“Hi, Grace,” Melissa says as Grace sits down.
“Um, hi?” Somehow it feels different to be talking to her at school, outside the meetings. Here, Grace is just her normal, boring self. But at the meetings, she’s becoming someone different. Someone who can talk to people without everything being a question. Someone with ideas. Someone with an identity.
“Melissa was just telling us how she quit the cheer squad,” Rosina says.
“Yeah,” she says. “Some of the girls are kind of mad at me right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Grace says.
“They’ll get over it.”
“Why’d you quit?”
Melissa crunches thoughtfully on a chip. “I think I finally got honest with myself and realized I didn’t really like it. I thought I was supposed to like it, and I kept waiting to like it. But it wasn’t anything like what I thought it would be. Most of the girls don’t even know anything about football. Like they literally have no idea what is going on at the games. That’s crazy to me.”
“Football’s crazy to me,” Rosina says.
Melissa nudges Rosina with her shoulder. “You’re crazy,” she says with a grin. Are they flirting? Grace notices Erin bury her face even deeper into her book.
“Cheer squad isn’t really about the games, at least not at this school,” Melissa continues. “It’s about this role you have in the school, and it’s something you have to do all the time, even when you don’t feel like it. And, I don’t know. I guess I realized that I don’t ever really feel like it.”
“Good for you,” Rosina says. “Now you can hang out with us peasants.”
“Does that mean you’re going to sit at our table all the time now?” Erin mumbles from behind her book.
“Don’t be rude,” Rosina says.
“It’s just a question.”
Melissa laughs. “I haven’t really made any plans beyond today.”
“Well, you’re welcome to sit here whenever you want,” Rosina says, giving Erin the stink eye. “Regardless of what that one says.”
“Thanks.”
“Looks like the troll table has had some defections too,” Elise says.
Grace turns around to see that the usually full table has a handful of guys at it now, and only two girls.
“Kayla Cunningham and Shannon Spears,” Elise says, shaking her head. “They’ll never come over to our side. They’d probably deflate if you separated them from their boyfriends.”
Ennis is nowhere to be seen. Grace’s eyes search the lunchroom and find Jesse Camp, sitting with a new group several tables away. Their eyes meet just as she realizes she was in fact looking for him.
“Dammit,” she says, turning around as fast as possible.
“What?” Melissa says.
“Nothing.”
“Your friend Jesse switched tables too, huh?” Rosina says.
“Jesse Camp?” Melissa says. “You guys are friends? He’s a great guy.”
“No,” Grace says. “We’re not friends.”
Melissa shrugs. Rosina lifts her eyebrows like, Yeah, right.
Erin says, “Do you want to know the longest fish name?”
“No,” says Rosina, at the same time Melissa says, “Sure.”
“It’s humuhumunukunukuapua’a,” Erin says. “It’s the Hawaiian state fish.”
“That’s interesting,” says Melissa.
“Don’t encourage her,” says Rosina.
*
“Hey!” Jesse says, catching Grace in the hall just as she’s about to step inside her fifth-period class.
Her stomach does something strange, like she’s on an elevator that dropped down too fast. Is it indigestion? Did she eat something bad?
Grace’s head is suddenly crowded with questions. How can someone’s face be this friendly? How can his eyes be so warm? Is it normal to simultaneously feel both dread and a sense of relief around the same person?
“I tried to find you after church yesterday,” Jesse says, “but I guess you had already left.”
Grace doesn’t tell him it’s because she ran straight home afterward for the sole purpose of avoiding him. “I’m going to be late for class,” she says.
“There’s still like four minutes until the second bell rings.”
Grace tries not to feel bad as Jesse’s face goes from cheery to perplexed to disappointed. “Oh,” he says. “You’re still mad at me.”
“I don’t really have time to talk right now,” Grace lies.
“I’m not friends with them anymore,” he says.
Grace says nothing. She’s afraid if she looks him in the eye, she’ll accidentally forgive him.
“I don’t understand why you’re so mad at me,” he says. “You know I’m on your side, right?”
Grace has no response. The truth is, she doesn’t know why she’s so mad at him either. Or why she wants to be. But she’s not about to tell him that.
Jesse sighs. “I was trying to be friends with everyone. It’s one of my faults, I guess—wanting people to like me. But I should have let some of those guys go a long time ago. You wouldn’t believe some of the racist shit that comes out of their mouths. I just pretend I don’t hear it. I pretend it doesn’t hurt. And some of the stuff they said about my brother when he was transitioning?” Jesse looks away. He swallows. “I didn’t stick up for him. I didn’t stick up for my own brother.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Grace says, and she hates herself for sounding so mean.
“I thought I could remain a neutral party. I thought if I didn’t say or do anything, then everyone would like me. But I realized that wasn’t going to be possible. Now I know there’s more important things than trying to be liked by everyone. So I picked a side. I picked the right side.” He tilts his body so that his face is at the same level as hers, so she has no choice but to look at him. “I picked yours.”
Grace doesn’t understand what she’s feeling. Part of her wants to forgive him, to be his friend, to get to know him. But then part of her is terrified by that entire train of thought and where it might lead, so terrified that staying mad at him for questionable reasons, and pushing him away even though all he’s doing is trying to be nice to her, seem like completely logical things to do.
“I don’t know if I believe people can just change like that,” Grace says.
She can’t read the look on his face. It’s something like pain, something like confusion, but also something almost like pity.
“If you don’t think people can change,” he says slowly, as if he’s trying to make sense of the words as he says them, “then what’s the point of any of this?”
The bell rings. “I have to go,” Grace says. But she doesn’t really care about getting to class on time. All she knows is, she doesn’t know the answer to his question.
The Real Men of Prescott