“I said ‘Yes, sir.’?”
“If you girls aren’t separated in ten seconds, I’m sending you all to Principal Slatterly’s office.”
So they move. One by one, they join other tables. Rosina sits with Serina Barlow. Melissa sits with a handful of cheerleaders, who are apparently still allowed to congregate. Erin heads to the library. Grace picks up her tray and looks around the lunchroom, is stunned to realize she could join half these tables and feel something close to comfortable. But there is one in particular that catches her eye, mostly a mix of athletes from the school’s less-fashionable sports like golf and fencing. At the end of the table, with a cheeseburger in his hands, is Jesse Camp.
Grace thinks about her mom. She thinks about how sometimes doing a scary thing makes it less scary.
“Hi,” Grace says as she sits down next to Jesse, just as he takes a big bite of burger.
“Mrumph,” he mumbles with a full mouth, his eyes wide with surprise.
“You have a little ketchup.” She points to a spot on her chin. Still chewing, Jesse tries to wipe it off but misses. Grace picks up a napkin from the table and wipes it off.
Jesse swallows. “Um, thanks.”
“I just got booted from my table by the rent-a-cop.”
“You’re such a rebel,” he says, smiling.
“I know,” Grace says, smiling back.
“So you’re not mad at me anymore?”
Grace takes a bite of French fry and shakes her head.
“So we can be friends now?”
Grace chews and nods.
“So,” he says, setting his burger down. “Things are pretty crazy around here these days.”
“You could definitely say that.”
“Are you friends with the girls who got suspended?”
“Yeah,” Grace says. “Pretty good friends, actually.”
“Have you heard anything from them?”
“It sounds like Elise’s parents are pretty cool and she didn’t even get grounded. Margot’s freaked out this’ll ruin her chances at Stanford, but I’m sure she’ll be fine. Her parents are threatening to sue the school or something. Elise’s too, I think. They’re filing a formal complaint with the school board. The other girl, Trista, she got it the worst. She’s like grounded forever. Her parents are going to make her do some kind of spiritual counseling with the youth pastor at their church.”
“Wow,” Jesse says. “That sucks.”
“Yeah,” Grace says. “Especially since none of them is guilty.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“Because you’re in the Nowhere Girls,” Jesse says. “I already figured that out.”
“The first rule about the Nowhere Girls”—Grace smiles—“is you do not talk about the Nowhere Girls.”
*
A girl looks around the lunchroom and can’t help but laugh a little at all the groups of girls being forced to separate by security guards. Since when are groups of white girls considered a threat? Must be that Nowhere Girls stuff. Some girls from her softball team invited her to a meeting a couple of weeks ago and she thought about checking it out, but she knew she never would.
Because this feminism or whatever it is they’re doing—it’s a white-girl thing. When they go around making demands and yelling, people call them fired up and passionate.
But black girls don’t have that privilege. When black girls stand up for themselves, people call them hostile. They call them dangerous. They call them other things.
*
Amber decides she needs a day off of school. She needs a break from being herself.
The problem is there’s nothing good on TV. There’s nothing good in the fridge. Mom’s at work and her boyfriend-of-the-week is who knows where (thank God), and the trailer is feeling damp and toxic. Some kind of dark-colored mold is growing around the edges of all the windows. Condensation drips down the glass and forms tiny puddles on the windowsills.
There’s that guy she met at that PCC party last weekend. Chad something. He texted her yesterday and she never texted back. Maybe this one’s different. Maybe he’s more mature because he’s older and in college.
Chad picks her up two blocks away. Amber thinks maybe if he doesn’t see where she lives, he won’t jump to certain conclusions. And maybe because he’s not part of her high school world, he won’t have any preconceived ideas about who she is. She can start with a clean slate. She could be anyone.
She tells him she’s hungry. She hopes maybe he’ll take her out for a real date at a real restaurant. Her heart drops when the car slows and turns into the McDonald’s drive-through. But at least he pays for it.
“Let’s go to my place,” Chad says. In the few minutes it takes to drive to his apartment complex, Amber eats her burger and fries and swallows whatever pride foolishly dared to surface this morning.
Amber has seen apartments like this before. Dishes piled in the sink for who knows how long. Cheap and mismatched secondhand furniture. Stained, drooping couch. Large bong on the coffee table amidst empty bags of chips and beer cans. A rank smell of dirty socks, rancid food, and ball sweat. Walls bare except for one crooked poster of a car Chad will never in his life be able to afford, with a bikini-clad woman on top he will never sleep with.
Amber’s phone rings. The caller ID says it’s that girl Grace from school. What is her problem? Why does she keep bothering Amber? Is it a weird Christian thing? Is Grace trying to save her? Well, too bad. It’s way too late for that.
“Here,” Chad says, handing Amber a plastic cup. She takes a sip of what she guesses is about five shots of cheap vodka with a splash of SunnyD. They talk for approximately four minutes before Chad unceremoniously leans over and puts his mouth on hers, his hand on her breast. He tastes like the room smells.
Amber wishes she’d gone to school today after all. Grace invited her to sit with her weird friends at lunch, but Amber hasn’t taken her up on it yet. Even though Amber doesn’t trust her, even though she has no clue what her angle is, sitting next to her at lunch and wondering what Grace wants from her sure sounds a lot better than this.
She pushes Chad away. “What’s wrong, baby?” he mumbles as he pulls her back. She tries to wiggle out of his arms, but he holds her closer. She hears her phone ring again, and she moves to reach for her purse on the floor, but Chad doesn’t let go.
“Stop,” she whispers, the word so foreign and strange in her mouth. She thinks maybe he didn’t hear her. She says it a little louder.
Chad laughs and pushes her down on the couch. “Yeah, right,” he says, both hands under her shirt, pressing against her ribs, holding her in place.
“No, really,” Amber says, the taste of fear in her mouth. “I’m not joking.”
He pretends not to hear her. He pushes her shirt up until it is gathered around her neck like a noose.
Amber knows she must make a decision. To fight or not to fight.
She is so tired. She thinks today was not a good day to try to not be herself.
She thinks, It doesn’t count as rape if I give up.
She thinks, Different rules apply to different girls. Someone like me doesn’t get to say no.