“I’m in a lesbian Tumblr phase. Ongoing. Indefinite.”
We all laughed, and something clicked into place. Something I hadn’t had a name for until right now.
For the next hour, we talked about everything and nothing. Teachers who sucked. Movies. The specific airlessness of being different at a school that rewarded sameness. Calliope had a story about getting kicked out of the library for excessive giggling over fanfiction, which she maintained was a hate crime. Sierra showed us photos she’d snuck back to take after dark of the school empty, fluorescent, like the set of a horror movie that hadn’t started yet. Raven mentioned tarot. Calliope demanded a reading on the spot and informed us her future contained, with certainty, a purple-haired wife and a cottage with chickens.
I listened at first. Then Calliope asked me my favorite movie, and I said, “Moonlight” without thinking, and somehow, I was talking about how that film had wrecked me in the best way. About seeing myself on a screenfor the first time. About the specific ache of wanting to be seen.
“God, you’re one of us!” Calliope declared, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “We’re keeping you.”
“Do I get a say in this?” I asked, but I was grinning. Actually grinning. My face ached from smiling so much.
“Absolutely not,” Raven said. “You’re stuck with us now. Welcome to the dysfunctional queer family you didn’t ask for but definitely need.”
Sierra raised her water bottle. “To misfits.”
“To weirdos,” Calliope added.
“To surviving this hellhole,” Raven muttered.
I clinked my bottle against theirs, warmth spreading through my ribs. “To us.”
That night, Ma made my favorite dinner. Tostones with garlic sauce. Pernil. Rice and beans that had been on the back burner since I’d left for school. She set the table with the nice dishes, the ones we only got out for birthdays and holidays and the time my abuela visited from Santo Domingo, and I knew something was up.
“Mijo.” She settled into the chair across from me. Her accent always thickened when she had something to say, vowels slowing down, the way her own mother’s had. “You seem happier today.”
I looked up from my plate, caught off guard. “I do?”
“Sí. You’ve been smiling at your phone. You hummed while setting the table. This is new.” She reached across and squeezed my hand, her skin warm and calloused from years of work. “Tell me.”
So I did. I told her about Raven’s blunt-instrument introduction. I toldher how Calliope had inhaled me into the group, like that was a thing groups did. I told her how Sierra had smiled at me and then kept smiling, which was something nobody at that school had ever bothered to do. I told her about the way they’d claimed me without asking permission first. About sitting at a table where the people seated around it knew I existed and were apparently glad about it.
Ma listened with shining eyes. When I finished, she stood up and pulled me into a hug that smelled like sazón and the lavender lotion she’d been using since I was eight.
“Mi amor, I’m so happy you found your people,” she whispered into my hair. “Everyone needs that. A place where they belong.”
“I know.” The words came muffled against her shoulder. “I really think I do. Belong, I mean.”
She pulled back, cupping my face in her hands the way she’d done since I was little. “You listen to me, Jett. You are perfect exactly as you are. Don’t let anyone make you small. Not the kids at school, not anyone. You hear me?”
I nodded. The problem was that I already was small. Literally. Shortest kid in my grade until eighth grade, and then I’d just stayed narrow. Skinny enough to look breakable, which had turned out to be the exact invitation Brad and his friends kept accepting.
Ma must have seen something in my face because her expression softened. “Mijo, you’ll grow. You’re still young. But even if you don’t…” She squeezed my shoulders. “Your strength doesn’t come from your muscles. It comes from here.” She tapped my chest, right over my heart. “And here.” My forehead. “Don’t forget that.”
“I won’t, Ma.”
“Good.” She kissed my forehead and sat back down. “Now eat. You’re too skinny.”
A laugh slipped out. I obeyed, shoveling rice into my mouth while Ma watched with the satisfaction only a mother feeding her kid could wear.
Later, in bed with my phone glowing in the dark, I caught my reflection in the mirror across the room. Scrawny arms, narrow chest, the body of someone who looked like a target to anyone hunting one.
Ma was wrong about exactly one thing. Strength did come from muscles. Maybe not only from muscles. But they helped. They helped enough.
I pulled up Google and typed:how to build muscle at home.
Someday, I told myself, scrolling through workout plans and protein shake recipes I would never make,nobody was going to shove me into a locker again. Someday I’d be the kind of person they didn’t even try.
I screenshotted a beginner’s workout plan and then switched over to the group chat Calliope had created.
