Gaby frowned at the idea of a fee, but I knew Dee could convince her. Probably she’d tell her it was actually feminist for a queer-run organization like theirs to take money from a bunch of straight people, teenagers or not.
“This is supposed to be a safe space,” said Gaby. “Are all these kids going to honor that?”
I promised her they would and prayed they’d prove me right.
“Why don’t you and Jamie do those gay-club meetings here anymore?”
I sighed. Gaby had asked me this at least once a month for a year.
“The Westville Gay-Straight Alliance is no more. Still.”
“Remind me why?”
(This, the inevitable follow-up. I knew she remembered why. I knew the interrogation was meant mostly to guilt us for insufficient tenacity.)
“Too many straight people.”
Toward the end of our freshman year, a few months after Jamie and I came out to each other, and then to our friends, and then, indirectly, to the rest of the school, Jamie decided she wanted to start a club—mainly because it would be good for her college application, which she was already thinking about, even then, but also because being gay was all we could talk or think about, and we wanted as many outlets as possible. And, as the only out queer people in our class, Jamie said, we had a responsibility to be a beacon of kindness and tolerance for our peers. I did anything Jamie wanted me to, so I agreed to be her vice president. We registered our group with Westville’s indifferent administration and put up posters around the school. By then we’d been to Triple Moon enough times to have a new but friendly rapport with Dee and Gaby, and when we asked if we could host our bimonthly club meetings there, they gladly accepted—Dee because it would mean new customers, and Gaby because it would mean being able to witness young queer community organizing.
Then the day of the first meeting arrived, and Jamie and I presided over a meeting of six straight people. We knew they were straight because whenever they raised their hands to contribute something to our discussion (which, that week, was about a movie about a gay boy played by—you’ll never guess—a straight one), they started all their sentences with “I’m straight, but.” At the next meeting, four of those same straight people showed up. At the third, there were three. After each meeting, Jamie and I went home drained and annoyed, feeling more like someone’s pets than anyone’s leaders. So we dissolved the group, telling each other we’d restart it later on in high school, when there were more queer kids around to join us. But as far as we could tell, there were never more than a handful, and the idea of starting a club got less and less appealing as time went on. To start a club as a junior seemed unimaginably embarrassing. And then we were seniors, which was as good as graduated, and there was no point.
“Well,” said Gaby. “Can’t argue with that.”
“So will you think about having Sweets?”
“I’ll think about it,” she agreed.
“And you’ll talk to Dee, too?”
“I’ll talk to Dee.”
“When do you think you might know by?”
“Quinn.”
“Okay, okay. Thank you.”
Gaby shooed me out of the office and I returned to the table, where Jamie was still tapping away at her keyboard. She didn’t ask me what Gaby and I had talked about, which I found infuriating, if unsurprising. Jamie rarely asked for details because she rarely needed to. Usually, details came to her. When she ignored me, I would do almost anything for her attention.
But Jamie’s attention was something I had to learn to live without. So I picked up Frankenstein and read for as long as I could, and then I got up to look through the bookshelf, hoping to find something I could take home and care for.
I got my good news a little over a very long week later. I was sitting at the kitchen table in my sweaty soccer practice shorts and a sports bra, eating around the still-semi-frozen center of a chicken