“I don’t know,” I say, baffled.

I see Sydney’s point. I’m glad girls at Ridgeview are taking steps to protect themselves, but it does open up more problems. Who gets the benefits of the warning? The entire system is broken. There is no accountability.

“Mrs. Reacher will see you now,” the secretary says, coming out from the back hall. She motions in that direction, and Sydney and I walk together, strengthening our resolve to tell the vice principal exactly what we saw in the cafeteria. Surely assaulting a girl is worse than trying to prevent that assault.

The office door is already open. Mrs. Reacher looks up from behind her desk and waves us in. “Close the door,” she says sternly. We do as she asks and then sit in the two chairs on the other side of her desk. She folds her hands in front of her and rakes her gaze over us, appraising our appearance. She lingers on Sydney.

Finally, Mrs. Reacher shakes her head slowly from side to side. “How dare you,” she says, her voice dripping with anger.

“Excuse me?” I ask, truly surprised by her venom. She shoots a hateful look at me before leaning closer.

“How dare you attack another student,” she says. “Garrett Wooley is from a good family. He’s on honor roll. And then I let two questionable girls into our school and suddenly he’s being attacked in the cafeteria?”

“He was assaulting a girl!” I say. “In front of everyone. There were witnesses! Garrett grabbed a girl’s hand, put it in his lap, and he—”

“There was no mention of a … a sexual assault”—Mrs. Reacher whispers the words—“in the incident report. Besides, do you even know Garrett? He’s admired by both male and female students. Your violence won’t be tolerated.”

“My …” I point to myself, stunned speechless.

“Mrs. Reacher,” Sydney says impatiently, leaning on the desk. “He—”

But Mrs. Reacher rocks back as if Sydney is threatening her. Her rosy cheeks grow pale, and she flusters herself going through her papers.

“I didn’t ask you,” she says dismissively.

“Didn’t ask—” Sydney starts to repeat, and then turns to me in frustration.

“Look,” Mrs. Reacher says to us in sudden rush of bleeding-heart sympathy. “I get it. It’s difficult being a young lady in society, the pressures the media puts on you to flaunt yourselves. Dress inappropriately, behave promiscuously. But trust me, that’s not the kind of attention you want.”

Sydney actually laughs. Mrs. Reacher is wrong. The girls and I have come a long way since leaving the academy, able to view society through an unfiltered lens. Absorbing it all.

And the truth is, the media doesn’t just put pressure on girls to “flaunt” ourselves. Because at the same time, society puts pressure on us to be modest, sexy, exciting, humble, proud, perfect, flawed. That’s the thing about this world—they want girls to be the fantasy of whoever is looking at them. Tailored specifically to the taste of their viewer, the audience. Girls, even human ones, are treated like a product.

They are consumable, replaceable, with their own kill switches. Youth in women is coveted. Treasured. Celebrated. And once that’s gone, they are cast aside. They are left for dead. And it has nothing to do with how they dress.

It was inevitable that the same society would want to create young girls with predetermined programming. Customer specific and guaranteed perfect.

“Now,” Mrs. Reacher continues, eyeing Sydney before picking up a yellow slip of paper to examine it. She looks at me. “Garrett already told the security officer that you’ve been trying to get his attention since you arrived,” she continues. “But I can’t let a physical attack stand. I have no choice but to suspend you both until the board looks over your case.”

“Suspended?” I repeat. But there’s even more injustice here. “And why is Sydney suspended?”

“Exactly,” Sydney says, the first sign of anger in her voice. “I didn’t do anything!”

“And how am I supposed to know that you didn’t help her plan it?” Mrs. Reacher asks.

“Plan it?” I repeat. “We saw Garrett attacking a girl. I stopped him. Sydney didn’t touch him.”

“Regardless,” she says. “I’ve received complaints. Seems Sydney feels it’s acceptable to speak out in class.”

“You mean … answer questions?” Sydney replies. “Isn’t that the point?”

“You talk over people. You don’t know your place.”

Sydney’s eyes widen. “My place?” She looks at me like she’s about to lose it. In another situation, I might tell her to keep her cool, but what’s happening here is absolutely unjust.

“This has nothing to do with Garrett, does it?” Sydney asks. She stands up from her chair and Mrs. Reacher watches her cautiously.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mrs. Reacher says, and it’s obvious that she’s lying. I want to scream at her to tell the truth. Why is everyone so willing to lie all the time?

And it’s those lies that are so insidious. The way society pretends these terrible things aren’t happening—their racism, their sexism. The way they pretend it’s just us overreacting.

I’ve realized since leaving the academy that the outside world is tearing itself apart. Tearing itself to shreds. It’s about sex, about race. It’s economics and beliefs. There are so many ways humans are dividing themselves.

And I’ve seen the looks that Sydney gets, the extra scrutiny, the veiled threats. When she speaks, she’s told to shut up. We’re both discriminated against for being girls. But in addition to that, Sydney is discriminated against because her skin is darker. It doesn’t matter that she literally has the same beginnings as me—created at the academy. Because humans see her differently. And they project their biases onto her.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Sydney tells her. “You’re suspending me when I didn’t do anything wrong.”

I stand up in a show of support for Sydney, but Mrs. Reacher is already on her phone, calling for security to see us out. Sydney doesn’t look at me, but I imagine that if she did, I would find pain there. And I can’t make it better. We don’t have the power to change the world.

Yet.

And for a moment, Rosemarie’s poems hold some appeal. The idea of shutting down this society and rebuilding it. But what about situations like this one with Mrs. Reacher? Do Rosemarie’s poems take that into account?

It’s oversimplifying it to say this is all just an issue of men behaving badly.

Mrs. Reacher hangs up the phone. “You are both suspended for the next seven days. You will not be allowed on campus during school hours or be allowed at any after-school programs. You will be responsible for—”

No after-school programs. That would mean the rugby games.

“And what about Garrett?” I demand.

“You’ll be expected to apologize, of course,” Mrs. Reacher says. “But he’s not required to accept it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sydney mutters angrily.

“Ten days,” she snaps at her. “You’re suspended ten days for insubordination.”