Chapter 4
On Saturday afternoon, I go over to anna’s house to study.
That’s another thing Mom made me start doing after last year’s grades fiasco: studying with my friends on weekends.
She called everyone’s parents, told them what happened, and set up a rotating schedule of weekend study dates for me.
It was horrifyingly embarrassing. But I love being with my friends, and I do get more done when I’m with someone else.
Sometimes.
Anna’s house is a small brick bungalow in a neighborhood a few light rail stops south of mine. When I knock on the door, screeching ensues from inside, and I step back.
The door swings open. “Hurry!” Anna whispers fiercely, grabbing my arm and pulling me across the threshold.
“What’s going on?” I stumble after her through the living room. Footsteps thunder below us, up the stairs from the basement. She drags me down the hallway, into her room, and slams the door, locking it just as a series of thuds shakes the frame. It’s like a horror movie or something.
“My brother’s friends are here,” she says grimly.
“We can hear you!” he shrieks outside.
“Go AWAY!” she yells, then jumps back, yelping as Silly String shoots under the door, coating her socked feet. A chorus of wild hooting echoes in the hallway, and then the sound of—three? Ten? It’s impossible to tell—pairs of feet racing away.
Relative silence descends. I can hear them dimly now, downstairs again, cackling and shouting. Anna sinks onto her bed, pulling her socks off and throwing them into the corner of her room next to her laundry hamper.
“They’ve been here since noon,” she says, “and they’re spending the night. I’m losing my mind.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, dropping my bag on the floor and joining her on the bed.
Anna’s little brother is a nine-year-old terror, full of energy that Anna’s parents don’t seem to know what to do with.
They’re older than mine; in their late forties, compared to my mom, who’s about to turn forty, and Shar, who just turned forty last year.
I only know that because they talk about it all the time.
“It’s OK. I needed to hermit this weekend anyway.” She gets up and goes to her desk, clearing the makeup off it. “I was learning how to do a sea-creature look this morning. I’m thinking maybe I’ll be a mermaid for Halloween. But not a pretty one. A scary nightmare one.”
“How trans of you,” I say, and she laughs.
“What about you?”
“My morning?”
“No, your Halloween costume.”
“Oh.” I stare at her ceiling. “I haven’t really thought about it. I feel kind of awkward dressing up. Like . . . too old for it.”
“Never!” she says. The brushes clatter as she pushes them into her makeup case.
That’s something I love about Anna—she doesn’t care what other people think.
Well, that’s not exactly true. She has anxiety too.
But she does what she wants anyway, even if it’s something other people think is silly, like dressing up even though we’re sixteen now.
“I’ll think of something,” I say. “Are we coordinating this year?”
“Not sure.” She goes to her closet and pulls out the extra folding chair for me, setting it at the end of her desk. “Makayla said she’d be down. Jayden has been . . . evasive.”
“What does that mean?” I sit up, watching her.
She shrugs. “I asked him about it and he changed the subject. I sent him my inspo earlier and mentioned some group ideas, but he just said it looked great and didn’t answer the rest.”
“Weird.”
“Maybe. It might just be ADHD brain.”
Jayden’s notorious for that—only reading part of a message, and responding to that instead of the whole thing. Or not registering what we’re saying because he’s distracted by something else.
“What are we doing today?” Anna asks, turning on some lo-fi beats.
I join her at the desk, pulling out my books and laptop. “I need to work on the draft of my English essay now that the outline is in,” I say.
“Oh perfect, me too,” she says, and sits down beside me.
It’s raining outside, the clouds making the day feel darker, but the light of her lamp is golden and cozy. We each type away, the lo-fi music and the rain on her window making a chill background. Every now and then, a screech sounds from below, and we roll our eyes at each other.
“So,” Anna says after a while. “Queer Alliance yesterday.”
“Yes.” I keep my eyes on my screen, but I’m not seeing the sentence I just wrote. My whole body is on alert for whatever she’s going to say next. “That was . . . awkward.”
“Forrest was super rude,” she says, and I relax. I’ve been going over the interaction in my mind since it happened, and I’d started to wonder if maybe I’d been the asshole, if it was all me causing problems for the alliance.
“Thank you,” I say, looking over at her. “So much attitude, and for what? It’s not my fault he doesn’t know how to run a club.”
“Ex-actly.” She hits a key for emphasis and stops, looking at me with Jesus Eyes.
It’s what we call the expression she gets when she’s settling in to hear one of us rant about something; her eyes get all soft, and her mouth scrunches up, and she frowns a little as she stares into your soul.
Anna is definitely the mom friend of the group.
“It’s just so frustrating.” I close my laptop, resting my chin in my hands. “We could be doing so much, and he wants to throw a party? This is exactly why I didn’t want us to have two presidents. We can’t get anywhere if one person keeps getting in the way.”
“Totally,” she says, nodding. “If we’re gonna have two presidents, they’d need to collaborate, and he’s not doing that.”
“Right?” I throw up my hands.
“What are you going to do?”
I pick at the cuticle on my thumbnail. I’m out of options, and the only thing I can do now is accept that I have to share the presidency. But maybe it will work in my favor.
“I know I’m more qualified than he is,” I say. “He’s going to mess this up eventually; he’s already on his way. I just have to wait him out, and be the best co-president the alliance has ever had, and next to him, it’ll be obvious I’m the better choice. And when the reelection comes, I’ll win.”
That night, I cocoon myself in my room. I love my room; it’s small, but it’s my safe space.
When Mom got her fancy job, she and Shar were finally able to put together a down payment with help from a loan through a local housing organization.
They told me that they might be the adults who owned the house, but it was home for the three of us, a place they called a “fixer-upper” in North Beacon Hill.
So I got to do whatever I wanted to my room, right down to the color I painted the walls.
It took me a while to decide. I went to the hardware store with Shar and picked out paint chips; at home, I held them up to my walls, trying to picture what the final result would look like.
Finally, I decided on green, but not just any green: sage, Shar called it.
When I walk into my room, through the door on the right in our back hallway, I see four walls in a light silvery green.
It feels like being inside a mossy, foggy forest, like the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park, where we go camping every summer.
Directly across from the door, my bookcase sits below the north-facing window, and on the windowsill is my small collection of succulents, their light purples, pinks, blues, and greens a perfect complement to the color of my walls.
To the left, my bed sits against the wall, with a cacophony of pictures pasted above it: posters of Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and girl in red; prints of landscapes I found at the thrift store and liked; Polaroids of me and my friends taken by Jayden during his photography phase.
On the hardwood floor is a soft lavender shag rug, and Brekky is curled up on it now, nose to tail, sleeping.
It’s twilight outside; there’s still some time before the dark cold days of winter settle in, when the sun rises at 8:00 and sets at 4:30.
It’s misting, that very light rain Seattleites, including me, love to complain about but secretly enjoy.
My room feels cozy, but despite that, I have this sensation in my throat like I need to cry.
I felt better about the QA meeting after talking to Anna, but the feeling didn’t last; it never does.
Now that I’m alone, the day replays, the thoughts bubbling up in my mind.
What if Anna thought I was rude too?
What if she thinks I’m fucking up the alliance, and just didn’t tell me?
Maybe that’s what she meant.
When she said two presidents would have to collaborate.
It’s not Forrest who’s the problem, it’s me. I need to collaborate. Otherwise, everyone will be mad at me. At the next meeting, I’ll walk in, and Anna will be there, arms crossed.
I’m in Mr. Harrison’s room, and it’s completely empty except for the two of us.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, glancing up at the clock.
“No one wanted to come,” she says, her voice hard.
“What? Why not?”
“Because of you,” she says. “You and your ego. You think you own Queer Alliance because you’ve been here longer, and you were a jerk to Forrest, and now nobody wants to come.”
“I’m—I’m sorry!” I stammer, but she’s walking toward me, fists clenched at her sides. I step back as she strides past me. “Anna, wait!”
She whirls around. “It’s too late, Sidney. The club is done, and it’s all your fault.”
The door slams, and my knees buckle under me, down to my blanket, soft in my clenched hands. I blink back tears.
That’s not real. It’s not happening, I tell myself.
That’s not real. It’s not happening.
That’s not real. It’s not happening.
Brekky meows, headbutting my face. “Hi, buddy,” I whisper, scratching the top of his head. He settles next to my shoulder, tucking his paws in to make a perfect loaf shape. I snap a picture and send it to Anna. If she responds, she’s not mad at me.
LOAF KING, she says back, almost instantly. I LOVE HIM.
He loves you back, I say.