Liz Reinhardt - Rebels Like Us

“It’s not like I never thought about being mixed race. I guess it was just that, in Brooklyn, everyone was competing to be unique or surprising. By comparison, I was boring, seriously. Really boring.”

Culture shock knocks city girl Agnes “Nes” Murphy-Pujols off-kilter when she’s transplanted mid–senior year from Brooklyn to a small Southern town after her mother’s relationship with a coworker self-destructs. On top of the move, Nes is nursing a broken heart and severe homesickness, so her plan is simple: keep her head down, graduate and get out. Too bad that flies out the window on day one, when she opens her smart mouth and pits herself against the school’s reigning belle and the principal.

Her rebellious streak attracts the attention of local golden boy Doyle Rahn, who teaches Nes the ropes at Ebenezer. As her friendship with Doyle sizzles into something more, Nes discovers the town she’s learning to like has an insidious undercurrent of racism. The color of her skin was never something she thought about in Brooklyn, but after a frightening traffic stop on an isolated road, Nes starts to see signs everywhere—including at her own high school where, she learns, they hold proms. Two of them. One black, one white.

Nes and Doyle band together with a ragtag team of classmates to plan an alternate prom. But when a lit cross is left burning in Nes’s yard, the alterna-prommers realize that bucking tradition comes at a price. Maybe, though, that makes taking a stand more important than anything.

Rebels Like Us

Liz Reinhardt

LIZ REINHARDT is a perpetually homesick NJ native who migrated to the deep South a decade ago with her funny kid, motorhead husband, and growing pack of mutts. She’s a fanatical book lover with no reading prejudices and a wide range of genre loves, but her heart will always skip a beat for YA. In her spare time she likes to listen to corny jokes her kid reads to her from ice-pop sticks, watch her husband get dirty working on cars, travel whenever she can scrape together a few bucks, and gab on the phone incessantly with her bestie, writer Steph Campbell. She likes chocolate-covered raisins even if they aren’t real candy, the Oxford comma even though it’s nerdy, and airports even when her plane is delayed. Rebels Like Us, her latest YA novel, is full of hot kisses, angst, homesickness, and laughs that are almost as good as the ones that come from the stick of a melty ice pop. You can read her blog at www.elizabethreinhardt.blogspot.com, like her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter, @lizreinhardt.

To Steph who refused to answer the phone until I swore this book was done, (despite my charms, pleas, and disgusting levels of self-pity) because she knows the purest form of love is also the toughest.

The world is full of awesome best friendships—Napoleon and Pedro, Claudia and Stacey, Jessica and Hope, Frog and Toad—but “Steph and Liz” is and always will be my fave.

I love you to the best doughnut shop in Brooklyn and back, bestie.

WHO’S WHO AT EBENEZER HIGH

“Several of your teachers mentioned dress code violations. I sense that there may also be an attitude problem.”

—Ebenezer High’s Principal Armstrong

“Agnes? That cannot be her name. That name would be ugly if it were my grandmother’s.”

—Ansley Strickland, reigning belle and Rose Queen frontrunner

“I like to root for the underdog.”

—Doyle Rahn, senior class heartthrob, Southern gentleman, expert mudder and rebel

“Obviously we have a different sense of humor here than y’all do.”

—Braelynn, Ansley’s BFF and second-in-command, and Rose Court nominee

“What I did? Running for Rose Queen? It’s not breaking any rules. But it’s breaking every tradition.”

—Khabria Scott, cheerleader, nontraditional Rose Queen

candidate and rebel

“Be careful ’round here. There’s some areas that aren’t real nice.”

—Officer Reginald Hickox

“I was never good at walking away from a dare.”

—Agnes “Nes” Murphy-Pujols, high school senior, new girl and reluctant rebel

“I ain’t about to retreat.”

—Alonzo Washington, senior class clown, baseball player and rebel

“Thank you for being the kind of daughter who never stops amazing me.”

—Nes’s mom, NYC transplant, nervous rebel parent

“This old town needs to shake some of the dust off.”

—Ma’am Lovett, Ebenezer High English teacher, supporter of the rebel alliance

“It’s funny because based on the tone of your voice, I would assume you’re not seriously considering melding the two most important things in the world—romantic love and social justice.”

—Ollie Nguyen, Nes’s BFF, bassoon prodigy and NYC rebel

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

WHO’S WHO AT EBENEZER HIGH

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Copyright

ONE

Sartre said hell is other people, but he obviously never experienced a winter heat wave in the Georgia Lowcountry. Six weeks ago, my best friend and I were drinking cocoa laced with swiped rum, huddled under covers on the couch, oohing over the fat, lacy snowflakes that drifted into frozen piles on the sidewalks. Today, I’m trying to resist fainting from the broiler-like temperatures. In winter.

No wonder there are twelve churches within a five-mile radius of my new house. If this is the kind of fiery heat Georgians deal with on a regular basis, the idea of hellfire must be a terrifyingly real threat.

The sun follows me like the creepy eyes in a fun-house portrait as my sneakers sink into the melting blacktop. I hesitate and stare at my distorted reflection in the glass of the school’s double doors. I’m still attempting to decode the movers’ unintelligible boxing system—yesterday when I opened a box marked Art I found my collection of Daler-Rowney watercolor paints tossed in with an eggbeater and a dozen of my mom’s old yoga DVDs—so my antifrizz balm is still MIA. With it, my hair falls into lopsided curls. Without it, I have to deal with my current situation—a dark cloud of frizz with a life of its own. It probably didn’t help my hair’s general health that I guilted Mom into letting me get the underside stripped, bleached, and dyed bright pink before we left the city. I need a hair tie. Or to get out of the pummeling sunshine before it fries my hair beyond recognition. I seriously love my curls, but I do not love what this crazy humidity is doing to them. Before I left the house this morning I decided that, despite my life going off the rails, I looked smoking hot. Now I look like I just made a quick run to the store and back for one of my aunties on a scorching August afternoon in Santo Domingo, even though all I did was walk across the school parking lot in Georgia. In the middle of winter. The only deliverance from this heat is inside the squat monstrosity that is my new school, Ebenezer High, so I need to make a decision: go inside or die of heatstroke.