Fall is a heady apple-tree season in Minnesota; the sinking feeling of winter hasn’t quite sunk, and the wind is aromatic with embering pumpkins and unpacked quilts and dirty, wet red leaves and a distinct, immodest scent of anticipation veiled over it all. Football season bleeds into hockey. The bottle blondes begin to lowlight a little. College scouts sniff around, and it rains until it snows. I’m in my last-period art elective on Friday, which would be the easiest class in the world to skip if I didn’t actually like it, when Ms. Mayakovsky, the severe-looking but appealingly crazy art teacher, hands me a note summoning me to the principal’s office directly after class. It doesn’t say why, though I have an idea. My suspicions are confirmed: all three of my comrades-in-arms are gathered outside the office, waiting to be called in.

“Guys, this is going to sound pathetic,” Tess confesses, “but this is the first time in eleven years of public school that I’ve ever been called to the principal’s office.”

“Me too,” Rowie says. “There goes my perfect record.”

“I punched Ryan Hoffstadt for tripping me in kickball in first grade,” Marcy says. “He lost four baby teeth, they made me sit at the bad kids lunch table for three days, and people called me the Tooth Fairy until middle school.”

“Savage from day one,” Rowie says, chuckling.

“Well, ladies, you must be happy to be sharing your first time with us public-school menaces.” I headlock Marcy and noogie her hard.

“Oh, eff off, poser,” Marcy says, calling me out and wriggling free in a matter of seconds. “Name one time you’ve ever gotten sent to the principal’s office.”

I blush. “I got sent to the guidance counselor once for telling everyone in my second-grade class that Santa Claus was invented by advertisers.” I hadn’t even known what that meant, really, I’d just heard Pops say it.

“Doesn’t count!” Tess gleefully points at me. “You’re just as big a square as we are.”

Principal Ross Nordling opens his door, quelling our clowning. “Ladies? Would you like to join me?”

We straighten up and hustle in. Principal Ross Nordling is a tawny man, the same golden pink from his hair (mustache, eyebrows, eyelashes) to his skin to his dress shirt. He’s youngish — I’d say late thirties — and not particularly intimidating, though you can tell he thinks he is; he gives off that red-meat scent of hanging on by a thread all the time.

“Please, sit down.” He gestures us toward four chairs. His demeanor suggests a host’s, as if he’s just invited us to sit for tea. We sit.

“The office is collecting and sorting this year’s signed Holyhill school policies,” he begins, glancing through the new copy of the Holyhill West Wind, the school paper, on his desk. “And I was surprised to learn that four of Holyhill’s most outstanding students hadn’t yet responded to a second reminder to sign the policy.”

None of us says anything for a moment.

“You don’t say,” Marcy replies, earning a raise of two strawberry-blond eyebrows.

“In fact, Miss Crowther, I do,” he challenges her.

“Ms. Crowther,” she corrects him. He takes a moment and gives us all a long elevator-eyes scan.

“Ms. Crowther”— he offers a shyster smile —“would you like to tell me why you did not sign the policy?”

“I’d be happy to,” she says. “We didn’t sign the policy because it’s narrow-minded and counterproductive. First of all, outlawing hip-hop is ridiculous, considering it’s everywhere, and second, a policy like this prevents anyone from learning from hip-hop.”

He sizes up the rest of us. “And this is how all of you feel?” We nod.

I pull out a folder with a copy of our application to be a recognized student group.

“The four of us are definitely in agreement on that,” Tess says, “and that’s why we’ve applied to create a discussion group about hip-hop music and culture.” She smiles at him. “We thought that if we showed how hip-hop can be a positive force for debate and learning, the administration might reconsider its ban on it. In case you haven’t gotten a chance to look it over, here’s a copy of the application we submitted about a week ago.”

Nordling takes the paper and gazes vacantly at it for a moment.

NAME AND PURPOSE OF GROUP:

Sister Mischief: Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos is proposed as a discussion group for queer inquiry — inqueery — into the language, music, and culture of hip-hop. As a safe space for GLBT students, the group will also serve as Holyhill’s first gay-straight alliance. By directing our questions about gender, race, class, and art toward both the discipline of hip-hop and the terrain of Holyhill High School in a spirit of tolerance, we hope to break down boundaries of what a hip-hop language, or a Holyhill student identity, may include.

NUMBER OF MEMBERS (ESTIMATED):

There are currently four members, though several hundred are expected to join when they realize that our group is way more fun than other groups.

ARE YOU REQUESTING FUNDING?

Not at this time.

MULTIMEDIA/TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS (PLEASE LIST ALL):

Audio/video equipment for listening to music and viewing films; Internet-equipped meeting space.

FACULTY ADVISER:

We’re working on it.

Nordling clears his throat. “Yes, Ms. Grinnell, I’m familiar with this application, and I’m sorry to have to inform you that it’s been denied.”

“Why is that?” I ask. “Because it violates your hip-hop policy or because you don’t want to deal with the fallout from creating a gay-straight alliance at Holyhill?”

“Is that what this group is?” he asks dubiously, holding up our application. “Because to me, it looks like a group without a faculty adviser dedicated to the study of a music and culture of violence, drugs, and licentious sex. I must say, I’m surprised that four bright girls such as yourselves would be so devoted to music that objectifies and degrades women.”

“I think if you studied it more, Mr. Nordling,” I retort, “you’d find that hip-hop isn’t nearly that simple, and that discussing and exploring its questions of culture and gender and identity are fascinating, legitimate courses of inquiry. Inqueery.”

Our conversation is interrupted by a knock at the door. Marilyn DiCostanza, our AP English teacher and head of the department, pokes her head in.

“Ross,” she says, “sorry to interrupt, but what are these signed school policy sheets my homeroom is handing in? I don’t remember any new school policies being discussed at the last faculty meeting.”

“This isn’t the ideal time to discuss it, Marilyn.” Principal Nordling maintains a forced smile.

“Now’s the time to discuss why a Christian prayer group is allowed to meet on school grounds but our hip-hop GSA isn’t,” I say.

“We could use a faculty adviser, Mrs. D.,” Tess pipes up.

Mrs. DiCostanza smiles. “It looks as though you have your hands full right now, Ross. I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Thank you, Marilyn,” he manages through pinched lips.

“Mr. Nordling, not all Holyhill parents are Christian, and neither are its students. And I think you should consider the idea that maybe students who don’t fit your Holyhill SWASP ideal might need a space where they feel safe too,” I say.

“SWASP?” he asks.

“Straight White Anglo-Saxon Protestant,” Rowie rattles off.

Nordling takes a deep breath and massages his temples. “Listen, girls. Whether we all like it or not, we live in a Christian community in a Christian nation. Don’t you think it’d be much easier for everybody if you just accepted the administration’s denial of your student group application and pondered all these things on your own time?”

“Mr. Nordling,” Tess says in a voice full of honeybees, “we are not interested in what is easy. We live in a melting-pot nation in which our freedom of expression is protected by the First Amendment. Our Christian community wouldn’t want the ACLU breathing down your neck. A First Amendment, or gosh, a church-and-state lawsuit — that would be so pesky, wouldn’t it? Hmm?” She sits back, crossing her legs.

“Ms. Grinnell, I must say I’m a little surprised at you. I wouldn’t have expected a stunt like this from a young woman such as yourself,” Nordling says.

“Actually,” Tess replies, “I believe this stunt, as you call it, is perfectly in line with my Christian values of love and tolerance. Nothing offends those values more than when people use Jesus’s words as a lame justification for their own small-mindedness.”

“Well, I’d hardly say —” he starts.

“We have some contacts in the local media,” Marcy says. I wonder who she’s referring to until I remember Rooster’s KIND-11 gig.

“There must be some way we can reach a compromise here,” Tess says, sweetly pounding Ross Nordling into the ground. “I’m sure my parents, Darlene and Dr. Gary Grinnell, would be so pleased to hear that you listened to us and made a fair decision. Hmm?”

Tess’s laid her whole hand on the table now: everyone, and I mean everyone, in Holyhill knows the Grinnells. Darlene is not a woman one wants as an enemy, and Principal Ross Nordling knows this exceptionally well, having overseen the education of both her daughters. However, he also knows that she’s not a woman one would think likely to support a queer hip-hop collective. Principal Ross Nordling drops his head and furiously kneads his forehead with his thumbs, weighing his options.

“How about this: you keep your group quiet, sign the policy, and”— he glances back at our application —“Hip-Hop for Heteros and Homos can meet in the old warming house out by the track.”

“Wait one hot minute,” Marcy says. “That warming house isn’t even technically on school grounds if it’s past the track.”

“It’s the best offer I’m making, Ms. Crowther. And how do you know so much about school boundaries? Does your father know about this group of yours?”

Marcy starts a little, but holds her bluff. “Of course he does.”

“Good. Do we have a deal, ladies?” He holds up the unsigned policies.

We exchange looks.

“Ladies?” he says.

“Well — all right,” I say.

“Really?” He brims over with glee.

“Naw, I’m just playing with you,” I say. “I’m not signing anything. And if that warming house isn’t on school grounds, it seems like we can pretty much meet there whether you say so or not.”

“I’ll have to check with my mother about signing.” Tess folds her hands delicately on her lap and smiles. “And possibly our family lawyer.”

“No, thank you.” Rowie smiles.

He looks unoptimistically at Marcy. “Seriously?” she scoffs. “No way.”

“All right, ladies. I’ll meet you halfway. You meet in the warming house for the rest of the semester. If, in that time, you can demonstrate to me that this group is truly positive and purposeful and that other students are interested in having it, we’ll find a space on campus for it next semester.”

“That”— Tess stands up, sticking out her hand —“is a better offer.” He shakes it.

“So you’ll sign?” Nordling asks, hoping this meeting is over.

“We’ll think about it,” Marcy says. Nordling shakes the rest of our hands and we retreat, holding in our laughter until we make it to the parking lot.

Later that night, waiting for Marcy to pick me up for our celebratory jam session with the ladies,¹⁸ I’m painting my nails black and white and watching Hedwig and the Angry Inch for the five hundredth time when I hear Marcy and Coach Bob walk into the kitchen, shooting the shit with my dad. They’re all old buddies, and I think I hear Marcy and Pops practicing their secret handshake. Sometimes I think my dad knows more about Marcy’s life than her dad does. No doubt he’s easier to talk to than tank-like Coach Bob, who’s shaped like a refrigerator and learned how to communicate in the Marines. I know my dad isn’t like other dads; I mean, he carves wood furniture for a living and miniature houses as a passion, for one. We’re pretty broke by Holyhill standards — it’s a good thing Marcy inherited Rooster’s old car, because Pops and I could never afford a second one — but I guess that’s just the price I pay for having a dad who’s pretty chill and empathetic and liberal by Holyhill standards, too.

18. Text from Rowie: I just got an original-release LP of CunninLynguists’ Will Rap for Food. When are you coming over?
Me to Rowie: Omfg, that’s like seeing a unicorn. On our way in 10.

Blowing on my piano-key fingernails, I attempt to shove on my emerald-green boots without using my hands, no easy feat considering the boots are eighteen inches tall. I hook my bag over my elbow crook, turn off the TV, and clump out to the kitchen.

Per usual, Dad is pushing food on Marcy.

“Seriously, Luke, I just ate,” she protests weakly.

“Little girl, you haven’t tasted egg salad like this in your life. Did you know curry powder makes everything better?” Dad’s going through a curry phase. Coconut curry, various veggies in curry sauce, now curried egg salad.

“I gotta admit, the egg salad is pretty tricked out,” I chime in. “But I contest the allegation that curry powder makes everything better.”

“Cite your evidence!” Dad cries, actually shocked.

“Uh, last Sunday’s maca-curry-and-cheese? Not meant to be, Pops.”

Bob guffaws. “Luke cooks like a girl.” This sends Marcy and me into peals of laughter.

He laughs. “Okay, okay, I’ll chalk that one up to my overzealous palate. But for real, just try one bite of this.” He spoons a lump of today’s special into Marcy’s mouth, and her eyebrows shoot up.

“Damn, that’s tasty.” Marcy coughs. “Nice work, Rockett man.”

“Ez, you want some? Skinny girl, you’re wasting away.”

“Dad, we had dinner like half an hour ago. Marcy and I really gotta bolt. Bob, didja bring Forrest Gump?”

He bashfully produces the DVD from under his coat, along with a six-pack, a bag of corn chips, and a can of Frito-Lay nacho cheese dip. Bob Crowther wears John Deere hats unironically. “Now, how’d you know it’d be that and not Platoon this time?”

I grin. “Lucky guess.”

Pops throws his hands up in mock exasperation. “What do you expect the man to say? We old men are creatures of habit. Bob likes war movies. I love by feeding. Go. Get out of here. Consider your welcome overstayed.”

I remember my hobo feet. “Wait, Pops, can you lace me up? My nails are wet.”

Dad shakes his head a little, chuckling, and kneels down to work on my magnificent shitkickers.

“Luke, I gotta bail on Sunday night,” Bob says as Pops laces.

“Why?” Pops looks crestfallen. “We haven’t, um, been bowling in months.”

“You know you guys sound a lot gayer when you come up with euphemisms for playing blackjack at Mystic Lake, right?” I say.

“Seriously,” Marcy says. “The jig is up. No one can come home from bowling smelling that much like Kool cigarettes and despair.”

“Well,” Bob says, “I suppose you were bound to figure it out.”

“Why can’t you go?” Marcy asks. “You don’t have practice on Sunday nights.”

“Maybe I should ask you,” Bob says. “You got any idea why Ross Nordling wants a meet with me first thing Monday morning?”

“Nope.” Marcy suddenly appears engrossed in cracking open the dip can.

“Mary Marcella, are you sure?” Bob asks sternly. Marcy hates her full name.

“You bet,” Marcy says. Pops and I exchange a look in which I try to convey I’ll tell you later.

“Did I buy you these?” Pops interjects. “They’re kinda nutty.”

“You mean they’re kinda beautiful? No, you didn’t buy them. I got them for ten bucks at Value Village with Rowie. Can you believe someone left these homeless?”

Marcy, Bob, and Dad exchange a look, then nod in unison.

“I’m breaking up with all of you. Later, Pops. Love you no shit. Later, Bob.”

“Love you no shit. Where are you going? Do you have your phone?”

“Just over to Rowie’s, and yes. Bye.”

I toss Dad a quick peck on the cheek, followed by an identical peck from Marcy. Marcy kisses my dad, but not her own. Just as we’re about to walk out the front door, the doorbell rings. Surprised, I turn back to the kitchen.

“Hey, Pops, you expecting someone?” Is Dad dating behind my back? That hasn’t happened in a while, not since Marcy and I scared away his last girlfriend, Felicia, by stealing a sign from the Holyhill Veterinary Clinic that read BUFFALO MEAT FOR SALE and putting it on her front lawn. Sign stealing is one of Marcy’s and my favorite pastimes. Truth be told, I still feel kind of bad about Felicia. There wasn’t anything overtly wrong with her except that she smelled like cottage cheese.

“Nope,” he calls back. “See who it is.”

I open the door to find none other than the despicable Mary Ashley Baumgarten, along with another girl who looks like her freshman doppelgänger. Why can’t I ever get away from this girl?

“What in God’s name are you doing at my house?” I ask MashBaum.

She pretends to gawk. “This is your house?”

I roll my eyes. “Yes. And this is my door.” I begin to close it, but Mary Ashley thrusts a foot in and comes back with a syrupy smile.

“Go ahead.” She nudges her mini-MashBaum.

“I’m canvassing today because the Holyhill Teens for Christ are selling poinsettias to support our Preserve Unborn Lives initiative,” the girl starts.

“Who’s the clone?” I ask.

“This is Kristina, my freshman buddy. She’s learning how to canvass for Christ.” MashBaum wraps an arm around her minion. “Right, Stina?”

“Perhaps you’d like to know that the first poinsettia is seventeen ninety-five, and each additional plant is just fifteen ninety-five,” Kristina rattles off, looking eagerly back at Mary Ashley for approval. “We guarantee delivery by December first, and for today only, we have a special offer of five plants for eighty-nine ninety-nine.”

“Oh, spare me,” I groan.

“That’s a total rip-off,” Marcy mutters. “If you buy one plant at seventeen ninety-five and then four at fifteen ninety-five, the total is only eighty-one seventy-five.”

Mary Ashley’s face twists, and she says, more for Kristina’s benefit than ours, “Look, it’s never too late for you girls to come to Bible study sometime, and just own up to your sins and learn about Jesus, and hear about everything we’re doing to save the unborn. Everyone is welcome. Teenage pregnancy is a big problem in Holyhill —”

Marcy cackles. “You should know, right, Mary Ashley?”

“We meet Wednesday afternoons, third lunch . . .” I can hear Kristina’s waning voice as I slam the door in her face.

“Unbelievable,” I say.

“Now we have to wait for her to leave before we can,” whines Marcy, watching through the window as Mary Ashley and Kristina cross the street.

“Like hell we do. Let’s run her over,” I say, opening the door and walking out.

Marcy follows. “Not worth the mess they’d make on the driveway. We should seriously call the ACLU on that Bible group. Bob’s always said pinko lawyers love that church-and-state shit.”

“Maybe,” I say, hopping into the passenger side of the Jimmy. “But don’t you think legal’s more flexible when you’re rich?”

“Shit is fucked.”

“For real.”

Marcy starts the car and I stick my tongue out between two fingers at Mary Ashley as we pull out. Dead prez’s lets get free blasts from the CD hookup. Marcy’s been heavy into hip-hop for as long as I can remember, and it was her endless lyrical parroting and beatboxing that got the rest of us rhyming in the first place.

“You’re good with words,” Marcy said to me about a year ago. She’d figured out how to break songs down for their parts on her computer. “You say things right. Can you make them rhyme?”

I wrote and I wrote, and it rhymed, but I couldn’t make it sit in a song shape. I just wrote lyrics like a highway without any exit ramps.

“I was thinking about Rapunzel,” Rowie said out of the blue one day. “I think I wrote a hook about Rapunzel.”

“Yeah?” I said, intrigued. “Lay it on us.” Rowie was so nervous as she read from her notebook that her voice shook.

“Bumping up against the edges of a blond-yawn town

She’s stuck up in a tower and she can’t get down

But she’s got beats in her feet and she’s drowning in sound

Break out, babe, obey it, get down.”

“That’s it,” Marcy marveled. “Thank God you came along. Miss Poet Laureate over here can’t write a chorus to save her own ass.” Then when Tess started hanging around, Sister Mischief was born.

People think it’s weird, I know — four suburban teenage girls, three white, one brown, making this kind of music. Maybe some people think a white girl from Minnesota doesn’t have any right to rhyme. But how am I supposed to keep from rhyming? To me, hip-hop is a reflection of your surroundings, and an instrument of change. And if that’s true, it can’t belong only to black people, or to white people, or to brown or green or blue people. Within a medium of subversion, I like to think that all subversive people are, or should be, welcome, because busting rhythm and poetry loose is the only way anyone with hip-hop pumping in their veins can feel free. We’re getting free. So fuck anyone who thinks we shouldn’t rap. If we’re being really honest with ourselves here, we rap exactly because a lot of people think we shouldn’t.

“Hey,” Marcy says.¹⁹ “Where you at, Ferocious?”

19. Text from Tess: On my way to R’s now, but I gotta hit choir practice for a while tonight or MA’s gonna call a Lutheran jihad on my a**.

I smile. “Just thinking.”

“Wanna find a new sign to bring Rowie?”

“No doubt, ladyfriend.”

Marcy pulls off the highway and we hunt for targets. I point out a generic handwritten GARAGE SALE THURSDAY sign and shrug; she shakes her head.

“We need something more ironic. Something with a little more smack to it.”

“What does that sign say?” Marcy asks, pointing at a sign on Mary Ashley’s mammoth yard.

“Oh, my God, we would have to be seriously stealthy to make off with that.” The lawn sign reads Herb for Holyhill: Herb Baumgarten for State Senator.

Marcy cackles. “Herb for Holyhill! That shit is ours.”

“Can you believe he’s actually running?” I say. “We’re basically doing Holyhill a nicey by sabotaging him.”

“I still can’t believe he’s running as a Republican with ‘Herb for Holyhill’ as his campaign slogan. Let me pull through the side street — it’ll get us closer.” She hangs a left and kills the lights. “I’m going to roll slowly by the edge of the lawn, and you dash out and grab it from your side, drive-by–style.”

“Someone should confiscate your DVDs of The Wire, but I’m on it.” We roll by the yard and I bolt across the lawn, twisting my ankle a little as I pivot back, sign in hand. The sprint leaves me panting when I jump back in the Jimmy and toss the booty in the back as Marcy peels out, cackling wildly. Marcy and me, we take care of business.

Rowie and Tess live at the end of a long cul-de-sac near the fire station, in houses facing each other from about a block’s distance. The Baumgartens live on the next street over, which lends a literal quality to Mary Ashley’s acting like we invaded her territory. Anyway, what I love most about Rowie’s house, apart from the old treehouse in the backyard, is the smell. It’s sweet and spicy and totally unlike the smell of any other house I know; I love that it’s full of scents unfamiliar to me. Before I knew Rowie’s family, I’d never really eaten Indian food, except for a samosa here and there, but Dr. Priya Rudra is a force to be reckoned with, in the kitchen as well as the ER. It took me a few tries to brave the Rudra chutney gauntlet without weeping from the heat, but that shit is legit. Marcy parks on the street, and we walk up to the embossed-copper door.

Dr. Rudra — well, one of them — Rowie’s dad — answers. “Ah! Friends! Rohini is expecting you. Do you want some chicken?” As the only non-veg member of the Rudra family, Raj Rudra is always trying to recruit companions in carnivoraciousness.

“You have no idea how full we are,” Marcy answers. “Esme’s dad just pushed me over my limit.”

“Maybe later,” I add. “Thanks a bunch, though. Is Rowi — Rohini down in her room?”

“Yes. Please go ahead.” He steps aside softly down the hall. “You girls have a nice time writing your rap rhymes.” He sends us off with a glance at the Herb sign ill-concealed behind Marcy’s back.

Just then, the other Dr. Rudra, Rowie’s mom, appears. Her face lights up when she sees Marcy and me.

“Girls! I’m so glad I caught you. Oh, I loathe that man.” She points to HERB FOR HOLYHILL. “He wants to destroy science education in Minnesota.” She laughs at the shocked looks on our faces. “My mother always says that American medical school turned me into a crazy radical. I say, what’s radical about dispersing information? Please, don’t get me started. How is your writing going?”

“Fine, thanks, Dr. Rudra.”

“I’m so glad.” She smiles. Rowie’s mom is really beautiful — not young, and not pretending to be, but she has a kind of glow that’s lit from within. “I was thinking about your verses. I studied poetry at university, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” I say, wondering when she had time to read poetry as she was learning how to save children’s lives.

“I have to get to hospital, but —” She looks conflicted for a moment, then relaxes. “Oh, it’s all right. I’m always early anyway. I want to show you this lovely poem I found. It made me think of you girls.”

“Yeah?” I say, surprised. Marcy looks awkward but intrigued. “Okay. I’d love to see it.”

She motions for us to follow her down the hall into the office she shares with the other Dr. Rudra. Marcy and I hover in the threshold, surveying the piles of paper and pictures of Rowie and Lakshmi, her little sister. Rowie’s mom plucks a sheet off her pile and scans it, smiling.

“Here it is,” she whispers. “It’s by a Minnesota poet, and it makes me think about those early friends, the girls you love first, before all others. This is the stanza that made me think of Rohini and you American girls.” She begins to read in a musical voice:

“How we could talk!

Translating back and forth. We knew hundreds

of lines by heart, the endless

rhythms, counterpoint to the ocean waves. We wanted

to take in all the wonder in the world, all

the ecstasy, all the tenderness. Ömhet,

you loved to say this soft word for tenderness, ömhet.

I loved to listen to you.

So strange to have loved something so much

and not to have known it was a calling.”

She finishes reading and looks up, gently searching our faces for a reaction.

“That’s — that’s beautiful,” I croak, clearing my throat.

“Isn’t it? I think it captures a kind of magic feeling, something mystical about the way life feels when you are young, and the love between women. It’s truthful that way. Do you know?” Dr. Rudra’s eyes return to the page for a moment.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Marcy slumped, staring at the floor.

“I know we all need a little poetry sometimes,” I say, to break the silence, and because it’s true.

Dr. Rudra nods firmly. “Yes. You are a very wise girl, to know that already.”

I clear my throat again. Marcy shifts her weight.

She looks at us again, searching. “Well, any time you feel like you need some poetry, you come to our house.”

“Thanks, Dr. R. Have a good night at work.” She places a hand on both of our shoulders and slides past us, smelling like Rowie — gardenia and almond and something else. Marcy is still all hunched over and quiet. This mom shit, she’s never looked it in the face. I nudge her.

“You cool, fool?” I ask.

She raises her head, taking in a rush of breath. “Yeah”— it hangs for a second —“yeah. Let’s do this.” Without providing further opportunity for discussion, she walks out of the study.

We scamper downstairs to find Rowie nestled in her bed underneath her enormous headphones and Tess humming “Poker Face” on the floor. Before I can nudge Rowie’s shoulder, Marcy leaps in front of her bed and flashes the Herb sign.

“Herb for Holyhill!” Marcy cries.

Rowie jumps like she’s been electrocuted and falls off the bed, on top of Tess.

“Jesus Christ, Marce, you almost killed me,” Rowie gasps, yanking her headphones off her ears, rolling over, and catching her breath. Marcy doubles over, yukking.

“Me too.” Tess coughs. “Where’d you get that?”

“Some asshole’s lawn,” Marcy says.

“What’s got you so lost in thought, girl?” I ask Rowie, patting her hair.

“I’m trying to figure out how to isolate this beat and bassline from ‘Testify,’” she tells us. “I think we could use a sort of similar structure, like, give Tess a vocal hook that repeats throughout the whole track and lay the rhymes on top of it. Here, listen.” She unplugs the cord from her MacBook and Common fills the room.

“I can pull that beat for sure,” Marcy says. “This track is totally post Common’s selling out, but still good shit.”

“Have you started working on lyrics yet?” I ask, knowing she has.

“Affirmative,” Rowie replies. “I’m thinking ‘Lemme Get a Hit of It’ as the title. But in the actual track, I want to put a pause between the two clauses so they sort of rhyme, like ‘Lemme get / a hit of it.’ So it’s like a call-and-response thing, like you’ll say something, and we all say ‘Lemme get / a hit of it,’ and then I’ll say something and everyone responds. . . . You get what I’m talking about?”

“I think so. If you can work that into a chorus, I can write some verses around it. What you got so far for the call and response?”

“Okay, so I think it just starts with you and me doing some MC improv as the beat starts and Tess’s vocals come in, you know, just talking like ‘Turn that up in the headphones’ style.”

“Got it. Tessie, you got a melody?”

“You know it.” She grins, splashing an arpeggio into a circular hook.

“And then you come in with ‘Sisterhood!’” Rowie instructs me. “Then we all say ‘Lemme get / a hit of it,’ and then maybe I say ‘Equality!’ and everyone responds, then maybe the TC, rollin’ with my homegirls, Roe v. Wade, you know, some other sweet shit.”

Rowie’s door flies open and thirteen-year-old Lakshmi appears.

“What the hell? Get out of my room!” Rowie hurls her pen like a javelin at Lakshmi, which strikes me as somewhat vicious, but what do I know about siblings?

“Can you cover for me?” Lakshmi asks.

“While you do what, exactly?” Rowie snorts.

“There’s a party, obvs,” Lakshmi says, rolling her eyes.

“Will there be boys at the party?” asks Tess, bemused.

Lakshmi looks at us like we’re all shit-for-brains. “Why would I be going if there weren’t going to be boys there?”

“Excuse me,” Rowie says. “I will not cover for you so you can go do whatever you do with those skanky little Holy Hellions. Go to bed.”

“Come on,” Lakshmi whines. “It’s only three streets over. You know how Dad gets as soon as he hears party. I’ll be back by eleven. It’s not even a bad party.”

“No.” Rowie holds firm.

“Damn, Ro.” Marcy whistles through her teeth. “You’re kind of a tightass.” Rowie looks at her wide-eyed, then relents.

“Fine. Eleven. Don’t get hit by a car or anything. Bye.”

Lakshmi leaps with delight, blows us all a kiss, and dashes out. We exchange looks.

“That one’s gonna be trouble,” Tess says.

“Don’t remind me.” Rowie shakes her head. “She’s on the Holyette Express. Let’s just talk about the song.”

“I was digging what you had going on,” Marcy says as she pulls her computer out of her backpack and starts isolating more samples. “Carry on as I work on technical support.”

“What if,” I start, thinking out loud, “at the last call and response before we get into the first verse, I say something funny like ‘Yo, Ro, you got some deodorant in that purse?’ and you say, ‘Yeah, Ferocious,’ and I just say, ‘Lemme get a hit of it’ by myself?”

Tess giggles and her dimples indent her cheeks. “Your face is crazy, crazy-face.”

“That should be a lyric in the chorus.” Rowie lights up, trying it. “Your face is crazy, crazy-face.”

We die laughing. “Lemme get a hit of it,” I choke.

“Got it!” Marcy proclaims seconds later. “Listen to this.” She plays another sick polyrhythm for us.

“Sick,” Rowie says.

“Word.” Marcy is pleased with herself.

I agree. “That shit is heavy.”

Tess checks her watch. “Buttfudge, I gotta run.” She begins to get her purse together.

“Sometimes I think your non-swears are nastier than actual swears,” I comment.

“Where you going?” Marcy asks.

“I gotta go to choir to make sure Mary Ashley hasn’t put out a hit on me-slash-us after our little showdown in the commons,” she says.

“She did show up at my house pushing poinsettias,” I say. “With a mini-MashBaum.”

“That girl is a Percocet dependency waiting to happen,” Marcy says.

“Yeah, uh,” I stutter. “I meant to say earlier, sorry she, like, thinks you’re gay. I sort of feel like it’s my fault.”

“Eff that,” Marcy says. “What comes out of that girl’s mouth is not what thinking sounds like.”

“Why are you afraid of Mary Ashley?” I say to Tess. “I mean, why do you care what she thinks of you or your friends?”

Tess sighs. “It’s all politics, girlfriend.”

“Plus you feel guilty for breaking up with her,” Marcy says.

“I always felt like she blamed me for that. Once I moved into the neighborhood, it’s like she got demoted or something,” Rowie says.

“She did,” Marcy says simply, shrugging.

“Look, you’re not wrong,” Tess says. “But strategically, it’s better for us and for 4H if Holyhill still thinks I’m in with the A-list Christian contingent.”

“I guess then they can’t say we’re all degenerates and aliens,” I say.

“Just some of us,” Rowie mutters.

“Oh, quit it with the Indiangst,” Tess teases her gently. “That betch is perverting my church and effing with my friends, and her unconstitutional Bible group is the best leverage we have with Nordling. As long as I can help keep our plan moving forward intact, we have something he doesn’t want to leak to the local media and their lawyers.”

“I feel you,” I say. “You’re like our secret ambassador. That’s some devious shit.”

“Yeah, get a hit of that.” She beams. “Plus, you know, I like to sing.”

“We’ll fill you in on this scheming later.” Marcy raises her hand in a good-bye salute.

“Tell the girls we said namaste,” Rowie adds drily.

“Mazel tov,” I contribute.

“Body of Christ.” Marcy makes the sign of the cross over Tess.

“Good night, God bless you, and God bless America.” Tess flashes us a peace sign and disappears out the basement door.