“You guys, whatever about Lauren, we have to not be late right now.” Emily’s voice is clear and judgment free, brightened only by enthusiasm. “We have to get seats by the back wall if we want to help hold the banner.”
As Emily steps out of viewing range, Jesse strains against the stall door, trying to keep her in her sights as she moves. It’s this pressure, probably, plus the shift in her weight as she goes to set her backpack down gently on the floor, that causes the rickety, worthless stall door to unlatch and fly open, sending Jesse sprawling face-forward onto the floor right at the girls’ feet, her backpack beneath her and her big green boots kicked out behind her.
The girls squeal. Jesse grunts.
“Oh my God,” shrieks First Girl, “oh my God oh my God!”
“Sorry”, Jesse mumbles, facedown. She hauls herself not terribly gracefully to her feet, afraid to look up, afraid to meet Emily’s eye.
“Um, excuse me,” First Girl says, her initial shock mellowing into casual contempt. “Don’t you know this is the girls’ room?”
Second Girl giggles abruptly, then stops.
Ocean roars, distantly, in Jesse’s ears.
She lifts her head and looks straight at them. Emily is in the center of the trio (it is the Vander High hoodie—navy blue with the big yellow V on the left breast), her arms crossed over her chest, summery head tipped quizzically to one side, flanked by her two virtually identical friends. It’s like there’s a mirror Emily on either side of the real Emily: hoodie hoodie hoodie, jeans jeans jeans, ponytail ponytail ponytail. In the center of the triptych, Emily stands looking at Jesse with terrible blankness, a perfectly placid unrecognition. It’s like she’s never seen Jesse before and doesn’t much care that she’s seeing her now.
Jesse turns to First Girl, on Emily’s left. First Girl’s eyes and the corners of her mouth are merry with evil. Jesse feels her fists clenching involuntarily.
“I’m sorry, what?” Jesse says. The calm she tries to maintain in these moments is fraying, and this comes out sounding a little bit like a threat.
First Girl takes it as one. She lengthens her neck defensively, tosses her blondeness over one shoulder, and repeats, “I said, this is the girls’ room.”
Every time this happens—and it happens to Jesse a couple of times a week, in the bathroom at the library, the locker room at the pool, Friendly’s, Starbucks, the ladies’ fitting room at the hideous disgusting hateful Fashion Bug, at school, at school, all the time at school—there comes a moment in the confrontation when it is Jesse’s turn to speak. Sometimes, especially with confused adults, she says politely, “I know, I am a girl.” Sometimes she gets it together and educates the person: “There are lots of different ways to be a girl.” Sometimes, if she’s having a bad day, she says, “Yes, it is the girls’ room, are you lost?”
But today, with Emily looking at her, just looking at her and not saying anything in her defense, Jesse comes up empty. She opens her mouth but nothing comes out.
First Girl gasps a little and grips Emily’s arm. “Oh my God, you guys,” she says, “she was watching us in there!”
“Ew gross!” Second Girl wails.
Jesse’s heart starts to pound. Her tongue thickens in her half-open mouth.
“She must have been, like, waiting for us to take our shirts off or something,” First Girl hisses. “Oh my God, disgusting. Oh my God, I feel so gross right now.”
Jesse turns back to Emily, searching her face for anything—backup; sympathy; defense; some big, distracting move that would steal their attention away from Jesse. But there’s nothing there.
Over the PA comes the final announcement: “One minute remaining in passing period. All students proceed to the gym for spirit assembly at this time.”
Now Emily springs into action. “Okay, you guys, come on, let it go,” she says in a light, coaxy-friendly way to her friends. “We cannot be late for assembly today.”
First Girl turns a fake-sympathetic face on Emily. “Oh, Em, that’s so nice that you’re trying to protect your boyfriend. You should stay and hang out with her, look, she totally wants you.”
Instantly, Jesse looks down at the floor. Her face cannot sustain examination for traces of lust for Emily Miller—it might be there, even if she’s trying to suppress it with every ounce of her energy.
“Oh, stop it,” Emily says, exasperated—the way you’d speak to a pesky child. “I’m leaving.” Emily turns and holds open the bathroom door, a wordless command. Despite herself, Jesse thinks, You’re not even going to look at me one more time?