Moxie: Chapters 1–5

There’s sweat beading at his hairline, and he puffs out his ruddy cheeks.

And then there’s a collection of snickers and laughs, like a smattering of applause.

Mitchell just smirks at her from his desk, his blue eyes peering out from under his auburn hair.

At 5'10" and a junior in high school, I’m afraid I might still be growing, but Claudia’s been the size of a coffee-table tchotchke since the sixth grade.

“I know,” Claudia agrees, waiting as I find my sack lunch in the cavernous recesses of my messy locker.

I think about going over to invite her to sit with us, but then I think about the fact that Mitchell and his dumb-ass friends are sitting smack in the center of the cafeteria, hooting it up, looking for any chance to pelt one of us with more of their lady-hating garbage.

I give Joan Jett a quick pet and then find a note on the counter from my mother. She could just text me, but she likes what she calls “the tangible quality of paper.”

Even though my mom is pretty relaxed compared to a lot of moms—like she’s always been up front with me about sex stuff and she doesn’t mind if I swear in front of her once in a while—it’s still hard to reconcile the girl in the Polaroid with the mom I know now.

I like listening to their banter, to their gentle teasing, to the way two people who have been together for over forty years communicate with each other.

I shrug, briefly fantasizing about what it must be like to be retired and able to spend your days puttering around with your ceramic rooster collection, totally oblivious to the realities of East Rockport High School.

“No, fortunately nothing too weird. Just urinary tract infections and ear infections all night long.”

“Him? Yeah, I know who he is.”
My mouth pops open and Claudia grins, relishing the moment.

Once a year each year in elementary school we were all forced to tour a musty house built in the late 1880s that didn’t have any toilets. One of the singular experiences of an East Rockport childhood, I guess.

He lifts up one lanky arm and drags his hand through his hair and his bangs fall in front of his eyes.

The thatch of dark hair on his head makes him look like a rooster strutting around up there.

I have the urge to clench my fists again until the slivers of my mostly bitten fingernails dig into my palms.

Sometimes I wonder how old you have to be to feel really nostalgic. Sometimes I wonder if it’s possible to feel nostalgic for something you never actually got to experience yourself.

Audacious. That’s a fancy vocabulary workbook word that would earn me extra points on any of Mr. Davies’s stupid unit tests.
The Riot Grrrls didn’t care what people thought. They wanted to be seen and heard.
Because they were audacious.

Alone in my room, I cut out a dozen slips of paper the size of my palm and wrote things on them in black Sharpie like SMOKING KILLS and SMOKING CAUSES CANCER and I DON’T WANT TO LOSE MY ONLY PARENT. Looking back, I cringe at that last one, but I was an earnest third grader, and I was going for the jugular.

I run one finger over the words of something called a Riot Grrrl Manifesto.

Because we don’t want to assimilate to someone else’s (boy) standards of what is or isn’t.

Because I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will, change the world for real.

Imagining I can hear them singing out the lyrics they've so painstakingly copied onto the pages of their zines.

When I’m finished, I crack my neck—it’s a little sore from hunching over my creation so intently.

With an hour left before my mom gets home from work, I take my finished pages and place them gingerly in my math folder, then slide the folder into my backpack.

There are no customers and just one employee, a guy wearing a frayed red vest that I guess is supposed to be some sort of U COPY IT corporate regalia.

He has a little stubble under his chin and a mass of unkempt salt-and-pepper hair that sits like a bird’s nest on top of his head.

I know the head custodian, Mr. Casas, gets here crazy early to unlock the doors and turn on the lights and power up the air-conditioning or the heat—both always seem to break on the hottest and coldest days of the year, respectively.

I’m a girl who would prefer to evaporate into the ether rather than draw even positive attention to herself.

A visit to one of the girls’ bathrooms reveals half a stack of Moxie zines sitting sadly on the counter, one haphazardly knocked to the floor, a faint footprint right on the front cover.

But as I take my seat in English, I spot Lucy Hernandez in the front row with a copy of Moxie in her hands, her lips locked tight and her brow furrowed as she reads the inside.

But Mitchell Wilson could live a thousand lives and never attain the perfection that is Seth Acosta in his sleeveless Sonic Youth T-shirt and perfectly tousled black hair.

But about halfway through the tedious fifty minute class I see it perched there, like a good luck charm.

Finally, Mr. Davies sits down at his desk to zone out on his computer while we’re allegedly “working independently” (actually messing around with our phones as surreptitiously as possible).

It pisses me off that my first reaction is to make sure he can’t hear us, but I don’t want to get caught by him and become the next brunt of his jokes.