The Feminist Agenda of Jemima Kincaid Page 7

  We’d been going to school together since seventh grade, but this may well have been the first time Tyler Donner had ever acknowledged my existence. “You bet,” I said.

  Or, to be fair, the first time I’d acknowledged his.

  “Huddle up, Lady Tigers!” called Andy.

  “You know the basic rules, right?” said Tyler.

  “Nope!” yelled about six girls, collapsing into giggles.

  “Oh, come on, we do,” said Jessica Landover, who was probably the best athlete in the class, male or female. She’d be playing lacrosse for West Point next year, which was (as the laxers say) sick. “We’re trying to advance the ball down the field.”

  “You can throw it or you can run it,” said Tyler, “or both.”

  Tyler and Andy gave us an overview. About half the girls weren’t paying attention, texting and redoing their ponytails and kicking up bits of turf instead. The rest were serious, decked out in Chawton athletic gear, hands on hips, intently nodding along.

  I was one of the serious ones. I had never played football, and although I enjoyed my uncle’s annual Super Bowl party, that was one hundred percent due to guacamole.

  “So basically,” said Melanie, “it’s a glorified game of tag.”

  Tyler looked insulted. “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

  “Yeah,” said Haley, nudging Melanie, “it’s tag and fetch.”

  We all laughed. Even Tyler and Andy. “Let’s run some plays,” said Andy, “and see if you think it’s so easy.”

  Here’s the thing, though: it was easy. Football’s complexity is a hoax. Behind all the starts and stops and strategy, behind offensive and lateral and rush, it’s tag plus fetch. It’s the easiest thing in the world.

  And—surprise!—I was good at it.

  In the first few plays I wasn’t that involved, just lining up and trying to block the girls storming Jessica and whoever Andy told her to throw to. But then she missed her mark and the ball squirted toward me and I scooped it to my stomach and darted around Kayla Wu and leapt over Brittany Bowling, and suddenly I was in the clear, the backfield opening before me. Andy blew his whistle, and he and Tyler had a quick conference.

  “Come here, Kincaid,” said Andy. “Let’s try a few plays with you in a more central role.”

  I could barely meet his eyes. I reminded myself that he didn’t know about my daydreams. “Got it,” I managed.

  “Run a buttonhook,” said Tyler. “You remember that one?”

  “Of course she does,” said Andy. “This is Jemima Kincaid we’re talking about.”

  “The girl who never forgets anything,” said Tyler.

  My first thought: Oh no, what is a buttonhook?

  But I do have a good memory. I rewound, found it. As I jogged back to the line of scrimmage, as Andy blew his whistle and Jessica balanced the ball between her fingertips, as I tensed to run, my eyes darting all over the field, Melanie shifting in response to me, the last spears of sunset golden and the shadows dark and deep, the goalposts stark white against the twilit sky, I thought, Is that what my name means? “Hike,” called Jessica, and I ran. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Sprinting up the field, Melanie keeping pace. You walk around with a hazy idea, but you don’t often get an unfiltered glimpse into the truth of how others see you, how they hear your name. Three Mississippi. Did they hear Jemima Kincaid and groan? Or did they hear it with respect? What did they think? What did I mean?

  Four Mississippi, and I reversed, hooked the buttonhook, and left Melanie in the dust. Jessica bulleted me the ball, and I basketed my arms and caught it and took off down the sideline. Christina was speeding at me, but I shifted gears. She dove. I leapt. She missed. I took another few steps free and clear before Andy whistled. He looked exhilarated. “Donner,” he said, “the Tigers have their running back.”

  You stop wondering whether something’s sexist when you’re having that much fun.

  Andy had the keys to the light box. He double-stepped up the bleachers to turn the lights on. “Staring much?” said Gennifer.

  “Me?” I said. He was wearing these silky white shorts, and I could see the muscles tense in his calves. “What?”

  “You’re just ogling him, aren’t you?” said Gennifer.

  Under normal circumstances I’d have brushed her off, but I met her eyes and smirked. “In my humble opinion, that’s an ass worth ogling.”

  She laughed, loud and startled. I laughed too. It felt like we were on the same team. “What’s so funny?” said Melanie.

  Gennifer didn’t tell her.

  Andy flicked on the lights, and the field was suddenly a movie set. It was all-American. Football under the lights, happy kids running around in gleaming, gorgeous youth. The weird thing, I think, was that all of us knew it. We saw ourselves from the outside. We were high school seniors! Look how young we were. Look how old.

  Gennifer was my defender on the last play. We’d planned a quick handoff from Jessica to Melanie, but Melanie got double-teamed. I’d been going long as a ruse, but I blinked through the lights to see the ball spiraling through the air, and I leapt for a catch that better have looked as spectacular as it felt. Andy let loose a quick, joyous shout. Gennifer didn’t have a chance. I ran it all the way to the end zone.

  “That’s it for the night,” said Tyler. He high-fived me, and so did Jessica. Girls laughed, laughed, laughed, smacked each other on shoulders and butts. “We’re gonna crush the Angels,” said Tyler. “I knew I was right to choose Tiger.”

  “You were assigned Tiger, dude,” said Andy, winking. He flipped his car keys from hand to hand. “Hey, Kincaid, you need a ride home?”

  * * *

  —

  Andy braced his hand on my seat to back out of the parking spot. “That was fun,” I said.

  “Because you’re good at it,” he said.

  “It would have been fun under any circumstances. Running around, being outside. Though maybe not quite so much fun.” I was prattling, because that’s what I do when I’m nervous. “I do like being good at stuff.”

  Andy drove the way most teenage boys do, with a cartoonish nonchalance. “Of course you do. You’re Jemima Kincaid.”

  My name again! What did it mean? We were at a red light. I tried to relax. I felt tense and ungainly, like my body didn’t fit within my skin. “Well,” I said finally, “you’re Andy Monroe.”

  A truly inane comment, but he nodded sagely. “Andy Monroe and Jemima Kincaid—”

  That and! Was it a significant and?

  You know you’re far gone when you’re parsing conjunctions.

  “—drive together through the night.”

  Oh. Just the beginning of a sentence.

  “It’s this one, right?”

  He pulled up in front of my house. One light burned in the kitchen. I wiped my sweaty hands on my shorts. “Thanks for the ride. My mom was relieved not to have to get out of bed.”

  Without warning, he put his hands on my head—like earmuffs, I thought—and mashed his face into mine. His tongue made one wrong turn onto my cheek and another onto my lower lip before it found my mouth.

  I jerked away.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Hey, wait—”

  “I just…” I was already opening the car door. “I have to go, see you, thanks, bye!”

  “You what?” said Crispin.

  “I huddled on the window seat in the kitchen—”

  “No. Before that.”

  “I have to tell you again?”

  “Yeah. Because it’s not computing. Someone as masterfully hot as Andy Monroe kisses you, and you dive away? That goes against everything our family stands for.”

  “I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad wouldn’t—”

  “It goes against everything I stand for. I didn’t raise y
ou to be this person.”

  “You didn’t raise me!”

  “Did my shining example mean nothing?”

  The first stage of Andy Monroe Kissed Me had been shock, and, debilitated by it, I’d made the mistake of texting Crispin. He’d called me immediately.

  “Bump,” he said more gently, “don’t worry. You’ll have another chance. If you want it. Do you want it?”

  “What I want is some warning!” I said. “I’d have handled it fine if it hadn’t been such a surprise.”

  “You had no signs this was coming?”

  “No!”

  “No?”

  “No…well…”

  Kneegate I. Kneegate II. The ride. The dark car. Andy Monroe and Jemima Kincaid. I’d known. But I’d thought I was fooling myself. I’d thought it was my imagination, if only because I’d wanted so badly for it to be true.

  Before the guy at the Quiz Team championships had kissed me, we had discussed it at length. It was late the last night of the tournament, and we were sitting on the floor behind a cart of folding chairs in a forgotten corner of the hotel lobby. He said, “May I ask you a question?” I figured it’d be about my mnemonic for the complete list of Nobel Prize winners since 1901, and I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to bring myself to give away team secrets, even though I was majorly crushing, but instead he said, “I like you sort of a lot,” and I said, “That’s not a question,” and he said, “Well, the question is, well, despite the distance between us, and obviously with you in DC and me in San Diego there’s not really, like, long-term potential, at least not unless we’re thinking really long-term, like maybe college, maybe, but, anyway, I mean, I like you, and I’m wondering, as a theoretical question, what would you do if I kissed you?”

  I internally freaked out, but I kept my cool, or what little cool I’d started with. We talked about it for a while. For a long while. Once we concluded that a kiss was an acceptable—if not entirely rational—act, he said, “Okay, I’m going to do it now,” and he wiped his hands on his jeans, and I was like, “Oh God,” and he said, “It won’t be that bad,” and he put his hand on my jaw, and his mouth on mine, and when I saw his eyes close, I even remembered to close mine. It was wet (which I guess is what you’d expect when one wet thing hits another) and it was squishy (ditto, mutatis mutandis), and beyond the wet squishiness, it mostly lacked sensation.

  I was relieved when it was over. Though for months afterward, I’d think about it when I called up Mr. O on the pink telephone, or whatever awful euphemism for female masturbation you want to use since all the nice simple ones like jerking off are definitely not gender-neutral. I had always considered it weird that I’d fantasize myself back to an event that had registered approximately 0.0 on my personal Richter scale of turn-ons, but that didn’t stop me—

  “Well?” said Crispin.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Just thinking.”

  “Was it a good kiss?” said Crispin. “Or did you launch yourself inside before you could tell?”

  Good? It was horrifying. Andy’s tongue was long and slithery and hard—ugh, it was muscular—and thinking about it, I raised my fingers to my cheek, to the corner of my mouth, and I shivered.

  Horrifying.

  “I have to go,” I told Crispin. “I have a phone call to make.”

  So to speak.

  * * *

  —

  I had texted Crispin instead of Jiyoon because Jiyoon and I were still ignoring each other. Fortunately, our internal get-over-it clocks tended to run at the same speed. Rapprochement occurred during Quiz Team practice. We were on the same team, and there was a question about the former attorney general who had helped Airbnb with their antidiscrimination policy. I said “Eric…” but blanked on the last name. “Holder,” said Jiyoon. We fist-bumped. I felt my body loosen. Being back on good terms with her was like taking off an uncomfortable bra. I hadn’t realized how the fight had been digging into my skin.

  Mr. Peabody stepped out of the room, and I don’t know if it was the nice weather or what, but everyone got in a rambunctious mood. Greg rooted through Mr. Peabody’s Costco carton of Jelly Bellies and pitched nasty ones at Monique, who shrieked and said, “You know I can’t even see a buttered popcorn without mouth-barfing!” Jonah yelled, “1877!” and about four of us yelled back, “Rutherford B. Hayes, Lucy Webb, William Wheeler!” We do these study conglomerates where a bunch of us memorize the same list, and we’d just done the presidents and their dates and spouses and vices. Vice presidents, that is, not vices like “cheeseburgers and interns” or “Nicorette and tricolon.”

  Jonah shouted, “1957!”

  “Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mamie Doud, Richard Nixon!”

  It was rowdy, in a Quiz Team kind of way. Ashby started talking about what she’d just read on Wikipedia. “All mammals flirt,” she proclaimed. “It’s a basic signifier of sexual interest. Mandrills shake their blue butts at each other, and—”

  She was drowned out by Greg and Vivek hooting, scratching their armpits, and shaking their butts. “Ashby!” Greg cried. “Ashby! I’m signifying my interest!”

  “Oh my God—”

  A buttered-popcorn Jelly Belly sailed through the air. Paul rolled his eyes at me and Jiyoon. “There’s no need for booty shaking,” he said under the din. “You know what’s the best way to flirt?”

  In the history of tricycles, there had never been such an obvious third wheel as I in that moment. “What?” said Jiyoon.

  He set his hand confidingly on her forearm. “This.”

  “What?”

  “Arm touching. Simple and effective.”

  Jiyoon touched my arm. Jiyoon! No! Wrong target! “Like this?” she said.

  “Does it feel natural, Jemima?” Paul said.

  “Um, I can’t tell,” I said. “I’m hardly a flirting expert. Try it on him, Ji.”

  She slit her eyes, just enough so I’d see she resented me deeply, but moved her hand to Paul’s forearm. He grimaced. “Remember planking?” he said. “Well, your hand’s planking on me. Keep it relaxed.”

  I glanced around. The rest of the team was either imitating monkeys or loudly proclaiming their exasperation with monkeys.

  “Try again,” said Paul.

  Jiyoon touched him. He jumped. “Ouch! That was a claw!”

  “I’ll leave you guys to it,” I said as smoothly as possible. I don’t know if they even noticed as I edged away. “Shake that monkey ass, Jemima!” yelled Greg, and, with my team hooting and hollering, I obliged.

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Peabody returned to simian chaos, but he’s a passive dude. Plus, he liked us. “Er, shall we wrap up?” he said. We played a few more questions, and then he unplugged the buzzer system. “I hope you’re all prepping for our last tournament. Who’s got phyla?”

  “Me,” said Jiyoon.

  “Supreme Court cases?”

  “I’m on it,” said Greg from the floor, where he was picking up Jelly Bellies. And eating them. I averted my eyes.

  “World rivers?”

  “I will fall upon that sword,” I said.

  “You’re still hosting the end-of-season party, right, Jemima?” said Ashby.

  “Of course.” Traditionally, the senior captain throws a party on the night of the last tournament.

  “Are we going with that idea we had on the bus?” said Greg.

  “Gourmet s’mores,” I said. “I’m on it.”

  “Gour’mores,” said Greg. “Gour’mores! That is so catching on.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Paul whispered to Jiyoon, touching her arm.

  She and I walked out together. “Well, well,” I said quietly. “A flirting lesson, huh?”

  “He’s just looking out for me,” she said. “It’s a major life skill.”

  “Uh-huh,
” I said. “So selfless. Come on, Ji. He has a major thing for you.”

  She blushed. She couldn’t hold back her smile. “You really think so?”

  “You’re just asking so I’ll say it again.”

  She deftly kicked me in the back of the knee. I crumpled, but then chased her down and got her back as we left the building. “Truce!” she called. “We’re even!” It was a glorious spring day, sunny and windy and blue and green.

  “I heard last year he was dating a college girl,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I wiggled my eyebrows. “Experience.”

  “Ew. Jem. Grow up.”

  “Just saying, he may well be a guy who knows his way around a—”

  “Stop! Ew! Stop!”

  I shut up, but not before a lascivious lip lick. For two people with minimal experience, Jiyoon and I joked about sex a lot. We were basically thirteen-year-old boys.

  “What’s new with Andy?” said Jiyoon. “Speaking of”—she licked her own lips—“experience.”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “More knee boning?”

  I couldn’t help cringing, which meant she won. We both laughed. “Yeah, no,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I don’t know. It was probably nothing.”

  I know. I know. My best friend. I hadn’t told her about the kiss. Now I had an opportunity and wasn’t taking it. I blamed the post-fight shakiness, the gnaw of insecurity: Did she even like me? But more, I think, was that I—yes, I, Jemima Kincaid, Lady of the Big Mouth—liked the secrecy. The whole experience, Andy’s mouth and mine, was still lurking in the two-toned darkness of a car at night. It was shards of streetlight, smears of shadow, and once I told Jiyoon, the lights would go on.