I blink a little as my eyes readjust to the fluorescent lights, and my gaze goes to the board.
“Well,” Mr. Harrison says. “We have eleven votes for Sidney.” He pauses, and I read the number right before he says it. “And eleven votes for Forrest.”
Oh my god.
We tied.
When I was nine years old, a few years before my parents got divorced, the three of us went on a winter hike together. That was our thing, rain or shine: regular hikes, and camping trips as often as Mom and Dad could get the time off from work. It was something they’d done since they started dating, and by then it felt like the only time there was peace in our family. On hikes, they both seemed calmer. They smiled more, and held hands, and all I had to think about was avoiding puddles and getting over logs and the burn in my legs from climbing the trail, instead of watching for tension gathering between them.
The temperature was in the thirties that day, but they still got me up at eight in the morning, bundling me into a parka and snow pants, helping me fasten grips onto the bottom of my hiking boots. Once we were on the trail, it didn’t take long for my face to go numb from the wind; when Imoved my mouth to talk, it felt like someone had painted a mask of glue over my face, holding it in place.
That’s what it feels like now, sitting in Mr. Harrison’s room, staring at the whiteboard.
This can’t be happening.
“Can we even have two presidents?” Jayden asks. His words sound far away.
Mr. Harrison lifts his palms up. “I don’t see why not,” he says. “There are no guidelines to prevent it.”
“Hell yeah!” The loud voice jolts me back into my body. Forrest shoots finger guns at me. “What’s up, Co-President.”
I wrinkle my forehead and shake my head. “Um, no,” I say, and his smile collapses into surprise. I look at Mr. Harrison. “We don’t need two presidents. It’ll just make things more complicated. I’ve been in this club way longer than Forrest has, and I’ve held a leadership position. It doesn’t make sense for him to be president too.”
Mr. Harrison’s eyebrows lift slightly.
“It’s just a club,” Forrest says. “It’s not that serious.”
I glare at him. “Just because it’s a club, doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
He rolls his eyes.
“See?” I say, throwing a hand out at him. “Mr. Harrison, you can break the tie.”
I hear murmurs around the classroom; someone lets out a breath nearby. I know how I probably look right now: uptight and mean, but I’m too angry to care. Who does Forrest think he is, throwing his name in the ring just because it’ll look good on his college applications? This club isn’tsome convenient opportunity he can use to make himself look better. This club is my life.
It’s everything to me.
Mr. Harrison takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Sidney, I’m not going to do that.” I open my mouth to protest and he shakes his head. “I am your advisor, here to provide supervision and guidance if needed. But this club belongs to you all, and the people have clearly spoken. They want you both.”
I look at Forrest, who’s staring at me, his arms crossed.
“Thisisunprecedented, though,” Mr. Harrison adds, “so let’s do a trial run and have a reelection at the beginning of next quarter. We’ll schedule the revote for the week after Trans Awareness Week.” He scans the room, and people nod quietly.
The bell rings and everyone jumps up. “Teamwork makes the dream work,” Mr. Harrison calls out with a smile. “I’ll see you all next week.”
Forrest and his friends are out the door immediately, leaving the rest of us to put the chairs back as fast as we can so we’re not late to fifth period. I move numbly from chair to chair, the meeting replaying in my head over and over. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t part of the plan. My year, the way I imagined it, is receding into a golden pinprick, the me I was going to be—accomplished, collected, and in control—vanishing in the distance.
As soon as we’re done, Jayden and Makayla rush off in the opposite direction to their history class, Makayla throwing a worried glance at me over her shoulder.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Anna says as the two of us hustle toward Algebra II. Most people are in their classes by now, a few stragglers rushing to make it in time for the last bell.
“Understatement of the century,” I mutter.
“You still have the presidency,” she says, picking up her pace to match mine. “Silver lining?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to share it with someone. Especially not him.” We turn a corner and beeline for the door of our classroom. The second bell rings just as we get inside, so Anna can’t say anything else about it.
In my seat, I watch as Mr. Gutierrez starts a lesson on quadratics, but my mind is buzzing again, no thoughts, just an electrical hum of doom-anxiety-desperation that only I can hear. I repeat a mantra in my head three times, one on either side and one safe in the middle:
