It’s still September and the school year has barely started, but I have plenty of homework to do already: a worksheet of problems for math, an outline for a short essay in English, and a reading for history. The essay outline isn’t due until next week, so I start the math problems. That’s my hardest subject, and last year, when I worked with a tutor after Mom discovered my grades had slipped to D’s in most of my classes, she taught me to do the hardest thing first. Sometimes it works.
But not today.
As soon as I look at the math problem, Forrest’s face flashes into my head, his ridiculous smile and cringey finger guns when we both won the election. Like he thought I’d be happy about it. Like we’re friends.
It’s just a club,he said.
It’s not. At least, not to me. Maybe I’m more invested than other people are, but the club has made a real difference at our school, and that’s not nothing. Right now, it feels like the world is closing in on us, on marginalized people, on queer people, on trans people. Yeah, Washington State is safe enough, but for how long? And how much of that safety is just in Seattle? It doesn’t take that long of a drive outside the city to see something fucked-up. Sometimes there are fucked-up things inside the city itself, like last year when my friends and I found anti-trans stickers all over a telephone pole in Capitol Hill. Right in the middle of what used to be, and still is in some ways, the gay neighborhood, where we should feel safest. I worry about my friends, about my mom, about Shar every time she goes to work at the job site. She’s there now, lit up golden in the afternoon sun, drilling a wall into place, and suddenly she slumps forward, blood pouring out of her hair, down her tanned temples; behind her is a coworker, his face set in a glare and hammer upraised, yelling a slur as she falls to the floor, and nobody helps her, they just laugh—
I shake my head to clear it, taking deep breaths, refocusing on the math worksheet.
That’s not real. It’s not happening.
That’s not real. It’s not happening.
That’s not real. It’s not happening.
Shar’s face, bloody and lifeless, flashes in my mind again and I grab my phone. I need to text her, make sure she’s OK. I know she is. But what if she’s not?
What’s for dinner tonight?I ask. I don’t want her to know I was worried about her; if she knows that, then she’ll ask why, and I can’t tell her I was just picturing her getting attacked by one of her coworkers.
I’m making salmon and wild rice,she texts back a few seconds later.On my way home now,she adds, and my shoulders relax.
Brekky jumps up on the table, distracting me from my phone. I grab him and hold him close. “You’re not supposed to be up here,” I whisper in his ear, and he flicks it, then wiggles, trying to get out of my arms. I set him down on the floor and stare at the worksheet.
I can’t share the club. I can’t risk it becoming just another social hour, where people come to hang out and nothing ever gets done. I have to do something about this.
I spend all evening at the table. Homework blurs into Shar’s arrival and then Mom’s, at the same time as Shar pulls the salmon out of the oven. They join me as I push my school-work aside, Mom still in her corporate professional clothes: navy slacks and a floral-patterned blouse, her long, wavy brown hair sleeker and shinier than mine will ever be. Next to her, Shar is carpenter-casual in battered Carhartt pants, her graying hair in a buzzcut, the smile lines deep around her eyes. She has 20/20 vision, unlike us. Mom’s glasses are blackand horn-rimmed, and my frames are round, pink-tinted clear plastic. Technically, the color was called “champagne.” I picked it because it sounded grown-up, like glasses that someone who had their shit together would wear. Someone who was Queer Alliance president. But instead, I’m just the co-president.
“How was your day, kiddo?” Shar asks.
I shrug. “Fine.”
“It was Queer Alliance elections today, right?” Mom asks, focusing on me. “How did it go?”
“I got it,” I say, forcing a smile. “I tied with someone else, though, and Mr. Harrison is making us share the presidency.”
“Honey!” She smiles warmly. “I’m so proud of you. Sharing is caring, right?”
“Oh my god.” I roll my eyes.
“It’ll be good for you,” she says. “Keep us posted, OK? I know you’re going to do some cool stuff.”
“Thanks,” I say, wishing I could feel excited the way I thought I would tonight.
“How’s the homework going?” she asks lightly, too lightly.
“Good.”
“Care to say more?”
“Math is almost done and I’m going to finish at lunch tomorrow. Essay outline assigned today and not due ’til next week; I’ll start it this weekend. History reading I haven’t done yet, but I’ll do it on the bus ride to school.”
She eyes me, and I brace for her assessment of my homework management. “I’m glad you have a plan. Just make sure you keep it up.”
“Mom.” I sigh. It is too soon for this.
“That’s all I’m going to say.” She puts up her hands, still smiling. “I want you to do well in all areas, not just what you love.”
