Chapter 8
“Hey, Co-President.”
I look up from my locker Tuesday morning to see Forrest leaning against the wall a few feet away. The hall is crowded, students chattering in clumps before the last bell rings for first period.
“Wow, you didn’t scare the shit out of me this time,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“Yeah, I’m trying not to give people concussions lately? It’s a new thing.” He grins.
“Personal growth! Impressive.” I snort, then stop myself. No friendly banter with the enemy. I grab the last book out of my locker and shut it. “What do you want?”
“I was thinking we could talk about club stuff today?” He shifts from one foot to the other. “Maybe we could actually sit down and have a conversation like normal people this time.”
I give him the side-eye. “What are you, like, allergic to standing?”
“I just think it’s more professional if we sit,” he says. “We are the presidents, after all, and this is serious business, according to you.”
“OK,” I say. “Fine. I will meet you in the library at lunch.”
“Excellent.” He puts his hands together like an evil scientist, just as the bell rings. We look at each other, and I can tell when we both realize we’re going to the same class. I take a step forward, then another, and he follows.
Forrest and I are walking to class together.
“Soooooo . . .” he says. “How are . . . you . . . ?”
I think of Dad, dropping me off at home on Sunday, how he hugged me for way too long before I climbed out of the car. How I stood at the window, waving as he drove away, and it felt like I was a kid again, watching him go to work, looking forward to when he’d come home and we’d watch cartoons.
“I’m fine,” I say. “And . . . you?”
“Pretty good,” he says.
The classroom appears ahead of us, a shining beacon of hope in this horrifyingly awkward moment. I speed up, heading inside, and Forrest peels away to talk to his friends on the couch at the back of the room.
The second bell rings, and everyone scrambles to their seats. Ms. Lundahl brings out a stack of packets and starts passing them out. One lands on my desk with a thump that hits me like a stone.
“I’m working on reading your short essay assignments right now,” she says. “As I mentioned at the start of the year, these were a warm-up for the main event of our first two quarters: your long essay and presentation.”
Groans echo around the classroom. “Love the enthusiasm,” she says cheerily, heading back to the front and grabbing the remote.
With the projector on, she walks us through the assignment step by step.
With every section, the cloak of dread that settled over my shoulders the moment she said the words “long essay and presentation” gets heavier.
This time, instead of writing about one of the three excerpts we read at the start of the year, we have to compare, contrast, and analyze all of them.
There’s a deadline for an outline, and for a first draft, and for the final draft.
Our presentations will happen in January, and we’ll have to give our argument to the class.
“No visual assistance,” Ms. Lundahl says. “It’ll just be you up here, and I’ll be grading on public speaking elements alone. I know that was a core component of tenth-grade curriculum for you all, and this will be a level up.”
“Fuuuuuck,” Stef mutters behind me. Beside me, Alexander murmurs in agreement.
I chance a look over, and he widens his eyes at me.
I grimace in response, and the impulse startles me.
I don’t dislike Forrest’s friends, exactly; I’ve just never r eally associated with them.
But that felt . . . friendly, almost. I didn’t even second-guess the reaction before I had it.
As Ms. Lundahl keeps talking, I pull my phone out, opening the group chat under my desk.
I can’t join for lunch today, I’m meeting with Forrest to talk about club stuff, I tell them.
We’ll miss you! Anna says.
Text if you need us to rescue you, Makayla says.
Don’t tempt me, I say. I put my phone back in my pocket and try to focus on the board. I can do this. The assignment, and the meeting with Forrest. It will be fine.
When I walk into the library later that day, I spot Forrest right away: in the back, eyes on his phone as he shovels pasta into his mouth.
“What are you looking at?” I ask when I get close, and he jumps, noodles falling off his fork into his lap.
“Fuck!” He sets the phone down, laughing. “You scared the shit out of me.”
I shrug. “I guess now we’re even.”
He rolls his eyes, picking food out of his lap. “And it’s queer stuff, dance trends and politics.”
“What?”
“What I’m looking at. My feed.”
“That’s . . . cool,” I admit, sitting down across from him.
And it’s unexpected too. I don’t know what kind of stuff I assumed he’d watch—dumb prank videos?
—and I’m surprised by his answer. Though I guess it makes sense; queer stuff, for obvious reasons, and the dance trends, since he’s friends with Alexander. “You follow politics?”
“Kind of?” he says. “I follow some creators who talk about what’s going on with anti-trans legislation, and anti-racism stuff. There’s this one account that does queer history videos. I love it.”
“You do?” It slips out before I can filter my surprise.
He laughs. “Wow.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I didn’t mean it like that.
It just . . . I didn’t . . .” I trail off, because I don’t know what to say, or what I actually meant.
You’re an asshole, a voice whispers in my mind.
You’re an asshole. You’re a fucking asshole. He thinks so and so does everyone else.
Stop, I tell myself.
Stop.
Stop.
“It’s cool,” he says. “You wanna talk about the exhibit?”
“Yeah! OK.” I pull out my notebook, pushing down the frantic murmuring in my head.
“So, here’s what I’ve been thinking. The library has a display case out front, and it still has the summer reading stuff from the end of last year in it, so this would be a perfect place to put part of the exhibit.
I want it to be eye-catching, something that directs people inside the library, where we can have the rest of the exhibit, which I’m thinking could be freestanding around the room.
Maybe we could make it like a scavenger hunt, where people go to every installation, write down a fact they learned, and turn it in for a prize? ”
“You wanna give people homework?” He tucks in his chin, staring at me from under his eyebrows.
“It would be optional.” I glare at him. “And it’s just an idea. Way to shoot me down.”
“Yeah, doesn’t feel good, does it?” he says.
I stare at him silently. His lips are pursed, eyes flat and peering right back into mine. I want to come back with a snappy reply, but I’m also just . . . tired. I don’t want to do this today.
“OK,” I say. “I know you said we could use this time to fight things out, but I don’t really want to spend my lunch break arguing with you.
I . . .” I blow a breath out. Time to be the bigger person.
For the millionth time in my life. “I’m sorry I shot you down.
When the club got started. But we’re stuck with each other until the reelection, so I want to make this work, at least until then. ”
He glares at me a minute longer, then sighs, looking away. “Yeah, all right. And you’re right. I want to make this work too.”
For the second time today, I’m surprised. I look down at my food, pretending to be very interested in deciding whether I want to eat my apple or my sandwich first. Across from me, Forrest is quiet too.
“It’s not a terrible idea. The scavenger hunt,” he says after a while.
“I don’t know.” I grimace. “I want it to be interesting, but maybe that’s not it.”
“We’ll figure it out,” he says. “What do you want in the exhibit?”
“Well, Stonewall, of course, and other big events in queer history. And important historical figures, like Marsha P. Johnson and Leslie Feinberg, along with people who are well-known right now.”
“Lady Gaga, Lil Nas X, Elliot Page, Laverne Cox, Janelle Monae . . .” He lists them off on his fingers.
“Yes!” I scribble the names down.
“We should definitely talk about when the DSM stopped classifying queerness as a mental illness,” Forrest says. “And some of the gay marriage milestones.”
“And the current anti-trans legislation.”
He nods, his mouth a grim line. “Yeah.”
We toss ideas back and forth and my paper starts to fill, enough for more than one exhibit.
Forrest knows way more about queer history than I expected; as much as me, and maybe more.
“We should include Lou Sullivan in historical figures,” he says.
I tilt my head, the name unfamiliar. “People think he’s probably the first trans man to openly identify as gay.
He founded the first organization for trans guys in the United States and had to fight for the right to medically transition because the criteria for gender identity disorder used to require trans people to identify as straight.
But he helped change that, and a bunch of other stuff too. ”
“Wow.” I stare at him, wide-eyed. “That’s so cool.”
“I know.” He grins.
I look down at my lists. The one for pop culture is particularly long. “So many celebrities are out now,” I say. “We can’t include everyone.”
“What if we have the alliance vote for the top five, and include the rest on a list in the exhibit? That way, people can still read it and see all the names.”
“That’s . . . a really good idea.”
He snorts. “You keep acting surprised.”
My face heats up, and I stare down at my paper. “Well, you didn’t exactly show you were capable of having them when you ran for president.”
“Well, you didn’t exactly show that you were capable of having a genuine conversation with me, but here we are.”
“Hey!” I glare at him, and he smirks back, spreading his hands wide in a sign of surrender. “God, you’re so fucking annoying.”