I give her a thumbs-up. Enough has gone wrong already today, and I don’t want to add a fight about my grades to the list. We did plenty of that last year.
I don’t know exactly when my anxiety got worse, but by last January, it was so bad I could hardly focus in class. When I went to do assignments, I didn’t know how because I hadn’t learned the material. So I just ...stopped. I went to class and took home the assignments, but they sat in my folders untouched.
“What is this?” Mom said to me the night grades came in. I was curled on the couch, watching cartoons, and she grabbed the remote to pause them.
She held up her phone, and when I squinted, she came closer so I could see. My grades, right there on her parent account in the school’s online learning management system. I’d forgotten she could access them too. All those D’s and F’s, one after another, hit me in the chest like fists.
“What happened, Sidney?” she asked.
I stared blankly at the scene frozen on the TV. I didn’t know where to start: the thoughts I was having about terrible things happening to her or Shar or Dad, the ones that felt so real they left me with my heart pounding, afraid I was losing my mind? Or the drunken texts Dad had been sending me, late at night, apologizing for what a shitty father he was, raging about Mom and what a bitch she was for keeping himfrom me, even though he had visitation rights but just never used them? My thoughts felt too heavy, too complicated, too much to describe, much less do anything about, and I didn’t want to make things worse between her and Dad by telling her how he was acting. So I didn’t say anything.
“You’ll have to work hard to avoid repeating the year,” she’d said at the time, and I nodded my head.
The next week, I’d started with my tutor, and Mom checked in with me every night about my homework until the end of the year, when my report card came in again. B’s and C’s. Crisis averted.
But not the one in my head, because even though Dad’s texts stopped, my thoughts didn’t. Some days it feels like I’m standing at a dam in my mind, rushing from one spewing leak to another, trying to stop the images as they firehose out. I haven’t drowned yet, but sometimes I’m afraid I might.
On Monday morning, I’m ready. I’ve been thinking about this presidency thing all weekend, and I know what to do. Sometimes my brain’s inability to shut up is a curse, but sometimes, it does come in handy.
I can hear Mom out in the kitchen as I get ready, and then the front door slamming as she leaves. Shar is long gone, up three hours before we are. Rummaging through my dresser, I pick out jeans, a green-and-blue-striped shirt, and my favorite hoodie. In the bathroom, I brush my teeth and wash my face, avoiding the mirror. The person I see in its reflection never looks the way I expect. Not that I really look like anything in my head; the world constantly reminds me that I’m seen as a girl, even though I’m not super feminine. I’m not masculine either, and I try as much as possible not to think about how everyone sees me. When I’m alone, I forget gender exists, and I feel like a formless blob. If I could be an animal, I’d say maybe a lizard, the kind thatruns really fast, or a small bird, so I could fly. Just not who I see in the mirror: an awkward-looking kid with shoulder-length, wavy brown hair, freckled white skin, and behind my glasses, eyes gray blue like my Dad’s, the only way he’s ever been a constant presence in my life.
I pop on my headphones as I walk to the light rail station to catch the train, picking Olivia Rodrigo’s latest album for the soundtrack to my morning. There’s a slight chill in the air, big clouds drifting in front of the silvery morning sun every now and then. The air smells good: earthy and crisp, like fall, my favorite season. Late roses bloom on the bushes in our neighbors’ yards, their scent fruity and light.
When I get off the train, it takes only a few blocks until the entrance of Jefferson comes into view. My heartbeat speeds up, even though there’s nothing special about it; the building was constructed in the 1970s, with newer additions tacked onto it in the years before I started high school: a shiny wing for STEM classes and a giant set of sports fields, along with new linoleum floors and fresh, undented lockers put in over the summer.
My heart is pounding, not because I see the school but because of what I’m about to do. Inside the building, I wind my way through the masses of kids crowding around lockers, chattering in clumps, goofing off outside classrooms while they wait for the doors to open.
I find him at his locker, thankfully with none of his friends in sight.
“Hey Forrest,” I say, and he looks up from his phone, a slightly dopey expression on his face like he just woke up.Which he probably did. Or he’s stoned. I don’t smell weed, though. He’s got the same hoodie on that he wore yesterday, and as he turns to me, he pushes the hood off, shutting his locker door with a bang that makes me twitch. Hopefully not enough for him to see it.
“Hey,” he says. Gone is the jovial shout; his voice is subdued, and he doesn’t smile as he looks at me. He points at me. “Co-President. What’s up.”
“Not much.” I shrug. “So. About that ...I really think it would be best for the club if there was one president, and I was wondering if we could talk and maybe—”
“If you’re trying to get me to step down, it’s not happening,” he says.
“Um—” I start, but my brain freezes and I don’t know what to say next. It seemed like a good plan last night, when I rehearsed it in my head, but Mind-Rehearsal-Forrest was way more agreeable than this Forrest.
“What’s your problem with me, anyway?” he says, crossing his arms.
“I don’t have—”
“You think you’re better than me?” I grimace, avoiding his gaze. “That you have some kind of claim to Queer Alliance just because you got to it first?”
“No, I—” My face is hot. A few people murmur as they pass us.
“I have just as much right to be president as you, and last I checked, half the club voted me in. Fair and square. So I’ll see you at lunch on Friday, Co-President.” He says the last word extra loud, swivels around, and walks away into the crowd.
I stand there staring down at the ground, not wanting to see any of the eyes that might be on me right now. I really don’t think I’m better than him. But Ihavebeen involved longer. And Ihavedone more than he has. I think that gives me a little more knowledge about how to run the club.
I blink against the tears that well up suddenly. Everyone saw that. Or at least, everyone passing us in that moment saw it, and now people just see me, standing in the hallway by a locker that isn’t even mine, about to cry. I hurry down the hall, in the same direction, then turn, heading for the nearest bathroom.
The gender-neutral single stall is open, and I lock myself inside, letting my backpack fall to the floor and slumping against the door. I slide down until I’m sitting on the tile and take off my glasses, pressing my hands against my eyes. I can’t believe I thought that was actually going to work. I’m such an idiot. Now he really thinks I’m an uptight bitch, just like the Forrest in my anxiety movie did.
Stop,I tell myself.
Stop.
