The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills Read Online Free PDF

around you without taking it too personally. It’s just adolescence, after all….”
    My mom had made what she thought was merely an offhand comment, but I clung to her advice. Thinking like this seemed to be the only way to make myself feel better. And so I’d gone to the library and checked out every book on anthropology I could find, and what I couldn’t find, I ordered off the Internet:
Ethnography Through Thick and Thin, Coming of Age in Samoa, Local Knowledge, From Lucy to Language, Critical Anthropology Now
… Not all of it had made complete sense to me, but I loved feeling like an explorer somehow, even if it was in my own town. I felt safe that way. Intellectual. And it was completely interesting! That was the best part — I actually liked this stuff. Cheerleading, blech, be gone! I was better suited to being an anthropologist anyway.
    Back in the present moment, TR smiled her acid smile. In response, my own mouth arranged itself into a jigsaw of doubt.
    “So, Margo,” TR continued. “We like your shirt sooooo much. Just wondering, where did you get it?”
    Tabitha and Casey were laughing silently at us, swallowing little snickers. TR gave a careless toss of her shimmery blond hair and then leaned toward Casey and Tabitha, whispering. I heard Tabitha mutter “drug dealer” and “baby.” Anyone who’d been in Melva longer than forty-eight hours would have known that these words related to various threads of gossip about Margo’s family currently in circulation. I wasn’t sure how the drug dealer rumor had started, but Margo’s older sister, Becca, had just had a baby during the past year. Margo’s sister wasn’t married. This had caused a small stir.
    “So are y’all comin’ to the party this Friday?” Tabitha asked.
    Margo didn’t answer, recrossing her legs.
    ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:
In warding off the attacking tribe, members of the weaker tribe must avoid direct confrontation — even the direct gaze will be taken as a challenge. Members of a weaker tribe must play dead and wait for the aggressors’ interest to wane. Thus we kept silent.
    “I heard that
last
Friday night someone saw you with a guy,” Casey said, directing her attention toward Margo.
    TR made a coughing noise that sounded like “slut.” Margo flicked her raised foot dangerously close to TR’s ankles.
    “Hey,” Casey said to TR. “We should get that stuff from my house for the junior class party. And then go check and see if they got that dress for Miss Livermush in a small enough size for you.”
    They had lost interest in us. I thought we were in the clear at that point, but no — too late. Margo cleared her throat and hawked up an enormous wad of phlegm. It landed, glistening, on the grungy floor, only millimeters from TR’s pretty foot in its wedge sandal.
    ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:
In the solitary act of retaliatory aggression, a lone member of the weaker tribe has, in popular parlance, “gone maverick.” Such an act could trigger an all-out battle or a more indirect attack, but either way, the repercussions will likely affect the entire weaker tribe, not just the lone aggressor. In other words, Margo’s actions made me very, very nervous.
    TR coughed, smoothed her new jean skirt, and sidestepped the glob with her long legs. “Ohmygod! Wait!” she said, in the same fake, drawling voice she used to charm the First Baptist Church ladies and sell yearbook ads. “I can’t believe how forgetful I am!”
    “What? What did you forget?” Casey asked, now looking puzzled.
    TR nodded and cast her long, purpley lashes downward, then looked sorrowfully over toward Margo.
    “I was thinking,” TR said. “With Miss Livermush coming up, and your family having a new baby in the house, you mightbe a little tight on money. And I believe in competition, so I want you in the pageant. I might have a dress you can borrow.” She smiled sweetly, as if bestowing a generous gift. But then she frowned. “But, oh! Oh, no, it