Rules for Being a Girl - Candace Bushnell Page 0,31

don’t want to be wearing glasses anymore because you personally like how you look better without them, I’ll help you pitch it to Mom for this summer. But if you’re just doing it to try to impress Louis—or anybody else—I can promise you that tripping down a flight of stairs at the Alewife multiplex is not going to get you the kind of attention you’re after.”

“I guess,” Grace grumbles, visibly unconvinced.

Then she turns her face to look at me. “I thought your article was really good, PS,” she says suddenly. “I don’t know if I told you that or not.”

“Really?” I peer at her in the mirror, surprised. “How did you even read it?”

“My friend McKenna had a copy,” she explains. “Her sister goes to your school.”

“Oh.” I nod. “Cool. Thanks, Gracie.” I think about that for a moment, busying myself with the flat iron to hide my smile. Realistically, I know that my feminist book club and my editorials in the paper probably aren’t going to make a whole lot of difference to the world at large. But if they made some kind of difference to my sister, that would be something.

“Promise me you’ll wear your glasses tonight, okay?” I ask her, pulling the barrette out of her hair and clamping it onto the pocket of my hoodie for safekeeping. “If only so that I don’t have to visit you in the ER instead of finishing this paper.”

Gracie hums noncommittally, her fuzzy gaze flicking to the open laptop sitting on my desk. She doesn’t say anything, but for a moment I can see her thinking it, weighing the cost of everything I’ve been up to lately: no boyfriend. No plans on a Saturday night. Big-sister constitution or not, I’m half expecting her to tell me to mind my own business.

“Fine,” she finally declares. “I’ll wear them.”

This time I don’t bother to hide my smile. “Good,” I tell her, satisfied. “Now stop moving around so I can finish your hair.”

Fifteen

I drop my paper on “The Swimmer” on Bex’s desk on Monday, then spend the rest of class slouching silently in my seat while everyone else discusses the different point-of-view characters in As I Lay Dying, which we were supposed to finish over the weekend. I used to look forward to AP English all morning, but the last few weeks it’s like I spend the entire period holding my breath and hoping to disappear.

Today I feel like maybe I actually have turned invisible, until nearly the very end of the period, when Bex catches my eye across the room.

“Marin,” he says, “you’ve been quiet today. Any thoughts you’d like to share on our old friend Billy Faulkner?”

“Um.” I swallow hard, my heart skittering like a mouse along a baseboard. I don’t like this version of myself. I don’t recognize her. “Nope,” I say, clearing my throat a bit. “I don’t think so.”

“Really?” Bex raises his eyebrows in surprise that might or might not be genuine. “Nothing to add?”

I shake my head. A month ago, I would have fallen all over myself to come up with something witty and intelligent and impressive. This morning, I can’t bring myself to try. “I think everybody else has pretty much covered it,” I manage to say.

I’m expecting him to leave me alone after that—Bex has never been the kind of teacher who’s interested in embarrassing anybody for the sake of proving a point—but instead he keeps his gaze on mine, steady. “Did you not do the reading or something?” he asks.

“What?” I ask, hearing an edge in my voice. “Of course I did.”

“Okay.” Bex shrugs. “Then what?”

“Then nothing,” I snap, suddenly out of patience for whatever game he’s trying to play. “I’m just saying, it’s hard to get worked up about the literary themes in a book where one woman character dies in the first twenty pages and the other one spends the whole time getting taken advantage of by creepy men while she tries to get an abortion, that’s all.”

For a second the classroom is so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat. Then a chorus of laughs and oohs break out. Chloe whirls around to stare at me, her eyes shocked and wide-looking; Gray lifts his chin in a wry, delighted nod.

Only Bex’s face is completely impassive, and that’s how I can tell I’ve gone too far. Sure, we’ve always joked around in his class, made fun of the books we’re reading and the authors who wrote them, but this . . .

This