Rebel Girls Read online

  I shook my head. “You’ve got it wrong. I totally support Melissa, but I was in Eugene at my mom’s all summer.”

  “But your sister?” Wisteria looked at me with a face that mirrored my own confusion, tilting her head to one side and scrunching up her face so much that the curlicue eyeliner crinkled in on itself at the corners of her eyes.

  “Helen was in Eugene with me all summer?” Now I was doing the question-voice thing, too, and tilted my head to mirror hers.

  “Oh. Oh.” Wisteria’s eyes widened with an epiphany that I clearly wasn’t in on. “Never mind? I think I was given some bad intel?”

  Okay, now that my sister was in the mix of a sentence involving “bad intel,” I needed to know what it was. I suspected it had something to do with that weird interaction between Leah and Helen almost two weeks ago, but since then, Helen had clammed up whenever I asked her about it, saying it was no big deal. She eventually resorted to putting on headphones and playing CDs on her Discman during Hurricane Andrew’s landfall so she wouldn’t have to talk to me. Then she’d ignored me all weekend, saying my cello practice was annoying her, and wound up going to her friend Sara’s house. Whatever was going on, she didn’t want my help.

  “Wisteria, can you please tell me what you heard?” I pleaded. I wanted to be patient, but it felt like Wisteria had an aversion to being direct. And while it wasn’t Wisteria’s fault that I felt so in the dark, I’d had enough of being the only one who didn’t know what was going on.

  “Really, Red, I think I just got confused,” she said with a hesitant smile. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you!” She paused again, and her smile faded. “It’s just—I heard that you and your sister were more, like, involved with the protests than that. Like, you may want to talk with your sister.” She widened her eyes with emphasis, like I was supposed to understand.

  “Oooh-kaay.” I shrugged my backpack up on my shoulder. I usually let Helen fight her own battles, but this seemed serious. After school, I’d check in with her to see if she was all right.

  But right now, physics—and the Cute Boy—called.

  * * *

  I forgot all about Wisteria’s ominous mention of my sister within the first two minutes of physics, when Mrs. Breaux called the Cute Boy to the chalkboard.

  “Kyle Buchanan, please work out problem three on page twenty-five.”

  That’s it, I thought. That’s his name! I’d been trying to find it out since the first day of school, but had so far hit speed bumps during our two classes together. Neither Mrs. Breaux or our calculus teacher, Mr. Loring, took attendance, and since the other students were all at least a year ahead of me, I didn’t know anyone except Melissa well enough to ask. Now, finally, at the end of the third week of school, I knew his name: Kyle Buchanan.

  Suddenly, the thought that he might be related to Pat Buchanan entered my brain, and my hopes deflated. He couldn’t be, though. He was too attractive to be related to that lumpy potato-faced man. I would die if he shared genes with a guy whose speech at the Republican National Convention made Mom so angry she actually stopped working on her book and went on a long, sputtering rant about how the Republicans were priming the nation for a fascist dictatorship.

  There was no way this perfect guy was related to a fascist. I watched dreamily as he wrote out the physics problem on the board. His back faced the class, his face shadowed by his hair when he turned slightly to the side. Even from the back, he was the hottest guy I’d ever seen. His white uniform Oxford shirt hung perfectly off his broad shoulders. The shirt was tucked perfectly into the plaid uniform pants that outlined his perfect, callipygian derriere. Everything about him was perfect.

  But I didn’t want to be caught staring when he eventually came back to his seat, so I looked down at my notebook. Then I became acutely aware of how weird and antisocial I must look with my nose two inches from my book, so I tried to look at him, but not too obviously. I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to catch his smile, but I also didn’t want to seem like a creep. I couldn’t seem to get the balance right.

  “Where did you go to high school before?” Mrs. Breaux asked when he finished.

  “I went to the International School in Brussels for the past two years.”

  Wow. It wasn’t that weird to hear of someone who’d spent a few years in Brussels, but it was still intriguing. Brussels was the one international city that kids with parents who worked at Exxon might suddenly go off to, when their dad—and it was always their dad—got a promotion. Most of the kids who came back from Brussels didn’t go to St. Ann’s, though. They went to St. Christopher’s or St. Ursula’s, the all-boys’ and all-girls’ schools, respectively, or even Baton Rouge High. It was always some school with a better respected, Old Baton Rouge pedigree and not the School that Suburban White Flight Built.

  “Well, they seem to have been adept at making you memorize formulae. You can sit down now. Caitlyn Comeau—” Mrs. Breaux called someone else to the board, but my eyes were still on Kyle.

  He walked back to his seat, three behind my own. As he passed by me, he smiled, and I somehow managed to smile back.

  I also blushed.

  I told myself not to get excited, but my internal dialogue was in all caps. HE SMILED AT ME. The Cute Boy—Kyle—had smiled at me! Maybe he didn’t think of me as a complete weirdo after I grabbed his backpack and mistook him for a girl much shorter than he was. It was the best I could hope for.

  A tap on my shoulder snapped me out of my reverie. I turned red, thinking for a second it could be a note from Kyle. Then I came to my senses. Melissa sat two desks behind me a row over, and the note was tightly folded into her signature sharp origami-inspired triangle.

  As I pried opened the note, my hand slipped. The tearing sound of paper, much louder than I expected, echoed outward from my desk. I held my breath, hoping it couldn’t possibly have been as loud as I’d heard it in my head.

  “Miss Graves? Please bring that note forward,” Mrs. Breaux said.

  It was that loud. Shit.

  Tendrils of heat crept up my cheeks. I walked toward Mrs. Breaux’s desk, my black Oxfords squeaking against the waxed linoleum with each step. I didn’t know if I imagined the sound, or if, like the ripping note, the shoes were magically amplified due to Mrs. Breaux’s presence.

  “Would you like me to share your note with the class?” Mrs. Breaux’s eyes challenged me from above her oversize red plastic glasses, which took up more than half her face and stood out against her milky white skin and bright red hair.

  “No, ma’am,” I said, remembering Mrs. Breaux required Southern politeness at all times. That note could say anything, from a report on Melissa’s date to plans for this weekend to more about this summer’s abortion protests. Fear and embarrassment bloomed in me at the thought of her reading it aloud, especially if Melissa had written something about Kyle.

  “Then I hope that this won’t happen again,” she said. “May I please have the note?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Breaux unlocked her desk, metal grinding against metal as she pulled the top drawer out. I cringed, more from a sense of impending punishment than from the sound. She placed the note inside the desk and closed the drawer, carefully turning the key in the lock.

  “Miss Graves, I will see you after class,” she said. “And you also, Miss Lemoine.”

  I sat through the rest of class facing the ominous certainty of detention. Most teachers ignored note passing, but Mrs. Breaux was a draconian ruler. She didn’t like talking out of turn, note passing, whispering to clarify homework assignments, or quiz answers that deviated from the way she taught formula solving—even if the answer was right, and especially if you’d figured out a smarter way to find it.

  I shouldn’t care about being punished. But the fact was, I did. I didn’t want to explain to my dad that I’d gotten into trouble for something trivial
. I think he’d be fine if I got into trouble for standing up for my principles, but for passing a note? I’d get a long lecture about taking classes seriously, for sure.

  Finally, the bell rang. I walked with dread toward Mrs. Breaux for the second time. Melissa, a defiant look on her face, joined me.

  “Ladies, what do you have to say for yourselves?” Mrs. Breaux asked. Her mouth turned down at the corners like an angry Muppet. It would have been funny if she weren’t so terrifying.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have been reading a note in class.”

  It wasn’t very riot grrrl–esque to care this much about detention, but my palms were sweating.

  “I’m sorry, too,” Melissa said. She didn’t look remorseful, but at least she sounded polite.

  Mrs. Breaux scanned the note, her reading glasses slipping down her nose. She held the paper up, using it as a pointer to accuse us of wrongdoing.

  “Yo, Athena—Now, isn’t that a nice way to talk to your best friend?—Is the point of physics to make us question our existence or to want to end it?—My, I’m glad you shared that with me!—I saw the Cute Boy smile at you! Maybe he likes you—Oh, how touching, young love—What are you doing this afternoon? Want to come over and help me dye my hair? I want it blue (you’re so right about dyeing it that color!) for tomorrow when I go out with Jason. I already have the Manic Panic.”

  Mrs. Breaux eyed Melissa critically. “As if you need any more ways to violate the school’s dress code, my dear,” she remarked drily, then continued reading. “Jason and I are going to see whoever’s playing at the Varsity. I hope he has a fake ID—Thank you, Miss Lemoine, for letting me know you are breaking the law! I doubt your father will like hearing about this—Do you think he does? You’re right. He is a bit scholarly. But he’s funny, and cute...and a good kisser—Oh, how I needed to know that, Miss Lemoine—Gotta go, best wishes for living through this dull class—Thank you for that kind assessment—Peace out, Melissa.”

  Mrs. Breaux folded the note sharply in two and glared bullishly over her reading glasses.

  “This note is absolutely inappropriate, Miss Lemoine,” she said. “Though I’m not surprised it came from you, considering your summer activities. Like many people at this school, I am surprised that you’re still here this fall, considering our pro-life policy.”

  She paused to give Melissa a long, withering stare. Melissa’s face remained expressionless, but I could tell from her clenched fists that she wanted to talk back. I shook my head at her slightly, hoping Mrs. Breaux wouldn’t notice.

  “Miss Lemoine, I will see you tomorrow morning for detention.”

  Melissa nodded, because there was nothing else to do. Mrs. Breaux had skipped over the reasonable option of after-school detention, which Melissa could avoid telling her parents about by making up an excuse about staying late at school, and gone straight to the nuclear option of Saturday-morning detention. She would have to tell her parents.

  Then Mrs. Breaux turned to me. I shrank back, certain she was going to give me the same punishment as Melissa. “As for you, Miss Graves, I’m giving you a warning.” Relief shuddered through me, followed by a wave of angry annoyance when Mrs. Breaux added, “And I suggest you stop associating with Miss Lemoine, unless you also want to spend more time with me.”

  Melissa and I rushed out into the deserted hall together. I gulped in the air of freedom, even though it was technically the same air as in the classroom.

  “God, she’s awful,” a voice behind us said.

  I turned to see who’d spoken to us. Kyle, the Cute Boy, leaned casually against the lockers, like he’d been waiting.

  “What are you doing here?” Melissa asked. “I hope you weren’t eavesdropping.”

  She sounded pissed. Guilt crept into my brain. After all, I’d escaped unpunished, but she would be hanging out with Mrs. Breaux tomorrow morning.

  “No, I left my books for the next class in there.” He smiled at me, but I had a hard time smiling back. Recovering from Mrs. Breaux’s threats would take time, even if most of them weren’t directed at me. “I didn’t know if she’d let me in after lunch.”

  “Want to eat with us?” The words popped out of my mouth unexpectedly, and I lost my ability to speak for the next few seconds, surprised that I’d managed to say something to the Cute Boy. It hadn’t been a very long sentence, but it was clearly spoken and made sense.

  Kyle’s smile widened. “Sure. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria after I get my books.”

  His answer surprised me even more. All thoughts of Mrs. Breaux disappeared from my mind as I nodded at him and walked to the cafeteria with Melissa.

  6

  In the cafeteria, I sat across from Kyle, and Melissa sat next to me. As I looked at Kyle, my stomach flipped and a deathly silence descended on our table.

  I was in shock. I’d asked the Cute Boy—Kyle—to eat lunch with us. I reminded myself that it was just lunch. It wasn’t a date or anything. He was new at our school, new enough that asking him to eat lunch with us wasn’t crossing cliques or an affront to some girlfriend, at least as far as I knew. I had no idea what he did after school, though. He could have half a dozen girlfriends.

  I tried not to think about that. Instead, I racked my brain frantically for something to talk about. Since the first day I’d latched onto his backpack, I’d been thinking of all the things I wanted to talk about with him. Now that we were sitting together in the cafeteria, though, they’d all disappeared from my brain. It was like going into a record store, knowing that I wanted a specific band’s latest CD, but all memory of what I was looking for vanished as soon as I crossed the threshold into the store.

  Instead, my mind buzzed with a thousand boring small-talk topics that would make me sound like the therapist my dad made me and Helen see after he divorced Mom—So, what’s your family like? What does your father do?—or like a complete freak—So, it doesn’t seem like you’ve joined any clubs or sports, as far as I know. What do you do when you’re not at school?

  So I can stalk you.

  “Did y’all see that Ross Perot might reenter the presidential race? That guy’s got some straaange ideas,” Melissa said, in her version of “How about that local sports team?”

  I had to think fast, or else Melissa would dominate the conversation with a political diatribe. There was nothing less romance inducing than your friend going on a rant about the lasting legacy of trickle-down Reaganomics or what she planned to spray-paint on the fake abortion clinic near LSU, which lured pregnant girls in with false pretenses of help but didn’t actually offer any medical services. I had to say something.

  “Do we have to talk about him?” I asked. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, which scraped fartingly against the floor. Great. Now I sounded awkward and flatulent.

  Kyle let out an uncomfortable half-cough sound across from me. He ran his hand through his hair, which was either a nervous tic or something to fill up the awkward pause.

  “Who are you going to vote for in the mock election, then?” Melissa asked.

  Oh, no. She wasn’t letting go of the politics. I wanted to hear the answer, and yet I also didn’t. In the fake “open primary” we had last spring, only seventeen people voted for a Democratic candidate. Everybody else voted for President Bush. I didn’t think much would have changed in six months. When I told Ms. Boudreaux, my history teacher, that I thought Bill Clinton had better ideas than President Bush, she chided me for “being swayed by his charm.” I thought it was super gross of her to imply that I had a crush on him. I didn’t, of course, but even if I had, his dorky saxophone performance on Arsenio Hall’s show would have killed it dead. There was nothing worse than someone my dad’s age trying to be cool.

  Except maybe Melissa’s obsession with talking politics.

  “Melissa,” I hissed before Kyle could answer. I accompanied that hiss with an under-the
-table kick to her shin.

  “Ow! Oh, hey,” Melissa said. “Kyle’s got the same backpack I do.”

  She returned my sharp kick under the table. I glanced at the backpack. She was definitely smarter than I was when it came to boys. She was nudging me to ask him what music he liked, something I knew about. And there was a Clinton/Gore button, which answered the election question. I let out an audible sigh.

  “Oh, yeah,” Kyle said. “I meant to ask you about—”

  But he didn’t get a chance to ask whatever question he had. Just when I thought the relationship gods had smiled on me with the favor of a boy with similar musical and political tastes, doom followed in the form of Leah Sullivan and her ever-annoying sidekick, Aimee Blanchard.

  My jaw clenched automatically, and suddenly I remembered something—not any of those things that I wanted to talk about with Kyle, which was fine now that I had a legitimate topic in terms of music, thanks to Melissa’s eagle eye—but about Wisteria. And Helen. And, of course, Leah.

  Leah slid into the seat to the left of Kyle, and Aimee on his right, forming a sandwich that was like a moldy bun around the most perfectly cooked hamburger ever. I had to get rid of the moldy bun before it spoiled the rest of my hamburger, but I couldn’t do that until I found out what Leah was suddenly doing at my lunch table, and what she was doing to my sister.

  “Hey, y’all,” Leah said cheerfully, as though it was perfectly natural for her to join us at lunch. Her Southern accent lilted with charm and cuteness. She flashed Kyle a smile that sent a hot flame of jealousy through my stomach.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at the cheerleaders’ meeting?” Melissa asked with a false sweetness through clenched teeth.