The Nowhere Girls Read online

  Rosina hears the bell ding in the kitchen announcing their order is ready. She sets the hot, glistening plates on a platter.

  She spits a little bit of her rage into each one.

  The Real Men of Prescott

  All women are insecure and longing for male validation. The fact that they hate themselves is our most powerful weapon, and one of the most important tools of the game is to learn how to use that self-hate to our advantage. This works especially well for superhot girls, whose whole sense of worth comes from their ability to control men with their looks. Show them that you aren’t being controlled, by knocking them down a notch.

  Ignore them. Tease them. Point out their little flaws. Use their insecurities against them, then they’ll do anything and everything to get your approval. You will be the one they want because they’ll be so afraid you don’t want them.

  —AlphaGuy541

  GRACE.

  Mom and Dad are still giddy from Mom’s sermon yesterday. They hover over Dad’s laptop at the breakfast table as he shows her the websites of different publishers and literary agents he’s been researching. They don’t even notice Grace enter the kitchen.

  “I think it’s finally time to finish my book,” Mom says with a huge grin. Dad hugs her, holding her in his arms for a long time.

  “It feels like the right time, doesn’t it?” he says as he lets go. “God’s calling us.”

  “He is,” Mom says earnestly. “I just hope people want to hear my message. I hope they’re ready.”

  Grace won’t tell them how she spent all night on the computer, scouring the Web for any sign of Lucy Moynihan. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr—everywhere, every sign of her, gone. Her old e-mail address bounced back. Her family seems to be unlisted, wherever they are. Lucy is invisible. She’s been erased.

  “God sure works in mysterious ways,” Dad says with a laugh. “I hate to say it, but people know who you are because of what happened in Adeline.”

  He didn’t seem to hate to say it at all, Grace thinks as she pulls a carton of orange juice out of the fridge.

  “As much as it hurt,” Dad says, “it got us to where we are now.”

  What does he know about hurt? Grace thinks.

  Mom sighs. “Who knew doing God’s work would involve having to think about marketing angles?”

  Dad hugs her again. “God will guide us in getting our message across, every step of the way.” He chuckles. “Even Paul did ‘marketing’ in the early church. All of it matters. Every bit is holy.”

  They look at each other with a love that had always been a comfort to Grace growing up, when none of her friends’ parents seemed to even like each other all that much. But now she’s starting to find her parents’ devotion annoying. The house is full of their positivity and faith—it’s stuffed with it—leaving no room for what Grace is feeling. Their plans and dreams are so big and so complete, but Grace has no place in them. She does not matter.

  She matters so little that her friends back in Adeline could just throw her away. She is no one. She is nothing. A girl no one sees. A girl no one remembers.

  Grace grabs an apple and a granola bar for breakfast and walks out the door to head to school early.

  She is so tired of being invisible.

  Grace will have to make her own plans, then. She will have to find her own way to matter.

  If you’re already nothing, you have nothing to lose.

  * * *

  Grace prepares herself all morning for the speech she will give Rosina and Erin at lunch. She uses several pieces of notebook paper over the course of her first four classes, jotting down points she wants to make, retorts to potential objections. By the time she sits at their table, she is almost confident about her case. Almost.

  Lord, give me strength.

  Erin pulls out her bento box with its usual bird-food contents. Rosina plops down with a banana, a carton of chocolate milk, and some cheese crackers from the vending machine.

  “That’s all you’re having?” Grace asks.

  “Today’s school lunch is tacos,” Rosina says. “I hate tacos.”

  “Do you think an android could be programmed to enjoy sex?” Erin says while spooning a mysterious green substance out of one of her box’s compartments. “And if it could, would there be a practical reason for it to have that ability?”

  “Wow, Erin,” Rosina says. “How about you start with something like ‘how was your weekend?’ ”

  “But that’s small talk,” Erin says. “You know I hate small talk.”

  “Now you’re just being contrary.”

  “That’s part of my charm.”

  “So, you guys?” Grace interrupts. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.” If she doesn’t speak now, she knows she’ll lose her nerve.

  “Slow down, man,” Rosina says. “Jeez, you both need to improve your social skills.”

  “Is this going to be about personal stuff?” Erin asks. “Because I don’t like conversations about personal stuff.”

  “Not really. I mean, sort of?” Grace stutters. She freezes. What was she was going to say? Where are those notes?

  “Hello?” Rosina says. “We’re listening.”

  “Hold on,” Grace says, pulling her notebook out of her backpack and flipping through the pages of her indecipherable handwriting.

  Rosina shrugs, opens her bag of crackers, and throws a handful into her mouth. “So,” she says with a mouthful of orange crumbs. “While you’re trying to remember what you were going to say, I also have an announcement. I have decided that we do in fact have to do something to stop those assholes. Not just the assholes who raped Lucy, but all the assholes. We have to keep them from breeding more assholes.” She peels open her banana and takes a big bite. “I think castration seems appropriate.”

  “Sounds messy,” Erin says.

  Rosina smiles. “That was funny, Erin.”

  “Thank you.”

  Grace puts her notebook back in her bag. Her body feels tingly, her surroundings surreal, like she’s moving in slow motion while the rest of the world is speeding up.

  “Are you serious?” Grace says. “What changed your mind?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Stop asking me questions or I might change it back.”

  Grace glances at Erin, who is chewing her food, watching them, listening. It is impossible to read her. She seems calm, but there is something else below the surface, something she is trying very hard to keep buried.

  “What about you, Erin?” Grace asks her.

  “Are you in?” Rosina says. “Do you want to be a part of our rebellion?”

  Erin doesn’t say anything for what seems like a long time. She is swaying slightly, her head down, like she is thinking hard, feeling hard, like there is a lot more going on inside her than what they’re talking about. Finally she says, “That sounds like subversive activity.”

  “Yeah, so?” Rosina says.

  “Subversive activity almost always involves breaking rules,” Erin says, her voice growing agitated.

  “That’s kind of the point,” Rosina says.

  “We want to break the rules,” Grace says, an energy building in her chest. The feeling of something happening. The feeling of something inevitable. The feeling of something that matters. “The rules are what keep us silent. The rules are what didn’t get justice for Lucy. The rules are what’s broken.” Her words are full of fire, maybe not a full-on flame, but definitely at least a spark.

  “Wow, New Girl.” Rosina lifts an eyebrow. “You’re just full of surprises.”

  Tell me about it, Grace thinks.

  “But we need rules to keep order,” Erin says, looking up for a moment with pleading eyes. “If everyone broke rules all the time, there’d be chaos. Then no one could get anything done.”

  “We’re not talking about those kinds of rules,” Rosina says. “We mean like the unwritten rules of our sexist culture. Like the way girls and boys are expected to act, like double standards, women
only making seventy-eight percent what men make, that kind of thing.”

  “Guys getting away with rape even though everyone knows they did it,” Grace says. “Girls living in fear for no reason except the fact that they’re girls.”

  Grace sees something shift inside of Erin. Her face makes a pained expression and she stops rocking. She shakes her head. “But we’re nobody,” she says. “How are we going to fix any of those things?”

  “That’s what we’re going to figure out,” Grace says. “Are you with us?”

  “With you for what? You don’t exactly have a plan. And who’s going to listen?”

  Grace and Rosina look at each other. They deflate just a little.

  Grace thinks about the messages Lucy left in her room. She thinks about telling Rosina and Erin about them. But something about that feels wrong, as if those words are secrets meant only for Grace, as if telling people about them would be betraying Lucy’s trust.

  “Erin’s right,” Rosina says. “It can’t be just us. No one’s going to listen to three weird girls.”

  “Let me state for the record that I still haven’t agreed to anything,” Erin says.

  Grace bristles a little at the “weird” label, but then she reminds herself that she chose to sit with these girls at lunch. God led her here, He gave her a choice, and she made it.

  “There has to be a way we can reach all the girls of the school and bring them together,” Grace says. “Like have a meeting or something.”

  They sit in silence for a long time. No one is eating. The drama of the lunchroom goes on around them, a wall of white noise. They cannot look at one another. They don’t want to admit their idea is doomed just as it got started.

  “You could e-mail them,” Erin finally says, like it was obvious the whole time.

  “How are we going to e-mail every girl in the school?” Rosina says.

  “Easy,” Erin says. “I can get their e-mail addresses from the office. I have access to everyone’s information.”

  “So we’ll send everyone an e-mail that says, ‘Hi, it’s us, three nobodies, and we’re still pissed off about old news that everyone wants to forget about, and we’re bringing it up because we want to make everyone’s lives miserable. So who’s with us?’ ” Rosina rolls her eyes. “Why don’t we just toilet paper the guys’ houses or something? That’d probably be equally as effective.”

  Grace feels something open inside her, a tiny whisper, a tiny light. “What if it wasn’t us?” she says. “What if it was nobody?” She pauses for a second. “What if it was everybody?”

  “What are you talking about?” Rosina says.

  “The e-mail,” Grace says. She is spinning. She is electric. “What if we sent it anonymously? It’d be coming from, like, nowhere. Then no one would know it was from us. And people would be intrigued by the mystery, right? They’d come to the meeting just to see what it’s all about.”

  “ ‘The Nowhere Girls,’ ” Erin says. “That’s what we can call ourselves. On the e-mails.”

  “Yes!” Rosina says. “The Nowhere Girls! Erin, you are on such a roll today.”

  “I am not rolling anywhere,” Erin says. “But thank you.”

  They sit in silence, all trying to imagine what a meeting called by nobody, from nowhere, would look like.

  “But what’s going to happen once everyone gets there?” Rosina finally says. “If we want to stay anonymous, who’s going to lead the meeting?”

  “Anyone could,” Grace says.

  “But what if nobody does? What if it’s awkward and no one says anything? Or what if it’s total chaos?”

  “What if it turns into a riot?” Erin says.

  The bell rings, signaling lunch is over. The movement and sound of hundreds of students intensify as everyone packs up to leave, and the girls feel their bubble quickly losing form. They will soon be swept back into the world of high school.

  “It’s not going to turn into a riot,” Grace says, speaking fast. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “It’s time to go to class,” Erin says.

  “Can we meet after school?” Grace says. “To plan this?”

  “My shift starts at five, but I can meet for a couple of hours,” Rosina says. “Holy shit, we’re really going to do this?”

  They look at Erin. She’s busy packing up her lunch.

  “Erin?” Grace says. “What about you? Is after school today okay?”

  She zips up her backpack. “After school is when I do my homework,” she says. “Then I watch my episode of TNG. I’ll have just enough time to do some extracurricular reading before dinner. If I meet after school, it will disrupt my schedule and throw everything into chaos.”

  “Really, Erin?” Rosina says. “Chaos? That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

  The lunchroom empties, and they are the last ones sitting in a sea of vacant tables, surrounded by dirty trays and soiled napkins.

  “Erin,” Grace says. “Look at me.” Erin meets her eyes for almost a full second. “What’s more important? Your schedule, or doing something to stop the rapist assholes holding this school hostage?”

  “ ‘Holding this school hostage’?” Rosina says. “That’s good, New Girl.”

  Erin fidgets with the zipper of her backpack. “I’m going to miss my episode,” she says, not looking up.

  “So you’re coming?” Grace says.

  Erin takes a deep breath, squints her eyes closed, and nods slightly. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood today.”

  To: undisclosed recipients

  From: TheNowhereGirls

  Date: Tuesday, September 20

  Subject: GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!

  Dear friends and classmates:

  Are you tired? Are you scared? Are you tired of being scared?

  Are you ANGRY???

  We know what they did. Spencer Klimpt, Eric Jordan, and Ennis Calhoun. We know they raped Lucy. We know they have hurt others, probably many of us. We know they will hurt more.

  But it is not just them, not just those three. It is everyone. It is the whole school, the students and administration, the whole community of Prescott, who let them get away with it. It is their friends and families and teammates who looked the other way. It is everyone who made excuses, everyone who thought “boys will be boys,” everyone who thought it’d be easier to ignore Lucy than to give her justice.

  When they raped Lucy, they raped all of us. Because it could have been us. It could have been any of us. Who will be next?

  The rape continues as long as they remain unpunished for what they did.

  Are you tired of enduring? Are you tired of letting things go? Are you tired of being silent?

  We failed Lucy. We will not continue to fail ourselves. We will not continue to fail one another.

  We will meet Thursday after school in the basement conference room of the Prescott Public Library. Enter through the emergency exit door in the alley off State Street. It will be propped open.

  This meeting is intended to be a safe, anonymous, and confidential space. What is shared, and the names of who is present, will not leave the room.

  Are you ready to do something? Are you ready to take matters into your own hands?

  Join us. Together, we are stronger than they are.

  We will not be silent any longer.

  Love,

  The Nowhere Girls

  US.

  “Nobody’s coming,” Rosina says.

  “Yes, they are,” Grace says.

  “I had to beg my aunt to give me the afternoon off babysitting,” Rosina whines. “Favors are really hard to get in my family, by the way. I used up a favor for nothing.”

  Rosina, Grace, and Erin are sitting on folding chairs in a long-forgotten room in the Prescott Public Library basement. Half the lightbulbs are out, and the walls are lined with dusty stacks of cardboard boxes. Erin pulls a book out of her backpack and starts reading.

  Grace is on the edge of her seat, her knee bo
uncing away. “They’re coming,” she says. She looks at her watch. “It’s only a little after three. People have to go to their lockers. Maybe stop somewhere to get a snack.”

  “I was sure at least a few people would show up,” Rosina says. “Three people responded, ‘This is awesome!’ to the e-mail we sent out. With exclamation points. I thought those were definite RSVPs.”

  “The e-mail was sent to five hundred seven girls,” Erin says. “It’s probable that at least a few people will show up.”

  “Thank you, Erin,” Grace says.

  “Unless all the recipients are either lazy or don’t care or think what we’re doing is weird. That is also likely.”

  “I’m going to go check to make sure the back door is still open,” Grace says. “Maybe people can’t get in and they’re too afraid to enter in the front?”

  “Or no one’s coming,” Erin says. “That’s the most logical answer.”

  “Maybe I can make it home in time to save my aunt’s favor for later,” Rosina says.

  “So that’s it?” Grace says with a quivering voice. “You want to give up?”

  But then the doorknob rattles. Grace blinks back tears. The three girls turn their heads as the door opens to a blinking, freckled face.

  “Um, hi,” the girl says. Elise Powell: Senior, jock, undetermined sexual orientation. Not the top of the popularity totem pole, but definitely not the bottom. “Is this where the meeting is?”

  She shuffles in, unsurely, and sits down on one of the chairs Grace set up in a circle. Following close behind are a pair of freshmen named Krista and Trista, both with badly dyed blue hair and thick black eyeliner. Then two more arrive—Connie Lancaster and Allison Norman, the gossips from Grace’s homeroom. How many does that make? Eight? Not exactly enough to start a revolution.

  “Oh, hey,” Connie says to Grace. “You’re in my homeroom, right?”

  “Yes!” Grace says, too eagerly.

  “Do you know who’s in charge of this thing?” Connie says, running her fingers through her long dark hair. “Who sent the e-mail?”