Tigers, Not Daughters - Samantha Mabry Page 0,59

of sense until Hector pointed out Iridian always carried around The Witching Hour, which, by the very title, would seem not to be about vampires, but witches.

We really had no idea what we were talking about, but when we discovered the truth of what Iridian was writing about in her notebooks, it was a nightmare. There weren’t any vampires or witches, but it was a nightmare all the same.

On a Tuesday in December, Iridian was in the cafeteria eating lunch alone. Right there, by her tray, like always, was The Witching Hour, her composition notebook, and her blue pen. Evalin Uvalde—the girl who was making out with John Chavez until Jessica threw a cup at her face—came up from behind Iridian and snatched her notebook. On instinct, Iridian whipped around and reached back, but Evalin spun out of the way, cackling. Evalin then hopped onto a nearby table and opened Iridian’s notebook. After scanning through a few pages, she landed on one that made her grin so wickedly wide.

This moment was important. It was the moment when the three of us who also had this lunch period, and who were sitting just a couple of tables away from where all this was happening, could’ve stopped what came next, or attempted to stop it and spin its trajectory on a different path. We could’ve saved Iridian Torres—it was so obvious she needed saving—but we didn’t. We remembered what happened the last time we tried saving one of the Torres sisters. Our heroics had backfired in the worst possible way. So instead of doing anything, we just sat there, our curiosity burning.

Evalin cleared her throat, and we couldn’t help it—we leaned toward the sound. Other students—almost the entire lunchroom—stopped talking and also leaned toward the sound. People hushed each other. Even the workers behind the counters got quieter, or so it seemed. The dings of the registers and the clanks of trays lessened, softened. That day, we were all hungry for nastiness.

“I have a problem,” Evalin read out loud, while Iridian curled into herself, shrank deeper into her jean jacket. “I can write most of the parts, like the parts describing the characters, what they look like, or how it feels when one character wants another character so much their knees turn to jelly and their heart starts to beat all fast and jangled. I know what this feels like. I can write that. But what I can’t write are the sex scenes. I have no frame of reference! I’ve never been with a guy or a girl. I’ve never even been kissed, and while I’m pretty sure I can fake those descriptions or borrow them from one of Ana’s books, that would be . . . disingenuous. I’d feel like a fraud. The descriptions wouldn’t be from the heart. It wouldn’t be real, and I want it to be real.”

Evalin read all this with a fake-earnest tone, and not once did she break character, even though her friends had their hands clasped over their mouths, their eyes watering from holding in their cruel laughter.

It got worse. Of course it did. Evalin looked up from the notebook and straight to where we were sitting.

“I’m thinking about asking one of the boys across the street at Hector’s for a favor,” she said. “I wonder if one of them will have sex with me.” Evalin snorted. “Just once. For research.”

Evalin lost it. She doubled over, gasping and laughing, clutching the notebook to her chest. Her friends all lost it as well. They laughed these loud, full-throated, messy laughs. We could see past the tops of their mouths, to their tongues, to the bits of french fries or the remains of ham sandwiches speckled across those tongues. John Chavez, the biggest shithead in town, was there, hooting and laughing. Eventually, Evalin—still laughing, laughing so hard she was hiccupping—straightened up and put her hand in the air, palm facing forward, silently commanding everyone to wait.

There are two things that gutless boys do when they’re being laughed at: They get defensive or they join in. The gazes of the people in the lunchroom that weren’t on Iridian—who was still sitting, frozen at her table—were on us. In that moment, we hated Evalin and the evil pride shining in her eyes. We hated watching Iridian fold into herself.