“Looks good. Way better than this experimental bullshit my mom’s on.” She took a bite, anyway and made a face. “Yeah, this is trash.”
A laugh escaped me. Short, startled. The first one in weeks.
“There we go.” Raven pointed her fork at me. “You looked like you were about to dissolve into the floor. This school’s already depressing enough without people disappearing into the linoleum.”
“I wasn’t…”
“You were.” She glanced over her shoulder, then back at me. “Look. I’m gonna be blunt because that’s how I operate. You’re gay, right?”
I froze. My fingers tightened around my fork. Every muscle in my body tensed, ready to deny, deflect, or run. “What?”
“Relax. I’m not asking to out you to the entire school. I’m asking because…” She gestured vaguely at herself. “Bi. Questioning. Still figuring my shit out, but definitely not straight. And I’m tired of sitting alone with the theater kids who think being quirky is a personality.”
A knot I’d been carrying for months, maybe years, loosened.
“Yeah.” My voice came out small. The word landed in my chest. Terrifying. Freeing. “I’m gay.”
“Cool. Welcome to the club. We meet Tuesdays and complain about heteronormativity.” Raven smirked, but something softer sat underneath. Relief, maybe, at finding someone else in the same wreck.
“Wait. We?”
“Oh, you haven’t been formally introduced to the island of misfit queers yet?” Raven stood up, grabbed her tray with one hand and my wrist with the other. “Come on. You’re about to meet your people.”
She dragged me across the cafeteria. Past the jocks, who didn’t look up. Past the theater kids doing vocal warm-ups, which to my deep relief nobody asked us to join. The stoners by the emergency exit registered our existence and decided not to care. Far corner table. Two girls.
One was Sierra. Her camera was on the table next to a half-eaten salad and a Diet Coke. The other had spiky red hair that looked like she’d cut it with kitchen scissors and a personal grudge. She wore a flannel jacket three sizes too big. The energy suggested she could burn the school down or save it, and the decision would depend on what Mr. Henderson said to her in third period.
“Ladies,” Raven announced, shoving me into an empty chair. “New recruit.”
The red-haired girl’s eyes lit up. “Oh, thank God. We needed more testosterone to balance out the estrogen. I’m Calliope, but you can call me Calli unless you piss me off, then it’s Calliope with the full four syllables and eye contact that will end you.”
“Jesus, Calli, let him breathe.” Sierra smiled at me, warm and real, and it stayed warm, which I wasn’t used to. “I’m Sierra. I’ve seen you around.”
“I’ve seen you, too,” I said, then immediately wanted to crawl into a hole. That sounded creepy. “I mean your photography. It’s good. Really good.”
Sierra’s smile widened. “Thanks. You’re Jett, right? You’re in my English class.”
“Yeah.” She did that in study hall, too, doodling in the margins of her notebook instead of taking notes. She drew intricate patterns of vines and flowers and geometric shapes that somehow made sense together.
Calliope leaned forward, resting her chin in her hands. “What’s your story? Are you a baby gay still in the closet, a confident gay who’s out and proud, or somewhere in the messy middle where most of us are rotting?”
I glanced at Raven, who just shrugged like, ‘Welcome to the chaos’.
“I’m…” I took a breath. Might as well. If I couldn’t say it here, where could I say it? “I came out to my mom last month.”
All three of them perked up as if I’d just announced free pizza.
“And?” Calliope prompted, eyes wide.
“She… she was good about it. Really good, actually.” My throat tightened remembering it. Ma had cried, but not the bad kind of crying. The relieved kind. The ‘I love you no matter what kind’. She’d hugged me so tight I couldn’t breathe and told me she’d always known, always loved me, and always would. “She said she just wants me to be happy.”
“That’s beautiful,” Sierra’s voice dropped, and there was something wistful in her voice. “My parents don’t know yet. I’m not sure they’d be that understanding.”
“Mine know,” Calliope tossed off. “My mom asked if this meant she’d get a daughter-in-law with good taste in wine. Very supportive in her own bizarre way.”
Raven snorted. “My parents are in denial. They keep talking about when I find ‘the right guy’ like my entire lesbian Tumblr phase never happened.”
“You had a lesbian Tumblr phase?” I asked.
