You don’t think you’re gay anyway. You really don’t. So it doesn’t matter, does it? Then again, who you really are has never mattered to your classmates nearly as much as who they think you are.
You got your citizenship when you were eight years old. You still remember Maman and Baba taking the Oath of Allegiance, and even though you and Jina and Nadeem were too young, the judge let you pledge allegiance to the flag so you could still feel like a part of everything.
You were so excited you kept practicing it around the house, pledging allegiance to the Persian rugs on the floor, the quilts hanging over the couch, the crayon drawing of a flag with the wrong number of stars and stripes you’d done in kindergarten.
And you pledged allegiance every morning in school, too, even though the teachers said it was optional. At least up until middle school, when suddenly it stopped, and instead of the Pledge ofAllegiance there were morning announcements, but that’s okay because by then Nadeem was in high school and had decided America wasn’t so great after all. Better than Iran, to be sure, but far from perfect, and maybe pledging allegiance to the flag painted on all the bombs that had been falling on people that looked like you for so many decades wasn’t cool after all.
And now there aren’t morning announcements at all. Instead there’sMeadowbrook News, every lunchtime, and you kind of want to sign up for journalism next year because you think you’d be way better at designing the graphics for the news segments than whoever is doing it this year and keeps picking D-tier fonts like Papyrus for everything.
You stuff your bio homework into your locker—despite Jina’s constant warnings, you haven’t dissected a frog yet, and hopefully you never will—and grab your history stuff. Your grade still isn’t up on the portal, a fact that Maman nagged you about this morning, like it was your fault it takes a while to grade a hundred quizzes, or like you skipped school and she just hasn’t found out yet.
You don’t know why she’s in your business so much these days.
You close your locker and turn to go, but then you hear it.
One word. Six letters.
Someone said it.
Someone definitely said it.
You whip around, but no one is looking at you. Everyone is acting like nothing is wrong, except you can see cheeks puffed out with suppressed laughter, teeth biting lips, hear a snort, a giggle, spot some sophomore slapping another kid’s shoulder, and no one is looking at you. You can’t tell who’s not looking because you’re aninvisible freshman and who’s not looking because they’re deliberately avoiding it. Because they think you’re a… that. Or because maybe they don’t think you are but they think it’s funny when you get called that, or because they’re the one who said it but they don’t want to get caught and sent to the office if you tell someone.
Your face feels hot, prickly, though your skin is still summer-dark, brown enough to hide most blushes, so they won’t see your humiliation.
Harder to hide is the burning in your eyes that makes you blink even though you don’t want to. If they know they’re getting to you, they’ll only do it worse.
Don’t react.
Back in sixth grade, someone Scotch-taped aKICK MEsign to your backpack, and you thought that was just a thing in TV shows, but people actually did it, your own classmates, though you never knew who, you only knew that first you thought someone had bumped into you but theneveryonewas bumping into you—not bumping, kicking you in the rear—and you didn’t knowwhyuntil you got to science and took your backpack off and saw the note, and your teacher saw you crying and asked what was wrong, and he saw the note, but no one ever got in trouble. No one knew who started it. No one saw who did it.
It was just all around you, and crying only made it worse, because then you were a sixth-grade crybaby.
So you don’t cry and you don’t let anyone know they’re bothering you. You clutch your backpack straps over your tightening chest as you blend into the stream of students and hope no one sees you, recognizes you, knows you exist at all.
Invisible.
High school was supposed to bebetterthan middle school. Not more of the same.
Your mom insists on picking you up from school every day, even though you could easily ride the bus.
You and Jina wait in the pickup line. Well, you wait, and Jina talks to her friends and acts like you don’t exist, even though you’ll both have to get into the car together when Maman shows up in her minivan.
Your underarms are sweaty from conditioning, where you spent the whole class running laps on the field in the sun, and you’re glad you have it seventh hour so you can go home and shower right after and not have to sit through class worrying that you smell bad.
You’re even more glad you don’t have to shower at school. You were scared that was really a thing, because you see it on TV sometimes, like schools are just full of showers. You think you’d rather die than have to shower with any of your classmates around.
A voice calls your name, your real name, and you glance over your shoulder but turn back quick.
It’s Dayton.
Dayton, who spent the day in ISS. Dayton, who had an email sent out to the whole school and parents and community about him. Dayton, who hates gay people.
Why else would he have shouted what he did at the top of his lungs, shouted at a guest who literally got you out of class, and all you had to do was sit and listen to a talk about poetry?
He could’ve even taken a nap.
But no, he decided to shout that word at the top of his lungs.
