The Nowhere Girls Read online

  2. Early-twenties community college student. Picked her up at local bar where she was out with girlfriends. She was definitely hottest of the bunch. Negged her into submission by first hitting on her friend to make her jealous. A little too drunk, so she just sort of laid there. Passed out in my bed, puked in my bathroom, and made me drive her home in the morning.

  3. Midtwenties hippie chick with big tits. Didn’t realize she had hairy armpits until it was too late. Her wildness in bed made up for it. Would consider adding her to my long-term harem if she agreed to shave and wash her hair more often.

  4. Seventeen-year-old slut I knew from high school. Hot body, but too insecure to be high value. Being too easy makes it less fun. The conquest is part of the turn-on.

  5. Trailer trash, indeterminate age, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five. Could have been number 4’s mom for all I know. She was all over me at a bar, I didn’t even have to throw any game. Okay sex, but a little too eager to please. She’s still pretty hot now, but I can tell this one’s on her way to becoming a fifty-year-old barfly.

  6. Nineteen-year-old skinny, lazy stoner. Loved to fuck all night. Was part of my harem for a couple of months. Ended up in the hospital for a few days with some kind of infection, asked me to visit her. Fucked her in the bathroom when she was high on painkillers. Too doped up to say much, but whatever.

  7. Eighteen-year-old blonde from out of town I met online. Dumb as a brick. Nothing special about this one. Did her in the back of my car, then never called her back.

  8. Seventeen to eighteen years old. I made the mistake of actually agreeing to be this one’s “boyfriend” for a year in high school, though of course I was still getting tail on the side. She started out hella hot, A+ grade, but got more and more pathetic the longer we were together. Finally got rid of her shortly after graduation. Good riddance to damaged goods.

  9. Seventeen-year-old chubby girl from school. I had a girlfriend and she had a boyfriend, but she got drunk at a party when he was out of town and told me she’d had a crush on me since sixth grade. Fat girls are so easy. Mostly a pity fuck on my part. She was so grateful.

  10. Sixteen-year-old redhead (whose carpet matched the curtains, by the way). Football groupie who talked too much and would do anything to party with the big boys. There’s something so fun about virgins. It’s so sweet how insecure they are, how they’re so willing to do what they’re told. You have so much power automatically, and they love it.

  11. Fifteen-year-old freshman nobody, got her so drunk she couldn’t say no. Kind of messy and mostly just laid there, but busting a nut is busting a nut.

  12. Sixteen-year-old who followed me around at school for weeks like a puppy. She was so grateful when I finally kissed her at a party. Didn’t take long to get her upstairs and naked. Boring and needy. Apparently she’s head cheerleader now.

  13. Sixteen-year-old hot girl from another school. Got her drunk and she immediately turned into a raging slut. Strung this one along for a few weeks until she started getting clingy and wanting commitment, then I kicked her to the curb.

  14. Fourteen-year-old. My first. Watching porn for the previous few years set me up to expect more. Her tits were too small for one thing, and her bush needed trimming. She had no idea what to do at first, but over time I showed her how to please. Her future boyfriends will thank me.

  —AlphaGuy541

  GRACE.

  Grace is not in the mood for church today. For one, she hardly got any sleep last night. What started with reading The Real Men of Prescott blog turned into nearly three hours of torture as she started clicking on links until she found herself deep inside the manosphere, on forums where men exchanged date-rape tips, on websites that suggested men move to impoverished countries where women don’t put up a fight and there are no laws to protect them.

  The world is a sick place, Grace thinks. It is a place where people can post things like that, spreading hate and darkness, and no one holds them accountable. It is a place where hurting people is too easy, and where helping them is too hard. It is a place where the darkness is winning, where the darkness will always win.

  And Mom’s up there preaching, doing her job, trying to convince this church full of people that there is still light in the world, that it is within reach, that it is within us. Grace doesn’t know if she believes this. She doesn’t know what she believes anymore.

  “John was a witness to the light,” Mom says. “He came to testify. He came to tell the truth of Jesus in a world that did not want to hear it.”

  She pauses and looks out at the silent, rapt congregation. She smiles like she’s about to deliver the punch line of a joke. “And it was good news,” she says, incredulous. “It was great news. It was news about God’s grace and love and forgiveness!” She throws up her hands in mock exasperation. “But they didn’t want to hear it. They said thanks, but no thanks. They said we’re just going to keep doing things the way we’ve always done them, even if it’s sort of stopped working for us. These guys were the definition of conservative.” A statement like this would have gotten Mom beheaded at her old church. It gets a few laughs from the congregation, but Grace has no energy for humor.

  “They had no interest in John’s news,” Mom continues, “because it was new and strange and because they knew it would change things. Because it was outside their understanding of tradition, and the way things had always been, and the way things ought to be. Change was scary. It was something to be avoided.

  “Who was this guy leading people to the river and washing their sins away, saying everyone was worthy of redemption? Who was this guy preaching justice, telling soldiers not to kill, telling tax collectors not to steal? Who was this man preaching charity, who said in Luke 3:11, ‘Let anyone who has two coats share with the person who has none; and anyone who has food do the same.’ Who was this crazy guy claiming someone even greater than him, someone even more revolutionary, was on his way, some guy named Jesus, who had the power to wash them, not just in water, but in fire, in the very light of the Lord? The people said to John, ‘Who the hell are you?’ ”

  A few giggles at her creative paraphrasing of Scripture. She pauses to let her words settle, to give people time to get ready to adjust to a more serious vibe. Her face is earnest; her eyes are kind, imploring. She is electric. Her smile is fueled by a love big enough for everyone in the congregation, everyone in Prescott, everyone in the world. But Grace’s heart aches a selfish ache, an ache that shames her, as she wishes the smile was meant for only her and not all these strangers.

  “John 1:23,” Grace’s mom says. “And John said, ‘I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness. Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ”

  The congregation takes a deep breath.

  “One calling in the wilderness.” She pauses. “A lone voice in the wilderness.” Her eyes are gleaming. “One solitary voice speaking truth in a loud, screaming world that does not want to hear it. But John speaks anyway. Because he has to. Because he knows the truth. Because his God makes him brave.

  “My friends, the world needs us to be brave. We live in a world full of suffering and hate and fear and greed, full of injustice, just like John did. Just like Jesus did. It would be easy to throw up our hands and say, ‘There’s no use. This is just the way it is. There’s nothing I—nothing one person—can do to change that.’ And I say to you: Yes, the world is broken. Yes, our leaders are often corrupt and it is difficult to trust them. Yes, we struggle to make ends meet while a few of the world’s richest men hoard enough wealth to house and feed all the starving people of the world. Bullies still seem to run things. The earth is getting sicker and sicker. This world is a hard, hard place to live. Yes to all these things.” She pauses just long enough for everyone to breathe. “But I want you to ask yourselves, is this broken world of ours worth saving?”

  She gives them a moment to consider her question. Grace doesn’t know if she can answer. She doesn’t know if she wants to.

 
; “Jesus thought so,” Mom says. “John thought so. I think so. I think we are all worth saving.”

  Someone in the audience says, “Amen.”

  “The wilderness is large,” she continues, gathering momentum, gaining speed. “It is loud and relentless. It is scary and vast. But our voices, they are louder than we even know. Even our whispers can send ripples that will spread farther than we could ever imagine reaching. One small kindness in a sea of cruelty, one word of truth among lies, these are the seeds that can change the world. Luke 3:8: ‘Let your lives prove your repentance.’ ”

  Someone says, “Hallelujah!”

  “We must do the things that scare us,” Mom says, her voice cracking with passion. “We must do the things we know are right even when everyone else seems to be doing wrong. We must listen to that tiny voice inside ourselves, God’s clear voice in the wilderness of our souls, even when the world is noisy and doing all it can do to drown that voice out. Like John, we must be the voice of one calling in the wilderness. We must speak. John 1:5: ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ My friends, we must be the light.”

  Grace can feel the energy of the room surge, simultaneously crushing her and lifting her up. She can feel everyone eating up Mom’s words, and she knows everything about her message is right and good, but something about Mom’s sermon is too hard to hear. It’s making her skin itch under the fabric of her dress; it is making her sweat. While everyone else feels inspired, she feels judged. Reprimanded. Damned.

  Grace whispers to her father that she’s not feeling well. He smiles and nods but doesn’t take his eyes off Mom. In the midst of everything she’s feeling, Grace is struck with another sadness, a jealousy almost, a yearning. She knows her parents’ love is unique, the way her father adores her mother, the way he admires her so deeply, completely, and without question. Grace has always suspected no high school romance could ever come close to this, so she’s never bothered with boyfriends, never bothered letting anyone in. Has she been set up for a life of disappointment? Is she doomed to be alone? How could she ever dream of having her parents’ fairy-tale kind of love? They live in a magic world where the queen is the one who rules the kingdom, one where the king follows her lead. It’s a beautiful story. But a kingdom is so much bigger than a family. It is a place where a princess can get lost. It is a place where she can be forgotten.

  Grace stands up and walks the full length of the church to the back exits. No disapproving, squinty eyes follow her, no muttered reprimands by thin-haired old ladies. After the heavy wood doors swing closed behind her, she expects the lump in her chest to dissolve, but it stays, heavy and stubborn. Why can’t she just be happy for Mom? Why can’t she believe in her the way Dad does? Why can’t she be part of their dream?

  The halls are empty and silent. Grace leans against the wall, hit with the realization that she has nowhere to go. She has no place for comfort, no place for refuge, no place that feels like home. Her house is still a mess of half-emptied boxes. Her room is full of a lost girl’s screams.

  A bathroom door opens at the end of the hall. The large form of Jesse Camp steps out, wiping his wet hands on the legs of his pants.

  “Oh, hi,” he says. His face opens into a warm smile.

  Grace wipes her eyes. Hardens.

  “Are you okay?” he says. “Are you crying?”

  “No, I am not crying,” she sniffles.

  “Hey, did I do something?” he says. “You gave me, like, dagger eyes at lunch the other day.”

  Grace glares at him, his face so misleading in its softness. “How can you be friends with those guys?”

  “What guys?”

  “You were sitting with Ennis Calhoun at lunch,” Grace says. “Then I saw you in the hall later with Eric Jordan.”

  Jesse’s eyes widen in surprise, but then he looks away and sighs with what Grace suspects is guilt. “Eric is on the football team with me,” he says weakly. “Guys on the team are just sort of automatically friends, you know? And Ennis hangs out with him, so I guess we’re kind of friends by default.”

  “You’re just sort of friends with rapists by default? Like you don’t have a choice in the matter?”

  “There wasn’t any proof,” he says, his voice rising defensively. “That’s what everyone said. They said that girl was lying.”

  “That girl has a name.” Grace tries to kill him with her eyes. When nothing happens, she turns around and storms away.

  “Wait, Grace,” he says. She stops walking but keeps her back to him. “You don’t understand. You weren’t here. Everything was crazy after Lucy said all that stuff. Everyone at school, the whole town was, like, falling apart.”

  “Yeah?” she says. “The town was falling apart?” She turns her head and looks him in the eyes. “How do you think she felt?”

  Grace is suddenly, acutely, aware of a new feeling burning inside her. It is a shift away from the heavy stillness of sadness, toward something faster, hotter, something that until now had been out of her reach.

  Anger. Fury. Rage. It takes strength just to feel it.

  Jesse says nothing as Grace walks back into the chapel she escaped just moments ago. Nobody seems to notice as she walks down the aisle, as she sits back down next to her father just in time to catch the grand finale of Mom’s sermon. The energy of the room envelops her and she is carried away with the rest of the congregation, her anger and sadness and feelings she cannot name swept up with the roomful of other lives, other passions and disappointments, other secrets, other loves, other lies. She closes her eyes and imagines she is one of many—nameless, faceless, not her mother’s daughter. She listens to the powerful voice talk about how Jesus championed the weak and defenseless, how he embraced the misfits, how he loved the unlovable, how he spoke for those who could not speak for themselves. How he died for her sins. How he died fighting for all of us. How now it is our turn to fight.

  The chapel rings with Grace’s mother’s words: “What are we going to do with our freedom, our power? What are we going to do with all this grace? What are we going to do with these blessed lives? What are we going to do to deserve them? How are we going to let our lives prove our repentance?”

  Grace needs to leave, needs to be alone. She walks out again as everyone rises for the last hymn, their eyes clouded by inspiration. She can feel their hope as she escapes the chapel, all their fired-up good intentions to change some vague and abstract notion of the troubled world around them. Maybe they’ll go home and get online and donate a hundred bucks to a worthwhile cause. The best of them will give a dollar and a smile to that homeless vet by the highway off-ramp with his cardboard sign asking for help. But what are they going to do for a girl who had been part of their community, who needed real help and was shunned instead?

  Grace walks the few blocks home and goes straight to her room, the only place she can think of that is supposed to feel safe. But she imagines eyes watching her, like the room is alive, holding its breath, waiting for her to do something. Maybe the closet will be dark enough, small enough. Maybe in there she will not feel watched.

  She crouches on the floor of the small closet, the hems of Sunday skirts and dresses brushing against her forehead. Light streams under the closet door as she pulls it closed from the inside. It is almost dark. She is almost hidden.

  But there is still light. Still enough seeping in to let her know she’s not alone. Enough to illuminate the words carved into the forgotten few inches of wall between the door and the corner, an unseen place, a place so dark, it could only be known by someone trying to be small—on the floor, with the door closed.

  HELP ME, the scratches say. They are the texture of screaming, so rough they must have been carved by fingernails.

  ERIN.

  Sometimes dads leave and no one tells you why. Then sometimes they come back, and no one tells you why then, either. So you’re left on your own to figure it out. This is when logic comes in especially handy. Without logic a
nd rational thinking, one might be left to the much lesser device of emotion, which can create all sorts of problems when left unchecked by reason.

  Here’s an example: 1) A dad leaves; 2) While he’s gone, his teenage daughter experiences something everyone says is traumatic; 3) The dad comes back; 4) The mom and dad still don’t talk to each other; 5) The mom and dad sleep in separate bedrooms; 6) The mom and dad smile too much whenever the daughter’s around and pretend everything’s fine.

  Then the family ends up in Prescott, Oregon, landlocked, exactly 81.7 miles from the ocean, in a town none of them particularly likes, and the girl has absolutely no say in the matter. Her family is still intact, technically speaking, though her father is at work far more than he’s at home, the twenty-mile commute to his office at the university a convenient excuse for his long hours and a convenient tool for avoiding the family he has little interest in being a part of, and the mother interacts with very few real, live people, preferring to manage her vast social-media empire of parent-support groups from her laptop perch on the kitchen island, right next to the fruit bowl, which is now devoid of bananas after she proclaimed them too sugary for her daughter’s sensitive system.

  Erin could be emotional about it. She could be anxious and stressed and confused. She might feel guilty, might blame herself for her father’s unhappy return, might see herself as the toxic glue keeping her family intact. But she refuses to let emotions rule her. She knows she is better off without them, without pain, without thoughts and memories that serve no use but to hurt her. So she creates a world inside her head where these things will not bother her, a place where logic rules, a place she can control. She shoves the memories and feelings down so deep, they will not touch her.

  There’s no use in wishing her family were different. Wishing doesn’t get anything done. Neither wishing nor thinking about the past is an efficient use of one’s time.