The Nowhere Girls Read online

  Then Otis was quiet. And Erin was confused because she thought she was supposed to be happy because silence was what she wanted the whole time he was talking, but then when it finally happened, something about it didn’t feel good, something hurt inside and Erin had no idea why, so she told Mr. Trilling she had to go cool off, which means go to the library to read about fish, which is what she says when everyone is acting so stupid she has to leave, except this time she had to leave because she’s the one who acted stupid, and all she wanted was to take back what she said to Otis Goldberg because she realized he did nothing but be nice to her.

  Erin should be watching the real Wesley Crusher on her daily episode of TNG instead of thinking about the fake boy-bun Wesley Crusher named Otis Goldberg, but instead she’s trapped in her room while her parents monopolize the whole downstairs with their fighting, which is where the TV is, which is where she watches TNG. Erin is forbidden from watching shows in her room, because Mom does not want her to isolate any more than she already does, which is a lot, but not nearly as much since this whole Nowhere Girls business started, which has completely thrown her off schedule, which has quite frankly changed everything, and Erin is still not quite sure how she feels about it, except that she misses her room, she misses Data and Captain Jean-Luc Picard and all her friends on the USS Enterprise, she misses her old house in Seattle, she misses her old beach, she misses her old school and her old life and everything she had and everything she was before she did the thing with Casper Pennington that made her have to leave.

  The world is moving too fast and she cannot adapt fast enough. It is getting harder to push bad thoughts away. They are a poison, spreading. Everything is a reminder, threatening to pull the memories from deep inside where she has them buried. Every day Erin is getting less like Data and more like the raw nerve she’s worked so hard to hide. She is falling apart. She is falling. She is lost in space and she has nothing to hold on to and she has no control over anything.

  Erin wonders why Spot is getting up, why he’s climbing over her to move to this end of the bed. She only realizes she’s crying when he starts licking the tears off her cheeks. “I love you,” she says to Spot, and he’s the only one she ever says it to.

  US.

  Mom and Dad are both busy tonight with church stuff, so Grace is eating her microwaved dinner in front of the computer while she Facebook stalks her old friends in Adeline. Judging from recent pictures and vague, heavily exclamation-pointed status updates, nothing much has changed. One of her friends is “really excited!” about her new kitten. One of them is “really bummed!” that she got a B on her chemistry quiz. One of them is asking her thirty-seven Facebook friends for prayers as she sends in her application to Boyce College. One reposted some meme with a picture of a defiant toddler making a fist and “Back off devil, I belong to Jesus!” written in Comic Sans font.

  And that’s it. Four friends. Grace can’t really think of anyone else to Facebook stalk. She grew up with these girls, spent almost every weekend with at least one of them, yet she feels no trace of missing them. She wonders what they would think of her new friends, about what she’s doing, what she’s becoming. They might pray for her, but only after they talked behind her back and vowed to never speak to her again.

  Grace always yearned to feel a part of something, and for a long time she felt secure with her place in youth group, in her church, in her tiny clique of friends. It was a small, sturdy box she shoved herself inside because there didn’t seem to be any other reasonable choices. But this, now, whatever this is, feels different. It’s not even a box. It’s something she’s building to fit her, a place in the world that is adapting and growing and changing as she changes. She’s a part of something she’s helping to create, not something premade that someone else decided was good for her.

  It was Grace who decided this was good for her.

  Grace decided.

  * * *

  Two friends kiss.

  “Are we allowed to do this?” one of them says.

  “There’s no rule against kissing girls,” says the other.

  “I wonder if all the Nowhere Girls are kissing each other now,” says the first.

  “They should,” giggles the other.

  * * *

  This girl cringes as she points her phone toward her naked body and presses the button to make the image permanent. She only glances at it as she types out the words: Remember you promised to not show this to ANYONE!

  She didn’t want to do it, but he begged and begged until she said yes. He said if she wasn’t going to have sex with him during the strike, she had to give him something. Better a picture of her than porn. Better her than someone else.

  But as soon as she presses send, her stomach lurches. What have I done? she thinks. Now the photo is out there, uncontrollable. He owns this image of her body. He owns her.

  * * *

  A girl lies on her bed facing her boyfriend.

  “Come on, tell me,” he teases, stroking his fingers lightly across her arm the way he knows always gets her excited.

  She picks up his hand and places it back on the bed. “You know I can’t tell you who comes to the meetings,” she says. “That’d be breaking so much trust.”

  “At least tell me some of the stuff you talk about. You don’t have to name anyone.”

  “It’s confidential.”

  “Fine,” he says, rolling over onto his back. “Whatever.”

  “What do you mean, whatever?” The girl sits up.

  “I mean, whatever.” He does not look at her.

  “I feel like you’re not supporting me,” she says.

  He takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes. He opens them. He looks at her for a moment, then stares back up at the ceiling. “It’s getting hard to support you,” he finally says. “It feels like the whole thing is about hating men or something. And I’m, like, a man, so I kind of take it personally.”

  “I don’t hate men,” she says, her voice shaking with hurt, or anger, or both. “I just hate what some men do. I hate that they get away with it.”

  “I get it,” he says, sitting up to face her. “I hate that stuff too. But you’re all talking about the bad stuff all the time, so it seems like that’s all you think there is. But there are good guys too. And most guys are probably somewhere in the middle. What about them?” He pauses. He waits for her to meet his eyes. “What about me?”

  She thinks she hears his voice crack. He looks away, but not before she notices the new wetness in his eyes. She opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes out.

  “I know I’m not perfect,” he says. “But I try to be a good boyfriend. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she says.

  His eyes bore into hers, begging. “Do you think I’m like them?” he says softly. “Do you think I’m a bad guy?”

  “No,” she says immediately, because she knows it’s the answer he needs to hear. She wraps her arms around him because she knows he needs to be comforted. They hold each other for a long time, and she can feel the relief in his body just as she notices the rising tension in hers. She knows it’s true that she loves him, but she wonders if maybe there is a little part of herself, deep down, that doesn’t trust him, that believes there is some latent animal part of him, part of all men, that’s like those guys, that’s bad, and there’s nothing he, or she, or anyone, can do to fix it.

  * * *

  Krista’s and Trista’s families sit beside each other at a wedding that is like almost every other wedding they’ve attended. Same music, same suits, same floral arrangements. Same words coming out of Pastor Skinner’s mouth. Same tired old reading from Ephesians:

  “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

  Krista and Trista look at each othe
r and roll their darkly penciled eyes.

  * * *

  A girl takes her dog out for his afternoon walk. She feels her phone buzz in her pocket with a new text message: U like? The attached photo glares at her from the screen and hijacks the good day she was having until now, replacing it with a sick feeling that spreads through her entire body.

  When did she ever give that douche bag in her economics class the impression that she wanted him to send her a picture of his pink, crooked dick? How can it be so easy for him to force his body into her vision like this, without her permission?

  She looks away from the dick pic and sees her dog crouched over the ground, concentrating. She bends down, holds out her phone and clicks, then presses send to reply with a picture of her dog’s fresh warm turd and the text message: U like?

  * * *

  A girl searches on the Internet: How do girls masturbate?

  ROSINA.

  In a miracle of scheduling, Rosina has a whole glorious Saturday off work and babysitting until the Nowhere Girls meeting tonight. Is this what it feels like to be a normal teenager? To have hours on end to sit around and do whatever you want, to do nothing, to listen to music and stare at the ceiling and dream about the life you’re going to have, someday, as soon as you make it out of this one?

  Mom’s at work, of course. Tía Blanca is watching all the kids next door. Rosina already finished her homework, so now all she has to do is go downstairs to check on Abuelita once in a while. Otherwise, she’s free to turn her music on as loud as she wants (Abuelita’s hard of hearing) and let the voices of her idols carry her away to a place where she is strong and fearless, where she can imagine herself onstage with them—harmonizing vocals with Corin Tucker, playing guitar next to Kathleen Hanna.

  Bang bang bang, says the door.

  “Rosina, open up,” says her mother on the other side.

  No, Rosina thinks, closing her eyes. Something seizes in her chest. Mami has an uncanny sense of the exact right time to crush Rosina, always right at the moment she is starting to feel free.

  “Rosina!” Bang bang bang.

  “It’s not locked,” Rosina mumbles. Of course it’s not locked. Mom had Uncle Ephraim remove the lock as soon as Rosina started puberty.

  Mami has a way of opening the door that always seems somewhat violent to Rosina. Like she’s a ball of anger and everything she touches explodes.

  “Turn that noise off!” Mami shouts over the music.

  Rosina rolls over on her bed and shuts off her stereo, saying a silent good-bye to the Butchies. “What?” she says in her best bitchy teen snarl.

  “Elena called in sick,” Mom says, scowling at a poster of a sweaty, tattooed, and scantily clad female musician onstage. “You have to come in to work.”

  Rosina bolts upright. “No,” she says firmly. “Absolutely not.”

  “Don’t give me that,” Mami says. “You’re not going to skip work just to lie around doing nothing.”

  “I have plans,” Rosina says. “I have to leave soon.”

  “What plans? Watching TV with that crazy girl?”

  “I told you not to call her that.”

  “Whatever it is can wait until another time,” Mami says, rifling through the pile of clean laundry on the floor that Rosina still hasn’t managed to fold and put away. She picks up a black shirt, smells it, then throws it at Rosina. “Here.”

  Rosina throws it back. “I’m not going.”

  Their eyes lock. Mami stands completely still. A rock. A mountain.

  “You are going to work,” Mami says slowly. “Get dressed.”

  “It’s my day off,” Rosina says.

  “Your family needs you.”

  Fuck my family, Rosina thinks. But it’s like Mami heard her, like she read Rosina’s mind, because her eyes narrow as if in response. Rosina can read her mother’s mind too. She hears her when she thinks, This means war.

  “How did I end up with such a lazy and ungrateful daughter?” Mami says.

  “Lazy?” Rosina says. “Are you insane? I work my fucking ass off for you people.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Mami hisses.

  Rosina stands up. “I’m in high school, Mami. In case you didn’t know, I’m supposed to be learning shit, maybe even—God forbid!—having fun once in a while. I’m not supposed to be working almost every school night. I’m not supposed to be taking care of everybody else’s fucking kids.”

  “How dare you talk to me like that,” Mami says, stepping closer. “You need to treat your mother with respect. I do everything for you.”

  “This isn’t about you!” Rosina shouts. “All I’m saying is I don’t want to go to work on my day off. I have plans. That’s my right.”

  Mami takes another step forward until they are only inches apart. She has to lift her head to meet her daughter’s eyes. “Your right?” she says. “You want to talk about your rights?” She stabs her pointer finger into Rosina’s chest. “Your family and the restaurant are what keeps a roof over your head and gives you food to eat. If you don’t appreciate it, maybe you don’t need it. Maybe you don’t deserve to live in the house I work so hard for. Maybe you need to be out on your own, see what the real world is like with all your rights you care so much about.”

  “Mami, that’s not what I—”

  “All you care about is yourself,” Mami says. “You don’t care about me. You don’t care about your family.”

  Something inside Rosina breaks. How dare she say that? All Rosina has ever done is take care of her goddamned family and try to make Mami happy.

  “Maybe you should try it sometime,” Rosina says, staring daggers into her mother’s eyes. “Maybe you need to think about yourself more and less about this family. That’s why you’re so mad. Because you’re jealous of me. Because I’m at least trying to have my own life, when all you do is what other people tell you.”

  “You’d have nothing without your family,” Mami says. Low. Snarling. “You wouldn’t even be here. You’d be nothing.”

  I’m already nothing, Rosina thinks.

  “But what if this isn’t what I even want?” Rosina says.

  And then the something inside Mami breaks too. “Fine!” she shouts, pushing Rosina in the chest so hard she falls back on her bed. “If this isn’t what you want, get out! Get out of my face! Get out of my house! You ungrateful puta.”

  Rosina jumps up and storms past her mother, knocking her as hard as she can with her shoulder. This is it, she thinks. This is the time she doesn’t come back. This is the time Mami throws all of Rosina’s shit on the front lawn and changes the locks and she never sees her family again.

  She storms downstairs in nothing but a ratty pair of leggings and an old T-shirt. She is burning, on fire. Her blood is made of lava. But even in her rage, she does not forget Abuelita. Good, sweet Abuelita. How did such a kind and gentle woman create such a monster? Rosina must at least kiss her good-bye. Even if Abuelita won’t remember. Even if she doesn’t even know who Rosina is.

  But where is she? She’s not on the couch watching TV. She’s not in her bedroom taking a nap. She’s not in the bathroom. Not in the kitchen.

  “Abuelita!” Rosina calls. “¿Dónde estás?” Nothing. “Abuelita!” she screams.

  “What happened?” Mom yells as she runs down the stairs.

  “She’s not here,” Rosina cries. “I looked everywhere.”

  For a moment they forget to be mad at each other. At the same time, their heads turn toward the front door. The weak early evening light shines through the open crack.

  They burst out the door. They call for Abuelita. Nothing. The day is overcast, a thick blanket of gray clouds hanging low in the sky, so misleading in their softness. Rosina’s eyes scan the neighborhood for any sign of a shuffling old lady, but everything is still. There are usually kids playing in front yards, people washing cars or pruning bushes, but it is eerily quiet today, as if everyone’s hiding.

  “Get in the car,” Mami commands.
<
br />   “But wouldn’t it make more sense if—”

  “Get. In. The. Car.”

  Rosina hops in the passenger seat while Mami starts the car. She starts driving before Rosina has a chance to fasten her seat belt.

  They roll down the street, calling for Abuelita out the window. There are more signs of life as they get closer to the highway—other cars, people walking.

  “Shouldn’t we talk to someone?” Rosina says. “Shouldn’t we ask people if they’ve seen her?”

  But Mami’s eyes stay glued to the road, her hands fists on the steering wheel, her thin lips so tight they’re nonexistent. This family does not ask outsiders for help. This family takes care of itself.

  They turn onto the busy street that leads to the highway on-ramp, all six lanes and a median, the fast cars and stoplights, the turn lanes and crosswalks, the big-box stores and fast-food restaurants, the bright lights and blinking signs. Abuelita must be so scared, Rosina thinks. Does she remember that things like this exist? Or does she think she still lives in the little Oaxacan mountain village she left years ago? Is she wandering around here, lost, thinking she stumbled onto another planet?