I take the stairs at the end of the hall to Mr. Higgins’s classroom and I settle into the only remaining seat on the front row next to Alex Wu and in front of Tucker Watson. Great. Stupendous, even.
If sandwiches were made of humans, this would be a highly uncomfortable human sandwich.
Alex Wu is one half of the only openly gay male/male couple at CCHS. He’s into gaming and skateboarding and he’s so thin that skinny jeans are loose on him.
As I sit down, he looks over his shoulder and gives me a nod.
Oh, and he was my first kiss. Did I mention he’s cute? Very cute. But Alex is very much off the market. He’s basically married to his longtime boyfriend and my own self-proclaimed frenemy, Kyle Meeks. I love Kyle, but more than that, I love to hate Kyle.
“All right,” says Mr. Higgins as he lowers the lights. “Settle down. Eyes and ears up front for announcements.” He’s the kind of teacher who was definitely taunted in high school and enjoys his power now just a little bit too much. I mean, the guy is wearing a sweater vest and a turtleneck. At the same time. That’s a whole new level of nerdy white guy I didn’t know existed.
A spunky intro plays with graphics zooming across the TV suspended in the corner of the room until the screen cuts to Millie Michalchuk behind the desk of the school newsroom. Millie and her boyfriend resurrected the once-defunct school news program by using it as a vehicle for morning announcements, which I am a huge fan of, because this Millie chick is sunshine. She used to do the morning announcements from the intercom in the attendance office, but someone at this school woke up and gave her the spotlight she deserves, though based on the snickering at the back of the classroom, not everyone agrees.
I roll my eyes and mutter, “Let a fat girl live.”
Behind me, Tucker Watson loudly shushes me.
I repeat: he shushes me.
And that’s it. That’s Tucker Watson’s third strike against me.
I whirl around in my seat and say, “Excuse you. Rude.”
His mouth forms a soft O, like he’s shocked I would ever talk back to him.
And somehow, despite all the ways he’s been a total dick in the past, I’m still slightly disappointed by this confirmation of his dick-ishness.
“Mr. Brewer,” warns Mr. Higgins, and I turn back around, still snarling.
Strike one: sophomore year. Tucker and I are paired up for a class project in Texas Government. We make a plan to meet twice outside of school to prepare. The first time is at my house. It goes fine. Great, actually. And I might even have had a very slight harmless crush. Our second meeting is at his place, but when I show up, he doesn’t answer. I see the blinds move while I wait outside. I swear a few kids walking by even laugh at me. When I confront him the next day, he tells me he forgot and that we should finish the project separately.
Strike two: junior year. First day. World Literature. We’re seated at the same table. Tucker asks for a seat reassignment. In front of the whole class.
There are some people at this school who I’ve never even shared a class with, but by some awful twist of fate, Tucker and I have shared at least one class a semester. Thankfully, besides our run-in at Ms. Laverne’s office, we’ve managed to stay out of each other’s way, but him shushing me gets me riled up all over again.
“Prom court nominations will be tallied this Friday and announced on Monday morning,” sweet, sweet Millie continues. At least she can’t hear the jokers in the back of my classroom from the safety of her little studio on the other side of the building.
Mr. Higgins zaps the TV off and immediately starts droning on about business loan interest rates.
After class I follow close on Alex’s heels and make small talk about his weekend just to avoid having to face Tucker and his stupid jawline.
“It’s only fair that I get the solo at graduation, ya know?” Alex says, for what I’m guessing is not the first time.
“Huh?” I nod as we turn the corner into the choir room. “Oh, yeah. Totally.”
Kyle is lounging on the risers, with his legs crossed at the ankle, a reminder that in this room, he is a king.
Clem sits with her chin perched on her knees, laughing at something Kyle’s said. Kyle is a total golden boy. Brown hair parted down the side and even the occasional sweater vest. I’m not entirely sure which schools are even Ivy League, but he’s definitely got the look. Very white guy at a Saturday morning brunch with the tennis team. Very punchable.
“There she is!” Kyle says. “Do you prefer Pumpkin or Miss Patch?”
My stomach drops. I look to Clem, the only living human who saw my audition video.
She grimaces and holds her arms up. This morning, she even let me pin her two braids around the crown of her head for a Heidi moment, so I’m finding it a little hard to maintain my anger as I admire my work. “I was just so proud of you.”
I have two choices: One, I could dig into Clem and let her know that I feel personally violated that she would share that video with anyone. Or two, I can play it off and act like it’s no big deal. I quickly decide that option two will elicit the lesser reaction from Kyle.
“Babe, what are you even talking about?” Alex asks Kyle as he curls in next to him on the risers. Some people might say that’s a lot of PDA for two high school dudes in a tiny Texas town, but this room—the choir room—is a little microscopic queer-kid haven in a kingdom built for cis-het white good ol’ boys.
I slump onto Ms. Jennings’s chair behind her music stand and turn to Alex. “I slapped together a silly little audition video for Fiercest of Them All. Not a big deal, honestly. And really it was just a joke.”
Kyle smiles in that glittering, charismatic way that reminds me he is such a politician. “Didn’t seem like much of a joke to me. I mean, can you imagine what an inspiration it would be for the younger members of Prism?”
I grin and bite back whatever sarcastic remark is trying to claw its way free. “Wow, Kyle. I hadn’t even thought about that.”
Clem nods, like wow, Kyle is such a genius. Wow, Kyle, what a big genius brain you have.
“That makes the club sound like a charity case,” says Corey, the quiet ninth grader who usually stands on the riser below me. Their curly blue hair is vivid against their light-brown complexion and they wear a shirt that says I EAT GENDER NORMS FOR BREAKFAST. “But you really should come some time, Waylon. For some of my friends, you’re like one of the first gay people they heard about in town.”
I think I was supposed to find that touching, and I do, really. But suddenly, I feel very old, like I’m one step away from referring to Corey as a youth.
Kyle clutches his chest and looks at Corey like a proud papa. “Corey’s taking the reins next year.”
I look past Kyle and smile at Corey. “Congratulations.”
Ms. Jennings breezes through the door of her classroom, and I don’t use the word breeze lightly. Somehow the goddesses of the universe have gifted us with this woman due to the fact that her wife (You heard that right! A gay teacher! In Clover City!) signed a deal with the city a few years back to do some kind of revitalization project that’s supposed to drag us into the twenty-first century twentysomething years later.
Ms. Jennings, a tall Black woman, with her natural hair always playfully styled into two pom-poms on the top of her head, is a little bit chic and a little bit eccentric. Her patron saints are Lauryn Hill and Tori Amos, and her room is decorated in concert posters from shows she’s actually been to, including some for a thing called Lilith Fair that she swears was her own personal awakening. Sure, she’s a little stuck in the nineties/aughts, but it’s charming in a relic-of-the-past kind of way.