really fester inside of me, you know? It’s hard for me to even think about what my life was like when I was still . . . bigger. And I’m starting to think that maybe that has less to do with how I looked and more to do with how I felt about it.”
He takes a deep breath and shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear his thoughts. “What I’m saying is I guess I have a lot more things to sort through than I realized, and what you said brought up a lot of things that I’d pushed to the side . . . things that I thought I was magically cured of after I lost weight.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “That’s a lot to have to deal with.”
“No, no,” he says quickly. “Those are my issues to work out. I’m the one who’s sorry for the way I’ve made you feel and that this has apparently been going on for so long.”
“Well, that’s a little bit my fault too. I could have said something instead of being all passive-aggressive.”
He laughs. “I do thrive on clear and direct communication.”
“Yeah. Not exactly a strong suit of mine. I’m doing amateur night, by the way. Or at least I’m going to attempt to, so thanks.”
“Yes!” Kyle clenches both his fists. “Me and Alex are totally going. We can say we knew you when.”
I take a deep breath. “But Kyle?”
“Yeah?”
“I need a favor.”
The Prism Club is bigger than I’d imagined. There are thirty-six members in total. Clem’s jaw drops when Hannah and I walk in, signing our names to the clipboard.
“Welcome,” Kyle says with a smile. “We have one—no, two!—new members with us today.”
You better believe I coerced Hannah into coming to this with me.
Behind Kyle, a few ninth graders who I vaguely recognize give each other brief excited glances before feigning indifference, and beside them Corey from choir gives me a small wave.
Even though I say I’m not one for organized groups, it hits me that I’ve never actually put myself out there enough to be considered part of a group and I feel a little regretful that my beef with Kyle held me back from this one. Except it wasn’t just Kyle. It was me and my fears and anxieties, too, that I wouldn’t be the right kind of gay and that I would be alienated by the one group where I should belong.
I feel like a real tool for only showing up here when I need something, but—“I need your help with something,” I say, and look to Kyle for his express approval before I continue.
He bows his head solemnly. “Anything we can do for our once and future queen.”
I laugh. “Okay, well, it’s not that serious. Actually, nothing is ever that serious. But this is time-sensitive. Like, tomorrow time-sensitive.”
When I filled everyone in Prism in on my plan, they were completely on board. We would paint the wall outside of the cafeteria in the 300s hall. Corey had the idea that we should paint the wall the colors of the Pride flag.
Dad helped me source the paint and supplies, so on Thursday, after school, I showed up prepared.
Thirteen members of Prism, including Clem, Alex, Hannah, and Kyle, volunteered to come help me, which was way more than I expected on such short notice.
Like Tucker promised in his note, he marked the wall with an X.
“You’re a genius!” Kyle calls to me as I carry the paint down the hallway with Clem and Hannah.
“Well, yes, of course,” I say. “But why exactly?”
He gently knocks his fist against the wall. “For priming this thing last night.”
“Um, that wasn’t me.”
Clem and Hannah look at each other knowingly.
“My heart is not the gates of heaven or something,” I say to them. “He can’t get back in with a prayer and a few good deeds. It’s going to take a lot more than paint primer.”
“Everything has a price,” Hannah says ominously as she pulls her hair back into a floppy bun.
“I don’t want to think about it anymore,” I say. “Can we get to work?”
The three of us set our buckets of paint down, and Alex is already hard at work taping off the wall for each color.
On top of a plastic tarp, we lay out small rollers and brushes alongside trays of paint. As people file in, Kyle assigns jobs. Some of us do edges while others take on the work of filling in the