Follow Your Arrow Page 6

By the time I get home, I’ve listened to Mika sing “Why are you wasting your life? Dance, dance, dance!” so many times it’s become a mantra pulsing through my whole being.

  I swipe over to my DMs and send the message before my self-preservation instinct inserts itself.

  I watch the DELIVERED receipt turn to READ as Kathleen opens my message.

  Channeling Mika and every strong queer singer I’ve ever listened to, I try to look at my response to Kathleen as me taking a step toward independence, putting myself first for once. Because this is what I want. Truly.

  But I’m terrified.

  And because it was Silvie who told me to do the event alone, a big part of me can’t help but feel like I’m still letting her decide things.

  Kathleen’s reply comes back almost immediately.

  I beep my car locked, and smooth the skirt of my dress as I walk into school.

  It took me twice as long to get ready for school than normal. I wanted to look good—really good, the kind of good that makes your ex-girlfriend reconsider all her choices. I decided on my black-and-white houndstooth-print cinched-waist dress because Silvie likes it, but also because it’s on trend right now and looks awesome in black-and-white-tinted photos, so it’ll give me lots of good selfie fodder throughout the day. I dressed it down for school with chunky boots, a blue cardigan, and lots of rubber bracelets.

  But as I make my way through the crowded halls, scanning the sea of heads for Silvie, I’m second-guessing the whole outfit. The thing about being with someone for such a long time is, they see through you. Silvie will take one look at me and know I put in extra effort today, and she’ll know why, and that will be that—I’ll have given her the upper hand. Again. Maybe I should have just said screw it, and gone with leggings and a baggy sweatshirt. But then I would look as heartbroken as I feel, and that would be a victory for Silvie too. #CantWin

  Jasmine is waiting at my locker.

  “What’s the plan?” she demands. I suspect she’s been wearing this same expression of concern since Saturday.

  “Hi. I like your lipstick,” I reply as I work the combination lock open. It’s a too-obvious attempt to placate her, I know, but also I really do like her lipstick. Jasmine’s style is preppy feminine—today she’s wearing a white top with a peplum around the waist and eyelet detail at the neckline, baby-blue jeans, and ballet flats. Her pin-straight black hair just brushes the tops of her shoulders; I know she’s been working hard to grow it out, and it looks really pretty. Her lipstick is the exact same shade of coral as her nails, and while I’m not one for matchy-matchy, I’d definitely give the lip color a try. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Sephora. It’s called Tiger Stripe.” Then, without missing a beat: “Did you get in touch with DJ Rio?”

  I sigh and lean back against my locker door, hugging my first-period books to my chest. “For prom, you mean?” Of course that’s what she means; I have a broken heart, not a broken head. But I’m in avoidance mode.

  Jasmine pins me with a flat glare.

  “No.” I sigh. “We didn’t get in touch with him.”

  “Because he didn’t write back, or because you didn’t message him at all?”

  My cheeks heat, and Jasmine sees it.

  “I knew it.” She groans. “The second I saw Silvie’s post about your breakup, I knew this would happen. We have to get this thing planned, CeCe. And the president and vice president need to be speaking to each other if anything is going to get done.”

  Typically the student council is in charge of prom planning, and they usually have a whole school year to do it. But last year was a huge debacle—the student council president decided to implement an opposite-gender-dates-only policy. And he was a popular senior, one of those physically imposing, loudmouthed types, so apparently no one on the council was willing to argue with him about it, and the rest of the student body didn’t even know about any of this until a couple of students showed up that night with same-sex dates and were told they weren’t allowed in. It ended up being fine in the end—the chaperones found out what was going on, promptly banned that guy from manning the door, and instructed the other ticket takers to let in anyone with a ticket—but in the moment it was a mess and it ended up all over social media. Silvie shared a bunch of the posts on her page, and I really wanted to do the same, but I chickened out.

  Anyway, after that, there was a lot of debate about whether a different club should take over prom duties, and by the time the administration decided on the GSA (in a clear effort to overcorrect), it was February. And that’s how we ended up scrambling to plan a formal event for over six hundred juniors and seniors in less than four months.

  I open my mouth to say, Of course we’re speaking to each other, but close it before the lie can come out. Jasmine picks up on my hesitation.

  “What?”

  I glance around to make sure no one can hear us, and lower my voice. “Silvie decided she doesn’t want to do Cincinnati Pride with me. I’m going to do it alone.” Anxiety twinges in my gut as I say it. Don’t think about that now, I tell myself.

  Jasmine’s perfectly threaded brows go sky high.

  “So … yeah, I don’t actually know how the prom planning is going to shake out,” I admit, defeated.

  A beat passes, and then Jasmine takes out her phone and begins composing a group text. “I’m calling an emergency GSA meeting.”

  “We already have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow,” I protest. “I was going to brainstorm theme ideas tonight.”

  “Lunchtime. Art room. See you then.” Jasmine’s still typing as she walks away. A few seconds later my phone vibrates with the message.

  * * *

  I make it through the first half of the day without bumping into Silvie, though I can’t help being on watch for her everywhere I go. We don’t have any classes together, which used to bum me out, but now it feels like a small mercy.

  Seems like everyone else in the world is in my face today, though.

  Every five seconds it’s:

  “CeCe! Come here! You look like you need a hug!” (Followed by a giant hug from a person I’ve only spoken to maybe twice before in my life.)

  or

  “I couldn’t believe it when I saw your post! You know I’m on your side, right?” (From someone I know for a fact shared Silvie’s breakup post, but not mine, on her own page.)

  or

  “What even happened? I know you can’t tell the whole story online, but it’s just us here—I promise I won’t tell anybody.” (With a whisper and a wink.)

  or

  “It’s better not to be tied down in high school anyway.” (From a teacher. A male one. Accompanied by an awkward shoulder pat.)

  I keep my app smile on the whole time, and my responses gracious and neutral. I don’t have anyone at school I can truly confide in. Jasmine and the other GSA members are my friends, and they know what TV shows I like and what my favorite foods are, but I don’t open up to them about real stuff. Family stuff or my grab bag of insecurities or anything like that. But I never minded before. Apart from Mackenzie, whom I’ve never actually met in real life, Silvie was my best friend. She, and my followers, were my full-time everything.

  Finally, at lunch, I spot Silvie at the back of the cafeteria line. I grab a tray and silently get in line behind her. I can’t dally—Jasmine will have my head if I’m not at the art room with my food in the next five minutes.

  Silvie doesn’t notice me at first, so I take the moment to drink her in. Her hair is loose and falls in soft waves down her back, her natural chestnut highlights shimmering under the lunchroom fluorescents. She’s wearing a cropped white T-shirt, an open red flannel that she found for three bucks in the men’s department at the Goodwill, jeans, and high-tops—she looks like the goddess of cool. Just as she’ll know how long it took me to get dressed this morning, I know without a shadow of a doubt that she threw the outfit together effortlessly. Her rings glint as she pushes her tray forward, and my fingers tw
itch to reach out and grasp her hand. I bet they’re cold—her hands are always cold. I used to love how they felt on my skin.

  As Silvie reaches for a cup of sweet potato fries, I say, “Can you grab me one too?”

  She jumps a little at the sound of my voice, and I feel a smug sense of satisfaction at catching her off guard.

  “Oh. Hey,” she says after a second, setting the fries on my tray.

  “Hey.” We take a few steps forward, and I grab a veggie burger. A couple more steps. Silvie selects a fruit cup. The line is moving slowly, and I feel people’s eyes on us, watching to see what kind of breakup this is going to be. “How are you doing?” I ask.

  “Fine.” She’s not looking at me. “You?”

  “Fine.” Two more steps. “Heading to the art room now?”

  “Yup.”

  “Jasmine’s really worried about the GSA,” I say.

  Silvie approaches the register and pays for her lunch. “Jasmine worries about everything.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, see you there.” And she walks away. Even though I’m only fifteen seconds behind her and we’re going to the exact same place.

  A lump forms in my throat as I stand there, staring at her back. She really couldn’t wait for me? It’s so small, all things considered, but it feels so mean.

  “Here you go, sweetie.” On a delay, I blink and reacclimate. Donna, the lunch cashier, is trying to hand me back my card.

  In a daze, I take it. “Sorry. Thanks. Have a good day.”

  My mind is going haywire as I drift through the halls and up the stairwell to the art room. By the time I arrive, the seven other GSA members—Silvie, Jasmine, Deri, Ramsey, Peter, Ariel, and Manny—plus our adviser, Ms. Janet, are already seated around the big art table. We have a few freshman members too, but they don’t have lunch this period. I take the seat closest to the door, my thoughts still racing.

  “Okay,” Jasmine jumps right in. “I called this meeting because we all know Silvie and CeCe broke up, and we’re really sorry about that.” She gives me and Silvie each a sympathetic look, and the other GSA members murmur their condolences. I’ve never felt so awkward, so watched. Not even in those moments before I tap POST. The spotlight only feels good when you walk into it voluntarily.

  “I want you both to know you’re going to be okay,” Ms. Janet chimes in, with her usual gentle, art-teacher voice. “Sometimes, when relationships end, it can feel like the end of the world. But in time you’ll be stronger than ever. And you’ll both find love again, if you want it, I promise.”

  I know she’s trying to be helpful, but whatever happened to teachers minding their business? I’m sick of everyone feeling like they own a piece of this.

  “Thanks,” I mumble, just as Silvie says, “I know.”

  “So, this is all a little awkward,” Jasmine says, redirecting us back to business. “But it’s only three months to prom and we have a lot of planning to do, and the GSA cannot fall apart.”

  “It’s not going to,” I insist.

  Jasmine levels me with her gaze. “Didn’t you say you two aren’t really talking?”

  I look down at my untouched lunch. “Yeah …”

  “And you said you didn’t mind using your connections to get us a baller DJ, but then you didn’t even message him. And”—she pushes on before either of us can respond—“when I texted you both this weekend, you said things would be fine but all Silvie said was ‘We’ll talk about it at school.’ Right?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Silvie nod.

  “Which is really freaking ominous,” Jasmine says. “At the very least, it’s a sign that you two are on different wavelengths. And I’m sorry, but we can’t risk a lack of communication messing everything up. This club is important to me. It’s important to all of us.”

  Ramsey, Peter, and Ariel all nod their heads in profuse agreement. Their parents aren’t any more supportive of their identities than Jasmine’s are.

  “It’s important to me too,” I mumble, but I’m not sure they hear me.

  Back in middle school, most of my friends were swooning over the guys on the soccer and football teams. N o n s t o p. I rolled my eyes at them and went back to paying attention to things that I deemed more important.

  Then, one summer, Rebecca H., one of the other day camp counselors-in-training, started flirting with me, and boom! I had those heart-racing, gooey-tummy feelings too. Me! Book smart, contrarian, the-sum-of-humanity-is-greater-than-its-parts me. The feelings were big, and they were intense. And they weren’t limited to boys. In fact, boys were more of a supporting character in the whole production.

  It threw me off balance. For so long, I’d been singularly focused on outward expression, and now this entirely inward thing was happening. Had I just become one of the people I was fighting for? I wasn’t sure. I liked girls, but I liked boys too, at least in theory. What did that mean?

  It took some time, and a lot of Googling, to get past the gay vs. straight binary and realize there was another option. Lots of other options, actually, one for each letter in the initialism. I was that little B tucked unassumingly between the G and T.

  And then I met Silvie, and this small but mighty group of queer and questioning kids at school, and any lingering questions I had were either answered or disappeared completely. I interact with LGBTQIA+ people online all the time, but even now, years later, the people in this GSA remain the only ones I know in real life. I need this club too.

  “Last year’s prom was crap,” Peter speaks up, his jaw set. “And I’m a senior now, so this is my last chance to get to dance with my boyfriend at the prom sans drama, and I really need it to happen, okay?”

  Silvie nods. “I know. I’ve been thinking about this all weekend.”

  She has? I mush a fry between my fingers, curious to hear what she’s going to come up with.

  Silvie continues. “And I think it makes sense for me to step down as president.” What? “Jasmine’s right—we have a lot of work to do over these next couple of months, and it’ll just be easier that way. Less tension.”

  “That’s very generous and diplomatic of you, Silvia,” Ms. Janet says, and chatter picks up again as people weigh in on Silvie’s oh-so-giving martyrdom.

  No, but seriously. WHAT?

  All the feelings that have been tumbling around inside me since Silvie brushed me off in the cafeteria start to overflow. It’s clear now that despite my hopes—and promises to our followers—of us remaining friends, that’s not going to happen. And it’s already started to affect the GSA and the prom. So, yes, one of us should probably step down from office. But why should Silvie get to decide? She is not the unilateral ruler of everyone’s lives. And she definitely does not get to be the good guy again, when she’s the one who is refusing to be civil. We’re not in the app, we’re not DM’ing with Kathleen; we’re in a classroom in our school, phones put away, and I get to be me here.

  “Actually,” I say, loudly enough that everyone stops and turns to look at me. “I’ll step down. Silvie’s a more natural leader than me, anyway. And I’ve been trying really hard to be okay with everything, but …” I look Silvie in the eye now for the first time since Saturday. “I need some space.” I clear my throat. “It’ll be better this way. For all of us.”

  A stunned hush shrouds the art room. They’re not used to me being the assertive one. They didn’t know me before.

  Peter is the one to finally break the silence. “I’m fine with whatever.” He holds up his palms and rocks back on his chair.

  I nod, thankful for that grain of permission. “Jasmine, would you like to be vice president?”

  She’s still speechless. But it doesn’t take her long to nod.

  “Okay. So Jasmine will be vice. Deri, you’d said you wanted to run for treasurer next year, right?”

  Deri, a sophomore, nods, a little awkwardly.

  “Does anyone else want to run, or is everyone okay with Deri taking over as treasurer?” I say.


  I take the lack of response as an affirmative.

  “Great. So Deri’s treasurer now. We all good here?”

  The air in the room is still tinged with bewilderment. But, slowly, everyone nods their agreement. Including Silvie.

  I pop a cold sweet-potato fry into my mouth. The seconds tick by. Still, barely anyone moves. I sneak a glance at Silvie and feel a smug burst of satisfaction when her expression confirms she’s just as caught off guard as everyone else.

  Sitting back in my seat, I wave a hand around as if to emphasize the fact that I am no longer in charge of anything here. “Carry on.”

  Finally, Silvie sets her tablet on the table. “Well, since there’s still twenty-five minutes left in the lunch period, let’s go over some ideas for themes.”

  Everything reanimates as the other GSA members produce their own lists and begin calling out suggestions.

  “Under the Sea!”

  “Moulin Rouge!”

  “Enchanted Forest!”

  “Masquerade!”

  I’m the only one with nothing.

  It doesn’t make sense, but right now, that feels surprisingly okay.

  In the weeks leading up to spring break, Silvie and I steadfastly avoid each other in the halls and at lunch. I’ve taken to eating in the library by myself, since our former lunch table was made up mostly of our GSA friends, and President Silvie got to claim them in our divorce settlement. It’s not so bad; I have the library’s Wi-Fi and the app and my followers to keep me company. And I still see the GSA people at our weekly meetings, though Silvie and I have an unspoken agreement to not make eye contact with each other in those moments. But I still peek at her sometimes, when she’s not looking.

  Prom planning is moving along steadily, apart from the fact that there’s still no agreement on a theme. The deadline for ordering decorations is fast approaching, so consensus or not, we’re really going to have to nail down a theme as soon as we return from break.

  Our break doesn’t officially start until Friday afternoon, but Silvie cuts out a little early and flies to Mexico Wednesday night. I know this not because she told me but because I can’t stop stalking her profile.