The Difference Between You and Me Read online

  THE

  DIFFERENCE

  BETWEEN

  YOU

  AND

  ME

  THE

  DIFFERENCE

  BETWEEN

  madeleine george

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  viking

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,

  Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2012 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  1 3 5 7 9 1 0 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Madeleine George, 2012

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  George, Madeleine.

  The difference between you and me / by Madeleine George.

  p. cm.

  Summary: School outsider Jesse, a lesbian, is having secret trysts with Emily, the popular student council vice president, but when they find themselves on opposite sides of a major issue and Jesse becomes more involved with a student activist, they are forced to make a difficult decision.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-56701-2

  [1. Lesbians—Fiction. 2. Protest movements—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction.

  4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.G293346Di 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011012192

  Printed in U.S.A. Set in Century Light

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  Table of Contents

  1 Jesse

  2 Emily

  3 Jesse

  4 Emily

  5 Jesse

  6 Esther

  7 Jesse

  8 Emily

  9 Jesse

  10 Emily

  11 Jesse

  12 Jesse

  13 Emily

  14 Jesse

  15 Esther

  16 Jesse

  17 Emily

  18 Jesse

  19 Jesse

  20 Jesse

  Acknowledgments

  THE NOLAW MANIFESTO

  Demanding

  JUSTICE NOW!

  for All

  Weirdos, Freaks,

  Queer Kids, Revolutionaries,

  Nerds, Dweebs,

  Misfits, Loudmouths,

  Rapunzels Trapped in Their Towers,

  Trolls Trapped under Their Bridges,

  Animals Abused by Their Masters,

  DETENTIONITES,

  Monsters,

  and Saints.

  By the

  National Organization to Liberate All Weirdos,

  or

  Point I.

  NORMALCY IS DEATH!

  Point II.

  Weirdness Is Life!

  Point III.

  Weirdos must COME OUT! The more weirdos who COME OUT! as weird, queer, freakish, nerdy, dweeby, loudmouthed, or otherwise unfit for quote unquote “normal society,” the closer we will come to TEARING DOWN quote unquote “normal society” and replacing it with a beautiful KINGDOM OF WEIRDNESS in which all Weirdos will be free to express every part of themselves in every part of school or the bus or work or church or temple or mosque or wherever it is they want to go. The KINGDOM OF WEIRDNESS will be a paradise of freedom on earth in which joy and happiness and clean forests and other unbesmirched kinds of nature reign and no one judges anyone else and eventually everyone will see how VASTLY SUPERIOR Weirdness is to quote unquote “normalcy” and quote unquote “normalcy” will wither away.

  Point IV.

  Judgmental People SUCK!

  Point V.

  Even before the Dawn of the new KINGDOM OF WEIRDNESS, Weirdos, Freaks, and Queers must DEMAND JUSTICE! We must DEMAND to be recognized as Legitimate by quote unquote “normal society.” We must make “Yeah? So what?” our total slogan. We must say it a thousand times a day until quote unquote “normal society” shrugs their shoulders at us and stops trying to make us Conform to their Strangulating Laws and Conventionalisms. We must DEMAND that they Leave Us Alone even if they don’t grant us full human rights.

  Point VI.

  We Demand

  for all Weirdos, Freaks, Queers, Other Oppressed People et cetera!!!

  FULL HUMAN RIGHTS INCLUDE:

  The right to wear WHATEVER CLOTHES WE WANT, WHENEVER WE WANT TO WEAR THEM.

  The right to MAKE OUT with WHOMEVER WE WANT TO regardless of RACE, COLOR, CREED, CLASS, NEIGHBORHOOD OF ORIGIN, EXTRACURRICULAR AFFILIATION, or GENDER.

  The right to use WHICHEVER BATHROOM WE FEEL LIKE USING and not to have to hold it until we can sneak into the one faculty bathroom that is not possibly full of abusive idiots waiting to ABUSE AND INSULT US FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON!!!

  1

  Jesse

  Jesse is in the sophomore hall girls’ bathroom, the farthest stall from the door, one huge, scuffed fisherman’s boot propped up on the toilet seat so she can balance her backpack on her knee and rifle through it. She’s looking for the masking tape that she totally, totally put in here this morning, she’s positive, she has a perfect picture-memory of swiping it out of the designated masking-tape cubby in her mother’s rolltop desk in the den and dropping it into her backpack, the big pocket, right here she totally put it here where is it where is it the bell’s about to ring—

  The plan is to wait until the pep rally is called and then paper the entire school with the latest draft of her manifesto in one lightning-quick, thirty-eight-minute blitz while the rest of the student body is penned in the gym bleating and baaing like the sheep they are. It’s a sweet, satisfying plan, but it can’t begin to happen without masking tape. Tape tape tape tape—Jesse digs deeper, feels around frantically in the backpack’s gummy innards.

  And the bell rings and the announcement comes over the PA—“annual spirit assembly being held at this time in the gym, all students proceed to the gym at this time”—and Jesse whispers, “Shit!” and starts to sweat.

  The door swings open, admitting a blast of hallway-at-passing-time noise, and a clutch of girls come in, mid-giggling-conversation. In her stall, Jesse freezes, presses back against the cool cinder-block wall.

  “Um, I mean, no way? It’s obviously a lie?”

  Through the sliver of space between stall door and stall wall, Jesse makes out a blur of blonde as the girls arrange themselves in front of the long mirror over the sinks. One of the girls is explaining something to the others in a tone that implies that they are totally stupid. She says every sentence with an implied “I mean, duh” after it.

  “She can sa
y they hooked up? She can go around telling everyone they hooked up if she wants people to think she’s a total slut? But there is no way they hooked up, just because I know that guy and that guy is impossible to get with.”

  “Impossible,” one of the other girls echoes, and giggles a little.

  Jesse’s knee begins to bounce. Her jaw tightens. If they were just here to pee it would be one thing, but these girls are settling in for a full hair-and-makeup session in front of the mirrors. Prepping for pepping. Go go GO! Jesse shouts at them telepathically. She has to be clear of this bathroom by no later than one minute before first period, otherwise—

  “Like, remember at Dylan’s party how hard I had to work to get him to hook up with me?” the first girl continues. “I practically had to slip him a roofie, remember?”

  “A roofie.” The second girl giggles again vaguely.

  “Remember I practically had to slip him a roofie and like beat him over the head with a club and like drag him back to my lair to get him to hook up with me at Dylan’s party? So there is no way he got with Lauren. If I have to go through all that just to get him? And she’s like a total barking dog? I’m sorry, I just don’t believe it.”

  “But why would she lie about it?” A third girl speaks, and Jesse’s heart stops, briefly—just pulls into a parking space and pauses. It’s Emily.

  “I don’t see why she’d spread a rumor about her own sluttiness,” Emily continues evenly, reasonably. Emily always sounds like that, like she’s making a point that everyone else is guaranteed to agree with.

  “Uh, to seem less ugly, obviously?” First Girl sneers. Second Girl giggles: Duh.

  “I don’t see where her lying about being slutty would make anybody think she’s less ugly,” Emily says. “It doesn’t make sense.” Jesse can picture her shrugging her I-guess-there’s-nothing-more-to-say-about-it shrug, perfect round shoulders in their soft J.Crew sweater bobbing up and down, a smooth, case-closed bounce.

  But is it the J.Crew sweater today? Jesse’s curiosity rises in her like a blush to her cheeks. Is it the pink one with the fake pearl buttons? Or maybe the black V-neck she wears over the white button-down? It could be the Vander High hoodie—it is spirit assembly today, after all, and Emily loves spirit. If Jesse were smart she wouldn’t move a muscle until these girls were gone, but she can’t help herself. Even a tiny slice of Emily is worth seeing.

  Carefully, soundlessly, Jesse brings her big, galumphy fisherman’s boot down off the toilet seat, cradling her backpack to her chest to keep it from slipping out of her grasp and crashing to the floor. She hunkers down and leans against the stall door, pressing her eye to the cold gap between door and wall. Emily is right there, not even three feet away, her back to Jesse, slim, denim hip jutted out to one side, gathering her long, thick, strawberry blonde hair into a single rope rising straight up off the top of her head. Quick as a samurai, she twists the hair-rope around and around, then spreads her left hand wide as a starfish with a ponytail holder stretched around her fingers, open to its widest width, then pulls the hair through the holder once, twice, then splits it into two hanks and yanks the whole thing tight. She tips her head first to one side, then the other, assessing the ponytail’s height, form, and placement in the mirror. It’s a move Jesse has seen her do dozens of times, but she could watch it a thousand more and never get tired of it. It’s like watching a Cirque du Soleil gymnast flip ten times through the air and stick the landing.

  “You guys, whatever about Lauren, we have to not be late right now.” Emily’s voice is clear and judgment free, brightened only by enthusiasm. “We have to get seats by the back wall if we want to help hold the banner.”

  As Emily steps out of viewing range, Jesse strains against the stall door, trying to keep her in her sights as she moves. It’s this pressure, probably, plus the shift in her weight as she goes to set her backpack down gently on the floor, that causes the rickety, worthless stall door to unlatch and fly open, sending Jesse sprawling face-forward onto the floor right at the girls’ feet, her backpack beneath her and her big green boots kicked out behind her.

  The girls squeal. Jesse grunts.

  “Oh my God,” shrieks First Girl, “oh my God oh my God!”

  “Sorry”, Jesse mumbles, facedown. She hauls herself not terribly gracefully to her feet, afraid to look up, afraid to meet Emily’s eye.

  “Um, excuse me,” First Girl says, her initial shock mellowing into casual contempt. “Don’t you know this is the girls’ room?”

  Second Girl giggles abruptly, then stops.

  Ocean roars, distantly, in Jesse’s ears.

  She lifts her head and looks straight at them. Emily is in the center of the trio (it is the Vander High hoodie—navy blue with the big yellow V on the left breast), her arms crossed over her chest, summery head tipped quizzically to one side, flanked by her two virtually identical friends. It’s like there’s a mirror Emily on either side of the real Emily: hoodie hoodie hoodie, jeans jeans jeans, ponytail ponytail ponytail. In the center of the triptych, Emily stands looking at Jesse with terrible blankness, a perfectly placid unrecognition. It’s like she’s never seen Jesse before and doesn’t much care that she’s seeing her now.

  Jesse turns to First Girl, on Emily’s left. First Girl’s eyes and the corners of her mouth are merry with evil. Jesse feels her fists clenching involuntarily.

  “I’m sorry, what?” Jesse says. The calm she tries to maintain in these moments is fraying, and this comes out sounding a little bit like a threat.

  First Girl takes it as one. She lengthens her neck defensively, tosses her blondeness over one shoulder, and repeats, “I said, this is the girls’ room.”

  Every time this happens—and it happens to Jesse a couple of times a week, in the bathroom at the library, the locker room at the pool, Friendly’s, Starbucks, the ladies’ fitting room at the hideous disgusting hateful Fashion Bug, at school, at school, all the time at school—there comes a moment in the confrontation when it is Jesse’s turn to speak. Sometimes, especially with confused adults, she says politely, “I know, I am a girl.” Sometimes she gets it together and educates the person: “There are lots of different ways to be a girl.” Sometimes, if she’s having a bad day, she says, “Yes, it is the girls’ room, are you lost?”

  But today, with Emily looking at her, just looking at her and not saying anything in her defense, Jesse comes up empty. She opens her mouth but nothing comes out.

  First Girl gasps a little and grips Emily’s arm. “Oh my God, you guys,” she says, “she was watching us in there!”

  “Ew gross!” Second Girl wails.

  Jesse’s heart starts to pound. Her tongue thickens in her half-open mouth.

  “She must have been, like, waiting for us to take our shirts off or something,” First Girl hisses. “Oh my God, disgusting. Oh my God, I feel so gross right now.”

  Jesse turns back to Emily, searching her face for anything—backup; sympathy; defense; some big, distracting move that would steal their attention away from Jesse. But there’s nothing there.

  Over the PA comes the final announcement: “One minute remaining in passing period. All students proceed to the gym for spirit assembly at this time.”

  Now Emily springs into action. “Okay, you guys, come on, let it go,” she says in a light, coaxy-friendly way to her friends. “We cannot be late for assembly today.”

  First Girl turns a fake-sympathetic face on Emily. “Oh, Em, that’s so nice that you’re trying to protect your boyfriend. You should stay and hang out with her, look, she totally wants you.”

  Instantly, Jesse looks down at the floor. Her face cannot sustain examination for traces of lust for Emily Miller—it might be there, even if she’s trying to suppress it with every ounce of her energy.

  “Oh, stop it,” Emily says, exasperated—the way you’d speak to a pesky child. “I’m leaving.” Emily turns and holds open the bathroom door, a wordless command. Despite herself, Jesse thinks, You’re not even going to
look at me one more time?

  First Girl sighs. “Whatever, you’re such a control freak, Em.” She gives her hair a final check in the mirror. “Bye, dyke!” she chirps cheerfully over her shoulder as she leaves, pulling Second Girl along with her.

  As Emily turns to walk out the door she meets Jesse’s eye for a fraction of a second. Her expression is scrunched-up and confusing, part Sorry and part What can you do? and part I know, this is so dumb and part Hey, it’s no big deal! A pity mishmash. This is not at all what Jesse wants. Jesse wants These girls are titanic mega-idiots and I renounce their friendship as of this moment and I’ll meet you in our usual spot at the library this afternoon and totally, totally make it up to you. Jesse takes a step forward as if to stop Emily, but even as she moves, Emily lets the door fall shut behind her.

  A moment of quiet.

  Jesse realizes that her heart is pounding.

  In the mirror above the row of sinks, Jesse looks back at herself. She doesn’t look like much. Dark, angry eyes, messy thatched-roof haircut the color and texture of straw, clenched fists, square shoulders, ringer tee, cargo pants, fisherman’s boots.

  Why do you have to wear those boots? Wyatt asks her almost every time he sees her. If you have to wear boots, fine, but why giant, loose, flopping, knee-high rubber boots that make you look like you just got off work at the slaughterhouse?

  They make me feel solid, Jesse almost always says. I like to feel planted when I walk.

  Crazy, Wyatt says to her. Rebel Without a Cause.

  From outside the door in the hallway comes a muffled blast of static, like a blip from the sound track of the moon landing—far away, but close enough that it makes Jesse’s neck stiffen, wild-animal style. Blast of static means Snediker’s coming, walkie-talkie live and crackling, clipped to the lower pocket of her blazer.

  Ms. Snediker, dean of students, is an iron marshmallow. She’s short and stout, pink cheeked and gray haired, and she rarely blinks. She always wears a flower-print dress with a skinny belt straining to stay clasped around her high, tight basketball of a middle. In her yearbook picture every year she poses, unsmiling, plump arms hanging stiffly by her sides, beside the wall of mug shots she keeps in her office, photos of kids she’s caught violating handbook rules or trying to sneak off campus during school hours. She calls this her “Hall of Shame.” She has a small, nasal voice that she never raises and that in no way matches the things she uses it to say: “busted,” frequently; “suspended,” whenever she gets the chance; and sometimes, on her luckiest days, “expelled.” Snediker is the Terminator. Snediker is coming.