Wednesday morning, Adree and I started getting all these tweets linking us to some video, so I clicked on hyperlink, which brought me to a televised talk show interview with Melcie Tate, a popular actress and feminist/activist who I loved. The beginning of the video talked about her work campaigning to prevent girls from becoming child brides both inside and outside the U.S., but at the end they asked her if she'd heard of Girls Shit Too and Embrace Femininity. She nodded, and they asked her what she thought of us and whether she found us brave.

"Brave?" she scoffed. "I wouldn't call it brave. Many teenagers these days are seeking online fame with no real sense of the future. I don't know much about those movements—but they certainly seem to be promoting a very tween brand of feminism. Not that that's necessarily bad—except it does seem to distract the world from issues of real concern, especially when the media and its consumers are helping."

"So you don't think these girls are the activists of the future?"

"The problem with our modern world is we confuse activism with slacktivism. Making vlogs about nail polish? How much does that help with sex inequality? But we must also remember: these are high schoolers who don't know much about the real world yet."

Right when I finished watching it, I didn't even know how to react. It felt like Melcie had sliced open my abdomen and pulled out my digestive organs. My will to put them back in and continue my journey didn't exist. All I was thinking about was how maybe we were just stupid high schoolers who didn't know anything about the real world, how our movements were just ridiculous projects. I didn't know why I'd ever thought they were becoming something more.

I wanted to finish the project and be done with it. All I needed was the grade.

And right then, I didn't think my "How I Plan to Change the World" essay would work at all. I needed to come up with another plan for how I wanted to change the world, and I needed to put some distance between myself and my tween slacktivism project, so I might have a shot at the Emily Hearst Scholarship. It seemed out of my reach at that point, though. Valerie would probably get it, and I should feel happy for her; she was one of my new best friends, after all.

In English that day, Ms. Brooks asked me if I wanted to talk about it, and I told her no.

Adree wasn't in class, and then she didn't release a vlog that night. I couldn't blame her; I didn't have it in me to even think about Girls Shit Too.

* * *

Friday, I stood in front of Emily Hearst's memorial fountain, watching water run down the six-foot-high sandstone block into the small pond below. It seemed now like the scholarship in her name would never be mine. I wondered what she'd been like, and if she would've viewed my project as important, or as a case of slacktivism. Adree still hadn't released a vlog, and she'd been distant in English class.

Even though I didn't want to be part of our competition anymore, I still wanted to one-up her. So I actually gave my viewers something to work with instead of leaving them hanging:

Dallas Delaney @DallasDelaney

Taking the week off from #GirlsShitToo. Need some time to reflect on my goals. Peace.

Adree

Fri, Mar 4, 7:04 PM

Adree

I saw your tweet.

Dallas

Yep. I don't feel like posting anything this week. Just like you.

Our viewers are disappointed.

Adree

It's just a ridiculous project. A week off won't hurt.

A ridiculous project? Is that all it is to u?

Dallas

Why? Is it more to you?

You're being oversensitive if you're really gonna let one person affect u like that.

Adree

Aren't u supposed to be masculine? 💪Brush it off.

Dallas

What? You are doing the same exact thing!

And you almost quit the Internet that one time!

Adree

I wanted to. But I didn't. There's the difference.

And I didn't plan on taking the whole week off.

Dallas

Ugh I hate when you're right

Adree

What if I come over and we respond to Melcie's accusations in a collab vid?

Dallas

Okay, sure 👍

When Adree came over on Saturday, I led her to my bedroom where she sat down on my bed and I sat down on my desk. "Haven't been over here for a while," she said. "It's changed."

"Yep," I responded, not really knowing what to say. Part of me felt like the situation was awkward, like I had just invited a vampire into my house, and I wondered how it was a good decision. The other part of me felt giddy: I finally had a girl over at my house, in my room. But as Josh had told me over winter break, this scene would surely remain G-rated.

Adree took in the scenery. "You still have metal posters all over the walls."

Again, I nodded, wishing she would give me something more to work with.

"How can you like metal so much? I mean...isn't metal known for being sexist?"

I had to think about it for a second, and I realized that yeah, metal was known for being sexist. It wasn't an epiphany—I'd known, I was just in a constant state of denial. The first death metal show I went to I was accused of being a groupie for no reason aside from me being a girl, and when I objected to the accusation, I was asked to prove my knowledge of the genre. (Alex and Benny weren't ever asked to prove their knowledge.) Not only did metal music and videos objectify women (not unlike many other genres), but there were also hardly any female metal musicians, and those few female metal musicians were constantly victims of degrading comments, evidenced by online comment sections. And even though metal dealt with topics of substance, it also dealt with themes of violence against women. How did I deal with it?

Finally, I had a good answer. "Compartmentalization, Adree."

"What?"

"I keep my love for metal and my love for feminism in separate compartments. Then I feel less conflicted about listening to black metal songs that refer to women as temptresses."

"Seems like you just shouldn't listen to those songs."

"If I were a good feminist, then maybe I would. Maybe I will. But for now, I'm just a mediocre feminist."

"Yeah, me too," she smiled. "And I say stupid shit... a lot. I'm sorry about that." 

"I say stupid shit, too." 

Nudging me in the shoulder, she said, "I saw the Instagram picture of you and Valerie yesterday."

I didn't know what she wanted me to say back, so I asked, "Why don't you and Valerie like each other? I mean, I saw the picture of you two when you were younger. You used to be good friends, right?"

"That was when she went to Crystal Shore Dance Studio with me. But she sold out to the stupid high school dance squad. What's better? A team you've been competing with since elementary school? Or a stupid dance squad that's sure to bring you high school popularity from the get-go? A dance team that actually dances the wide range of emotions, or a dance team that does simplified and vulgarized? She chose her path."

I realized Adree might not be exaggerating: maybe Valerie had chosen the school team because of the popularity. Most people knew Valerie's name because she was the head of the dance squad, the girl we watched perform front and center at all sporting events and pep rallies.

Adree, on the other hand—well, I only knew she was a dancer because of her Instagram.

"I liked your Instagram vids," I blurted out. "The ones of you dancing."

"Why did you just start following me on Instagram?"

Not knowing what to say, I replied, "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." Nothing like an idiom for an ambiguous answer.

"So what are we? Frenemies?"

I shook my head and nodded at the same time, making circular movements. More ambiguity. It made her laugh. "What were you doing in those pictures, by the way?" I asked.

Getting out her phone, she went to her Instagram, scooting even closer to me in the process, so our thighs were touching. "In this one, I'm doing a chaîné calipso."

"That's cool." We watched the video loop a few times, with her turning and then fanning her leg into this cool spread-legged leap thing. With each subsequent play, the move didn't get any less cool. "What about the other vid? The spinny things—those are freaking cool."

She clicked on that video. "Fouettés. A lot of dance terms are derived from French. It means something like 'whip.' You know, because I whip my leg around and around."

"How do you not fall on your face afterward?"

"I spot," she said, looking at me directly in the eyes. Our faces were so close. Her pores were clear, her lips looked glossy, and she smelled like strawberries. "I keep my eyes on one spot, and then whenever I rotate my head they go back to that spot. See?" She gestured to the vid again, and I had to peel my gaze away from her lips.

"Show me. In real life. Right now."

Her expression made me think she thought I was joking. "I'm not even wearing dance clothes. Besides, there isn't enough room in here."

"We can go out back."

Realizing I was serious, she sat up straight. "Okay."

We went into the back yard, where the concrete patio was looking as concretey as ever.

"I'll do them right here." She stood on the other side of the concrete patio, across from where I'd sat down at our outdoor table to ready myself to watch. "Don't move, because I'm gonna spot you," she said. She looked at me and then started doing her fouettés.

One, two, three... she got all the way up to nine before she lost her balance, turning her head to look straight at me with every turn. "It's a lot harder in tennis shoes," she laughed, recovering.

"I thought they were rad!"

"I guess they can make you dizzy, even when you spot."

"I might've moved my head. Sorry."

She smiled. "Let's lay down."

I followed her, thinking how weird it was that we were laying down together on concrete as opposed to criticizing each other over Youtube. When we were on our backs, I said, "It seems like dance competitions are way better to watch than the dance squad's performances."

"Definitely," she said, rolling onto her side toward me, prompting me to turn my head. "You should come watch one of our performances." 

"I'd like that." 

Suddenly, the moment felt a little too sentimental or something. I felt myself blushing, and Adree blushed, too. She gathered herself before saying, "Are we ready to go inside and do this? To show Melcie Tate we aren't just tween feminists?" Her hand took mine, making the moment feel even more sentimental. 

"That we're awesome mediocre feminists? Totally." I squeezed hers back, feeling weird about it, because that wasn't something I ever did with anyone besides Dylan. But even though it felt weird, it also felt right.

"Let's take a selfie first." Her phone flashed above our heads, and I felt amazed by how many people wanted to take selfies with me lately.

After that, we went inside and worked on our collaborative vlog until the stars were visible, agreeing that we would release it at 8 p.m. the following night, when I usually released my own vlogs.

That night after she went home, she posted the picture of her and me, laying back with our hair spread out on the concrete. Her purplish hair met my dark brown hair, and we looked connected. She'd used a silly filter, making our skin glow and everything else look more colorful, but I liked it; sometimes it could be fun to look at the world through a filter. She captioned the image with: "Moonbathing w/ @DallasDelaney. Stay tuned for our vlog!" All of our enmity was gone in that moment; Instagram was filtering it out. All you could see was our connected hair and our smiles and the way that Adree's head was tilted towards mine. I didn't usually like selfies, but sometimes they could capture those fleeting moments where you weren't thinking about how the grass could be greener because it seemed green just the way it was. The filter might have been responsible for that...it made our concrete look grass-green.