how Erin is or saying he liked her presentation on the Iroquois Confederacy. Today was by far the worst, because he kept asking about the Nowhere Girls, if Erin is in the Nowhere Girls, if she’s been to the meetings, if she knows who started it; and Erin had no idea if he was talking to her because he was trying to get information, or if he actually wanted to talk to her, and she didn’t know which one was worse, or which one was better, and she certainly didn’t know which one she wanted, or if she’s allowed to want anything, if it’s safe to want anything. So she just forced herself to keep her mouth closed, which just made him talk more, so he started talking about himself, and how he thinks the Nowhere Girls are great, how he totally considers himself a feminist, how he has two moms who would kill him if he didn’t consider himself a feminist, and by then Erin couldn’t keep her mouth closed any longer, so she blurted out “Can you please be quiet?!” so loud the whole class turned around to stare at her, and Mr. Trilling said, “Erin, are you all right?” in that way all the teachers do, even nice ones like Mr. Trilling, which really means, “Erin, are you about to get all Aspergery on me?”
Then Otis was quiet. And Erin was confused because she thought she was supposed to be happy because silence was what she wanted the whole time he was talking, but then when it finally happened, something about it didn’t feel good, something hurt inside and Erin had no idea why, so she told Mr. Trilling she had to go cool off, which means go to the library to read about fish, which is what she says when everyone is acting so stupid she has to leave, except this time she had to leave because she’s the one who acted stupid, and all she wanted was to take back what she said to Otis Goldberg because she realized he did nothing but be nice to her.
Erin should be watching the real Wesley Crusher on her daily episode of TNG instead of thinking about the fake boy-bun Wesley Crusher named Otis Goldberg, but instead she’s trapped in her room while her parents monopolize the whole downstairs with their fighting, which is where the TV is, which is where she watches TNG. Erin is forbidden from watching shows in her room, because Mom does not want her to isolate any more than she already does, which is a lot, but not nearly as much since this whole Nowhere Girls business started, which has completely thrown her off schedule, which has quite frankly changed everything, and Erin is still not quite sure how she feels about it, except that she misses her room, she misses Data and Captain Jean-Luc Picard and all her friends on the USS Enterprise, she misses her old house in Seattle, she misses her old beach, she misses her old school and her old life and everything she had and everything she was before she did the thing with Casper Pennington that made her have to leave.
The world is moving too fast and she cannot adapt fast enough. It is getting harder to push bad thoughts away. They are a poison, spreading. Everything is a reminder, threatening to pull the memories from deep inside where she has them buried. Every day Erin is getting less like Data and more like the raw nerve she’s worked so hard to hide. She is falling apart. She is falling. She is lost in space and she has nothing to hold on to and she has no control over anything.
Erin wonders why Spot is getting up, why he’s climbing over her to move to this end of the bed. She only realizes she’s crying when he starts licking the tears off her cheeks. “I love you,” she says to Spot, and he’s the only one she ever says it to.
US.
Mom and Dad are both busy tonight with church stuff, so Grace is eating her microwaved dinner in front of the computer while she Facebook stalks her old friends in Adeline. Judging from recent pictures and vague, heavily exclamation-pointed status updates, nothing much has changed. One of her friends is “really excited!” about her new kitten. One of them is “really bummed!” that she got a B on her chemistry quiz. One of them is asking her thirty-seven Facebook friends for prayers as she sends in her application to Boyce College. One reposted some meme with a picture of a defiant toddler making a fist and “Back off devil, I belong to Jesus!” written in Comic Sans font.
And that’s it. Four friends. Grace can’t really think of anyone else to Facebook stalk. She grew up with these girls, spent almost every weekend with at least one of them, yet she feels no trace of missing them. She wonders what they would think of her new friends, about what she’s doing, what she’s becoming. They might pray for her, but only after they talked behind her back and vowed to never speak to her again.
Grace always yearned to feel a part of something, and for a long time she felt secure with her place in youth group, in her church, in her tiny clique of friends. It was a small, sturdy box she shoved herself inside because there didn’t seem to be any other reasonable choices. But this, now, whatever this is, feels different. It’s not even a box. It’s something she’s building to fit her, a place in the world that is adapting and growing and changing as she changes. She’s a part of something she’s helping to create, not something premade that someone else decided was good for her.
It was Grace who decided this was good for her.
Grace decided.
*
Two friends kiss.
“Are we allowed to do this?” one of them says.
“There’s no rule against kissing girls,” says the other.
“I wonder if all the Nowhere Girls are kissing each other now,” says the first.
“They should,” giggles the other.
*
This girl cringes as she points her phone toward her naked body and presses the button to make the image permanent. She only glances at it as she types out the words: Remember you promised to not show this to ANYONE!
She didn’t want to do it, but he begged and begged until she said yes. He said if she wasn’t going to have sex with him during the strike, she had to give him something. Better a picture of her than porn. Better her than someone else.
But as soon as she presses send, her stomach lurches. What have I done? she thinks. Now the photo is out there, uncontrollable. He owns this image of her body. He owns her.
*
A girl lies on her bed facing her boyfriend.
“Come on, tell me,” he teases, stroking his fingers lightly across her arm the way he knows always gets her excited.
She picks up his hand and places it back on the bed. “You know I can’t tell you who comes to the meetings,” she says. “That’d be breaking so much trust.”
“At least tell me some of the stuff you talk about. You don’t have to name anyone.”
“It’s confidential.”
“Fine,” he says, rolling over onto his back. “Whatever.”
“What do you mean, whatever?” The girl sits up.
“I mean, whatever.” He does not look at her.