The rest of the period passes in a fog of wishful thinking. That this is all a bad dream. That the bell ringing will project us all into an alternate reality where the Kendall family never moved to Meteor, or I skipped fourth grade like my teacher said I could, or even that my parents really did stop having kids after Fresa and I don’t even exist.
Unfortunately, when the bell does ring, all it does is cause a stampede. School is out. Pageant week has finally arrived.
Junior hangs back, and I fall in step with him as we walk out the door in comfortable silence.
“Hey, Ring Pop!” comes Kendra’s voice from behind us.
Every one of my muscles clenches at the nickname. I quickly scan the hallway to see who heard her and how much damage has been done. It’s the first time she’s addressed me directly since we started high school.
And I guess Kendra is ready to remind me of that. Maybe I’ve gotten too comfortable in my anonymity, but this throwback to the most humiliating moment of my school career is like being thrown into the deep end.
Fourth grade. A field trip where I was lucky enough to be seated next to Allison Davis on the bus after admiring her shiny, golden hair since the beginning of the year.
And look, I was nine, I wasn’t sure what my feelings meant yet. If I wanted to be best friends with Allison, or if I wanted to be her, or if I wanted something else altogether. Something I didn’t even know the shape of yet. All I knew was that my mom had given me two Ring Pops in my lunch and told me to share one with a friend, and the saints had sat me next to Allison.
I didn’t get up the nerve to offer her one until the bus ride back, after she leaned close to show me a rock that looked like a horse head, and I got goose bumps because her hair smelled like flowers.
Later, I’d kick myself for not just handing her the candy like a normal person, but I was carried away on the wings of what I didn’t yet know was my first crush, so I took Allison’s hand and went to slide the plastic ring onto her finger. My heart was beating so hard I was sure she could hear it, and she smiled.
But that was before Royce Bradley, seated behind us with Cole, leaned over the seat. “Ew, what are you guys, lesbos?” he asked, loud enough for the whole bus to hear, elbowing Cole, whose eyes widened for just a fraction of a second with something I knew even then was fear. Cole had never been under fire from Royce, but he had to have known he was protected by very thin social armor.
Kendra was behind them of course, she and Royce already an item at nine and ten. While Royce was usually the instigator, Kendra was cruel, and I saw it in her eyes. She’d remember this moment long after Royce lost interest.
She’d make me pay for my mistake.
I froze. Lesbo. I’d never heard the word, but I knew what it must mean. My summer-brown skin hid my blush, but Allison’s was spreading like strawberry jam, and she yanked the ring off her finger and threw it at me.
“I’m not gay,” she sneered. Kendra laughed loudly, and I knew I should have said I wasn’t either—because I wasn’t, right?—but I knew if I spoke I would cry, so I just sat there as Allison turned a stony shoulder toward me and spent the rest of the trip looking out the window.
She moved again, at the end of the year, and Cole punched Royce on the arm and asked him a question about some sports thing, and eventually they moved on to ridicule someone else. But Kendra called me “Ring Pop” until well into middle school, and absolutely everyone knew why.
Forget asking questions, or exploring, or coming out. From the moment Jeff Hanson peed his pants at the blackboard at the end of seventh grade and my daily harassment ended, I knew I was lucky to be left alone. Even if being left alone was sometimes lonely.
Even if the weight of the secret cost me my best friend.
“Kendra,” I mumble when she reaches me, trying and failing to present a smaller target by collapsing my shoulders. I know I’m ruining months of what Cereza calls posture training (which is just her jabbing me in the spine whenever she catches me slouching, anyway).
Kendra glides up to me with her usual precise steps, her long legs golden beneath a sunflower sundress. “I thought we should talk about the project before you take off to serve . . . whatever it is your family serves out of that tin can.” Her entourage of long-legged, perfectly made-up lackies laugh, like the bleating of sheep.
My face heats up, but I don’t answer, just shrink even further into myself.
She rolls her eyes. “Well, even you must know the Miss Meteor pageant is next week.” She gestures to the banner just being strung up in the school’s main hallway, as if the event needs to be announced. “I’m gonna be doing my duty to the town by being the fourth woman in my family to be crowned . . .”
The girls around her whoop, twirling, showing off their tiny dresses and blindingly white braces-corrected smiles.
“So, I’m just saying, if my duty is to attract tourists to save this town and all the sad little businesses in it—like, what’s that little lunch shack called? Se-Loser’s?” Another chorus of bleating fills the hallway. “I’m gonna need you to do your duty, too, do we understand each other?”
“It’s called Selena’s,” I say, because my parents deserve it, but honestly, I’m not even sure she hears me, and I don’t try again. If I upset her too much, she’ll forget whoever is in her crosshairs this week and I’ll be right back where I started.
“Hey, Kendra,” says Cole from the group behind her, and my stomach flip flops. His voice is usually mild, laid back, but there’s something tense in it as he takes the target from me again. He must be afraid of them, I think. Afraid of what they’ll do if he steps too far out of line. But he doesn’t let it stop him. Even though he doesn’t know me. Even though this isn’t his fight.
“Cole,” Kendra says, in a way that grants permission and relaxes the crowd. Her gaze is imperious, unearned, and directed at Cole. It makes me feel something closer to anger than fear. Just for a second.
“It’s weird,” Cole says. “But I’m actually on the cornhole team—which some say is an even bigger draw than the pageant—and I don’t have a problem finishing my homework.”
“Yeah, Kendall?” Royce Bradley says, approaching in a crowd of letterman jackets with little beanbags sewn onto the chests. “Well some of us are busy getting laid.”
Cole’s jaw tightens. Just a little. Not enough for anyone to see. Anyone but me, anyway. Because I think Cole Kendall has just helped me transcend my fear, if only for a second. At this moment, I don’t feel totally alone, and that feeling lights a tiny, reckless flame in me. Like a single match.
Something small, but with the potential to be utterly destructive.
“Is that any way to talk about a man’s sister?” Cole asks, but there’s more effort behind that casual tone now, and my tiny flame finds more fuel. What right do Kendra and Royce have? Why doesn’t anyone ever stop them?
“The project,” Kendra says to me, glowing even brighter with her upperclassman boyfriend draped around her, already turning to go. “It’s all yours. Don’t expect any cozy late-night study sessions or anything . . .”
My face burns, my hair in my eyes again, my only armor against this place.
“Yeah, don’t get any ideas about my girl, Ring Pop.”