I smiled, squashing the tiny part of me that hoped she’d ask me not to come, just so I could feel justified in my woundedness. If our conclusion were more dramatic, and Ruby properly dumped me, or I properly dumped her, and we refused to speak to one another ever again, at least people would know I mattered to her.
“What did Mikey and them think? About us, I mean,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Mikey was whatever, but David and Ben were big fans.”
“Ew,” I said.
“I know. I had to give them a lecture on, like, the fetishizing male gaze.”
“I bet they loved that.”
We smiled at each other, and in that moment, something in my chest unlocked. I realized then that I did not care, really, what Mikey or David or Ben thought of me, or of me and Ruby. Neither did I care what any of the other ruler-straight so-called popular kids thought. Their long and horrible reign was ending. Soon we would all be starting over. There would be a new social order in college and, if my mom was to be believed, at every job I ever had, but nobody could make me care if I didn’t want to. The way those people lived their lives didn’t have to have anything to do with the way I lived mine. And the truth was, nobody was thinking about me and my decisions and my feelings as much as I was. Ruby had shown me that, in a nice way. Maybe the thought should have scared me, or depressed me, and months earlier, it definitely would have. But I didn’t feel that now. I felt light. I felt free. Nobody cares! I thought, and it made me laugh.
I awoke on December 7 to an anxious ache in my stomach. Though Jamie and Ruby both assured me that attendance would be good, we’d only been able to get verbal or social media confirmation from thirty-three people. (Thirty-three times twenty-two is seven hundred twenty-six, plus sixty-six if Ruby waives her share, making…seven hundred ninety-two dollars.) I rolled over in bed to find the article Davey had written, which was supposed to go up late last night or early this morning. I’d given up refreshing the page around one a.m. When it loaded, and I saw the headline—LOCAL COFFEE SHOP PROVIDES SAFE SPACE FOR SAN DIEGO’S QUEER YOUTH—I shimmied excitedly. I texted it to Jamie, who’d probably already read it five times through, and then skimmed it quickly for mention of my name.
“Without Triple Moon, I don’t think I would’ve been brave enough to come out when I did. Dee and Gaby are like gay guardian angels,” says Quinn Ryan, a senior at Westville High School and organizer of tonight’s event.
I smiled and searched next for Jamie.
“The most important books I’ve ever read, the most meaningful discussions I’ve had, the most amazing person I know—all of that happened here,” says Jamie Rudawski, also a senior at Westville High School and Ryan’s co-organizer.
First I only noticed that “Ryan’s co-organizer” part, which thrilled me even as—okay, maybe because—I knew how much Jamie would stew over it, because it made it sound like I was the one in charge. I planned a little consolatory speech: I would tell her it was just a matter of clarity, and I only came first because I’d said the coffee shop’s name. Her quote was better, more moving. Her quote was…wait. I reread it, then read it again. Was I that most amazing person? I had to be. Right? Unless it was Gaby. I knew they had a special connection. But that didn’t fit quite right. Had she said inspirational, maybe, but amazing sounded like someone she once loved. Or was it still loved? I stared at the present tense of I know, squinting as if I might find a clue in the space between the words.
Just then Jamie texted me back, a string of nervous fragments.