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5
It turns out that I can’t keep quiet when the teachers here insist on treating girls like freakish novelties.
“As newcomers to this school, I’m interested in hearing what ourexemplarystudent intake has to say for themselves,” Mr. Stevenson, our walrus-looking English teacher, says with barely restrained displeasure. He paces between the desks, his hot gaze lasering on the girls. “Let’s find out what standard of literacy has been brought to Lochkelvin. Tell me, ladies–” and here I hold back my cringe, “what would you say is your favorite book of all time? Please – do feel free to wow me.”
All the girls are positioned in a single line at the front of the class. Arabella sits poised on the edge of her chair, absurdly hyper-focused. I’m not surprised to see, in my periphery, her arm swinging upward into the air as she puts herself forward.
Behind me, Rory makes an unimpressed scoffing noise.
Mr. Stevenson nods at her. “Yes?”
“War and Peace,” Arabella answers promptly, and I have to refrain from rolling my eyes.War and Peace. Of fucking course. “I find it quite inspirational. It’s such an evocative exploration of nineteenth-century Russia, and the rawness of revolution shines on every page.”
“All twelve-hundred of them?” Rory drawls beneath his breath.
“An interesting choice,” Mr. Stevenson says in the blandest possible tone. He flicks his hand so hard in my direction I think it’s about to dislocate. “You.”
“I… I’ve never readWar and Peace,” I state, shaken by his directness.
Mr. Stevenson pinches the bridge of his nose and Rory hoots with laughter. “Your favoritebook.”
My heart is hammering. My palms are all sweaty. I feel the weight of the class’s attention on me, of Arabella’s superior gaze to my left and Rory’s unrestrained glee behind me.
“I don’t really have a favorite book,” I mumble.
Mr. Stevenson peers at me in dismay. “Do you read?Canyou read?”
“Yes!” I answer indignantly, because all I can hear is Rory’s laughter ringing in my head. “I started a feminist book club at my old school.”
“Oh myGod,” Rory says with another of those mocking laughs. “Fucking feminists, I swear to God.”
My face colors – not with embarrassment but rage. My hand curls into a small fist, and I scrape my thumbnail against my skin to keep myself grounded.
I choose to speak, mainly to drown out the too-loud and lingering effects of Rory’s existence. “I’d say my favorite of the ones we read is Virginia Woolf’sA Room of One’s Own. It… spoke to me.”
“So I guess this club was just you, then,” Rory says loudly behind me, as though he can’t possibly fathom girls talking together outside the presence of boys.
“No,” I say, turning round to look him in his cold gray eyes. “There were actually twelve of us.”
“Wow. A whole dozen! Really smashing the patriarchy there.” He grins at me with bright enthusiasm, and I quickly face the front again. I try to control the sinking, shrinking feeling that takes over my body – and the strange sensation that grabs my heart whenever our eyes connect. “You know, I’ve actually readA Room of One’s Own, and I found it trite and pointless.”
Trite and pointless. I sit in my chair, in a seething fury. As if Rory Munro’s ever cracked open a book by a woman before, never mind Virginia Woolf – does he even know who she is? No one who’s readA Room of One’s Owncould possibly call it“trite and pointless.”
But then Rory stridently continues, “The male perspective is terribly lacking, and I did ultimately find it a book about privilege written by a privileged woman with very little to say but much to complain about. I would hypothesize that a woman doesnotneed money and a room of her own to write in – after all, there are many men without either of those things, particularly in Woolf’s era, but does she care about them? No. She is as sexist as it comes, as well as racist in one particularly egregious passage, and she cares only for matters that advance her concerns. It’s frankly despicable that Lochkelvin students have overlooked these points and chosen topraiseher writing instead. In short, her book does a disservice to men as a class, and Woolf is an entirely selfish figure who ought not to be celebrated.”
There is a small smattering of applause after Rory’s diatribe, and, as I send my mental apologies to Virginia Woolf for having her name trampled through mud in my first English class, I sink further into my chair.
Work hard.
Stick with the girls.
Stay out of trouble.
My three rules swirl uselessly around my head as I clench my jaw.
What is the point? What is the fucking point?
* * *
