Chapter 24 Jaxon

“What’s this?”
“This is you making it up to me,” Grayce said. “I told you this was going to happen. Just take the bag.”
It had been three days since the movie, three days since our conversation in the dark on the grassy field. I’d received a text an hour earlier from Grayce asking me to meet her on the quad ASAP. It was a Saturday, and I’d dragged my butt out of bed way too early to face this rainy, foggy morning, but for some reason, I’d still done it.
“I fear for whatever this is,” I said. Grayce handed me the plastic bag she’d been carrying, and I reached my hand into it, wondering if this was a sick prank and something in there was going to nip my fingers off. What I pulled out was even worse than any creature with fangs.
“It’s an inflatable vagina,” I said, letting the enormous pink thing dangle from one finger.
“It is,” Grayce confirmed. “And you’re going to wear it while you march in the Women’s Rights parade in half an hour.”
“You’re kidding.” I knew she wasn’t.
“You said you’d make it up to me,” Grayce said. “This is it, Jaxon.”
“You forced me out of bed at seven-thirty on a Saturday to march through downtown Denver with a toy vagina?”
“It’s not a toy,” Grayce said. “It’s a statement.” She pointed at the words written on the vagina in bold, black letters with a Sharpie: WOMEN ARE MORE THAN JUST BODIES. Then she turned around to pick up a travel mug of what I hoped was something hot to drink and handed it to me. “I brought you coffee. Does that make up for it?”
“Yes,” I said, taking a sip. I grimaced as the foul, bitter liquid hit my tongue, gagging. “No. Did you make this?” I held the cup away from me.
“Yes. Why, what’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing, it’s great.” I spat a coffee ground from between my teeth and tucked the inflatable vagina under my free arm. “Are you sure there’s nothing else—anything else—that I can do to apologize for teasing you in high school?”
“Nope, this is what I want,” Grayce said. She picked up her mug of coffee and took a drink without choking on it. “You want to advocate for refugees someday, Jaxon, so you should know politics and human rights cover so much more than just that. With the presidential elections coming up, I know you’re aware there’s been quite a fight against one of our sexist, bigoted presidential nominees.”
And I did know. I knew all too well the crisis growing in the election run because politics was something I secretly kept up to date on during my free time away from friends. Had Tyler ever seen me reading up on America Today, he’d tease me for months for being an intellectual idiot. (I had yet to tell him that calling someone an intellectual idiot was a contradiction, but since I wasn’t even sure he knew the definition of contradiction, I’d kept it to myself and let him get his kicks out of using it as an insult.)
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll march with you.”
“I know you will.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised when Alex picked us up in her little car to take us to the starting point of the women’s march downtown. She wore an entire outfit colored pastel pink, a color that looked so ridiculous on her that she might as well have rolled in Pepto Bismol for the same effect. A large sign pinned to her front read: I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR with WE WILL NOT BE SILENT on her back. I couldn’t imagine anybody in their right mind, especially a man, would ever try to silence Alex, if anything, for the pure terror of being shanked. I didn’t comment on it because I didn’t want to be the one she went after. Grayce, whose sign was a bit more conservative but still bold, read, “Speak Your Mind, Even if Your Voice Shakes.” I didn’t want to be the one to tell her it might have been more appropriate in her case to have it read: “Speak Your Mind, Even if You Ramble Pointlessly.”
“I’m surprised Grayce convinced you to come,” Alex said as she drove. More specifically, she swerved and cussed her way down the street, winding in and out of traffic as she shouted slurs at people who flipped her off. “I told her there was no way in hell you’d agree to this.”
“He owed me,” Grayce reminded her. She was sitting in the back seat of Alex’s car with me, and when she looked over and smiled, I had the sudden urge to lean over and brush a loose strand of her hair back. Instead, I mentally kicked myself for even thinking about it and looked away.
“I almost forgot, we have one for you, too,” Alex said. She reached over with one hand and yanked a hand-made billboard off the passenger’s seat, tossing it back to me. The cardboard hit me in the face before falling into my lap.
“The inflatable vagina wasn’t sufficient?” I asked, flipping the sign over to read it. It said, “This is What a Feminist Looks Like.”
“No, you’ll have them both,” Alex said. “Also, I brought coffee.” She reached down for two Starbucks cups and handed them back to me and Grayce, unaware or not caring that she’d just cut off the driver behind us. They blared their horns, but she ignored them.
“But I made coffee,” Grayce said.
“Oh, God, did you have to drink it, Tate?” Alex asked, catching my gaze in the rear-view mirror. I looked at Grayce, who had her eyes narrowed at me.
“Yes,” I said. “And it was so awesome.”
“Shut up,” Grayce said. She socked me in the arm playfully as Alex turned into the parking lot and parked the car. Around us, hundreds and hundreds of women—and men—were gathered in groups preparing for the march. I was relieved that everyone looked as ridiculously dressed as we were, and some of the signs held up were even more outrageous than ours. I wasn’t the only one with a giant vagina, either, though I was probably the only dude with one.
“Hey,” Grayce said, elbowing me softly as we followed Alex through the crowd of people to get in line. I looked over at her, noticing how her cheeks flushed in the frigid morning air. She wore a slouchy beanie, a gray one, and today her eyes seemed to match her hat with a gray tint that looked anything but drab and dreary. They were magnificent.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for doing this.”
We stopped in the middle of the parking lot, surrounded by people of every age, color, and gender. She reached for my hand and squeezed it. Her skin was so warm I almost tightened my fingers around hers and didn’t let go, but I didn’t.
“And I forgive you,” she said.