The Tina Fey Problem On the tragedy of 2010s feminism

When I was 12, my mom enrolled me in a running group, Girls on the Run, to shock me out of my pubescent laziness. For an hour, 24-year-old coaches would lead us around the track in our pink, Girls-on-the-Run-branded T-shirts. They eventually broke us up into smaller groups once it became obvious that Danielle, who played club soccer, was going to lap Cecilia, who spent all of her free time watching 30 Rock. But, despite my nearly 20-minute mile pace, the program was empowering. After every session, I was a Girl on the Run. Not everyone, I thought, could claim that title.

When I wasn’t running laps inside a brightly-lit gym, I was working my way through a slew of 2010s sitcoms. First it was 30 Rock, which I started watching a couple years after its release in 2006. Then Parks and Recreation in 2009. In 2012, Mindy Kaling’s first solo show, The Mindy Project, was released. Come 2013, Inside Amy Schumer aired and only a year after that, I watched the newly premiered Broad City. I didn’t get around to Girls until later, but I did find the time to read Lena Dunham’s book, Girl. I also read Tina Fey’s Bossypants and Amy Poehler’s Yes, Please if you couldn’t tell, insufferable as a tween. I was also a Feminist.

Girls on the Run, 30 Rock memoirs I read are artifacts of the type of femi nism that was gaining steam in 2012. Over the next few years, this strain would come to define mainstream feminist media, pollinating airwaves with its girl-power branded messaging, until it met its fatal end following Trump’s election and the Women’s March in 2017. It was focused on putting everything—sexual deviances, traumatic responses, annoying tics, bodily malfunctions, professional disappointments—out on a pink tablecloth and calling for the world to come see. Its method of gaining popularity was to be loud and obnoxious. Beyond that, the comediennes didn’t have much of a plan. +++

Feminism in the 2010s packaged itself simply. It was distilled in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s rulebook, laid out in her 2014 TED Talk-turnedbook-length-essay, We Should All Be Feminists Adichie’s definition of a feminist encapsulates the politics of the time: a feminist is “a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better.” It was a simple message, one that made it easy for any middle-school-aged girl to wield the feminism sword without a coherent strategy or politics. “We must do better” was the slogan, but the process of betterment was left undiscussed. It gained its power only in its artic ulation, and it left all of its potential dangling in the modal verb. It was a great rallying call for the

In the first episode of writer Liz Lemon, played by Fey (who created the show), faces off against her new boss: Jack Donaghy, a Donald Trump-type NBC executive played by none other than Alec Baldwin. The next six seasons follow Lemon as she attempts to lead the writer’s room of an eclectic sketch comedy show, based on Fey’s time working as the first female head writer for Saturday Night Live. Through romantic travails, professional disasters, and a number of clumsy accidents, the compact sitcom had an impressive jokesper-minute rate, and it was well-received upon airing. But as much as it was about a woman in a man’s world, it was also about a woman in distress. As Donaghy says in the first episode, Fey’s character, Liz Lemon, is as much a powerhouse as she is “a New York third-wave feminist, college educated, single and pretending to be happy about it, overscheduled, undersexed, who buys any magazine that says ‘healthy body image’ on the cover and every two years takes up knitting for … a week.” Liz Lemon eats Cheetos apologize, she confesses her darkest secrets in a monologue. They include being “sexually rejected by not one, but two guys who later went on to clown college,” having “five donuts so far today,” pooping her pants “a little bit, at an all-you-can-eat country buffet,” and going on a date with her cousin. This is what I’ll call ‘Feyian feminism,’ which will later be picked up by Poehler, who plays an outrageously optimistic public servant on Parks and Rec; by Kaling, who plays an egotistical narcissist on The Mindy Project; and by Dunham, who plays an insufferable Brooklynite on Girls. It is confessional through and through, and its impact arises only from its having been stated. The comedians of this era created a museum of embarrassing femininities, exhibiting various vaginal problems, sexual mishaps, and digestive issues to the impressionable viewer. But behind the installation, there wasn’t much programming. attendance in Washington. They joined the long lines of women in pussy hats holding signs like “We are not ovary-acting,” “Ninety, nasty, and not giving up,” “Vulva la resistance!” and “This pussy grabs back.” Here was the final breath of the Fey-ian political body. Millions of women threw their nastiness toward the White House. In return, Trump’s Supreme Court appointees overturned Roe v. Wade

Women in 2023 have fewer legal rights than the women of 2006. In certain ways, the cultural landscape has changed in their favor—the #MeToo movement transformed social norms that had worked against women, and in some cases women saw justice against their perpetrators, at least through the legal system. But 10 states have banned abortion since the series finale of 30 Rock aired. Title IX protections on campuses were scaled back during the Trump administration, and companies could now choose to deny basic reproductive healthcare coverage based on religious beliefs. The comedians of the decade leading up to Trump’s elec- tion may have managed to change the landscape of TV, but their feminism didn’t hold up in the fight against actual political threats.

What accounts for this failure? The very essence of the Fey-ian feminism that circulated in the mid-2010s was threatened by anything that didn’t fit neatly into its mold. The growing visibility of trans issues complicated the feminism which relied so heavily on corporeal signifiTIME Magazine’s June cover story featured the actress Laverne Cox with the headline “The Transgender Tipping Point.” “Nearly a year after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage,” it reads, “another social movement is poised to challenge deeply held cultural beliefs.” Less than a year later, Diane Sawyer’s interview with Caitlyn Jenner in April 2015 brought the topic of transness further into the American

The vapidly grotesque feminism of Dunham and Schumer now faced a major challenge. By continuing to proceed as normal, they risked aligning themselves with the growing trans-exclusive radical feminist (TERF) movement that seemed to champion vaginas over everything else. Journalist Elinor Burkett wrote an op-ed New York Times responding to the 2015 Jenner-Sawyer interview. In it, she bemoans transness for the stereotypes and “boxes” it puts upon femininity. “People who haven’t lived their whole lives as women,” she writes, “shouldn’t get to define us. That’s something men have been doing for much too long.” For Burkett, gender is a laundry list of minutiae, an often very gross and uncomfortable checklist, that each person ticks again and again until she gets enough points to earn the Woman badge. Trans women, Burkett writes, “haven’t suffered through business meetings with men talking to their breasts or woken up after sex terrified they’d forgotten to take their birth control pills the day before.” These examples are, truly, 30 Rock episodes. Liz Lemon, in the episode “Jack the Writer,” tries to get an intern to cover up because the male writers are so distracted by her breasts. In “Cooter,” she has a pregnancy scare after a fling with an that published Burkett’s letter has recently come under fire for its antitrans rhetoric, with nearly 1,000 contributors signing a letter stating that the paper’s coverage of trans issues has been inflammatory and anti-factual at a time when trans rights are under attack nationwide. Practically in response, the Times published an op-ed by former Books editor Pamela Paul titled “In Defense of J.K. Rowling,” where Paul claims “nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic.” While Rowling has insisted she respects the idea of transness, she has also maintained not only that there is an essential, permanent distinction between cis and trans women, but that institutions—like jails or psychiatric wards—should treat people according to this distinction. Perhaps a more articulated, nuanced feminism could have pushed against this tired, harmful narrative. Instead, old-school feminists like Paul, Rowling, and Adichie—who has made some Rowlingadjacent comments herself in recent years—are enabled to fill in for a feminism left vacant. When challenges to the mission’s very symbol—the vagina—and all that it could not accommodate were posed, its creators gave up on it altogether. They stood up from the table upon which they had thrown everything and farted as they walked away (as Julia Louis-Dreyfus does in Inside Amy Schumer, “The Last Fuckable Day”).

So what remains? Not a lot. As Andrea Long Chu put it in a 2019 n+1 article about her transition and the concept of womanhood, feminism today is in the unenviable position of being politically obligated to defend its own impossibility. In order to be for women, feminists must refrain from making any positive claims about women. The result is a kind of negative theology, dedicated to striking down the graven images of a god whose stated preference for remaining invisible has left the business of actually worshiping her somewhat up in the air.

The exclusivity and inflexibility of Fey-ian feminism was what eventually brought the movement to its knees. But the truly insidious effect of a feminism based on divulgence and confessions was that it left little else to be said. Up until recently, there were still taboos to be broken. But now the gas has been passed, the men have been sexually dominated, and the “cunts” have been uttered. The pussy has literally been shown (Girls, Season 5, Episode 7: “Hello Kitty”). So where do we go from here?

I do not lament that the tweenagers of today have no Tina Fey equivalent to worship; the type of feminism that is so focused on enumerating what is has no place in a politics interested in what could be. But I do miss the possibility of a conscious feminism in general. Girls on the Run had plenty of problems, beginning with its name and ending with its intentions, but it did at least create a space of potential feminist action for young girls. And, despite the screed above, I loved 30 Rock, The Mindy Project, Broad City, and the rest. They were great examples of what a feminist media could be like, even if they never managed to hit the mark. Still, an inclusive feminist world relies on there being a feminism in place.

In that same essay, Chu proposes an alternative for our impoverished culture. As she writes in response to cis women who might question

I don’t want what you have, I want the way in which you don’t have it. I don’t envy your plenitude; I envy your void. Now I’ve got the hole to prove it. I would give anything to hate myself the way you do, assuming it’s different from the way I hate myself which, who knows.

Fey, Schumer, Dunham, and the rest used a pile of vaginas and bad sex stories as their soapbox. They thought they could negotiate a new feminism by simply adding, at a rapid pace, to what was already there. But Chu says something else. She proposes a feminism borne from the void, from the gap between different women, by the gap within each woman herself.

Amia Srinivasan, a philosopher of sex, puts it similarly in a 2021 New Yorker article:

It is also true that many non-trans women know something of the heartbreak caused by a body that betrays—that weighs you down with unwanted breasts and hips; that transforms you from an agent of action into an object of male desire; that is, in some mortifying sense, not a reflection of who you really are … What might a conversation between women, trans and non, look like if it started from a recognition of such continuities of experience?

These continuities aren’t one-to-one in the way Elinor Burkett would like it; it’s not a matter of comparing my white-pants-period story to your gross-guy-from-Tinder story. It’s a connection which arises from the disconnection we feel between, within, and beyond ourselves.

And perhaps that’s what Fey, Dunham, Schumer, and the rest were trying to get at: a way to articulate the places where ‘womanhood’ fails to fill in the gaps. Rather than searching for a new method, they tried to fill the hole with more of the same, but it only grew with the vulgarity of their jokes. For, as Chu and Srinivasan implore, it’s that gap which defines gender. The gap between what we feel ourselves to be and how we are perceived, the gap between our consciousness and the forms our consciousness clings to. Any feminism that depends upon an imagined connection where meaning transfers seamlessly from one body to the next, one experience to the next, is destined to fail. Any politics, generally, that attempts to connect experience as if experience itself were continuous has failed and will fail, too. A new feminism would make room for the discontinuity. It would depend on its eventual brokenness, like when you see yourself in a window and don’t recognize the reflection. Or like when you think back to yourself a decade ago, running around the indoor track in your 30 Rock merch, and wonder who that girl really was.

Stephen noticed it first at breakfast. It was Tuesday and Tuesday was waffle day. Friday was also waffle day, but on Friday he was allowed to have them with whipped cream. Stephen ran down the stairs and into the kitchen and he smiled; his mother remembered, and hadn’t poured the syrup yet. There was a right way to do it—pouring the syrup. The right way to do it was to pour the syrup on the side of the plate, letting it pool, and then soak the waffle strips—he always cut them into thin, long strips—in the puddle. He chewed on the first syrupy strip and, as soon as he felt there was room, picked up a second and chomped down and then PANG. It hurt! In the back of his mouth, on the top, on the right, it hurt! Stephen bit down and the half-chewed waffle made contact and PANG—it hurt like that!

The pain shot up through his tooth, sharp and instant, a white hot blinding flash firing into his brain. Then an aftershock, throbbing, waves and waves, out from the pulsating tooth, pounding around his mouth and down through his entire body. It thumped into his stomach and he could not breathe. He lurched forward, folding over, hot tears welling in his eyes. PANG

Stephen slowly swallowed the partly-chewed waffle strips and looked to where his mother had been. She was gone. He whipped his head back and forth, scouring the kitchen. Where did she go?

“Okay, honey!” The sweet, warm voice drifted in from the other room. “Time to go!”

She was there, in the living room. She hadn’t left him. To the sweet music of her voice he sank back in his chair and released a deep exhale. Echoes of pain faded from his body and mind as he walked to the door, leaving behind his still-full plate of waffles. +++

In many ways, second grade was better than first. This year, Stephen was in the same class as Jonah and Jason—they had been separated after kindergarten. Also in the class was Isabelle Natterschiff—beautiful, lovely Isabelle. And since he was in the first reading group, he was allowed to choose his own books during independent reading.

But this year, he had Ms. Bergman. Evil Ms. Bergman. Oh, how mean she was! How cruel and full of spite! Two days before his eighth birthday, she caught Stephen passing a note to Jason during social studies. Class time was for everyone, she said. So if Stephen has something to say, he would have to share with everyone.

As he sat at his desk, finishing his subtraction, Stephen saw her glaring eyes blaze across his memory. He saw the slight upward curl of her thin, papery lips, that serpentine sketch of an almost-smile. Stand up, she had commanded. Read the note aloud. Include the rest of the class. It’s not nice to exclude people. Later that day, she called his parents. He was disruptive, she told them, disruptive and disrespectful. It was a shame for a boy so smart to act in such a way. But it wasn’t true. It was a hideous lie Ms. Bergman told. He was a good boy. His ears turned hot as the hateful memory lingered.

He looked across the room to Isabelle Natterschiff finishing her worksheet. Soon, he pridefully pledged, some day very soon he would tell her how he felt. He did not know if her marriage to Ethan Sonnenfeld still stood— they had held a small, private wedding by the cubbies during afterschool last year—but he would profess his love regardless. Anyway, he knew they couldn’t last, because if they had kids they might be named Sonnenfeld-Natterschiff.

At lunch, Stephen sat with Jonah and Jason, as he always did. He unzipped his lunchbox, and set his eyes upon the turkey sandwich, apple slices, yogurt, and Goldfish his mother had packed for him. Turkey sandwiches were gross, but he promised his mother he would eat them.

Stephen jammed his mouth full of Goldfish. PANG. Oh lord, there it was. That quick and sharp, then long and wide, PANG, there and all at once, then everywhere—PANG

Shock subsiding, Stephen lifted his hands to hold his face, pressing down on his cheek above the afflicted tooth. Jonah and Jason gave him a strange look.

“My tooth hurts,” Stephen said through muffled groans.

“Maybe you have a cavity,” said Jonah. A cavity? It couldn’t be a cavity. He always brushed his teeth. He never missed a day. He was diligent; he was precise; he always went the full two minutes—he had a little hourglass that timed it; he made sure to hit every spot; he didn’t rush; he didn’t even complain. He couldn’t have a cavity.

“My mom had twelve cavities,” said Jason. “She said she was always at the dentist. And every time they would stick a needle in her mouth and then drill her tooth.”

Stephen looked at his friend through widened eyes.

“She said it really hurt.” Jason leaned back and crossed his legs. “She cried every time.”

Stephen dumped the rest of his lunch into the garbage.

+++

Stephen had a problem. After lunch, the pain hadn’t gone away. He tried to ignore it, to pay it no mind, but there it remained, that little pang, slowly chanting in the back of his mouth. He played tag at afterschool. Pang. He did his homework. Pang

At dinner he barely touched his food. He told his mother he wasn’t hungry. His father told him he needed to eat so he would grow. He said he was sorry. Pang.

He couldn’t have a cavity. It would go away.

+++

Stephen had gone to Hebrew school every Saturday morning since he was four. This year, his parents made him go after school on Wednesdays, too. On Wednesdays, it was just the older kids.

This week, Rabbi Kessler talked about Moses. They all knew the story, how Moses had led the Jews out of Egypt, through the desert, to the promised land. But they were old enough now to learn about a more complicated chapter.

When the Jews had almost reached the promised land, after forty years of wandering, they ran out of water. So God told Moses: speak to a rock and water will appear. But Moses got impatient. He hit the rock with his staff instead of speaking to it. And so God punished him, and did not let him enter the promised land. Stephen couldn’t believe it. They were so close and it had been so many years and Moses had done so much and right as they were about to make it, he wasn’t allowed to go.

“He died without ever stepping foot in the promised land,” the rabbi said sadly.

It seemed so cruel, so mean and unfair.

Pang

Stephen’s mother walked him home from Hebrew school. He was eight now, so he usually did not hold her hand anymore when they walked in public. He held it tight today.

He couldn’t have a cavity. Cavities were for kids who were bad and didn’t brush their teeth. Dr. Gursky, his dentist, always told him he brushed so well. Dr. Gursky had a funny accent because he was from a country in Europe. Stephen couldn’t remember which one. Maybe Siberia. Pang +++

That night, Stephen got in bed at nine o’clock sharp, like he was supposed to. He made sure to be exactly on time. Once the lights were out, his mother sang him a song and kissed him goodnight.

“One more?” he asked.

His mother ran her hand through his hair.

“Tomorrow, sweet boy,” she said. “It’s late.”

She turned away and left, slipping out the door. The room grew cold.

Pang

He hadn’t told her about his tooth. If he told her, she would make him go see Dr. Gursky. And if he saw Dr. Gursky, he might find a cavity. It was better to pretend nothing was wrong. Maybe tomorrow, the pain would be gone. It was worse today than it was yesterday, but tomorrow it might be gone. He shut his eyes so tight and tried to push, push, push the thoughts away. To will himself to sleep. Then he saw Dr. Gursky, the shiny scalp under a thin patina of once-black hair, the little wire-rimmed glasses, sticking that rounded pointy shiny metal tool up into his gums. A hot tingling trickled down his arms and lingered in his hands. He couldn’t have a cavity. How could he have a cavity?

Pang

In his heart, Stephen knew. What else could it be? A hot, freezing, furious terror beset his bones and he sprang out of bed. He had a cavity. But why? He did everything he was supposed to do. He didn’t understand! So he would pray. Yes! He would pray, and beg God to take the cavity away. He would explain to God that he was good and that there must have been a mistake and he was not supposed to get cavities. That there was no one less deserving. Stephen stood facing the window—he thought that way might be east—and began to pray.

As he prayed, he remembered Moses. He remembered how terribly God punished him when he struck the rock. That one bad thing. And he realized: he was being punished. Somehow, he, Stephen, had aroused the righteous, furious wrath of the divine. He had angered God and God smote him with a hole in the tooth in the back of his mouth. But what had he done? He was good. He tried to be good. Why had he been cursed?

Stephen looked up and he thought about his mother. He thought about how sometimes he wasn’t nice to her. Sometimes he wouldn’t listen. Last week, he snuck downstairs and he went on the iPad and stayed up until 11:00. When his mother had woken him the next morning, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t get out of bed. His mother yelled. He was going to be late for school! she said. And he was; he was late for school. He walked in at 8:34, morning meeting was already over, reading had started, and Ms. Bergman, cruel Ms. Bergman, she gave him the most evil look. Oh, how he hated Ms. Bergman, the odious witch. But oh, oh, oh! She was his teacher! He was supposed to listen to her! And he tried, he really tried. But she was so dreadful, so mean and terrible. He didn’t mean to disrupt. He didn’t mean to make things difficult. He said he hated school, that he wished he could never go again, but he didn’t really mean it. He liked reading and sometimes he even liked science.

Stephen felt a heat kindle in his soul and he looked up to the sky and imagined God there, a mighty cloud above his house. He remembered his misdeeds and the times he had been bad; they flashed through his mind and he knew that God had seen them, all of them. The heat inside swelled and grew; it welled up from his stomach and through his chest; and he felt his chest constrict, pulled down toward his stomach, tightening, tightening.

Under the weight that pressure broke; and from the depths sprang a cry so deep and powerful he could feel it rise past his lungs and leap through his throat. But when it left his lips, that weighty mass of fiery fear, thrust from the anguish of his soul, that deluge—when it left his mouth it crumpled, it collapsed and vaporized into thin air.

Stephen could only muster a whimper. His lower lip began to quiver and his chest began to shake, emitting a series of little pants, short and shallow. Tears welled up in his eyes and, one by one, fell, scalding, down his face. One tear rolled down his nose and crested over his top lip, landing in his mouth. And with his tongue he felt his tooth and the pain, which, in his moment of terror, he forgot, came once again bounding to the fore.

PANG PANG PANG PANG—his tooth wailed from the back of his mouth. It shook and shuddered and danced around, howling its anguished cry. It throbbed and ached and Stephen could not help but wilt under its weight.

PANG PANG PANG

That horrible noise, that clangor of panging. Oh, how it hurt him; oh, how he ached. He lay on the floor and rolled around. Landing on his side, he closed his eyes and spoke to God.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I’m sorry, God. I know I don’t always listen. I don’t listen to mommy. I talk in class. I stole some candy from the cabinet and hid it in the Lego Batcave.”

He curled up into a ball beside his bed.

“But I try,” he keened. “I try to be good. And I promise. I will never be bad again. I swear. I swear.”

Over and over, he said it. “I swear, I swear.” Again and again the words left his mouth, their meaning receding, dissolving into sheer recitation.

His body tired and his fervor cooled; his panting slowed and the panging in his mouth quieted. Stephen pulled a pillow from his bed and hugged it tight, drifting into sleep.

+++

His mother found him in the morning, curled up on the floor. She gently awoke him. He stirred and yawned and, opening his eyes, pain and God and teeth and fire and PANG came flooding back into his brain. His body again filled with terror and he burst into chittering sobs. He told her everything.

“Oh, honey.” His sweet mother held him close. “We’ll go see Dr. Gursky as soon as we can.”

+++

The hot bright white light scorched down on Stephen as the dentist’s chair whirred backward and his pounding bellicose heart thumped war songs in his chest. Dr. Gursky looked down at him. One eye was squinty, the other big and bulging behind the tiny round glasses. He had even less hair than last time, just two colorless fuzzy patches on the sides of his shiny head.

“Okay, Mr. Stephen,” he said in his Siberi an accent, smiling. Stephen wondered why his teeth were so yellow. “We are going to take a look around to see if we find a cavity.”

He put a bulky, boxy pair of sunglasses over Stephen’s eyes and cranked up the light.

“Open up wide.”

Stephen meekly complied.

“Wider.”

He couldn’t go wider.

“Gnaaaaaaagh,” Stephen groaned.

Dr. Gursky placed his icy gloved hands on Stephen’s face and pulled his mouth ajar.

“Ngyaaaaaag!”

The dentist reached his hands through Stephen’s gaping jaw. He dug around through teeth and gum with his pointy probe, sticking his mirror into the back of Stephen’s throat. Stephen wanted to gag. The metal hook tapped and clicked against the hard enamel. The sharp edge poked and prodded between the gaps in his teeth and nudged in the grooves of his molars. PANG PANG PANG PANG PANG. The metal tapped against the second to last tooth on the top-right of his mouth.

“There it is,” the voice with the accent said.

Stephen’s chest collapsed in despair. Oh, how right he’d been. He imagined all he might have done better, but there was nothing to be done. He had misbehaved and now he would have to pay. He splayed across the reclined chair, submitting.

“We are going to have to fill the cavity,” the dentist said, pulling his tools from Stephen’s mouth.

When Dr. Gursky lifted his hand again, Stephen saw the long, thin needle. His soul arose in violent revolt. He wanted to gnaw and writhe and thrash about, to pound his fists across the bald man’s face. But he could not—he had to be brave. He gripped the armrests, digging his nails into the plastic, holding himself still. He would not cry again.

“You will not feel,” the Siberian offered with equanimity.

There was a slight pinching tweak in his gum and the gleaming needle was pulled from his mouth.

“See? Not so bad.”

The right side of his mouth slipped into numbness and Dr. Gursky lifted a tiny drill.

“You will barely feel.”

But that was a lie. A heinous and terrible lie. The drill drilled on and it buzzed in Stephen’s mouth—humming, fizzing, whirring susurration. It zapped its zipping whiz vibrations, metallic electricity, power puncturing into his buzzing tooth. The drill sent pulses through his body; he shuddered to its buzzing rhythm. Static shocks ran through him, from his teeth to the ends of his fingers and toes.

The furious buzzing ceased.

“All done.”

All done?

The door swung open and Stephen heard the touch of gentle footsteps.

“Oh, my poor baby.”

He opened his eyes to see his mother standing beside the dental surgeon.

“No more cavity for little Stephen,” the Siberian reported. “He is a very brave boy. He +++

At school the next day, Ms. Bergman assigned everyone new seats. Stephen’s new spot was just one seat away from Isabelle Natterschiff. During reading, he finished his chapter early. He peeked over at Isabelle, her hair in a long braid, diligently scanning the pages of her book. Oh, he couldn’t wait any longer! He ripped a page out of his notebook and began scribbling a

“Five more minutes, everyone.”

Stephen jolted to attention. Ms. Bergman was looking right at him; he could feel the burn of her gaze. He pretended to read. After a moment, he glanced up. Ms. Bergman had turned her back. His body bubbled with frenzied frightened glee as he finished writing the note. He looked back at Isabelle, who met his eyes.

Stephen smiled.