Prom and Prejudice (2 page)

It’s like God hit the mute button then in the caf, because all of the usual conversation and clanking of utensils and trays falls silent except for the cafeteria ladies talking over their steaming tubs of whatever slop they’re dishing out today. Cassie holds her chin high but her eyes are rimmed red. Seeing them, I know for a fact that while I have had many, many bad ideas in my life, maybe even more than I should be allowed to have as a human being and therefore a fallible creature, this is by far the worst idea I have ever had.

A familiar voice cuts across the silence.

“Can you be-
lieve
her?”

It’s Willow Harper. I can tell without having to look behind me because the sound of her voice makes all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s like when you’re driving along at 50 in a 35-mile-per-hour zone and you hear a police siren behind you.

“It’s like she’s
proud
of it,” Darien Drake marvels.

Soon everybody starts talking again. Maybe they aren’t all talking about Cassie, but boys are whistling at her and one reaches out a hand as he passes us to touch her butt.

“Hey!” I yell as my friend Gary swats the cave dweller with his chemistry notebook. Cassie just looks at me, her big eyes overflowing with tears; she looks broken, not angry or accusing, and this makes me feel even worse.

Without thinking, I climb onto my chair, which wobbles a bit, so my friend Shondra steadies it with one hand. She has no idea what I’m doing and, frankly, I don’t either, but she and Dave and Gary seem convinced, out of sheer loyalty, that it is going to be epic.

“What is the
matter
with you?” I shout toward Willow’s table, where she and her coterie sit sneering at me. Darien looks down at her lunch, but more out of embarrassment for me than for herself, and Willow smiles broadly when I catch her eye, as if I’d just presented her with a plaque in appreciation of her overall fabulousness. “Why can’t you leave Cassie alone?”

“’Cause she’s a slut,” someone calls, and the room erupts in laughter. Cassie runs toward the doors. Shondra looks around for a second and then runs after her. I feel my face begin a slow burn and my knees shake so hard I think I am going to fall off my chair until Dave grabs the edge of it to steady me.

“She’s a slut?” I call out. “Really? A
slut
? Okay. She had sex. Yes. Cassie had sex with
one
guy—” I look around the room at everyone. “But
so
what
? Okay, show of hands. How many of you have ‘done it’? And how many of you have done it with more than one person?”

I stop, choking a bit on my own disbelief because
people are actually raising their hands
; in fact, most of the males are high-fiving each other like they’re members of Seal Team Six and just saved the free world.

I still have no idea where I am going with this but I’m a little bit like a suicide bomber now—I’ve reached a point where I have no choice but to go up in pieces and hope I blow up enough people with me.

Gary pumps his fist in solidarity as I snarl, “Well, that’s
great
. Kudos to you all!” I clap a little, turning around to include everyone in the applause as best I can on my wobbly chair that was not designed to be a grandstand in any way. “But here’s the thing. No one makes fun of
you
for it. In fact, some of you guys are local l
egends
for it.”

More whooping, high-fiving, and fist bumping ensues. I could win a national election with this much support, except I have failed to get my message across. Boys are arguing over who is the biggest stud, girls whisper, and everyone misses the entire point of my lecture.

Until Willow brings them back.

She stands, hand on the hip of her magenta leather skirt, and says to everyone, “You’re soooo right—thank you, Georgia. Hey, maybe we should
all
wear labels
all
the time—special letters like your sister did today, just to avoid the confusion.” She pauses to reflect, her chin in her manicured fingers. “What would
your
letter be, Georgia? Maybe a big purple V for Vegan Hippie Freak? Or,” she concludes with a lip-curling smile, “V for
Virgin
. Permanent virgin.”

Her table twitters like chickadees on cue and just about everybody else is laughing, too. Gary, green Mohawk flailing in anger, stands and makes a threatening gesture toward the table with the loudest boys, and the more mild-mannered Dave helps me down from my chair because I am shaking so hard I know I am about to fall off it, and that would bring a really spectacular ending to my already spectacularly terrible piece of political theater.

And then I see Michael Endicott, who never comes to the caf for lunch but has decided that he needs a Coke from the machine by the door on the one day I do something humiliating. He stands by the exit, looking at me and shaking his head.

“And I guess your letter will be B,” I say to Willow, but with a lot less bravado than I had before. “Wear it well.” I pick up the remains of my lunch, stuff it into my bag, and walk toward the doors. Gary starts clapping, and Dave joins him, and they’re both trying to yell things like, “Go, Georgia!” and “Speak truth to stupidity!” but no one is paying any attention to them. Despite their loyalty and good intentions, if this episode makes it as a feature story in the next issue of the alternative paper we all write for, the headline will read “VEGAN AVENGER ATTACKS DOUBLE STANDARD, SMACKED DOWN BY GLAMAZON.”

When I get to the cafeteria exit, Michael’s still there, holding the door open for me.

As I attempt to pass him, he asks quietly, “So the scarlet letter? That was
your
plan?”

“I admit that it wasn’t one of my better ideas,” I wail softly. “In fact, a retarded squirrel could have come up with a better one, but, still, I didn’t think it would go as badly as it did. And somebody had to do something!” By the time I get those last words out, I’m running down the hall and to the lavatory, knowing that it is going to be the longest afternoon I have ever spent in the halls and classrooms of Longbourne High.

But it will be even longer for my sister.

Thanks to me.

Weeks ago, I had yelled at Michael for insulting my family, but
I
am the one who has managed to humiliate us all.

***

I get through the rest of the day by imagining I am deaf and blind to everyone but my teachers. I have what appears to be a laser-sharp focus on my schoolwork, but I really want to run down the hall and grab Cassie and pull her out of the school so we can run away to the most remote island in the Pacific, where I can spear fish for her and spend the rest of my life apologizing for ruining hers.

After school, I consider blowing off the
Alt
meeting, but I know I owe it to Dave and Gary and Shondra to show up. I have to be at least as brave as they were in supporting me when they had to know I was being a total jackass. I take the seat next to Shondra at the small conference table in Mr. Mullin’s room and raise an eyebrow at her and she knows exactly what I mean.

“I took Cassie to the nurse’s office and she was sent home sick,” she says.

I exhale for what feels like the first time since lunch. At least Cassie didn’t have to deal with anything else. Maybe later Tori can help her figure out how to get through tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

Gary plops himself down at the opposite end of the table from Dave, who is punching the keys of his laptop. “That should have been one awesome fuck-you to the whole school today, Georgia,” he says. “But these assholes are too stupid to get it.”

“I think I played a key role in the stupidity,” I admit, wondering if my stomach will ever stop thrashing around like a trapped animal.

“We have some wack ideas about sex around here,” Gary says with a shake of his head, and Dave looks up then.

“I think that would be a great idea for an article,” he says. “This double standard guys-are-studs, girls-are-sluts should have died in the fifties.”

“Right that,” Shondra agrees.

“You want to write from the women’s perspective?” Dave asks her, and she shakes her head dubiously.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to write that from the
black
woman’s perspective. If I say anything in defense of a girl’s right to have sex, I’ll be seen as the oversexed ghetto hooch bused in to Longbourne and you know it.”

“People are so confused,” Dave sighs, but he’s nodding because he understands what she means. I, on the other hand, hadn’t even thought of Shondra’s position, so score one more in the dense-and-oblivious column for me. “So many people are either so pro-sex it’s ridiculous, like it’s the only thing worth doing—especially if you’re a guy—and then others think it’s a one-way ticket to hell if you do it before you’re married.”

“Cassie’s twin is one of them,” I say dully, adding, “except Leigh’s former missionary boyfriend once gave her a hickey the size of a grapefruit,” and everyone laughs.

“Are hickeys allowed if you have one of those purity pledge rings?” Dave asks me.

Gary nods wisely and says, “My sister’s roommate at Bowdoin is Catholic and she and her boyfriend are all about this purity shit but they do everything
but
. My sister accidentally walked into their shower room one day when this girl and some guy—not her boyfriend—are there. She’s, um, performing an act on him that begins with an ‘F’ in Latin.”

“In a
public
shower?” Shondra says with a shudder. “That’s not right.”

“Where else are you supposed to do it when you have a roommate?” Gary reasons, and Shondra and I practically yell at the same time, “Not in the hall shower!”

“It’s totally wrong that your sister is being treated like some kind of monster and Jeremy Wrentham is like, this major porn star king to everyone,” Dave says.

“Yeah,” Gary agrees. “He’s the asshole who posts his adventures online, not your sister.”

“
What
?” I explode.

“Not with your sister!” Gary insists. “He’s never posted anything online with her in it! But Jeremy’s posted...plenty of other stuff.”

Now I am shaking and gritting my teeth; soon tears are going to come flying out of the sides of my eyes like poison darts.

“You didn’t know,” Dave marvels. “It’s why Jeremy got kicked out of Pemberley. Apparently one of his videos features the headmaster’s daughter.”

I close my eyes and fight back the tears with all the strength in my suddenly enfeebled body. I can hear Michael’s voice in my head, can hear what he said back in my kitchen that day:
Jeremy is kind of evil, Georgia. You don’t know
. And I wouldn’t listen. I’d even made out with Jeremy on New Year’s Eve, until Michael had taken me home before I could do anything stupid and end up like my sister.

“Hey, look you guys!” Dave calls, and he’s waving at his laptop. “You have to read this awesome letter that just came in to
The
Alt
’s email. It’s this defense of Cassie and a really good argument against everyone else’s hypocrisy. I wish I had written it.”

Gary and Shondra rush to read over Dave’s shoulder, but I can’t bear it.

As I pick up my bag and my coat, I tell them, “I have to go home and see how much damage I’ve done to my sister.”

“I’ll forward you this letter,” Dave promises as Shondra wraps me in a big hug and says, “Tell her to stay strong. You, too.”

When I get home and force myself to go up to Cassie’s room to check on her I see her lying on her bed, and Leigh is there, too, with her arms around her twin. Cassie is crying softly and Leigh is saying something, and I back out of the room because there is nothing I can do that will be half as good as this. Jesus Freak Leigh, who I’d have guessed would be burning her sinner sister at the stake, is being more helpful—and loving—than I have ever been, despite all my good intentions.

When I check my email and read the open letter that Dave forwarded I’m ready to join a special witness protection program for the exceptionally dense and embarrassing. Because I realize that I will never write anything as smart and thoughtful and convincing as this. It is brilliant and beautifully written and says everything I wanted to. I should just be glad that someone succeeded where I had failed so dazzlingly, but it hurts too much.

And I can see its immediate effects when
The
Alt
comes out the next day. There’s much less whispering and no open taunting. There is no new graffiti and I don’t see anyone passing their phones or pictures around. By the end of the week, it’s over. Just like that.

Someday, whenever I get over my own role in this public shaming, I will find the anonymous writer and get down on my knees and pledge eternal devotion to their spirit and eloquence. But right now, I just feel moronic.

2 Beantown Bust

I keep a low profile at school until Spring Break arrives weeks later, and I am no longer contemplating how to tell Michael that I know why he got expelled and what he did for Los, Shondra’s friend, to save him from the same fate. After seeing the look in Michael’s eyes when he’d recognized that I was the author of Cassie’s greatest humiliation, I know there is no way he could ever feel anything but contempt or pity for me ever again. Why compound that by declaring myself?

So by the time Spring Break arrives, I am so eager to get away from Longbourne and everyone in it I’m actually thrilled to accompany my mom and Tori as they visit colleges. Our last stop is Boston, and when Tori confides that BU is her safety school, I suggest she blow off the overnight orientation and stay at the hotel with me and Mom. I have to admit my motives are somewhat selfish. Our grandmother booked a really nice room on Copley Square because she planned to join us here, but she got the flu a few days ago. And even though Mom and Tori and I could easily drive back to Longbourne from Boston, Mom still wants to stay in the luxury hotel—especially since
her
mom is paying for it. But a night alone in a hotel, however swank it is, with just Mom for company does not appeal so much to me. We hadn’t talked much in the motel room we had shared while Tori stayed over in the dorms at Middlebury, and that was okay with me. Mom has no idea of anything that is going on with Cassie—or my role in it—and I plan to keep it that way. But Tori decides that she’ll hang out in the BU dorm just for the experience and I marvel once again at how comfortable she is with most human beings, even ones she doesn’t know. She doesn’t worry as much as I do about having something in common with people or what to say to them.