Chapter 6
“Time for round two?" Jayden asks, walking up beside me as I head toward Mr. Harrison’s classroom on Friday. He skips ahead, spinning to face me as he walks backward.
“What do you mean?”
“You and Forrest.” He throws a few fake punches. “Party versus panel. Pew pew!”
“Oh. Yeah.” I shift my backpack, tightening the straps.
Images keep flashing in my head: Forrest and me, toe to toe in the center of the circle while everyone watches us shout at each other.
Forrest pushing me, me pushing back. Mr. Harrison calling the office, security arriving, both of us at the principal’s, and then Mom’s face, pinched in disappointment because I let her down.
Again. Jayden must hear the anxiety in my voice, because he slows his walk, coming to my side.
“Are you OK?” he asks.
I shake my head. My heart is pounding again, and I know I’m probably not having a heart attack, but what if I faint? I take a deep breath, just to make sure I can. Is that lightheadedness I’m feeling?
Jayden’s hand curls around my arm, stopping me in the hallway, and he draws me over to the side, next to a bank of lockers. “I’m sorry,” he says in a low voice. “I know you don’t like Forrest, but I didn’t realize it was this bad.”
“I just . . .” My voice cracks, and I turn away from the crowd, toward him, so people can’t tell how worked up I am. “I just want this year to be good.”
“It will be,” Jayden says, resting both hands on my shoulders.
I look into his warm brown eyes, his forehead furrowed as he gazes at me.
“Forrest is just one dumbass. Yeah, you have to share the presidency with him, but everyone knows how much you love this club. Don’t let him ruin that for you.
” I nod, even though I don’t believe Jayden at all.
I know he’s trying to help, but he has no idea what it’s like inside my head.
The things I see that I have to make sure don’t come to pass.
Because if they do, everything else might fall apart too, and I don’t know if I can handle that.
“Come on,” he says, squeezing my shoulders. “We’ve got a meeting to get to.”
I follow him down the hallway, counting my steps:
One, two, three.
One, two, three.
One two, three.
The rest of the way to Mr. Harrison’s room is twenty-seven sets of three, for eighty-one steps total. All odd numbers, which is comforting, and something inside me settles a little bit, like a dragon retreating into its cave.
Forrest is there before us again, setting out chairs. We exchange nods, and I join him, pushing seats into place.
People filter in, but it doesn’t take long for the trickle to stop.
We definitely have fewer people this week than last week; we started the year with at least ten freshmen, and today we’re down to two.
None of the sophomores show, and the only senior is Riley.
Stef is here, notebook already open, but even Alexander is missing.
“Hold up!” He darts in just as Anna closes the door. “Sorry I’m late.”
“It’s all good,” Jayden says, smiling at him.
I look around the room. There are ten of us here, down from the more than twenty on the first day. Last year, we averaged fifteen people per meeting. I should know; as secretary, I was keeping track. But we’re only three meetings into the year and we’ve lost so many people already.
Is this because of last week?
Because of me and Forrest, and our . . . disagreement?
“OK!” Forrest says, calling the room to attention. “Queerly beloved, we are gathered here today to figure out what the fuck we’re doing this month.” A few people giggle. He looks at me. “I’ve been talking with people outside of the club, and it sounds like a lot of y’all are into the party idea.”
The blood freezes in my veins. He’s been talking to people? Outside of club time? He came to me as if he actually wanted to work together, and this whole time he’s been talking to everyone else behind my back.
“Really?” I manage through a clenched jaw. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“I like Sidney’s idea,” Anna says softly. She widens her eyes at me when I look at her, and I widen mine back. I know she understands what this means. Forrest is showing his true colors.
“Maybe you shouldn’t speak for others,” I say to Forrest.
“Well, Anna’s your friend, of course she likes your idea,” he fires back. “But this isn’t a popularity contest. It’s about what everyone wants, not just you.”
I sit back in my chair. Mr. Harrison emerges from his office, looking around at all of us.
“How are we doing?” he asks. “I heard raised voices.” His gaze lands on Forrest, who shrinks slightly, a sheepish smile crossing his face.
“Sorry, Mr. H,” he says. “We’re just, um. Passionately discussing the best direction for the club this year.”
Mr. Harrison nods slowly, scanning Forrest’s face, then mine. The room feels like a pressurized container, as if one wrong word will be the puncture that suffocates us all. I don’t want to be responsible for that suffocation.
“Fine. Do the party.” I squeeze the words out, expecting the room to relax, but instead every face swivels to me. Jayden’s eyebrows raise, and he looks to Makayla, who’s fidgeting with her ring, and then to Anna beside her with hands frozen in midair over her laptop.
“You sure?” Forrest asks, his voice too light, like he didn’t just Julius Caesar me in front of everyone.
“I said it’s fine,” I say, and he shrugs.
“So . . . what do we need to make this happen?” Stef asks, eyes darting between the two of us.
Forrest stares at me a moment longer and lurches into motion, out of his seat and across to the whiteboard. COMING OUT PARTY, he writes in an empty space.
“Decorations,” Riley calls out, and Forrest scribbles it down.
“Snacks?” one of the freshmen says.
“Posters to advertise it,” Alexander adds.
One by one, people call things out, until they’ve got a list and start fleshing it out.
Under decorations, we add streamers, balloons, signs, and a disco ball—that last one is Forrest’s.
Apparently he just happens to have a mechanical disco ball on hand.
Under snacks, he writes cupcakes, chips, fruit, and juice.
I don’t know where it’s all going to come from, but it’s out of my hands now.
Maybe that’s the silver lining, if there is one; if it fails, it won’t be on me.
“I’ll make a collaborative playlist so we can all add to it,” Alexander volunteers, and takes everyone’s numbers so he can send the link in a group chat later.
When the bell rings, Forrest stays to help put chairs away instead of darting out like he has the past few meetings.
I avoid eye contact with him, straightening a row of desks on the opposite side of the room.
In my periphery, I can see him, his head turning toward me sometimes as if he wants me to look at him, but I don’t.
Maybe he’s trying to get in my good graces by staying, maybe he’s doing it because he really does care like he claims to.
It’s hard to tell, and I don’t like that.
Anna comes up to me, ready to go, and I grab my stuff, following her out. A group of seniors plows down the center of the hallway toward us, Anna and I parting on either side of them, coming back together in their wake. She links her arm through mine, and the connection anchors me.
“That was . . . intense,” she says as soon as we round the corner.
“Yeah.”
“How are you feeling?”
I shrug.
“I know you weren’t really fine with that,” she says.
“No, I wasn’t.” I look over at her. “He basically admitted he set me up. He came to me acting like he wanted to talk it out, and meanwhile he was going around to everyone to get them on his side.”
“He didn’t talk to me,” she says. “Or Jayden and Makayla. I’m sure they would have said something if he had.”
The thought warms me. He knew my friends had my back, that they wouldn’t go along with him.
“So why did you agree to it?” she asks.
Our arms unlink as we approach the stairs to the math wing, and I pull ahead of her as we climb to the next floor. My breath comes a little harder in my lungs. I still think a party is a waste of time. I still don’t trust Forrest not to run the club into the ground. But he wasn’t backing down.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I say. “If I said no, we would have been locked in conflict for another week.”
“I guess,” she says. When we get to the top, I wait for her, and we link our arms again. “But now . . .” She smirks, eyes sparkling with mischief. “. . . you have leverage.”
Something sparks in my mind. Jayden, telling me maybe I can get what I want if I give Forrest something he wants.
I didn’t give in today on purpose, and I’d prefer to avoid talking to Forrest as much as possible, but maybe I can use this.
I’ll meet with him again like he suggested, and this time, I’ll be ready. It’s my turn to get my way.
When Makayla’s dad swings their door open Saturday morning and sees me, he grins, eyes crinkling. “Sid the Kid!”
Unlike Makayla and Jayden, he’s as white as the doorframe, and he fills it completely. He’s a former football player who met their mom, a tiny Black woman, in college, and he still looks like he should be out crushing yards on a field somewhere.
I give him two thumbs-ups. He’s been calling me Sid the Kid ever since I started hanging out with Makayla and Jayden, but it’s not just me; he has nicknames for all of us.
Jayden is Jay Is the Way, because he loves the Mandalorian and all things Star Wars; Anna is, of course, Anna Banana; and Makayla is—
“Mack Attack!” he bellows into the house. “Sid’s here!” He’s like my dad, if my dad had an age-appropriate sense of humor and an actual presence in his kid’s life.
Makayla appears at the end of the hallway. “What’s up, study buddy?”
“Oh yes, my other rhyming nickname,” I say dryly. She smirks.