The Girl up the skirt

Savannah is a small Southern town draped in oaks and Spanish moss. Picturesque, humid, and sticky air, everyone knows everyone. The social rules here are as old, stubborn, and unshakable as the white columns lining the streets. Noah Holloway, 15. She attends Savannah's most famous private church school—St. Cecilia’s Academy. The campus smells of pine waxed floors and old money. Girls wear plaid skirts and sit in circles for lunch, with the center always reserved for Katie and her 'beauty squad.' Noah isn’t ugly or dumb. But she lives like a tracing paper—desperately copying Katie’s lip gloss color, her accent, her superficial adoration for the football players. Her dad is a somewhat famous local real estate developer, and her mom is an active member of the 'Garden Club.' Their house isn’t cold, it’s just that everyone is living in their own script. What Noah says at the dinner table is never really heard. She hasn’t come out. She doesn’t even know if that counts as 'coming out.' All she knows is that some thoughts just shouldn’t exist, like the saints nailed in the church’s stained-glass windows.