Now that it’s the day of our first meeting though, I just feel like the host of a party nobody wants to come to: even Chloe begged off in favor of an extra shift at the restaurant, which probably shouldn’t have surprised me at this point but still sort of sucked. The fact that I couldn’t convince my own best friend that a feminist book club was a good idea doesn’t bode super well for its success.
Ms. Klein shrugs. “So then no one comes,” she says. “You and I can talk about the book ourselves.” She nods at the Dunkin’ Donuts box on the desk beside her. “And eat twenty-five Munchkins apiece.”
I laugh, which calms me down a little; I’m about to ask her if she’s read anything else by Margaret Atwood when a couple of nervous-looking freshmen I vaguely recognize as members of the jazz band sidle into the classroom. My heart leaps when I realize they’re both holding copies of the book.
“Hey,” the taller one says, a white girl with her blond hair in two Princess Leia buns, looking around with no small amount of trepidation. “Um, is this the book club?”
“Sure is,” Ms. Klein says. “Have a seat.”
It’s a little bit awkward, but to my surprise, a handful of other people trickle in one by one: this kid Dave, an AV dude with carroty hair and a pale face full of freckles, and Lydia Jones, who’s black and works on the lit mag. Elisa Hernandez, the five-foot-tall captain of the girls’ volleyball team, shows up with a couple of her teammates.
“You guys have a big game coming up, right?” Ms. Klein asks, and Elisa beams.
“We were state champs last year,” she explains with a nod. “We’re defending our title.”
“Seriously?” I ask. I don’t exactly have my ear to the ground around school lately, but I’ve heard exactly nothing about this. I think of how everybody—me included—always shows up to cheer for our sucky football team, even though they won like twice all of last season. “How come they’re not doing a pep rally for you guys?”
“Are you kidding?” Elisa asks as her teammates giggle. “We can barely even get a bus for away games most of the time.”
I frown. “That’s so obnoxious.” It’s like now that I’m looking for inequality, I’m seeing it everywhere, categorizing a thousand great and small unfairnesses everywhere I go. Why didn’t I really see this before?
“Sounds like a great topic for your next op-ed, Marin,” Ms. Klein says pointedly, popping a Munchkin into her mouth.
Which—huh. I look over at Elisa, raising my eyebrows.
“You want to do an interview?” I ask, and Elisa grins.
Eventually Ms. Klein steers us back around to The Handmaid’s Tale. I’ve never been in a book club before, and I printed a list of discussion questions off the internet in case there were any horrifying lulls in the conversation, but it turns out we don’t even need them: Lydia and Elisa are big talkers, and Dave is quietly hilarious, with a sense of humor so darkly dry it takes me a full beat to realize when he’s joking. We’re talking about the similarities between the Republic of Gilead and modern-day America when somebody knocks on the open door. I look up, and there’s Gray Kendall in his Bridgewater Lax hoodie, backpack slung over one bulky shoulder.
“Uh,” he says, his dark eyes flicking around the room. “Sorry I’m late. Is this the book club meeting?”
Right away I sit up a little straighter. “Why?”
“Marin,” Ms. Klein chides mildly. “You’re looking at it, Gray.”
“Cool,” Gray says. He looks at me a little strangely, then holds up a book—a battered paperback copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, a bright orange USED SAVES sticker peeling off the spine. “Can I, uh—?”
“You did not read that book,” I blurt before I can stop myself. I know I’m being hugely rude, but he’s obviously got some kind of ulterior motive. For one insane second I wonder if Jacob sent him to mess with me.
“Um.” Gray huffs a laugh, good-natured but slightly disbelieving. “Yeah, I did.”
My eyes narrow. “The whole thing?”
“Yeah.”
I look at him skeptically, trying to figure out what on earth his game is. A random lax bro showing up here like some kind of Trojan horse who’s acting all interested to try and . . . what? Infiltrate my book club? That makes no sense.
Everyone else is watching silently. Dave clears his throat.
“Fine,” I say eventually. “You can stay.”
Gray smiles then, saluting me with his tattered paperback and making his way to an empty seat across the circle. Ms. Klein asks a question about Offred and the Commander, and the discussion is pretty animated from there. I’m expecting Gray to try to dominate the conversation, but to my surprise, he mostly keeps his mouth shut; when I glance over in his direction he’s leaning slightly forward in his seat, listening to Elisa with a furrowed brow. He’s so quiet, in fact, that as we’re about to wrap up, Ms. Klein nods in his direction.
“You’ve been keeping to yourself over there, Gray,” she says pleasantly. “Anything you took from the book that we haven’t covered?”
“Um.” Gray clears his throat. “I mean, I’ll be honest, I thought it was terrifying. My heart was pounding the whole entire time. I almost peed my pants when that girl’s plane to Canada got stopped on the runway.”
I frown. That definitely didn’t happen in the book, unless I somehow missed it. “Which girl?” I ask; Lydia and Elisa look at him curiously.
“The main one,” he explains, for once in his life looking vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect of this much female attention at once. “You know, the one who was on Mad Men.”
And there it is. “Uh-huh,” I say, satisfied. “That’s what I thought.”
“All right,” Ms. Klein says, barely hiding a smile. “We should break up for today anyway, but I’ll meet you all back here next week.” We’re going to read mostly short stories and essays, we decided, for the sake of being able to meet more frequently. “Any of you who want to take leftover Munchkins home, feel free.”
I pocket a couple of glazed and head out to the parking lot, where I’m surprised to catch Gray pacing back and forth in front of the building, stopping every few feet to frown down at what looks like his watch.
“You okay over there?” I call out.
Gray nods sheepishly. “Step counter,” he calls by way of explanation, waggling his wrist in my direction. “But it’s not working.”
I laugh, I can’t help it. “Seriously?” I don’t know what it is about this guy that makes me want to heckle him.
“What’s wrong with a step counter?”
I shake my head, walking closer. “I mean, nothing, if you’re my mom.”
“Is your mom extremely physically fit?” Gray fires back.
“If Zumba counts, absolutely she is.” I nod at his wrist. “What’s your goal?”
“Twenty thousand.”
I raise my eyebrows and shrug my peacoat around my shoulders. “Every day?”
He shrugs. “It’s not that much, really.”
“You don’t have to have false modesty about your step count,” I say with a smile. “I’m not that impressed.”