Chapter 8 #2
“Back at you,” he says, still grinning. The bell rings, and he jumps into motion like a tornado, pulling his hoodie and backpack on at lightning speed. “See you later, Co-President.”
“It’s so early,” Anna mumbles, her eyes still half closed as we head through the halls to the library Friday morning. Here and there, posters for our party are tacked up on the display boards; Jayden and Makayla put them up on Monday. “Remind me why I decided to help set up for the party again?”
“Hey, you live two blocks from here,” I say. “I had to catch the earlier train while you were still asleep.”
“Let’s not compare suffering,” she says dryly, and I burst out laughing. The sound echoes through the still-empty halls; the school buses haven’t arrived yet, teachers just starting to get to their classrooms. Ms. Lundahl waves to us as she unlocks her door, and we wave back.
“I’m so behind on my outline,” I say after we’re around the corner. “It’s due Monday, right?”
“Yeah. We can work on it this weekend. I still need to finish mine.”
“Perfect.”
In the library, we find Riley, Forrest, and the goth freshman who mentioned Stonewall gathered around one of the tables, sorting through decorations.
People brought things from home throughout the week, stuffing them into Forrest’s locker, and now they’re all spread out on the table: streamers, sparkly lights, bead curtains, balloons, and a whole pile of Pride flags, including the bi, lesbian, ace-spectrum, nonbinary, and trans flags.
Riley waves to us behind the balloon they’re puffing into. It swells in front of their face, translucent and full of glitter.
“That’s so cool,” I say.
“Nyx brought them,” they say as they tie it off. The goth freshman waves shyly, and I smile back at them.
Mx. Prager joins us at the table. They’re a full head shorter than all of us, their round form swathed in bright yellow overalls, a flamingo-print shirt underneath, with a long rainbow sweater completing the look.
Sometimes they’re in a wheelchair, but today they’re using their cane, the length of it wrapped in gold.
“Anything I can help with?” they ask.
“Do you have tacks?” Forrest asks. They nod, and he follows them up to the front.
I join Riley in untangling the strands of lights, and when Forrest returns with a tub of tacks, we grab chairs to stand on and start hanging the lights up around the perimeter of the library.
Nyx and Riley get to work on the balloons, and Forrest starts putting up the Pride flags.
Pretty soon the library looks like a gay hurricane hit it, lights glowing on every wall, a bead curtain hanging in the doorway, streamers adorning every aisle.
A few of the chess club kids come inside and stop short, gaping at the decorations, and Forrest invites them to come back at lunch for the party.
Chatter from the halls seeps into the library, breaking the quiet of the morning, and Mx.
Prager busies themself with students coming in to print papers, turn in books, or hang out.
We finish just in time for first bell. We gather back at the table, collecting empty plastic from the opened packets of balloons, shouldering our backpacks.
“I have to say, this really came together,” Riley says, glancing at me, and I nod along. As much as I hate to admit it, Forrest did a good job spearheading this. The library looks inviting. Now we’ll see if anyone comes.
By the time lunch rolls around, I’m on edge. I want to feel excited, but what if no one shows up except Queer Alliance members? Should I have fought harder for something more meaningful as our first event? I grab my lunch box from my locker and link up with Jayden outside the cafeteria.
“I saw Stef with the cupcakes this morning,” he says, taking a huge bite out of his corndog as we head for the library. “Dayloosohgoog.”
“What?”
He chews frantically and swallows the corndog. “They look so good!”
“Oh. Great! Cool.”
“What’s up with you?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I try to smile.
“Sidney.” He eyes me as we turn into the library hallway. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a bad liar?”
“You do, all the time.” I stick my tongue out at him.
“OK, well. I say that because it’s true. So what’s up? Was Forrest a dumbass during setup this morning?”
“No! No. He was fine. I’m just . . .”
“Anxious?”
“Yeah. As usual.” I laugh, but it’s half-hearted.
“Hey.” He curls a hand around my upper arm and squeezes gently, stopping me just outside the library.
“I know you think you’re responsible for the success or failure of Queer Alliance, but you’re not.
” I blink, looking down. I don’t know how he does it, but Jayden always seems to know what’s going on with me.
“Plus, if this fails, you can just blame it on Forrest,” he adds.
“And then you’ll be a shoo-in when it’s time to revote. ”
I laugh, meeting his eyes again. “You’re right.” As much as I want to win the presidency, though, I don’t actually want this event to fail. Even if it means getting an edge on Forrest. The club’s well-being is more important than that.
“You know it!” He points at me. “OK, let’s get in there.”
I take a deep breath and follow him through the open double doors, the bead curtain tickling my face.
Inside, people are crowded around the tables—way more than we usually have at Queer Alliance meetings.
Music is blasting through a portable speaker on one of the tables, and at the front desk, Mx.
Prager bobs their head as they study their computer screen.
I follow Jayden to the first table, where we find Makayla and Anna stuffing their faces with cupcakes.
The whole table is covered in rows of them, each one labeled with the appropriate dietary restriction: vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, ones that are all three, and ones that are none of those things.
I pick one of the latter, a chocolate cupcake with tiny sour gummy worms resting in its pink frosting.
The first bite makes my eyes widen. It’s moist and rich, the icing flavored like actual strawberries, not just generic sweetness. The gummy worms add a perfect tartness.
Stef appears beside me, her long beaded braids swinging forward as she leans over the table to grab a vegan one from the other end. “Hey Sidney,” she says, smiling at me.
“These are incredible!” I say, taking another bite. “Your aunt is a genius.”
She laughs. “Thanks.”
“How long has she been doing this? Where’s her bakery? Do you get to just eat these whenever you want?” The questions spill out of my mouth, Stef’s eyes twinkling as my words trip over each other in excitement.
“She opened it a few years ago down in Rainier Beach. It’s become a real community spot. It’s called Sweet Tooth, if you ever wanna go.”
“That’s really cool that she donated.”
Stef shrugs. “She’s always been super supportive of me. She’s gay too, she lives with her wife.”
“Was the rest of your family not supportive?” I watch her face, the small glitter hearts pasted at the corners of her eyes moving with her expressions.
I don’t think I’ve ever had this long of a conversation with Stef before.
Not that I don’t like her. But she’s just always been Forrest’s friend, and I guess I kind of wrote her off by proxy.
“Eh, my parents were fine, so were my sisters; some of my extended family was weird, and my grandma . . .” She grimaces. “I’m not out to her yet. She’s old and super Christian, like she’s still convinced I’m gonna marry my dad’s best friend’s son.”
“Oh my god.” I face-palm and she laughs. “Why are boomers like that?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not into it,” she says.
“What’s up, nerds?!” a familiar voice bellows. Forrest pushes between us, snagging a cupcake. “This party is pretty great, huh?” He grins at me, face inches from mine as he licks the frosting off. “I told you.”
I roll my eyes and step back. “Yeah, OK, I’ll give it you.” I glance around at people chattering to each other over the music as they dig into the chips, fruit, and drinks we brought. “This . . . was a pretty good idea.”
“Wow.” Forrest shakes his head. “You approve of something I’m doing. I never thought I’d see the day. Now I can die happy.”
“You are so annoying,” I say, but I can’t help smiling.
“So I hear.” He smirks. “OK, I gotta get back to Skittles pong.”
“Skittles pong?”
“Beer pong, but with Skittles!” He’s already walking away.
“Did Mx. Prager OK that?!”
“It’s fine! We’ll pick up anything that spills!”
I follow him and it’s exactly as he said: Each end of the table has three rows of cups, in bowling pin formation, filled with Skittles. Nyx is waiting for him at one end.
“Finally,” they say when he walks up. They seem a little more relaxed today, not so much like a cat I could scare off with a sudden movement.
“I was just getting them in on the game,” he says, jerking a thumb at me.
“I’m not playing,” I say quickly, and look over at the other team. Jayden smiles at me sheepishly from his place beside Alexander. “Jayden!”
“It’s not messy like beer pong is!” he says quickly.
“You don’t even drink,” I say, but I can’t help it; I’m grinning.
Alexander flutters his fingers at me. “We do need a referee.”
I side-eye him for a second, and then I nod, and they all cheer. A glow swells in my chest, and I take up my position beside the table, at the center.
We’re mid-game, Jayden and Alexander winning, when the bell rings to signal the end of lunch. It jolts me out of the warm, happy glow of the party and back to reality, where we have a ton of stuff to clean up and only five minutes to do it in before fifth period.
“We’re good,” Forrest says, his eyes catching mine just as I’m about to panic. “I asked Mx. Prager to write us all passes.”
“Oh.” My shoulders settle. “You really did think of everything.”
“Not so bad having a co-president after all, huh?” He smirks at me as he sweeps Skittles from the table into a cup.
I smirk back. “It’s not the worst.”
He snorts and I join him in tidying. Jayden and Alexander are at the next table, putting the remaining snacks into a big reusable bag, while the rest of the Queer Alliance bustles around the library taking down decorations.
“Forrest!” We both look up at the voice to see someone I don’t recognize, tall with long blue hair, golden-brown skin, and dramatic cat-eye makeup.
“Mercury!” Forrest steps forward and the two of them hug. He turns to me. “Sidney, this is Mercury. She’s a sophomore, and is in theater with me. I’ve been trying to get her to come to Queer Alliance forever.”
“Hi!” I smile up at her. “Thank you for coming.”
“This was so fun,” she says. “I didn’t know Queer Alliance did stuff like this.”
“Well, we do now,” Forrest says.
“I gotta get to class, but . . . the meeting is on Friday next week, right?”
“That’s right,” he says.
She flashes us two thumbs-ups and slides past, toward the double doors. Forrest turns to me. “She just came out,” he says in a low voice. “We started talking last year while we were both on set crew and she was questioning things.”
“I didn’t know you did set crew.” I glance back at Mercury, her giraffe-like frame disappearing into the hallway.
Forrest has a whole life outside his posse, is friends with people I didn’t know he knew.
And he told them about Queer Alliance. Got them to come to this party, this thing I thought was a terrible idea, a waste of time, and . . .
It wasn’t.
He winks. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
I huff. “Oh yeah, you’re so mysterious.”
He wiggles his fingers at me like he’s casting a spell, then turns to take the cup of Skittles to the trash.
I scan the library; almost all the decorations are put away, and Riley is pulling down the last of the flags.
The only one left is Mx. Prager’s Pride flag on the wall behind their desk, which has every single color including the trans Pride chevron with the black and brown stripes, and the yellow triangle with the purple circle that signifies intersex people.
It hangs there year-round, a comforting reminder that there are people working at this school who have our back no matter what the outside world is like.
This party was a reminder of that too, that there’s a bigger community of queer people and allies at this school than just the people who come to Queer Alliance.
I’ve been focused on making sure my ideas get heard so I can win the reelection, but Forrest’s ideas are good for the club too.
And it might not have happened if I’d kept trying to shut him down.
“So, I was thinking,” Forrest says as he rejoins me at the table. “It might be easier to plan our meet-ups if we exchange numbers.”
I scan the floor, looking for any escaped Skittles.
The thought of texting Forrest, of all people, makes my brain short-circuit a little.
It’s just so . . . weird. His request makes sense, though; it would be easier to just text him than look for him at school.
And I want to keep up our collaboration.
Yeah, I want to win the reelection, but more than that, I want the club to succeed.
“I promise I won’t spam you,” he continues. “Scheduling purposes only.”
I scoop up an orange Skittle from where it lodged under a nearby bookcase. “OK.”
“Really?”
I turn and he’s looking at me, head cocked to the side, eyebrows raised. “I can change my mind and say no, if you prefer,” I say dryly.
“No, no! Here, just a second,” he says, searching his pockets for his phone. I tell him my number, and a moment later my own pocket buzzes. I pull my phone out, and there it is: an unknown number, and a single text:
Hey it’s Forrest.
I hope I don’t regret this.