Chapter Thirty-Nine

IN LIT CLASS, WE BEGIN TO study women in literature. We read excerpts from Jane Austen and Alice Walker, poetry by Angelou and Plath. On Tuesday, we spend half of class discussing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Wollstonecraft, and then we move on to her daughter and Frankenstein.

Maybe it’s true that men like Thomas Hardy write women well, as victims or survivors, wives or daughters, mistresses, or even soldiers.

But women write women as people.

And Mary Shelley wrote men as monsters, and I love her for it.

“Beware; for I am fearless,” Mary Shelley wrote, “and therefore powerful.”

I wonder if that’s true.

When class ends, Mrs. Riley asks me to stay behind for a moment.

As soon as the room empties, Mrs. Riley slides a familiar pink sheet across her desk.

“Why haven’t you applied for this?”

I sigh and drop into the chair beside her desk. “I tried. A few times. I just can’t write to the prompt.”

“So try again. Think about what’s holding those words back. Push through it. If you become a journalist, you are going to get a lot of assignments you don’t like. You’ve got to find your own angle. And the cash prize doesn’t hurt.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

I’m working on my next crow column now, and it’s about crows in ancient folklore. There’s a fable about a crow that is dying of thirst, but the water in the pitcher in front of him is too low for his beak to reach. So he collects pebbles and drops them in one at a time. The pebbles make the water rise, bit by bit, until he can take a drink. The moral of the fable is that necessity is the mother of invention.

This essay for Auburn Township won’t be enough for me to get into NYU, let alone actually go there. But it could be a pebble. Right now it feels so far out of reach, but maybe, if I try, it’ll get closer, pebble by pebble, until I can take a sip.

“I did have one idea. But I already know it isn’t something the Auburn Township Council will want to read.”

Mrs. Riley laughs. “Then it’s probably something they should read.”

I give her a half smile. “Maybe it is.”

“If it’s controversial, it might not win, Leighton. But you should trust your writing, and your voice. At the very least, you’ll force six middle-aged, privileged white men to read something that matters to a seventeen-year-old girl. Maybe it’ll plant a seed. And if you do win, you’ll get your first byline.”

“What?”

“The winning essay gets printed in the Auburn Gazette. You’ll have your first real publishing credential.”

The prospect is terrifying.

And tempting.

But I know what kind of men are on the council. Men who look the other way. Police officers, teachers, and old family friends.

Last year in trigonometry class, my teacher kept mocking a woman who’d been on TV all week testifying about a senator’s history of harassment. He said, “If everyone is a victim, then it’s like no one is,” and I felt shame like scalding water on my spine, and stopped raising my hand in class.

And in the diner, when I sometimes catch the end of Mom’s shift, I hear the way the men flirt with her, how she tolerates their rudeness. If she didn’t, she’d lose tips. Or a job.

Auburn born, Auburn proud. But there’s only one acceptable way to live here, and when you deviate from that narrow path, then you are the threat. Like your voice will crumble their entire world.

Maybe it’s true.

Maybe it would break this town to know that the best athlete to ever come out of Auburn, who carried his team to a state championship and would’ve gone pro, has fallen, and he’s taking his family with him.

But some things should fall apart. They should burn themselves out, like a candle that’s run its wick to the bottom. It’s dangerous to wish for such a thing, though, because some flames are too selfish to extinguish themselves.

There are flames that would set the whole world on fire if it were the only way to keep burning.