Rules for Being a Girl - Candace Bushnell Page 0,23

some crazy feminist?”

I laugh out loud at that, a mean hollow bark. “Some crazy— You know what, Jacob? Maybe that’s exactly what I’m turning into. And maybe you can go screw yourself.”

For a moment Jacob just stares at me, his mouth opening and closing. I’ve never said anything like that before—to him, or to anyone. I’m waiting for the surge of horror, but instead I just feel kind of powerful. Maybe I should tell people to screw themselves more often.

“Okay then,” he finally says, crumpling his sandwich wrapper up into a ball and chucking it into the bin at the front of the cafeteria. “See you never.”

“See you never,” I echo, slinging my backpack over my shoulder and heading to my first-period class.

Jacob’s reaction to my editorial is a pretty good litmus test for the rest of the morning, all told. Dean Shepherd makes a big show of cowering like he thinks I’m going to hit him. Hallie Weisbuck makes a Hillary Clinton joke.

“Maybe it’s a good thing,” Chloe says consolingly at the beginning of Bex’s class. “Honestly, this is the most people have talked about the Beacon since we started editing it.”

“Headlines don’t sell papes, Marin’s crazy editorials sell papes?” I ask, riffing on Newsies, which we used to watch all the time back in middle school. Then I frown. “Oh, also, I just broke up with Jacob.”

“Wait, what?” Chloe’s hands drop. “Why?”

“Because—” I break off. All of a sudden His casual sexism randomly started to bother me when he said he didn’t like my piece doesn’t feel like the banner cause it did this morning. “Because—”

Chloe shakes her head. “Marin, what is going on with you?”

“Okay,” Bex calls before I can answer, leaning against his desk up at the front of the room. “You guys ready to get started?”

I slink low in my chair as he goes over this week’s vocab unit, then assigns a response paper due the following week. “I’ve got a new reading list for you all to take a look at,” he says, passing out a stack of papers. “I want you guys to pick one of the short stories on this list, then write two to three pages on one of the literary techniques the author uses.”

It’s an easy assignment, the kind of thing I’ll be able to knock out in an hour or two, but as I scan the list of authors I find myself frowning: John Updike, Michael Chabon, John Cheever. Before I can quell the impulse, my hand is up in the air.

“Yep,” Bex says, nodding in my direction. “Uh, Marin.”

“I’m sorry, I just—” I look around a little nervously. Dean Shepherd already has a smirk on his face. “Shouldn’t there be some female authors on this list? Or authors who aren’t white?”

Bex looks surprised for a moment; he glances down at the list, like possibly he hadn’t noticed the omission. He tsks quietly, then looks back up at me. “Ooookay then, Marin,” he says brightly. “Not into the list, huh? What do you think I should add?”

“Oh—um.” I hesitate, my mind going completely, terrifyingly blank. In this moment I honestly couldn’t name a single short story if my life depended on it, let alone one written by somebody other than a dead white guy. “I guess I hadn’t really thought it through that far,” I admit finally.

“Well,” Bex says in that same cheerful voice—slightly plastic, I think now, more sarcasm than actual friendliness. It’s the first time all year he’s seemed anything less than 100 percent chill about an assignment—although I guess it’s also the first time I’ve complained. “Make sure you let us know if you come up with anything, yeah?”

The class kind of chuckles, and I nod miserably, feeling my whole body prickle with embarrassment. Chloe shoots me an incredulous look. God, why couldn’t I just have kept my mouth shut? It’s not like I wasn’t drawing enough attention to myself already.

Bex is turning back to the whiteboard when there’s a knock on the open door. I glance over, and there’s Ms. Klein in the doorway in her navy-blue shirtdress and her big round glasses, her dark hair in a tidy bun on top of her head.

“Mr. Beckett,” she says, gaze flicking from him to me and back again in a way that makes me wonder if she heard the whole exchange. “I’ve got your attendance forms from Ms. Lynch. I told her I’d drop them off.”

“Oh!” Bex nods, shooting her a megawatt smile. “Thank you.”

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