Page 1 of Sending Love Letters to Animals

Monday’s lunch looked like it consisted of the stuff they couldn’t fit in the dumpster behind the cafeteria after school ended on Friday. I’m not even kidding. On Friday, the main lunch option was hamburgers and tater tots, as if fried potatoes actually count as a vegetable. What was sitting on my plate was some type of hot dish, with tater tots on top for the crust. There’s no point in trying to tell me that the lunch ladies didn’t keep the leftover tots from Friday and then decide to get creative on Monday.

Typically, Mrs. Jacobson—the principal’s assistant—posts the lunch menu for the entire week on the bulletin board at the main entrance every Monday morning. All of the students arriving for the start of a brand-new week walk right by it and can check out what to expect at lunch each day for the next five days. However, Mrs. Jacobson had gotten careless with this one aspect of her job.

On the first Monday when there wasn’t a menu on the bulletin board, I figured she had simply forgotten. As the days went by, then the weeks, and our lunches got stranger and less appetizing, I realized Mrs. Jacobson wasn’t derelict in her duties. The students of A.M. Whitemane High School simply weren’t going to be provided a menu any longer.

Instead, the lunch ladies had most likely been instructed to get creative with providing hot, nutritious meals to the student body each day. Budget cuts or something, probably. Like the arts, making sure students had enough fuel to actually make their brains work wasn’t a priority for Administration any longer. We have a really nice football stadium, though. They built a shrine to former all-star athletes in the hall that leads to the gymnasium, too. So, things will be fine.

I’m being sarcastic, obviously.

To Hell with athletics, football stadiums, football players who have worked at local car dealerships since graduating high school twenty years ago, and to Hell with hot dish. We used to have great lunches at our school. Nothing that you’d see in a fancy French restaurant or anything, but they were good. Meat, veggies, grains, some dairy or fat. Well-balanced and yummy, and always hot—unless it was something that wasn’t supposed to be hot.

I tried to write an exposé about it for The Word Around Whitemane, but Ms. Tabatabai, our advisor for the aforementioned school paper, talked me out of it. At first, I was pretty frustrated with having my journalistic integrity compromised—there was a real issue to be addressed—but I finally realized she had been right. It would have only caused trouble and put a target on my back.

Like, last year, one of the kids at Whitmer Central—the high school on the other side of town—had written a blog post about the principal not allowing an LGBTQ-plus student union. The shit really hit the fan. Rumors spread like warm Nutella, and the kid, like, dropped off the face of the Earth for a long time. People were speculating that death threats from some secret union for principals had forced him into the Witness Protection Program or something.

Nothing is really that exciting here, though. Turned out the kid was being homeschooled for a while. When he came back to school, the LGBTQ-plus student union was allowed, the kid did something with his hair that shocked everyone, and he started dating another dude in his class. The whole thing was even on CNN at one point. The blog post part. I don’t think they did a piece on his new relationship or anything. Though, that would have been cool. I guess.

All of it seems ridiculous when you consider A.M. Whitemane High School has had an LGBTQ-plus student union for three years. I guess we’re more progressive since we’re a few miles away or something? I go to the meetings sometimes, but it has basically devolved into a hook-up club. The few queer kids in school can’t decide who’s dating who on any given day. They draw straws or something, I imagine? I guess that’s life in high school when you’re queer and your options are limited. It’s not really my scene. They have cookies and punch pretty often, though, so sometimes I go for my sugar fix and to sip the tea. Gotta keep up with my queer soap opera, after all.

Basically, what I’m saying is—that’s been the biggest thing to happen in this town. Ever. Well, probably. Okay. Probably not, but it was pretty spicy stuff for a few months. People still mention it sometimes and it’s been almost a year since it all went down. So, it was clear to me that if that kid could stir up such a frenzy by merely standing up for LGBTQ-plus students’ rights, my queer ass writing about the cafeteria food would be apocalyptic.

Ohhhhh, the homosexual is too good for tater tot casserole? Who does he think he is? He’s probably a…GASP…vegan.

No, thank you. I don’t need that kind of theater in my life. Broadway or nothing at all is my motto. Having CNN run a national piece on me for being uppity about lunchroom food is not one of my long-term goals.

So, three thousand words written by Ryan Offsteader—that’s me—about the subpar lunches did not show up in the school newspaper. Instead, I wrote what was, in my mind, a dazzling list of Broadway musicals my fellow students should know about and why they should know about them. Ms. Tabatabai thought it was excellent. My fellow students gave me crap about it for weeks, obviously. In a jovial way. I wasn’t bullied or anything. Though, I guess when someone teases you about something that is so entrenched in gay culture, it could easily go either way. I’m pretty sure everyone would have also teased a straight kid for liking musicals, though. Regardless, I didn’t end up on CNN or in the Witness Protection Program. No teachers’ union came for me.

The whole thing didn’t bother me much, to be honest. People are allowed to think I’m weird or call me a stereotype for loving musicals. The teasing was mostly in fun, anyway. No one here is really all that homophobic or, if they are, they’re not exactly vocal about it. It’s probably the only thing about me that makes people think I’m gay automatically anyway. So, it’s fine. The token gay kid who loves musical theater is fine with it.

Watching. Not participating. I can’t sing. I’m not in drama club or choir or anything like that. I have two left feet and a singing voice that would make an enraged possum envious.

Okay, so obviously I’m not the only gay kid in the entire school. Statistically, that simply doesn’t figure. We have the LGBTQ-plus student union as proof, after all. I guess I’m just more open about it outside of the club than everyone else. I’m not a walking Gay Pride Parade or anything, but I don’t hide my sexuality. Coming out of the closet was stressful enough. Pretending I was something I wasn’t didn’t seem like a choice after that.

“Hey.” Jules waved her hand in front of my face. “Are you going to eat your hot dish or what?”

Shaking my head clear of thoughts, and not quite managing, I looked at her through bleary eyes. I still hadn’t fully woken up and we were more than halfway through the school day. Jules gave me a questioning look, then pointed at my tray. I glanced down at the half-full tray.

I’d eaten my green beans, the fruit salad, but had left the hot dish.

I removed my water bottle from the tray and nudged it at her, its slick plastic bottom sliding along the smooth top of the lunch table easily.

“Thanks,” she said as she pushed a few loose braids back over her shoulder dramatically.

With a nod, I went back to daydreaming.

I really needed to get my head in the game. Early morning classes are always easy—history, P.E, computer science, and trigonometry. Afternoon classes—English, chemistry, and Spanish are always the worst. It’s probably because my brain is so numb after lunch that I automatically reject all things educational after a certain point in the day. Regardless of the reason, I needed to focus so that I didn’t mess things up.

Ruining my afternoon by doing poorly in my final three classes would only make me grumpy for Journalism Club. Ms. Tabatabai was usually fairly permissive if we were all dragging tail once the final bell rang. She wasn’t too much of a taskmaster, but she still liked for us to give close to the same energy in Journalism Club as we’d give in a class that counted toward our GPAs.

“Is it just me,” Liam asked, waking me from my dream with a nudge to my ribs with his elbow, “or are they feeding us from the dumpster?”

I smirked as a way of agreeing but said nothing.

“Someone wrestled this away from a raccoon, for sure,” Elijah was picking at his hot dish on the opposite side of the table from Liam.

My smirk turned into a grin.

“Y’all are just picky,” Aubrey was stuffing her fork into her mouth. “It’s not that bad.”