A Girl Called Fearless Read Free Page A

go onstage? Or Sophie—how’s cyber lab going to work for you?”
    Ms. A held out her hand for us to quiet down. “Sources within the association have told us that colleges are being pressured to keep women out. They’re being threatened with funding cuts if they don’t cooperate.”
    â€œI bet it’s Senator Fletcher and the Gang of Twelve,” Sparrow said.
    I looked back at Ms. A. For the last year, she’d been telling us about Senator Fletcher and the twelve other powerful members of Congress who headed up the Paternalist Movement and seemed to control everything the government did.
    â€œBut why are they doing this?” Sophie asked.
    Sparrow rolled her eyes. “Fifty million women died and the country fell apart. The Paternalists want us home safe and sound in the kitchen. Not taking jobs away from men who need them.”
    â€œThis isn’t fair!” Zara cried. “We’re going to be eighteen. We’re supposed to be free to choose what we want.”
    â€œThey’ll pay for this,” Sparrow muttered like it was something she intended to carry out herself.
    I stared at her. It wasn’t the first time Sparrow said something like that, but it always shocked me, because she looked like a Renaissance Venus with soft curly hair and a perfect oval face. Not a kick-ass chick you’d expect to wreak vengeance.
    Ms. A touched Zara’s shoulder. “I promise you,” she said, “the Paternalist Movement doesn’t control everything or everyone. Don’t forget there are people fighting for your rights in this country, including our president.”
    Sophie burst out, “But we can still go to college in Canada, can’t we?”
    â€œYes, that’s still an option.”
    I sank into my seat. I’d never get Dad’s blessing to go to Canada. The only reason he’d sign off on Occidental was that it was twenty minutes away.
    â€œThis is why you cannot be silent, my dears,” Ms. A said. “When you leave Masterson next year, you must speak out for Gen S.”
    Generation Survivor.
    Ms. A nodded at Sparrow, and the security camera quit buzzing and went live. “Let’s start with embroidery, class.”
    We got out our needles and thread. Last spring the Masterson Board of Trustees had revamped our curriculum. They cut back our courses in science and math and slipped in classes in child rearing and the domestic arts. With our mothers and older sisters no longer around to teach us, they wanted to make sure we were prepared to assume our roles.
    But Ms. A turned embroidery defiant: a game we played against the administration and the trustees. Each stitch was part of a secret code Ms. A used to teach subjects we were denied: velocity, DNA, vectors.
    We’d stitch or knit or crochet the principles into our heads and tear the stitches out after class. Chinese women used nu shu code to write letters to each other. We used ours to learn.
    Ms. A marked out a pattern to follow on the board. Sparrow glared at the blank spot where the poster for MIT used to be. Zara was sniffling, and Portia stared at Ms. A with hollow eyes.
    I tried to thread my needle with the white silk, but the thread wouldn’t go through. Sophie took it from me and did it in one try.
    â€œSo you think you’ll go to Canada for school,” I asked her. “Your dad won’t try and stop you?”
    â€œHe believes in my dream. He would never try to stop me.”
    I knew about Sophie’s dream, because she’d shared it with us—of inventing a blood test that would reveal if Scarpanol had turned a girl’s ovaries into cancer factories before it was too late to treat.
    I didn’t have a dream like Sophie, but I had questions I needed answered. I needed to understand why people did what they did, why they fed Scarpanol to cattle without years of testing it. Why the government let people import it from China, why the