Not Here to Be Liked: Chapters 17–25

But cook makes it sound like he flips burgers in a diner, and chef makes him sound like he wears a white hat and obsesses over things with only French names.
In the end, I decide to go with chef because it sounds more accomplished, and because the embellishment seems necessary to balance out the amount of white space left on the page.

After school, when Winona is late meeting me by her locker, I consider taking it out to read. It’s a book, after all—isn’t that what it’s for? But I have an irrational aversion to being seen with it, I realize.

Late last night, after extensive brainstorming (and cajoling) via text, I finally got Winona to buckle down and work on the changes for Driveways, and we’re supposed to shoot today.

When we broach the topic to a gaggle of freshmen milling around in front of their lockers, they’re on board without any hesitation.

He’s got an aquiline nose and serious eyes, plus a head of curly hair that falls over his eyes.

“What’s up?” says Serena, amiably enough, but with the thinnest layer of exasperation.

At this, Serena regards Winona with a sudden gravitas. “But that always matters.”

“I just liked the way she wrote about it, I guess. Like, she took this thing that I’ve experienced in such a mundane way, and she made it into something else. For the first time, I felt like someone was writing about a place that I knew, in a way that felt like literature.”

I’d assumed he’d drive a boxy monstrosity of a car, so high off the ground that even humdrum trips make you feel like you’re riding a float in your own parade.

Len surveys the blustery sky, which is cloudless and unnaturally bright. “You guys gonna be all right in this wind?”

The Hargis pitcher, a pale redhead with gangly legs, winds his arm up and sends the ball hurtling over home plate.

I feel an inexplicable tickle of a smile come on—and I squelch it in a hurry.

The Hargis fans realize this, too, and their distaste awakens like a beast. “Come on, McIntyre, get it together!” a voice thunders from the bleachers.
The Willoughby contingent, for its part, is also unhappy.

“Quit throwing like a girl!”
I look around, but no one besides me seems rankled by this comment.

The Hargis fans react first, erupting in cheers as the umpire calls the inning. McIntyre, vindicated, is now a hero, and he practically skips toward the Hargis dugout, clearing the foul line with a jubilant hop.

“Time for something in your wheelhouse.”
“What’s that?”
“Asking questions.”

As for me, I am almost universally regarded with a deferential courtesy that baffles me.

The important thing is that I’m here with him, and he seems fine with it, so the respect they have for him carries over to me. It’s disquieting. It makes me feel complicit in something I don’t understand.

I questioned then, standing alone in the dark corridor, whether there was any point in being pretty if it could so easily, and arbitrarily, be lost.

Even when you got it back (as Kim did, thanks to the dermatologist daughter of A yī's coworker and, if you ask Mom, excessive prayer to the Guanyin Buddha), keeping such a fickle thing around seemed to require constant obsession.

But before he notices me, I can tell from his face—even in the distance—that he’s seen something else. First there’s puzzlement, and then chagrin.

It feels wrong to keep it from her, especially now that she and I are...well, friends. And the girl is also planning a walkout on my behalf, so there’s that.
Len, however, does not have similar qualms.

“No guy leans into a girl like that without being into her,” I say, with an authority that is not based on personal experience.
“That seems like conjecture.”
“No, it’s definitely true.”

Later, long after Len has given me a ride home and we’ve parted ways for the night—both committed with assiduous cheerfulness to the falsehood that nothing out of the ordinary has happened—when I’m already in bed with the lights out because it’s past one a.m., I get a text message that sends a thrill down past my stomach.

The implication, I’ve always reasoned, is that there is something inherently unfeminist about women who concern themselves primarily with men. A feminist should have hopes, dreams, and wants that are completely independent of male needs and desires.

Len, for his part, could teach a master class in chill, and other than a curious glance the first time he saw me (which I ignored), he also betrays nothing. He is so stoic that sometimes I even feel like I might have imagined everything that happened.

But my interruption apparently isn’t enough to kill off this scintillating exchange, because then she turns back to Len.

And then I remember the first day this whole mess got started, when Len sat on top of his desk and read out loud what I’d written about him, his tone flippant in a way that I now understand was not fully sincere. He pretended that what I’d said didn’t matter to him, but it wasn’t true.

As she hands me yet another ivory ballgown, I decide not to point out that scholars have recently discovered that ancient Greek and Roman statues weren’t actually white to begin with—that it’s likely the marble we see was once painted over in bright, maybe even garish colors.

The idea of pure white as the paradigm for classical perfection, Ms. Perez had said, is a modern myth.

“Don’t ever talk to me again!” she cries, and hangs up the phone with contempt.

“Maybe it’s more impactful if you leave it ambiguous? Like the question of who actually did it.”

“Is she still going on about Jason?” Winona’s disapproval is palpable.

It reminded me of the drive to Hargis that day—how, for one fleeting afternoon, we were friends.

He seemed almost disappointed to have been left out of the planning, but he agreed to assign the story to Olivia, the News section writer with probably the least animosity toward me (a feat), and Cassie, who would take photos.

I draw some quizzical glances as I unpack my Lady Justice accoutrement, but no one comments besides Mr. Schlesinger, who studies me for a second.

“But, you see,” says Dr. Guinn, chuckling, “I find it extremely ironic to punish absence from class with more, enforced absence.” Instead we’ll all be served with detention for five days, starting today.
The room murmurs in response to this edict.

...it’s not hard to lay on the mea culpa thick. “Please don’t take it out on everyone. They were just trying to stand up for what they thought was right. I’m the one who should have known better, and I’d like to take responsibility for it now.”

Is there another, special detention for kids who do particularly insolent things?

Now his grin gets puckish.