Her friend says, “I’m Connie.” Grace feels the flutters of hope in her chest. All girls gossip, don’t they? Even nice girls are a little bit mean.
“All right,” Coach Baxter says from the front of the classroom. “This class is American Literature. Before we get started, there are some things I want you to know. I believe in the canon. I believe in reading great works of literature that have endured through the ages because they explore universal themes. I’m not going to waste our time with work that is popular because of passing fads and political correctness. My job is to give you a strong foundation in the classics, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. We will start with selections by Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Then we’ll read Moby Dick, by Herman Melville.”
“Isn’t that about a whale?” says a guy in the front row.
“It’s about obsession and man’s eternal struggle with himself and God,” says Mr. Baxter. “Among other things. But yes, there is a whale. Is that all right with you, Clemons?”
“Yes, coach.”
“Good. After Moby Dick, we’ll move on to selections from American greats like Mark Twain, Henry James, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck. Then we’re in for a real treat with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which most intelligent people consider the greatest American novel. If we have time at the end of the semester, we’ll hopefully be able to read selections from a few great living authors, including my personal favorite, Jonathan Franzen.”
“Now,” he says. “Open your textbooks at the beginning, and we’ll go around the room taking turns reading. Page four: What is a novel? Who wants to start?”
Grace opens the textbook on her desk to a pencil-drawn doodle of a penis wearing sunglasses.
*
Grace gets lost trying to find her locker, so by the time she gets to the lunchroom it’s nearly full. She looks around for Connie and Allison, the girls from her homeroom, but they must have a different lunch. She searches the room for other potential friends—not too pretty but not too ugly, somewhere in the middle of being nobodies and somebodies, the kind of friends she could dissolve into. For a moment she considers turning around and finding a hidden spot under a stairwell to eat.
But then a table catches her eye. In the corner of the lunchroom, near the hallway that leads to the library, is an island in the sea of high school hierarchy. Sitting there are Erin, the bald girl from the school office, and Rosina, the girl she met in front of her house yesterday, equally strange but in a different, louder, way. The two girls seem unaware of the world around them, as if they don’t even know they’re sitting in the middle of a high school cafeteria. How nice it would be to be that free, that unencumbered by the whims and weaknesses of other people.
Rosina looks up and catches Grace’s eye. Erin turns her head to see what Rosina’s looking at. The two girls look at her, not exactly smiling, but with a curiosity that is not unkind.
Is it true that this decision—where to sit at lunch—could define Grace for the rest of her high school career, quite possibly for the rest of her life? Is life that senseless and absurd? If her previous experiences are any indication, the answer is yes.
Grace had a plan, but maybe that plan was wrong. Maybe decisions should not be made out of fear. Maybe the goal isn’t to blend in. Maybe Grace has been approaching this game all wrong, and the goal isn’t to play it safe and try to stay in the middle. Maybe she doesn’t have to play the game at all.
“Hi,” Grace says when she reaches the lunch table, her heart pounding. “Can I sit with you?”
Erin tilts her head in a way that reminds Grace of either a cat or a robot. “Why?” she says.
“Erin,” Rosina says. “Remember how you’re not always supposed to say the first thing that comes to mind?”
“But I want to know why she wants to sit with us,” Erin says, with no trace of cruelty. “No one ever wants to sit with us.”
“Good point,” Rosina says. “Why do you want to sit with us, New Girl?”
“I, um, I don’t know? I guess I just met you both before, and you seemed nice, and I’m new and don’t know anybody yet, and—”
“It’s okay,” Rosina says. “I was kidding. Of course you can sit with us.”
“We’re not nice,” Erin says.
“Speak for yourself,” says Rosina. “I’m nice.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m nice to you.”
“I’m the only person you’re nice to.”
“Well, maybe I’m going to want to be nice to New Girl, too. So far, she’s being nice to me, so I’m definitely considering it.”
Erin shrugs. “You’re lucky,” she says. “This is the best table in the cafeteria.”
“Why’s that?” Grace says as she sits down.
“It’s the quietest,” Erin says. “And it has the quickest escape route to the library.”
Grace notices Erin’s lunch in a small tin container with three compartments. It is not the lunch of an average teenager, not a sandwich or chips or anything resembling cooked food. Erin notices her looking. “This is called a bento box. It’s from Japan. My mom got it for me because I don’t like my food to touch.”
“Are you on a diet?” Grace asks.
“Not on purpose.”
“Erin’s mom feeds her leaves and sticks so she won’t hit herself anymore,” Rosina says.
“Rosina’s tone of voice implies sarcasm,” Erin says flatly. “But the content of her statement is close to the truth. Except these aren’t leaves and sticks.”
“Okay, time to change the subject,” Rosina says. “What’s your name, New Girl?”
“Grace. We met yesterday, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. You live in Lucy Moynihan’s old house. Shit!” Rosina fake slaps herself. “I promised I wouldn’t utter her name again.”
“Why not?” Grace asks.
“I do not want to contribute to this town’s unhealthy obsession with that girl. It’s been a whole summer and people are still talking about her. Get a life, Prescott.”
“Was she your friend?”
“You’re looking at my friend,” Rosina says. “This bald girl eating rabbit food.”
Erin looks up from her lunch of shredded vegetables. “People aren’t going to stop talking about her until they stop feeling guilty,” Erin says. “They can’t let it go because it’s still weighing on their consciences. Conscience. What’s the plural of ‘conscience’? I should know this.”
“That was a very astute observation,” Rosina says.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What exactly happened to Lucy?” Grace asks. “Did she say someone raped her? Who’d she say did it?”
Neither Rosina nor Erin says anything. They take a bite of their lunches in tandem.
“Did you believe her?” Grace says.
Rosina sighs. “Of course we believed her. Most everybody did, but they’ll never admit it. Probably half the girls in this school have had some kind of run-in with one of those assholes.” Rosina looks up from her barely-eaten sandwich. “But it doesn’t fucking matter.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?” Grace says. “Of course it matters.”
“On what planet?”
Grace has no idea how to answer.