Tenth Grade
(age sixteen)
Sixteen, for a lot of people, was the end.
Past sixteen, people officially didn’t have to stay in school if they didn’t want to.
High school went up two more grades for people who wanted to stay the course: diploma plus apprenticeship, if they wanted one of the blue-collar trades, or diploma plus university for the white-collar professions.
But only ten percent of the population was going to end up in either type of full-time employment.
Sixteen was the age where a lot of people looked at the odds, looked at their own mediocrity, shrugged, and resigned themselves to a life on Basic Income.
Either way people put their feet on their desks and socialized.
The people who were staying the course made fun of the people who weren’t, called them slackers, said they’d always known they wouldn’t be good for much.
The people who were leaving made just as much fun of the people who stayed: called them brownnosers and keeners, dupes who would waste the best years of their lives studying so hard for something most of them wouldn’t get.
Out of the thirty percent of the class who were headed for the university prep stream, a third would try their best for two more years only to have their hopes dashed when the university turned them down.
Another third would make it into university, study even harder, graduate with a fancy diploma and still never land a job.
Half the remaining ones would flounder in temporary positions for a few years before eventually giving up.
The statistics for apprenticeships were similar.
It was wild hope—or a grossly exaggerated ego—that made so many of them still want to try.
So it surprised him how bittersweet it felt, lounging there in the corner of the classroom on that last day, looking at all the straight, cis classmates he’d hated and knowing he’d never be trapped in here with them again.
And it surprised him even more when—midway through the litany of stupid party games and too-sweet treats—Kelli Reynolds got up from behind her desk and sidled up to him.
He stood still, not wanting to react. It had been a year and a half since they’d talked to each other—since that last, awful moment when Kelli had ordered him out of her room—and they’d both changed.
Kelli had gotten taller, like most girls, and even shyer and glummer than before.
She’d started paying attention to her clothes and her makeup—the way she’d pinky-sworn, back in seventh grade, that she wouldn’t.
Trying to look, not like a popular girl, but like a miniature version of the buttoned-down professional she wanted to become.
Rowan had changed even more. He still wasn’t allowed to dress like a boy in here, but he’d cut his hair even shorter than before.
He’d taken to wearing big heavy shape-obscuring jackets, stompy boots, anything to make him look meaner and larger and vaguely masculine.
Kelli stopped a safe talking distance away from him, looking at the ground. That stung, like everything else. Rowan knew how Kelli was about eye contact. But she’d used to make an exception for him.
“Hey,” Kelli mumbled.
“Hey,” Rowan said, warily.
“Do you want me to call you Rowan, still?”
She said it quietly enough that nobody nearby would hear, and Rowan suppressed a strong emotion that he didn’t know how to name. A year and a half since he’d told her that name, and they hadn’t talked since. A year and a half later, and she was still the only person he’d told.
“It’s Rowan to you,” he said, lowering his voice to match hers.
And Kelli, to his surprise, smiled a little. Like it was a relief to her, knowing for sure. Knowing he meant it.
“So—” she said. “You’re going?”
“Yeah. Couldn’t pay me not to. You’re staying?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Grow up, use that brain, make a name for yourself. Get power and use it to change things. I hope you do. I hope it works out that way.”
He meant it, even now that they weren’t friends.
He hoped Kelli grew up to be the CEO of the whole world and changed every single thing she’d planned on changing.
But from the way she bit her lip, from the way she refused to quite look at him, he knew they both felt the same doubts.
Only ten percent of the population ever got jobs, and out of that ten percent, how many ever reached the level where they were allowed to change anything—even some tiny bylaw?
How were people like him and Kelli ever going to do that?
Growing up to the age of sixteen had already taken almost everything they had.
“You should stay, too,” she blurted. “You could. You were always so smart; you could do it if you wanted.”
And that stung, somehow, even over and above everything else.
“Yeah,” Rowan said, before he could talk himself into some kinder answer. “If only I applied myself. If only I could buckle down and focus and be good like the other girls, then there’d really be something to me. Heard that one before.”
Kelli stammered. “I just meant . . .”
“I know what you meant.” He turned away. “If you ever actually want to talk for real, you can look me up. But I’m done being judged, by you or by anyone.”
He walked off toward some other corner, where there was a little clump of gloomy, black-clad girls who might give him the time of day. He didn’t let himself look back at her.
How he wished, just for one blinding moment, that he had Kelli and Elaine both happy at his side.
That they were all three about to stride off into the future, not frightened and alone but together, bouncing their most daring plans off of each other and watching each other’s backs.
A gang of three, a polycule, a community.
But it was too late for wishes like that.