Rebel Girls Read online

  Sean smiled weakly, his brown eyes filled with a hurt that he would never talk about. I hoped that I was wrong about Leah. For his sake—definitely not mine.

  “You know girls better than I do,” he said.

  That was exactly what I was worried about.

  13

  “Wait, so you’re telling me that you told Sean about the rumors? And you were surprised that he got mad at you? And, oh, my God, are you telling me Leah’s mom cheated on her dad?”

  Melissa looked up at me from the piano bench. Her back was to the piano keyboard, pressing down a dissonant trio of keys that had long since stopped ringing out. Her relaxed position was a sharp counterpoint to the astonished look on her face. Her hands absently plucked at the violin in her lap, turning one of our serious orchestra pieces—Wagner, which also made it self-important—into a jaunty, pizzicato tune.

  Our Thursday orchestra rehearsal wouldn’t start for another hour and a half, so we were theoretically practicing for our chamber group. But a string quartet works best with four people, and since Jessica and Derek were both sick, we were hanging out in one of the LSU music building’s soundproof practice rooms. It was the perfect gossip capsule. I had expected her to want details on my after-school date with Kyle, but she’d homed right in on Sean and Leah and Helen.

  “Yeah, and no, and yeah.” I kind of regretted telling Melissa the whole story now, especially the part about Leah’s parents getting a divorce. Despite being the least important, it was the juiciest fruit of the conversation. “You were right. But he was already primed to be mad at me. Leah had already planted the seeds of ‘oh, Helen made this up herself.’” I rolled my eyes, which didn’t nearly convey how angry it made me that Leah would expect anyone to believe that, even Sean. “Anyway, I think I got through to him a little by the time we left Steve’s.”

  Melissa’s nose wrinkled at the mention of the comic shop. “I still don’t get why you go there with him.”

  “You know I like comics, too.” Melissa could be so judgy when it came to Sean, and that sometimes leaked over onto me.

  “Yeah, I know.” She shrugged, but her hands kept fluttering on her violin. I think she’d switched to the Shostakovich, but without actual bowing, I couldn’t say for sure. “Still, you shouldn’t be surprised that he’s on Leah’s side. I told you he would be. Sean’s super into her, God knows why.”

  “So, what now?” I must have looked as sad as I felt because Melissa’s expression suddenly softened, and she finally put the violin down on the piano.

  “Hey, if it’ll make you feel better, we can go do something really dumb to take your mind off things, like try to find the worst clothes of the seventies at the thrift store, or call KLSU from Dr. Walsh’s office and ask to send out a dedication to him for a Dead Milkmen song or something.”

  The thought of dedicating a song like “Punk Rock Girl” or “Bitchin’ Camaro” to our cranky, white-haired orchestra conductor might, under normal circumstances, be kind of funny. Not that he’d ever hear it, but enough people in orchestra might, and they’d definitely laugh when he took to the podium. And he’d never know why.

  But this wasn’t a normal day. At least not for me.

  “I don’t want to do something dumb.” I spat out dumb with proportional ferocity to my frustration over having failed Helen. “I want to do something that matters.”

  Revelation spread across Melissa’s face. It started as a light in her hazel eyes, and then a small flicker of a smile that bloomed into as toothy a grin as she ever got. “I’ve got it! You want to do something that matters.”

  I stared at her. “Yes, that’s exactly what I just said.”

  “Yeah, so.” She grabbed her very expensive violin and waved it in my face to shush me. I backed away, putting myself out of range. “I have the perfect thing. You know how we always talk about spray-painting the fake abortion clinic?”

  “You’re not serious!” I told her. “It’s only five thirty. It’s September. It’s daylight. There’s going to be eighty-seven million people on Chimes Street. We can’t spray-paint the fake abortion clinic now.”

  “I know.” She grinned maniacally. “That’s why we’re not going to go with our original plan.” She said it with another dismissive wave that did nothing to reassure me. “We’re going in.”

  “You’re joking, right?” Even as I protested, part of me thought she might stop pushing me to help her spray-paint the place if we did this. And I was a little curious. I’d like to know what kind of inaccurate science they were touting as human biology.

  “Hear me out!” She was packing up her violin like it was a done deal, gently laying it in its case. “We go in posing as volunteers. True believers, you know?”

  I was fairly certain my face looked the same as it did when I was trying to figure out the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle before the caffeine hit me.

  “How is this going to help Helen?”

  “I don’t know what it will do, but...” Her voice trailed off for a second, and then she bounced on the piano bench. “Look, we need insight, right? Everything that they say seems like it’s the first cousin of truth, you know? It’s the same at the clinic, you know? We could learn from them. Something anyway.”

  None of this was really related to Helen, other than the associated topic of abortion. I weighed going to the clinic in relation to the theoretical vandalism that Melissa always suggested. The risk was proportionate to the payoff. That is, not all that much, if I could keep Melissa in check.

  “If you promise that we’ll be back in time for rehearsal.” I looked at her, trying to appear as stern as possible.

  She clapped her hands. “We will! I promise! We’ll be back at least fifteen minutes before Dr. Walsh raises his baton.”

  * * *

  The fake abortion clinic—otherwise known as the River Rouge Choices for Women—was in an old frame house in the middle of the block on Chimes Street, nestled between a used textbook store and a head shop. In sharp contrast to its neighbors, the clean clapboard was painted a cheery yellow, and white shutters framed the windows.

  On the way over, we’d rehearsed our roles. We were going to pose as members of our school’s pro-life club, which we knew enough about from the incessant invocations of its name every time the topic came up in religion class. In case they knew the officers of the club, we were going to be recent converts.

  “Okay, we’re solid, right?” Melissa asked, doubt inching into her voice as we got to the front porch of the building.

  “I think we’re solid.” For once, I sounded less nervous than Melissa. I didn’t have anything to lose in this scenario, whereas she’d been on television pulling girls into an abortion clinic. On top of that, she was far more recognizable than I was. There weren’t a ton of purple-haired half-Asian girls running around Chimes Street, but there were at least a half dozen generic white alternagirls like me within two blocks at any given time.

  At the door, she paused and turned to me one last time. “Let’s do this, Graves.”

  “You got it, Lemoine.”

  She pulled the door open and gestured for me to go in first.

  The waiting area looked like a cross between a doctor’s office and my grandmother’s wood-paneled living room. A row of beige chairs lined one wall, while a large squishy off-white pleather couch occupied another. All around were posters of smiling babies, held by happy mothers, with testimonials underneath. In one, a slightly older couple snuggled a baby, thanking the birth mother—presumably in the room—for giving them the opportunity to be parents. Another poster featured an African American girl thanking the organization that ran the clinic for “keeping her and her baby off welfare.” Its offensive stereotyping stood out from the others, with their generic, smiling white people and lack of assumptions about motives.

  We stood in the center of the room, uncertain. We’d expected
someone to be at the front desk, but it was harder to focus on our plan in a deserted room.

  Finally, a petite youngish woman with curly black hair and a long prairie-print Laura Ashley dress walked out from the back. She had an upturned nose and an air of Cabbage Patch cuteness. When she saw us, she stopped and clasped her hands almost prayerfully. A sad smile was on her face, as though she knew exactly why we were here. In her mind, one of us needed an abortion, which she was absolutely not going to let us get.

  “Welcome, welcome,” she said softly. She shook her head, and her shiny curls bounced in time. “So young,” she muttered. “So, so young.”

  Melissa bristled, her mouth twisting briefly into a frown. Then, remembering why we were there, her face cleared into a wide-eyed, shocked expression.

  “Oh, uh, no, ma’am,” she said. “I mean, we are young. But we’re not here for counseling. We’re, um, from the St. Ursula’s pro-life club.”

  It was a brilliant bit of improvisation to say we were from St. Ursula’s, the all-girls’ school across town, instead of St. Ann’s. We knew maybe ten people in the entire school, and none in the pro-life club, so it was a gamble. But at least the visit wouldn’t be traced back to us.

  “Oh, did Reagan send you?” The woman clapped her formerly praying hands with such a loud slap that the lace cuffs of her sleeves shook around her slender wrists. Melissa jumped at the sound. “Are you out of materials already? That’s so wonderful!”

  Melissa looked quickly toward me. I nodded, first to Melissa, and then—convincingly, I hoped—to the woman. “Yes, we’re all out,” I lied.

  “Oh, then, just let me run and get a stack of brochures for you.” She was already swooshing out of the room, her long floral dress swirling around her feet. “Such a wonderful, good girl, that Reagan,” she said over her shoulder.

  When the woman vanished down the hall, I turned toward Melissa. “Do you know Reagan?” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “No, and the less we say now, the better.”

  My stomach tensed as minutes passed while the woman was in the back. After what seemed like an eternity, during which Melissa and I couldn’t talk out of fear of giving ourselves away, the woman returned. She struggled with a large box, her tiny body bending backward under its weight. When she got to the desk, she dumped the box with a thud. Her face was red and sweaty from the effort.

  “Do you girls think you can carry all this? I don’t want you to run out again so soon.” She gestured toward the box, which was packed tight with at least three types of pamphlets. From where I stood, it looked like one was for women entering abortion clinics, “Do YOU know the consequences of abortion? A primer for mother and the unborn child,” and another was for girls like us, “How can YOU bring the fight for life to YOUR school?” The third I couldn’t quite see from where I stood because the woman was now leaning over the box in an attempt to catch her breath.

  Melissa shook her head with faux sincerity. “Oh, no, ma’am. We weren’t expecting this many pamphlets. Could we, um, maybe take half? And, um, would it be possible to get a tour before we leave? Reagan was talking about how much good work you do here, and we’d love to see for ourselves.”

  Melissa was good. If we got through the next few minutes without messing up, this day would go down in our personal books as legend: the day we tricked a fake abortion clinic worker into showing us how their whole operation worked.

  “Oh, girls, I would be delighted.” She dabbed sweat from her forehead with a tissue from a box on the desk. I imagined the tissues were for girls in the waiting room, and a pang of sympathy ran through my chest for all the girls who probably didn’t find the help they wanted here. “But it will have to be short, I’m afraid. We’re about to close, and there’s a patient in one of the rooms.”

  Melissa flinched at the word patient, but kept the broad smile on her face. I hoped the woman didn’t see Melissa’s true reaction as she led us down the hall past rooms that looked like any other doctor’s office. Except, I noticed, there were a lot of posters about fetal development. Here a fetus, there a fetus, everywhere a fetus. Fetuses that didn’t look like the nebulous tadpole creatures I was used to seeing in biology books, but baby-like. Even the tiniest of fetuses looked like a chubby newborn.

  The woman stopped directly across from the only exam room with a closed door. She clasped her hands together in the same sanctimonious motion she’d used when she first saw us.

  “It is my great pleasure to show you these rooms,” she said, projecting her voice across the hall. “It is such an important part of our work. In exchange for attending our counseling sessions, we help the girls with whatever they decide. If they want to keep the child, we help them sign up for assistance programs. But, more often, we help them find loving homes for their babies with good Christian families.” She paused for a moment and bowed her head dramatically. “Of course, THEY NEED TO KEEP COMING TO COUNSELING SESSIONS TO GET ANY OF THIS,” she bellowed toward the closed door. “AS EVIDENCE OF THEIR REPENTANCE.”

  I jumped back at the fire and brimstone. I glanced at Melissa, who under other circumstances would probably tell the woman that Planned Parenthood did all the same things without requiring repentance.

  “Um, what if they decide that they want an abortion? How do you keep them from that?” Melissa asked in a pinched voice.

  The woman blinked and frowned so deeply that her whole face seemed like it was composed of nothing but a downturned mouth. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said, shaking her head. “We can’t even let them think about that. Their souls would be in mortal danger from taking a life, and that’s the foremost thing we must stress. But for those who don’t believe as we do, it’s our duty to let them know of the...other consequences.”

  She said the last sentence conspiratorially.

  “What do you mean the, uh, ‘other consequences’?” I asked, trying not to look at Melissa. She had to be hanging by a thread.

  The woman widened her eyes. “Oh, you must be very new. Reagan is very well-informed about the biological consequences that girls can face if they go through with an abortion. I’m surprised she hasn’t told you.”

  I finally looked at Melissa. Behind her smile, she looked volcanically angry, like the time last year when our biology teacher dismissed evolution as “only a theory.” A twitch appeared at the corner of her mouth, and her hands were shaking. I shot her a look, and she crammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

  “Oh, no, ma’am, we’re so new,” I said apologetically. “Just went to our first meeting a couple of weeks ago. We haven’t learned everything yet.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy the woman, and she nodded. “Well...” She gestured for us to follow her down the hall. “There’s an increased risk of breast and uterine cancer—” Melissa shook her head behind the woman’s back “—and an increased risk of infertility—” Melissa rolled her eyes “—and a whole host of complications that can arise from such a dangerous procedure, especially if the woman has VD.”

  None of this was scientifically accurate, or even remotely true. I’d looked up the statistics before I wrote the medical essay for Melissa’s zine.

  Beside me, Melissa let out an angry, strangled sound. She tried to play it off as a cough, but the woman turned around abruptly as we got to the final room.

  “And this is our headquarters, though Reagan probably told you...” Her voice trailed off as she took in the sight of Melissa’s red face and uncomfortable grimace of a smile.

  “Sooo, uh, this is where you organize for protests?” I interrupted, trying to get the woman to look at me instead of Melissa.

  “Oh, yes.” Her gaze flitted to me for only a moment before returning to Melissa. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  This was it. “Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “Like I said, we, uh, just got into the cause. You know, it became so important after this summer.”


  The woman nodded, scrutinizing Melissa.

  “You know.” She narrowed her eyes. “There have been a lot of interesting converts lately. Some whose motives I suspect. You wouldn’t be the first ones—or even the first ones this week—who don’t seem to know as much as you should. And I don’t think Reagan is at fault.”

  We were at the back of the building, trapped behind enemy lines, with a long, long walk to the front door.

  “Oh, no, ma’am, she isn’t.” I could feel the heat of my lies creeping up my face. I grabbed Melissa’s arm and started pulling her backward through the building.

  “Wait.” Melissa jerked her arm away from me. She faced the woman with an almost—but not quite—contrite look, the way she looked at Mrs. Breaux when she tried to get out of detention. “I’m sorry. This whole thing is...overwhelming. I just wasn’t prepared for some of the more, uh, graphic imagery. Um, did you say that other girls came here this week for materials?”

  The woman’s prairie dress and hair-sprayed curls jiggled as she nodded. “Oh, of course,” she said. “It can be overwhelming.” She clasped her hands prayerfully, for at least the third time. “Those girls. All they wanted was the posters we take to protests, which are so harsh by necessity. I can see that you’re different from them now. You’re so tenderhearted that you’re barely able to stomach the truth. I can’t imagine you’d want those posters, at least not yet.”

  The idea of Melissa being tenderhearted, along with the idea that this was a “friendly” space, was absurd, almost funny. But the general panic of the situation kept me from laughing.

  “No, ma’am, you’re right, we’re not quite ready for those right now. We should probably just take those pamphlets you got for us and go.” I tugged on Melissa’s arm.

  The woman nodded sagely. “You know, the box is very heavy. I can have one of our boys deliver the pamphlets to your school tomorrow.”

  “That would be so wonderful, thank you!” I nudged Melissa to get moving. Her face had gone from contrite to sour after the woman called her tenderhearted. As we retraced our steps to the front office, she grimaced at every poster, threw double birds at false medical charts, and snarled silently at the woman behind her back. We had maybe thirty seconds before she would blow up.