For her senior project, Dallas Delaney starts Girls Shit Too, a series of vlogs inspiring girls to ditch the constraints of femininity and adopt the perks of masculinity. That's when another girl in her English class, Adree, uses her own online plat...
I walked into class and slumped into my chair, right before Valerie walked past me in what was definitely a new outfit. Unlike Valerie, I didn't pay critical attention to what people were wearing—that is, unless I had a crush on them and what they were wearing seemed to flatter them in some way. And her outfit was flattering. She wore this fancy gray blazer with a black blouse underneath and skinny black leather pants and black high heels. She looked classy and metal at the same time. She didn't usually look like that—normally, she wore brighter colors. Maybe she wanted to start dressing like an adult with a career. I had seen her new outfit on Instagram this morning, and in our shared chemistry class earlier today, and when she was walking, with Chad, to her new Audi for lunch. Now I got to admire it for a fourth time.
She sat down next to Adree Richards, who I noticed had changed the color of her hair again. I didn't know Adree that well, aside from the fact that she would get upset whenever someone called her "Audrey" instead of pronouncing her name with a long "A," and that one of her parents was Filipino. I'd also heard Valerie once say about her, "God, she changes her hair like she changes her boyfriends," and it made me remember that Adree had gone through a lot of boyfriends our freshman year, which wasn't a bad thing like Valerie made it out to be; I wished I'd had the same luck with girls. I remembered having to do a school project with Adree in middle school, and I remembered her being annoying, but that was a long time ago. I really liked her hair, especially this year. She'd been wearing it down a lot, and it was usually dyed one of those black hues with a subtle tint of another color, like green or purple. Today, it had a bluish tint. And I admired it, hard. I wanted to tell her that it totally slayed, but I'd discovered that when I complimented girls at school where they knew I was a lesbian, they usually perceived it as me hitting on them. This was a far cry from when I was outside of school and tried hitting on girls I didn't know, and they thought I was complimenting them. There was no winning.
It wasn't that big of a deal, because girls like Valerie, who I sometimes considered complimenting, were already over-complimented, and didn't need the ego-boost anyway. I slipped my phone out of my pocket and checked to see that Valerie's Instagram picture had gotten 132 likes, about 70 more than this morning. No matter how much I liked her or her outfit, I wouldn't want to make that pretty head any bigger...it was already the perfect size.
Ms. Brooks walked into class late with thermos and a smile on her face, and she asked, "How many of you have come up with a topic for your project or paper?"
Only one person raised their hand: Valerie. When people weren't complimenting her on her looks and things, or commending her for being the head of the Crystal Shore High School Dance Squad, they called her a suck-up and an overachiever, but I secretly admired her academic abilities, especially since I felt positive she spent hours maintaining her appearance each day, plus all those hours she spent with the cheerleading squad and with Chad. How did she have time left to spend on her mind and schoolwork?
Looking disappointed for just a second, Ms. Brooks went into some lecture about how students often mistakenly think they need to come up with a completely original topic. "You're all in high school," she said. "I know a lot of you might not feel like you have the knowledge or experience to add original content to some of the discussions going on in the world. Let me tell you a secret: try to be creative over being original. Creativity means taking an old idea and transforming it into something that seems original. Explore it from a new angle. Combine it with another idea. Put a new name on it. How will you make your topic creative?"
Adree raised her hand, but when Ms. Brooks called on her, instead of answering the question, she asked, "Can we actually use our social media accounts to do this project?"
"Absolutely! In fact, I encourage you to do just that. You can use Youtube to post video logs, you can use Twitter to circulate your content and to micro-blog about your project, you can use Facebook to reach audiences you know and to write longer posts about your project—"
"—If we want our grandmas to be our audience, you mean?" Sharkbite interrupted. We all laughed, because most of us were friends with our grandmas on Facebook and had given up on updating our statuses regularly for fear of them criticizing the many things we had to say, things beyond the depth of grandparent comprehension.
Ms. Brooks smiled and nodded, but continued, "You can use Instagram to publish images of what you are doing, you can use Tumblr if you want to connect with an audience of people based on shared interests or themes. The possibilities really are endless." Now Ms. Brooks turned and looked at Valerie, who was sitting up straight and expectant, like usual. "Valerie, I know you've talked with me about your project, but will you tell the class what you plan on doing? Maybe you can inspire your peers."
"Of course," said Valerie, using the tone she would use whenever she talked to adults; a high-pitched and professional-sounding tone. Then she stood up with an impossible eloquence considering the height of her heels, and she looked at us, saying, "I'm going to be advocating for alleviating hunger in India."
Why, Valerie, why did you always make me like you more by doing things like this?
"Isn't that sort of aiming for the stars?" Adree asked without raising her hand, interrupting my thoughts. Her and Valerie weren't friends, for whatever reason, and their enmity was always detectable. Which always amused me.
"Well, I'll be circulating information over Twitter, researching organizations to curate onto a single site for easy access to their content, blogging facts about organizations and about poverty and its resulting hunger, and creating a webpage to collect funding for an organization of my choice, using some form of incentive to get people to donate. The stars are only as high as you make them," Valerie ended with an evil smile/glare. A smare.
Ms. Brooks sensed the tension, because she said, "You are absolutely right, Valerie. But you bring up an important point too, Adree: your projects don't necessarily have to 'aim for the stars,' as you say. As long as your topics have an audience somewhere that might view them as important and worthy, they will probably be fine by me."
Alex gave me a look from across the room, and I knew he was trying to tell me that his "metal is better" idea could fly because an audience somewhere might view it as important and worthy. I rolled my eyes, but still felt worried that even Alex's ridiculous idea was better than my nonexistent one. I felt better knowing Benny was on the same boat as me.
But the feeling faded when I looked over at him and saw he had fallen asleep with his head in his arms. Why did I care about being on the same boat as him? He wasn't headed for the Emily Hearst Scholarship Island like I was. He didn't even seem to care about school that much, only about not having to repeat it. And now, I was totally off course.
Not like Valerie, who would take the safe route. I knew that she was applying for the Emily Hearst Scholarship, too. Her project didn't really seem unique or creative to me, but it was effective, and irritatingly noble. It might be just what the Hearsts were looking for.
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