4
MORGAN
I’d like to say the rest of the morning went better, that after forgetting my book bag and almost getting hit by a car, it was all smooth sailing. But it wasn’t. The hall monitor gave me the third degree for being late and then sent me to the office, seemingly not convinced that I was a new student, because “new students don’t start at the end of the year.” Which, fair, but I am, and I did.
After that was straightened out, I went to my locker, where the combination definitely did not work, and by then homeroom was over and first period had started. I think the hall monitor felt more pity than annoyance as she walked me back to the office, where the principal said, “Miss us already?” One late pass and new combination later, I was on my way. Sort of.
Because I was also late to third period. Silly me, I thought all the 200 rooms would be on the second floor, but it turns out that room 215 is actually in the new wing of the first floor. And why not?
Miraculously, I make it to my fourth-period class, Government—the last before lunch—early. The teacher introduces herself as Mrs. Morrison, hands me a textbook, and tells me to sit anywhere. Which is when I realize the desks are lined up in a semicircle around the room instead of in rows, like all the rooms had been at my old school. Clearly, order means nothing here.
“You don’t have assigned seats?” I ask, looking around as all the students filter in.
“No, Ms. Matthews, not in my classroom. You’re free to pick any desk.”
I scan the room, selecting a seat to the right and toward the back, one with a good view of the teacher and everyone else. Not that there’s much choice; with the way things are set up, everyone is visible at all times. Clever. It’s going to be next to impossible to text or zone out without her seeing it.
Allie comes in, giving me an encouraging smile as she walks a few steps into the room. She takes an empty seat next to someone I can only assume is her friend by the way they instantly start chatting. It’s fine. Or it will be, after school, when I can meet the team, which will hopefully be more accepting than my old team—they dropped me like a hot potato after I came out. Or maybe it was after I called the coach a misogynistic homophobe. Either way.
I duck my head and flip through the book, scanning the pages and wishing I could be anywhere but here, until someone kicks my chair. I look up and find myself face-to-face with the girl from the car. The messy bun is gone, her hair cascading back down around her face, which I have absolutely been staring at for too long.
She clears her throat. “You’re in my seat,” she says, not exactly rudely, more like extremely firmly . . . with no room for discussion.
“I thought there weren’t assigned seats,” I say, even though my instinct is to grab my stuff and run. But I’m done backing down. This is the new me.
She grits her teeth. “It’s implied.”
“How?”
“Look, I appreciate you’re new and all, but this is my seat and has been since September, so if you could go run over to someone else’s—”
“Funny you should say ‘run over.’” I smile. “That’s kind of your thing, right? Running things over?”
I swear to god her nostrils flare. It would be cute, if she weren’t so damn annoying. Scratch that, it’s definitely still cute, but I’m trying to ignore it. Unless angry nostril flaring counts as flirting, in which case—
“You almost hit my car, not the other way around.”
“Is there a problem, ladies?” Mrs. Morrison asks, turning from the whiteboard and raising an eyebrow.
I open my mouth to say yes, there is a problem, a very big problem, actually, not the least of which is my level of attraction to this person, who is clearly the queen of all assholes ever, but I’m cut off by another voice across the room.
“Morgan, right?” Allie says, and I snap my head toward her. “Sit with us.” She taps her pencil on the empty desk beside her.
I flick my eyes to the girl hovering over me, hesitant to let her win, but she looks more bored than annoyed now, so it doesn’t seem like it’s worth taking a stand. At least not today. I grab my books and slide out of the chair.
“Tough first day?” Allie asks when I drop into the seat beside her. She’s changed out of her running clothes and into a soft-looking sweater, the sleeves pulled down over her hands. Her bright red nails peek out, in stark contrast to the whiteness of her skin.
“Something like that,” I answer as Mrs. Morrison announces she left a handout in the office and will be right back. She tells us to open to page 106 and then disappears out the door.
“So, this is Lydia. She’s also on the track team.” Allie points to the girl beside her.
“Hey, Coach is amped you’re here,” Lydia says, pushing back the black hair that falls in loose waves around her face. She’s cut off the neck of her too-large sweatshirt and slid one side down her shoulder, exposing even more of her light brown skin. The teachers at my old school would have a heart attack.
“Yeah? How does everybody else feel?” Just because Coach is “amped” doesn’t mean the rest of the team is. I’m a bit of a controversial recruit.
Allie and Lydia share a look that tells me all I need to know.
“That great, eh?”
Lydia twirls a little bit of her hair. “For the most part it’s cool. And the rest you don’t have to worry about. You clear your waiver and get us to states, and people will look the other way about everything else.”
Right. Everything else. Like the whole super-gay thing, and the whole transfer-or-be-expelled thing, and the whole “getting one of my D-I offers revoked and the other put ‘on pause’ for going to the news about it” thing. But, hey, any college that doesn’t accept me—all of me—isn’t a school I’d want to be at anyway, right? At least that’s what I tell myself when I wake up every morning.
“They just don’t want to get involved,” Allie cuts in. “Like, we don’t care that you’re gay or anything.” She whispers the word “gay” like it’s some kind of horrible secret. Which, no.
“Cool, well, I actually do care about that,” I say, which makes an awkward silence stretch between us, but I figure it’s better to get that out in the open now rather than let myself be shoved into the closet.
Allie looks mortified. “Oh my god, that came out so wrong. Of course you do. Of course I do! It’s cool! It’s—”
“Allie, shut up.” Lydia smiles, leaning farther forward to face me. “Look, since we all made this weird already, I’ll just come right out and tell you that, one, Allie puts her foot in her mouth a lot, and two, I’m pan, so you’re not the only queer girl on the team. When I said people will look the other way about everything else, I meant, like, the being-kicked-out-of-your-school stuff. Nobody on the team cares who you, me, Allie, or anybody else is hooking up with, as long as it stays off the track. At this point, we’re all just looking to nail our meets and survive these last couple of months. And I think it’s pretty cool that you fought your old school on this. It was bullshit what they tried to do to you.”
I hadn’t realized how big of a weight I had felt in my chest, until just now, when it all lifted. I smile for the first time all day as the teacher returns, waving around a bunch of papers.
“Who’s ready to learn about amendments?” she asks in a singsong voice.
• • •
“So what’s her deal?” I ask later that afternoon, after sports study hall, when we’re walking on the track for warm-ups.
Allie turns her head in the direction I’m looking, where the girl from this morning is sitting surrounded by a group of other kids on the bleachers. “Who?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. The girl from class, the one who said I took her seat.”
“Yeah, that’s Ruby Thompson. I’d recommend staying away from her.”
“Why.”
“Because she’s trouble?” Allie says at the same time Lydia says, “Because she’s a mess.”
I glance toward Ruby one more time. “What do you mean?”
“Um, where should I start?” Allie says. “Besides her, like, general air of I will kill you if you look at me wrong? Let’s see, she’s obnoxious, she’s always in detention, she kind of sleeps around, she barely talks to anyone except for, like, Everly Jones, and I swear to god she has Tyler under some sort of a spell. He’s, like, in love with her—”
“Wait, who’s Tyler?” I ask.
Lydia shakes her head. “Tyler Portman. He’s a lacrosse boy and Allie’s crush since sixth grade.”
I tilt my head. “So is this like a mean-girl thing? You two don’t like her because of who she’s hooking up with?”
“No,” Lydia says. “Ignore that part. Her reputation for being trouble long precedes her and Tyler, trust me.”
“Seriously,” Allie says, taking my hand and pulling me closer to the track. “Avoid, avoid, avoid. And definitely do not do anything else to get on her bad side.”
“She almost hit me with her car this morning.” I wince. “And then I may have sort of slammed my hands on the hood, so I’m pretty sure I’m already on her bad side.”
Lydia’s eyes go wide. “You touched her car?”
“She almost hit me!”
“Yeah, I would have just let her,” Lydia says.
Allie nods. “At least it’d be over faster.”
Before I can respond, Coach blows her whistle.
Practice has begun.