Chapter 2
When I was nine years old, a few years before my parents got divorced, the three of us went on a winter hike together.
That was our thing, rain or shine: regular hikes, and camping trips as often as Mom and Dad could get the time off from work.
It was something they’d done since they started dating, and by then it felt like the only time there was peace in our family.
On hikes, they both seemed calmer. They smiled more, and held hands, and all I had to think about was avoiding puddles and getting over logs and the burn in my legs from climbing the trail, instead of watching for tension gathering between them.
The temperature was in the thirties that day, but they still got me up at eight in the morning, bundling me into a parka and snow pants, helping me fasten grips onto the bottom of my hiking boots.
Once we were on the trail, it didn’t take long for my face to go numb from the wind; when I moved my mouth to talk, it felt like someone had painted a mask of glue over my face, holding it in place.
That’s what it feels like now, sitting in Mr. Harrison’s room, staring at the whiteboard.
This can’t be happening.
“Can we even have two presidents?” Jayden asks. His words sound far away.
Mr. Harrison lifts his palms up. “I don’t see why not,” he says. “There are no guidelines to prevent it.”
“Hell yeah!” The loud voice jolts me back into my body. Forrest shoots finger guns at me. “What’s up, Co-President.”
I wrinkle my forehead and shake my head.
“Um, no,” I say, and his smile collapses into surprise.
I look at Mr. Harrison. “We don’t need two presidents.
It’ll just make things more complicated.
I’ve been in this club way longer than Forrest has, and I’ve held a leadership position.
It doesn’t make sense for him to be president too. ”
Mr. Harrison’s eyebrows lift slightly.
“It’s just a club,” Forrest says. “It’s not that serious.”
I glare at him. “Just because it’s a club, doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
He rolls his eyes.
“See?” I say, throwing a hand out at him. “Mr. Harrison, you can break the tie.”
I hear murmurs around the classroom; someone lets out a breath nearby.
I know how I probably look right now: uptight and mean, but I’m too angry to care.
Who does Forrest think he is, throwing his name in the ring just because it’ll look good on his college applications?
This club isn’t some convenient opportunity he can use to make himself look better. This club is my life.
It’s everything to me.
Mr. Harrison takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Sidney, I’m not going to do that.” I open my mouth to protest and he shakes his head. “I am your advisor, here to provide supervision and guidance if needed. But this club belongs to you all, and the people have clearly spoken. They want you both.”
I look at Forrest, who’s staring at me, his arms crossed.
“This is unprecedented, though,” Mr. Harrison adds, “so let’s do a trial run and have a reelection at the beginning of next quarter. We’ll schedule the revote for the week after Trans Awareness Week.” He scans the room, and people nod quietly.
The bell rings and everyone jumps up. “Teamwork makes the dream work,” Mr. Harrison calls out with a smile. “I’ll see you all next week.”
Forrest and his friends are out the door immediately, leaving the rest of us to put the chairs back as fast as we can so we’re not late to fifth period.
I move numbly from chair to chair, the meeting replaying in my head over and over.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t part of the plan.
My year, the way I imagined it, is receding into a golden pinprick, the me I was going to be—accomplished, collected, and in control—vanishing in the distance.
As soon as we’re done, Jayden and Makayla rush off in the opposite direction to their history class, Makayla throwing a worried glance at me over her shoulder.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Anna says as the two of us hustle toward Algebra II. Most people are in their classes by now, a few stragglers rushing to make it in time for the last bell.
“Understatement of the century,” I mutter.
“You still have the presidency,” she says, picking up her pace to match mine. “Silver lining?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to share it with someone. Especially not him.” We turn a corner and beeline for the door of our classroom. The second bell rings just as we get inside, so Anna can’t say anything else about it.
In my seat, I watch as Mr. Gutierrez starts a lesson on quadratics, but my mind is buzzing again, no thoughts, just an electrical hum of doom-anxiety-desperation that only I can hear. I repeat a mantra in my head three times, one on either side and one safe in the middle:
Stop, stop, stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
My heart is racing, my palms sweaty.
Again.
Stop, stop, stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
I feel lightheaded, nauseous.
Again.
Stop, stop, stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
Stop. Stop. St—
I jump up. I can’t stand this anymore. Everyone looks at me as I rush to the door, and behind me, I hear Mr. Gutierrez calling out, but I don’t stop.
I charge into the hall, down the long corridor out toward the wing where I know Jayden and Makayla are in class with Forrest. The security guard shouts after me as I blaze past him, but I keep going, the halls blurring until I’m at the door and pushing it open into the middle of a class in full swing.
The teacher looks up and so does every face in the class. Forrest stands.
“You can’t be president,” I tell him.
He rolls his eyes. “Fuck you,” he says. “I got elected fair and square. You’re just an uptight bitch.”
I launch myself at him, everyone around me erupting in screams. I shake my head, and suddenly I’m sitting in math class, blinking as Mr. Gutierrez drones on at the board. My heart is racing. Did I really just storm to Forrest’s class and tackle him?
No. There’s a desk in front of me, the brown grain of the fake wood gently swirling across its top, interrupted by the purple cover of a spiral notebook, a pen resting beside it.
I grip the desk with my hands and look around the classroom.
The walls are white, the linoleum floor is blue, the lighting is horrible.
All around me students are taking notes.
That’s not real. It’s not happening.
That’s not real. It’s not happening.
That’s not real. It’s not happening.
But the election did. I have to work with Forrest for the entire term.
How am I supposed to do that?
The moment I step inside my house that afternoon, English Breakfast runs toward the door with his signature raspy meow.
I take off my backpack and kneel as he flops down on the hardwood floor to expose his belly.
I know better than to touch it, though. Some cats allow belly rubs, but Brekky isn’t one of those cats.
I keep my fingers up around his head and neck, scritching his smoky gray fur just the way he likes it.
Petting him calms me, and for a moment, his sweet face is the only thing I see, his green eyes half closed in happy relaxation.
“You’re probably hungry, huh?” I murmur, and he chirps, jumping up and pushing his head against my knee.
He follows me into the kitchen and circles my feet, meowing loudly as I put some wet food into his bowl.
A high-pitched squeak pulls my gaze to the floor, where our other cat, Earl Grey, has joined him.
She’s a dainty gray tabby, much smaller than Brekky, and where he’s laid-back, she’s skittish.
They belong to Shar, my stepmom; she got them as kittens years ago, before she met my mom.
The cats are both equally enthusiastic about the food, though, and run to it as soon as I set it down.
We feed them three times a day: Shar takes the morning, since she’s up the earliest before heading to her job site, I do the afternoons when I get home, and Mom feeds them after dinner.
By the way they act around food, though, you’d think we were starving them.
I grab a glass of orange juice and some chips and set up at the table with all my schoolwork.
Our house is pretty small, so I don’t have far to go.
The main floor is where we live: the two bedrooms and the bathroom at the back, the kitchen in the middle, with its side door, and the open-plan living room and dining room at the front of the house.
There’s a back door in the basement, but it’s unfinished down there, all concrete, cold and damp with spiders lurking in the corners.
The only reason I go down there is to do laundry.
Out the side door, there’s a small garage where Shar does all her woodworking projects.
Gay art adorns the walls around me, thanks to Mom and Shar’s love for queer artists: abstract color blocks, portraits of gay couples, a giant knitted tapestry in a rainbow ombre.
The furnishings are thrifted but cozy. We don’t have a ton of money, but this home is ours, and it’s better than Dad’s place.
Or at least, the place he lived the last time I saw him, but that was almost a year ago.
It’s still September and the school year has barely started, but I have plenty of homework to do already: a worksheet of problems for math, an outline for a short essay in English, and a reading for history.
The essay outline isn’t due until next week, so I start the math problems. That’s my hardest subject, and last year, when I worked with a tutor after Mom discovered my grades had slipped to D’s in most of my classes, she taught me to do the hardest thing first. Sometimes it works.
But not today.
As soon as I look at the math problem, Forrest’s face flashes into my head, his ridiculous smile and cringey finger guns when we both won the election. Like he thought I’d be happy about it. Like we’re friends.
It’s just a club, he said.