Something catches in Grace’s throat, a mix of gratitude and pride. A great gasp of love.
The homeroom bell rings. “Attention, please,” Slatterly’s voice booms over the loudspeaker before the class even has a chance to get seated.
“This is gonna be good,” says Connie.
“I am pleased to announce that the administration has made significant progress in our mission to uncover the perpetrators responsible for the Nowhere Girls activity.”
“?‘Perpetrators’?” Allison says. “Is this a joke? Did she really use that word?”
Grace’s momentary high crashes. Hard.
“Our technical advisers have successfully traced e-mail correspondence and have identified several people of interest.”
“Oh, shit,” says Connie.
“Would the following people please come to the office immediately?”
Grace closes her eyes. She cannot remember how to breathe.
“Trista Polanski,” Slatterly says.
“Oh no,” Allison says.
“Elise Powell,” Slatterly says.
The jocks in the front row bust up laughing. “No surprise there,” one of them mutters. “Fucking dyke.”
“Fuck you!” Connie yells across the room.
“Language,” Baxter scolds half-heartedly. But he is leaning back in his chair, almost smiling; this is his first win of the season.
“And Margot Dillard,” Slatterly says, and even over the loudspeakers, Grace thinks she can hear something like pain in the principal’s voice.
“Holy shit,” laughs one of the trolls. “Queen Margot’s going down!” The boys are beside themselves. They haven’t been this happy in weeks.
“Oh my God,” Allison whispers, tears welling up in her eyes. “Not Margot.”
Grace’s tears are already falling.
“What are we going to do?” Connie says.
What have we done? Grace thinks.
*
Rumors fly like crazy. Some say the girls have been suspended for a week. Others say they’ve been expelled, even arrested. Rumor is Elise has been kicked off the softball team and will lose her U of O scholarship; Margot is disqualified from Stanford. Trista is being sent to some kind of boarding school where they do things like “convert” gay kids. The truth is impossible to decipher from all the gossip.
“I tried calling Margot and Elise,” Melissa says at lunch. “It keeps going to voice mail. Have you talked to Trista?”
Krista can barely even shake her head. She’s inconsolable. She’s been crying since homeroom.
“Margot wasn’t even at the first meeting,” Grace says. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why her?”
“They wrote to the Nowhere Girls e-mail address,” Erin says. “That’s how the computer techs must have identified them.” Everyone looks at her. Everyone but Rosina. “Maybe,” she adds. “I don’t know. It’s a theory.”
“So that’s it?” Melissa says. “They sent an e-mail and now they’re taking the fall for everyone? That’s ridiculous. That can’t be legal.”
Rosina and Erin are sitting in their usual spots across from each other, but they haven’t spoken; they haven’t even looked at each other. Grace knows almost nothing about what happened between them on Saturday night, only that she came outside after the meeting was over to find Erin alone, pacing the porch and crying. All Erin told Grace was they got in a fight and Rosina decided to walk home in the rain. She was silent on the ride home as she stared out the window and, Grace suspected, searched for signs of Rosina.
“This is so fucked up,” Melissa says. “Look at Ennis sitting over there. He thinks it’s safe to show his face again.”
“What are we going to do?” Krista cries. “We have to help them.”
“Hey, bitches!” one of the guys from the troll table yells across the cafeteria. “How’s your revolution going?”
“Catch any rapists lately?” says another, and the table explodes in laughter.
The girls say nothing. Not even Rosina has the energy for a response.
Grace stares at Rosina until she meets her eyes, but nothing passes between them but fear.
In the three hours between lunch and the end of school, Grace experiences a kind of regression. She goes back in time to a pre-Rosina, pre-Erin, pre–Nowhere Girls version of herself. Fear can do that to a person. Fear can do all kinds of things.
There is nothing lonelier than fear. In Grace’s language, it is the opposite of faith. It is when you need God the most.
But Grace cannot think of God right now. She is stuck inside herself with her shame, her secrets. Grace did this. Grace made this mess. Good people are being punished, and it’s her own damn fault. Three lives are being ruined because a nobody wanted to be somebody, because pride got in the way of a good sheep staying a sheep.
What made Grace think she could change anything? What made her think she could even change herself? People can’t change. That’s just a lie to keep therapists and preachers in business. She never should have bothered. She should have just kept her head down, just kept to the invisible middle of the herd where she belongs, where she’s always belonged, along with the other sheep, with the other invisible girls.
She should have painted over those words on her bedroom wall as soon as she saw them. She should have never learned the name Lucy Moynihan.
Grace wants to go back to being empty. Being empty did not hurt like this. There is no risk when you are no one. There is nothing to lose when you have nothing.
Emptiness. What Grace wants is emptiness.
But where can she find it? The house is not empty. Is that Mom Grace sees through the kitchen window? Is she boiling water for tea? Or is it another ghost, another figment of Grace’s yearning?
Grace considers turning around. She could go to one of the places the girls have claimed—the model home, the old Dixon Mansion, the vacant warehouse, the library basement. But as usual, she’s too slow. Mom looks up and sees Grace through the window, and a smile spreads across her face, the kind of smile Grace has been aching for, a look of acknowledgment, the look of being seen, and suddenly all Grace wants is to fill up that not-empty house with her. All she wants is to be her mother’s daughter and nothing else.
“Hey, sweetie,” Mom says when Grace enters the kitchen. “Want a cup of tea?”
What Grace means to say is yes, but instead she starts crying. Mom’s arms are instantly around her, and they are not the pastor’s arms. Grace is a girl again, before everything changed, before all this caring and worrying and growing up, and for a few brief moments she is no longer afraid.
“Oh, Gracie,” Mom says, and leads her to the couch. For a moment love makes Grace brave, and she thinks maybe if you miss someone, you should tell them. Maybe if you want something, you should do something about it instead of feeling sorry for yourself.
“I miss you, Mom,” Grace says.
“Oh, honey, I miss you, too.” And now Mom is crying too. “I’m so sorry I’ve been so busy. I haven’t been here for you.”