Rules for Being a Girl - Candace Bushnell Page 0,25

one by one: this kid Dave, an AV dude with carroty hair and a pale face full of freckles, and Lydia Jones, who’s black and works on the lit mag. Elisa Hernandez, the five-foot-tall captain of the girls’ volleyball team, shows up with a couple of her teammates.

“You guys have a big game coming up, right?” Ms. Klein asks, and Elisa beams.

“We were state champs last year,” she explains with a nod. “We’re defending our title.”

“Seriously?” I ask. I don’t exactly have my ear to the ground around school lately, but I’ve heard exactly nothing about this. I think of how everybody—me included—always shows up to cheer for our sucky football team, even though they won like twice all of last season. “How come they’re not doing a pep rally for you guys?”

“Are you kidding?” Elisa asks as her teammates giggle. “We can barely even get a bus for away games most of the time.”

I frown. “That’s so obnoxious.” It’s like now that I’m looking for inequality, I’m seeing it everywhere, categorizing a thousand great and small unfairnesses everywhere I go. Why didn’t I really see this before?

“Sounds like a great topic for your next op-ed, Marin,” Ms. Klein says pointedly, popping a Munchkin into her mouth.

Which—huh. I look over at Elisa, raising my eyebrows.

“You want to do an interview?” I ask, and Elisa grins.

Eventually Ms. Klein steers us back around to The Handmaid’s Tale. I’ve never been in a book club before, and I printed a list of discussion questions off the internet in case there were any horrifying lulls in the conversation, but it turns out we don’t even need them: Lydia and Elisa are big talkers, and Dave is quietly hilarious, with a sense of humor so darkly dry it takes me a full beat to realize when he’s joking. We’re talking about the similarities between the Republic of Gilead and modern-day America when somebody knocks on the open door. I look up, and there’s Gray Kendall in his Bridgewater Lax hoodie, backpack slung over one bulky shoulder.

“Uh,” he says, his dark eyes flicking around the room. “Sorry I’m late. Is this the book club meeting?”

Right away I sit up a little straighter. “Why?”

“Marin,” Ms. Klein chides mildly. “You’re looking at it, Gray.”

“Cool,” Gray says. He looks at me a little strangely, then holds up a book—a battered paperback copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, a bright orange USED SAVES sticker peeling off the spine. “Can I, uh—?”

“You did not read that book,” I blurt before I can stop myself. I know I’m being hugely rude, but he’s obviously got some kind of ulterior motive. For one insane second I wonder if Jacob sent him to mess with me.

“Um.” Gray huffs a laugh, good-natured but slightly disbelieving. “Yeah, I did.”

My eyes narrow. “The whole thing?”

“Yeah.”

I look at him skeptically, trying to figure out what on earth his game is. A random lax bro showing up here like some kind of Trojan horse who’s acting all interested to try and . . . what? Infiltrate my book club? That makes no sense.

Everyone else is watching silently. Dave clears his throat.

“Fine,” I say eventually. “You can stay.”

Gray smiles then, saluting me with his tattered paperback and making his way to an empty seat across the circle. Ms. Klein asks a question about Offred and the Commander, and the discussion is pretty animated from there. I’m expecting Gray to try to dominate the conversation, but to my surprise, he mostly keeps his mouth shut; when I glance over in his direction he’s leaning slightly forward in his seat, listening to Elisa with a furrowed brow. He’s so quiet, in fact, that as we’re about to wrap up, Ms. Klein nods in his direction.

“You’ve been keeping to yourself over there, Gray,” she says pleasantly. “Anything you took from the book that we haven’t covered?”

“Um.” Gray clears his throat. “I mean, I’ll be honest, I thought it was terrifying. My heart was pounding the whole entire time. I almost peed my pants when that girl’s plane to Canada got stopped on the runway.”

I frown. That definitely didn’t happen in the book, unless I somehow missed it. “Which girl?” I ask; Lydia and Elisa look at him curiously.

“The main one,” he explains, for once in his life looking vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect of this much female attention at once. “You know, the one who was on Mad Men.”

And there it is. “Uh-huh,” I say, satisfied. “That’s what I thought.”

“All right,” Ms. Klein says,