Chloe nods slowly. “Um, thanks,” she says. “I’ve got other plans, but . . . sounds fun.”
I wince. Other plans, like she’s some vague acquaintance on the T who doesn’t want to come to my weird church group and not the person who knows me best and longest, who always comes into a one-person bathroom with me when we’re out together and whose house I’ve thrown up in on two separate occasions.
“Sure thing,” I tell her. “Maybe another time, then.”
“Maybe,” Chloe says, leaning over the sink to reapply her lipstick. Neither one of us says goodbye before I go.
After Gray’s practice, we head over to the potluck together, his heavy hand on mine. I’ve always kind of liked being in school when it’s dark out, how it feels weirdly festive; Lydia and Elisa made decorations for the bio lab, brightly colored paper bunting hung up above the whiteboard, and a bunch of desks are pushed together and draped with a purple plastic cloth. Gray brought brownies one of his moms made, studded with walnuts and caramel chips and topped with flaky sea salt. Dave stopped at McDonald’s and got like five dozen Chicken McNuggets, and Chloe’s dad sent me with a huge to-go container of lamb meatballs with a yogurt dipping sauce from the restaurant. Even Ms. Klein brought something, though she’s always talking about how she doesn’t ever turn her oven on—tiny crostini spread with herby cheese and dolloped with fancy blackberry jam.
This is the first time we’ve all hung out where we didn’t have a specific book to talk about, and I was worried it might be as awkward as it was back at the very beginning, but to my surprise the room is echoing with conversations: Bri and Maddie, the jazz band freshmen who’ve been showing up since the very beginning, are debating whether cheerleading is inherently sexist, while Dave and Gray scroll through Gray’s phone, putting together a playlist of pump-up jams.
“My boyfriend is obsessed with this one,” Dave says, hitting play on what I think is the new Halsey. He dates a super cute guy on the track team who’s dropped in on a couple of our meetings and knew a shocking amount about feminist film theory.
“It’s also important to think about the ways that women of color are left out of the conversation,” Ms. Klein is saying when I drift over toward the dessert table. “Like when people say that women make seventy-seven cents on the dollar, what they mean is white women. For black women it’s sixty-three cents on the dollar. And for Latina women it’s even less.”
“It’s fifty-four cents,” Elisa pipes up from across the room, then goes back to talking with Fiona Tyler, a sophomore who joined the club a couple of weeks ago, about some musical show on the CW they both like.
“No offense,” Lydia says, crossing her ankles and leaning back on the desk she’s perched on, “but when it comes to feminism, or whatever, it feels like white ladies always kind of want to make the conversation about them. Like they’re the only ones whose ideas or priorities anyone should listen to.”
My first reaction is to feel defensive—that’s not what I’m doing, is it?—but then I take a breath, thinking about everything I thought I knew about feminism before I started the book club. I know that I’ve still got a ton left to learn.
“I can see that,” I admit. “Like I remember reading an article about the original name of the Women’s March being a rip-off of the Million Man March, and when black activists pointed that out a bunch of white women got all offended.”
“Yeah, that’s one example,” Lydia says, though from her expression I can tell it’s nowhere near the most important one. “But basically it’s just that a lot of white women have this idea that feminism can be separated out from race or sexual identity or ability or any of that—and it can’t. If you’re going to go in, you have to go all in, you know?”
“The Audre Lorde essay we’re going to be talking about next week is a great example of how different identities and marginalizations intersect and inform each other,” Ms. Klein says, nibbling the corner of a brownie. “And you guys put Her Body and Other Parties on the list of books you might want to tackle, right?”
“That book is awesome,” Gray says immediately. “And, like, super gory.”
I look at him in surprise. “You’ve read it?”
He shrugs. “My mom got it for me, ’cause I said I liked Stephen King.”
The conversation wanders from there—from Pet Sematary to who bought winter formal tickets and who they’re taking, to the new werewolf show that just went up on Netflix, to a short biography of Ida B. Wells that Fiona pulls up on her phone when Dave admits to not knowing who she is. She’s just finishing up when I notice Gray sneaking a look at his messages.
“You got another date?” I ask, nudging him gently in the side.
He shakes his head. “There’s a party at Hurley Dubcek’s,” he admits. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to go after this, but I didn’t want you to think I didn’t want to be here.” Gray looks around. “Because I do,” he says resolutely, like he thinks he’s running for political office. “Want to be here.”
“Okay, big feminist,” I say, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder. “We believe you.”
“I was going to swing by that party too, actually,” Lydia pipes up. “If anybody wants a ride.”
There’s a moment of awkward quiet then, all of us looking around at each other, none of us wanting to be the first to bail.
Finally Ms. Klein lets out a snort. “Get out of here,” she says, popping one last meatball into her mouth before snapping the lid back onto the take-out container. “Make good choices, et cetera. I’ll see you guys next week.”
Twenty-Seven
Hurley Dubcek lives in one of those quintessential Massachusetts houses that’s been around since the colonies, with a steeply pitched roof and no real front porch, like maybe they didn’t have time for things like that back then because there was too much butter to be churned. As we walk past an antique china cabinet in the narrow hallway all the delicate-looking dishes rattle ominously.
“I always feel like a frickin’ monster in places like this,” Gray murmurs over my shoulder.
I nod. “I was just thinking that exact same thing about you.”
He looks at me, mock horror on his handsome face. “Rude!”
I grin at him. “I’m kidding.” I reach back and take his hand, lacing our fingers together and squeezing once before releasing him. “Come on.”
We pull a couple of warm cans from a thirty-pack in the kitchen, watching as Elisa grabs Lydia a Diet Coke from the fridge before pulling Dave in the direction of the backyard. Gray lets out a low whistle.
“Check out book club,” he says with a smile. In the end almost everyone who was at the potluck wound up coming, all of us rolling down the windows in Lydia’s mom’s van and singing along to the radio at the tops of our lungs. “Ready to rage.”
“I was surprised they all showed up tonight,” I admit as we edge through the crowd into the living room, where someone has pushed aside what looks like a hundred-year-old leather sofa to make room to dance on the knotty wood floors. “To the potluck, I mean. Honestly, I’m surprised they show up at the actual meetings too, but you know what I’m saying.”