The remainder of the hour passed quickly, and Lily was pleased as her room emptied out, already looking forward to her next week in charge. One student lingered, and Lily smiled at Macie when she hesitated by her desk.
“Is everything all right, Macie?”
“Y-yeah, I wanted to ask you something.” Macie fiddled with the sleeves of her shirt, eyes focused on her sneakers, and Lily waited to hear whatever she was struggling to say. “I’ve been talking to a couple of other students over the past few weeks, and we want to set up a gay-straight-alliance, but we need a teacher to like, oversee meetings and be in charge, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in doing that?” The words rushed out of her, and Lily struggled to keep up. “You don’t have to, because I know you’re busy and everything, but I thought I’d ask.”
“I’ll have to check with Mrs. Woods first,” Lily said, not sure if Alisha would want Lily signing up for extra work when she was still new to the faculty. “But I’ll let you know what she says, and we can talk about it more on Friday. That’s when I see you next, right?”
Macie nodded. “Thanks.” She hurried away, and Lily went to see if Alisha was in her room. The lights were on within, so Lily rapped her knuckles on the smooth wood of Alisha’s door.
“Come in!” Alisha said, and Lily found her sitting behind her desk with a pile of books. “Lily, hi. How was science club?”
“Great. I enjoyed it and I think they did, too.”
“Good.”
“Have you got a minute to talk about something?”
“Absolutely.” Alisha gestured toward the front row of seats, and moved to sit beside Lily, turning to give Lily her full attention. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine. I had a student ask me about something and I wanted to run it by you. She’d like to set up a GSA. They need a teacher to run it, and she asked if I’d be interested.”
“And are you?”
“Yeah, I am. I think it’s a valuable resource. It could make a lot of difference to kids who might feel like they don’t have anywhere else to go.” Lily wished there had been something like that in place when she’d been a teenager. “But I didn’t want to say yes without talking to you first.”
“That’s understandable. I’m not against it—in fact, I actively encourage all members of the department to get more involved in school life. Perhaps not so early into their career…” Alisha said, lips quirking into a smile, “but from what I’ve seen from you already, I don’t doubt that you’ll be able to handle it.”
Lily’s cheeks felt hot. “Thanks.”
“They’ll have to fill out the relevant documentation. If they need any help, you can send them to me. I had to do it when we started the science club. And we used to have a GSA, so the framework should already be in place.”
“How come it stopped?”
“Mostly a case of bad timing. The teacher running it left the same year that a lot of the older members graduated. No one stepped up once they’d all gone.”
“Oh.” Lily hoped that wasn’t an indication of the school community’s overall attitude toward LGBTQIA+ issues. “That sucks for the younger kids.”
“It does. Which is why I’m happy for you to start it back up again.”
“Do we need to get the principal involved?”
“You’ll need his approval, so I’d recommend sending him an e-mail telling him you want to do it. Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”
“I will, thank you.” Lily rose to her feet, already drafting an e-mail in her mind.
“And Lily?” Alisha’s voice brought her to a stop halfway through the door. “Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re clearly winning over the student body, and I’m impressed by what I’ve seen from you so far. You’re settling in nicely. I can’t wait to see what more you can do.”
The second compliment had the same effect as the first. “Thank you.” Lily escaped before Alisha could make her flush any further, a spring in her step as she retreated to her own room.
* * *
“Come in!” Lily said in response to someone knocking on her door. She didn’t look up right away, too busy focusing on updating her lesson plan for the following day. She expected Mei—a near-constant fixture in her room at the end of the day—or Alisha, who often swung by to check everything was going okay. Even Eva, storming in to argue with her about something would have been more likely than the man clearing his throat at the front of her classroom.
“Principal Blake!” Lily set down her pen and straightened in her chair, wondering if she should get to her feet or shake his hand. “Sorry, I was miles away.”
“Please, call me David.”
Lily had only spoken to him a handful of times since she’d been hired, but he seemed pleasant enough. At around fifty years old, his hair was starting to speckle with gray, a no-nonsense aura exuding from him that Lily suspected had gotten him to the top of the ladder.
