The Inside of Out Read online

  Are you sure she’s not pretending to be gay in order to steal you from me, thus destroying my life once and for all?

  In any case, I’d seen enough. There were chinks in the armor.

  As the bell rang, Hannah stood to bus our trash—a peace offering.

  I cleared my throat. “So I’ll see you seventh period? Alliance meeting?”

  “Right,” she said. “See you there.”

  I had to look up Room A2 on a school map. It took several wrong turns into a faculty lounge and the vice principal’s empty office for me to locate the sign reading A2, and taped underneath it, a printout: “Student Club Meeting: 1:30–2:40.”

  I hesitated. This was a conference room, the kind where teachers held meetings on how to ratchet our test scores up to levels that would prevent them from being shamed in the local papers.

  “Come on in,” a male voice said behind me. Before I could turn, his hand met my back, nudging me in with him. “We won’t bite. Unless you ask nicely.”

  I knew this kid. Or of him, I guess. His name was Jack Jackson—easy to remember, especially since QB used to recite it in a high-pitched voice every time he passed Jack in the hall, like it was the height of wit to call someone by his actual name. I’d been proud to bear witness to the day last winter when Jack Jackson had put an end to it by murmuring back in a sultry voice, “You know I love it when you scream my name.”

  It was no secret that Jack was gay. He wore it proudly, along with his unofficial uniform of khakis, polo shirt, and weathered boat shoes. I’d always liked him for it. But I’d never talked to him before today.

  “I take it back.” Jack’s face darkened as he leaned in to whisper to me. Leaned up, really. At five-six, I had a good inch on him. “She might bite.”

  He nodded to the end of the long conference table, where Raina Moore had claimed the power seat. Riffling through pages of an old legal pad, she barely gave us a glance as we walked in. But a few seconds later, she froze, brow furrowed, and peered back up. At me.

  “Interesting,” she said.

  “Interesting” was a better reaction than, say, “Go away,” or “Kill it with fire!” Still, it took a little courage to pull out one of the roller chairs on the far side of the table and claim it for my own.

  “I’m Daisy,” I said to Jack.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I know. Wondered when you’d show up here.”

  Before I could ask what that meant, the door opened again, and through it walked the milkmaid, chatting with someone whose face rendered me speechless.

  Sean Bentley—the most beautiful boy in the Greater Charleston Area.

  When I was a freshman and Sean was a sophomore, he played Billy Bigelow in Carousel, while I was cast as, like, New England Townsperson Five. The only reason I didn’t quit Drama Club right then was the possibility of “accidentally” touching the lead actor during a late-night rehearsal.

  Two years later, Sean was still 1950s matinee idol dreamy, with wavy hair somewhere between bronze and burnished gold, lightly tanned skin, a gleaming smile that crinkled at the corners. An army of girls trailed him like a parade, vying to be his Number One Strictly Platonic Girl Who Was a Friend. Sean was out, in the way that the singing, dancing lead of every school musical who openly dates guys is clearly out, but still they followed, hoping against hope that they could change his mind.

  I myself had quit stalking Sean after a firm but gentle intervention from Hannah late freshman year. But I didn’t blame the ones who’d kept trying. After all, I’d written two-fifths of an opera for the guy. That was devotion.

  “We’ve been Skyping,” he was sighing to sympathetic noises from the milkmaid. “But it’s just really hard, you know? Having an ocean between— Jack! My man!”

  Sean Bentley high-fived in my general direction.

  “And . . .” Sean pointed at me. “Daisy, right?”

  He remembered my name.

  “Daisy Beaumont-Smith,” the milkmaid said, a smile lifting the corner of her mouth as she recited the name I’d given them at the booth. “I’m Sophie. So glad you came.”

  “Did you ever finish that opera?” Sean asked, and even though he was just being polite, I felt the blood drain from my face as I scrambled for an answer that sounded better than “Nope!”

  Luckily, Raina picked that moment to gather her legal pads and smack them against the table in a smart stack. “Should we get started?”

  I glared at the clock mounted above the whiteboard. Where was Hannah?

  The door squeaked and I twirled in my fancy conference room chair to wave hello. But, again, not her. A younger kid with short-cropped brown hair re-shouldered his giant backpack and stared around the room. I wondered whether he’d gotten lost looking for the nurse’s office.

  “Welcome!” Sophie’s voice was just this side of cult leader.

  “Um . . .” The kid moved back a step. “Is this the club for if you’re gay? The sign doesn’t say.”

  “It’s for quilt bag students, yes,” Sophie said, and I glanced around, wondering if that had made sense to anyone else.

  Raina smiled tightly. “Come in and shut the door, please, we’re about to get started.”

  The kid fumbled for a chair, his eyes everywhere but on us.

  “I’m new too,” I offered. “Daisy Beaumont-Smith.”

  “Cool. Kyle Hornsby. I’m a freshman.” He winced, as if it were a painful admission. “This room is super nice.”

  Raina nodded. “They tried to marginalize us last semester by putting us next to the wood shop. We lobbied the administration, citing noise violations and health concerns, and . . .” She gestured to the room with a smirk. “We won.”

  “Awesome,” I said, guessing from Sophie’s flat expression that the “we” in this case was one Raina Moore, Attorney at Law.

  “So. Daisy,” Raina said, her voice notably sharper than a moment ago. “Why don’t you go first?”

  Everyone turned to blink at me while I sat there trying to figure out what exactly constituted “going first.”

  Hannah wasn’t here. And Hannah was prompt. The promptest. That squeaky conference room door to the rest of the world was looking awfully inviting right about now. But then I looked at Raina—and saw a challenge in her eyes.

  Screw it.

  I cleared my throat and stood, realizing too late that it was kind of a grandiose gesture for an audience of five.

  “I’m Daisy. As you know. I . . . am very passionate about LGBTQ issues,” I started, praying that I’d gotten the acronym right. “I want to . . . um . . . fight for equal treatment and rights for every gay student.”

  They were smiling at me. This seemed to be the right track.

  “I mean . . .” I leaned against the chair and it swiveled but didn’t fall over. “I feel like this school tries to bury issues instead of dealing with them head-on, so we need to be proactive in making sure our voices are heard.”

  That was a direct quote from my mother, complaining about cafeteria options with her Real Food activist friends at our dinner table a few nights back.

  Raina raised her eyebrows. She was listening. This was my in.

  “Like you, Raina,” I said. “You lobbied the administration for a better room and you got it. I want to be a part of things like that.”

  Sean leaned forward and I had to brace myself not to fall over from the blinding glow of his smile. “What kinds of things do you have in mind, Daisy?”

  I swear he made that sound dirty.

  “Well . . .” I refocused, wishing I’d thought this through in advance. “I think there should be tougher crackdowns on bullying. I want to go to a school where gay students feel comfortable bringing their boyfriends and girlfriends to dances without worrying about the football team making fun of them.”

  Everyone glanced awkwardly at each other, and I we
nt hot and prickly, insta-sweating. Had I miscalculated? Despite their losing record, the Pirates were beloved across the social spectrum, for reasons I myself could not fathom.

  But then Sophie spoke up.

  “Actually, Daisy, students aren’t allowed to bring same-sex dates to dances. It’s in the school rules.”

  For a second, I was too surprised to speak. I’d always known that the conservative element ran strong here, and that our school wasn’t exactly immune to it. But this was the twenty-first century. Marriage equality was a done deal nationwide. How could we still have that rule?

  “We need to fight it!” I shouted.

  There was a breath of silence, then everyone in the room started talking at once, except Raina, who squinted at her legal pad as if waiting for an answer to appear on it. I watched her, my veins thrumming.

  Her eyes lit up.

  Bam. I’d won over the room. I was part of the LGBTQ solution. The only way this moment could be better was if Hannah had actually bothered to show up and witness it. I blinked a quick glare at the door.

  “We should strategize,” Raina said over the chatter of the others. “Plan for prom, not homecoming.”

  “Why not homecoming?” I was too excited to stop. “The sooner the better, I say.”

  “Hear, hear!” Jack offered me a high five, but I noticed a beat too late and wound up high-fiving his shoulder. It was fine. This was amazing. I couldn’t wait to tell Han. We had an agenda. We would take on the school and we would win. We would enact real, lasting change. And then maybe next year, orchestra? Might be fun to learn the violin, although the larger string instruments were arguably—

  “Awww.” Sophie beamed at me, going crinkly. “You want to take your girlfriend to homecoming, don’t you, Daisy?”

  My chair swiveled on its own.

  “Hannah von Linden?” Jack waggled his eyebrows. “No need to front, dear, it’s obvious you’re together.”

  “Oh!” I laughed. “Noooononono. Hannah’s not my girlfriend. Actually, I’m straight.”

  The silence that fell was so sudden, I wondered if I’d gone momentarily deaf. Then Raina stood from the table, pointed to the door, and chirped:

  “Nope! Out! Go.”

  5

  I fought to keep my smile from shaking loose. “Excuse me?”

  Raina leaned over the table. “What part of ‘Not a GSA’ did you not understand?”

  “All of it? I guess?”

  She clenched her jaw so hard I swore I heard her gears sparking.

  “I’m so sorry, Daisy,” Sophie said from the end of the room. “But this group is just for students who identify as queer.”

  Now everybody was smiling again, but in this oh it’s so sad way. No, more of an all the seats at our lunch table are taken way.

  “Okay, yeah, I . . . wow.” I picked up my backpack.

  “‘Wow’ is right,” Raina said, under her breath, and I was heading toward the door, I really was, but then she added, only a tiny bit softer, “More like whack job.”

  My bag fell with a thud onto the table. “Mental illness is nothing to joke about.”

  The room went freeze-frame except for Raina’s hand flying to her mouth. “I—I didn’t—”

  “I have not been diagnosed with mental illness, but if I had, I would find the term you used even more offensive.” Raina’s hand dropped, the tilt of her eyebrows decidedly less impressed than a second ago, but who cared? I’d wanted to say that for years. I leaned against the table, revving up. “Also. Also! Don’t you realize how hypocritical this is?”

  Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Excuse me?”

  “Discriminating against me based on my sexual orientation?”

  Next to me, Jack Jackson murmured, “Ohhhh, this should be good.”

  Raina’s face went cheerleader sunny at the prospect of a debate. “Are you seriously standing here trying to appropriate—?”

  I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what “appropriate” meant as a verb, so I cut her off. “I’m standing here trying to help. Trying to add my voice to yours. If I’m not welcome, so be it, but just know that you’re silencing me. You’re doing to me exactly what you’re fighting against.”

  “Oh my God,” Jack said. “You are one privileged little bitch, but I think I love you.”

  I blinked down at him. “Thank you?”

  “She has a point, Ray.” Sean shrugged amiably. “And I know things got ugly when we were a GSA, but—”

  “We’re not letting cis dilettantes into our group to claim ownership over our narrative. End of story.” She scribbled something onto her legal pad as if making it official.

  What in the hell did “cis” mean? Should I be insulted?

  Instead of asking, I snatched up my bag, ready to embrace defeat and join Chess Club with Hannah. Getting checkmated by cocky freshmen over and over again for forty-seven minutes had to be more fun than this.

  I was two inches from exiting stage left when Sophie’s hand crept up.

  “I might have a suggestion. In this one case.”

  Everyone’s eyes darted to hers and her lashes fluttered downward.

  “It seems like Daisy’s sincere about wanting to help change the homecoming rule.”

  And everybody looked at me.

  “I am.” I leaned against the door. “I’m a very sincere person.”

  At Sophie’s wince, I shut up.

  “So,” she continued, “why don’t we let her run with this a little? And then we can decide whether being more inclusive makes sense.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Sean said, drumming a swing beat on the table in celebration. “The inclusive part and the Daisy part.”

  When he said my name, he winked. Shameless. Jack reached up to shake my hand and Kyle gave a rapid-fire nod, probably afraid we’d ask him to say something out loud. When I dared turn to Raina, her smirk yanked me right back down to earth.

  “Fantastic! Go for it. Multiple generations of gay students haven’t managed to reverse the dance rule, but hell—you’re sincere, Daisy Beaumont-Smith. I’m sure you’ll succeed where everybody else failed.”

  “I appreciate that, Raina,” I said, partly to show how sincere I was but mostly to annoy her. She glared flaming chain saws at me as the bell rang and we all made our way into the administrative wing.

  Outside the door, Sophie motioned to an alcove beside a water fountain and ducked inside. Something in the combination of her furtive expression and peasant garb made me want to whisper “Vive la Resistance!”

  “You are awesome,” I said instead, following her. “I’m sorry if I put you in a weird spot.”

  “Not at all.” Her voice was a normal volume but her eyes kept rising over my shoulder, presumably scanning for Raina. “It might be tricky, though. The last thing we want to be is discriminatory, but—there’s a history. Ray was part of the group when it was founded. It was a GSA then, but the response from the straight students was . . . not what they’d hoped. A bunch of seniors got together and showed up to meetings to make fun of them. It became a sort of sick party. And one by one, all the gay kids dropped out. Some of them were only half out of the closet until then, so it wasn’t good. Two kids ended up transferring out of the school. One tried to kill himself.”

  “Oh my God.” My hand darted to my forehead. “That’s horrible. Why didn’t I hear about this?”

  “I was in seventh grade when it happened. So you were probably in middle school too. And what you said about the school burying issues?” Sophie glanced at the ceiling as if making sure it wasn’t bugged. “Anyway, things aren’t that bad now. It was probably just a rotten batch of seniors, but when Raina and I talked about restarting the group again last year, we decided we’d create a safe haven for gay students. So while we love our straight friends, we don’t include them in the Alliance.”
/>   “You know I’m not like that, right? I would never do anything to jeopardize the group.”

  “I know,” she said, picking a cat hair off my shoulder. “It’s just tricky.”

  “Wait, hang on,” I said. “You and Raina founded the Alliance together?”

  “We were . . . sort of”—Sophie looked down at her espadrilles—“dating at the time?”

  I kept my mouth shut, but my eyes must have flashed “Shut. Up,” because Sophie smiled, shaking her head like even she couldn’t believe it.

  “It didn’t last long,” she said. “We’re way too different. And our visions for the group are pretty different too.”

  The second bell rang and we both jumped.

  “I’ll do what I can for you, Daisy,” Sophie said. “Either way—thank you!”

  She waved and walked off, while I lingered, trying to decipher her thanks.

  Oh. Right. I was “running with this.” This being the huge school-policy battle that I myself had just full-on Joan of Arced. Okey dokey then. Vive la whatever.

  I glanced at the hall clock, sprinted past a flock of lost freshmen consulting school maps, and caught Hannah slipping out of Chess Club a few minutes late, shaking hands with a knobby-necked boy she’d clearly just defeated. When she spotted me, her apologetic grimace deepened.

  “You missed an awesome meeting,” I said.

  “I’m sorry!” She picked at her nails as we started down the hall. I swatted at her fingers before she could bite them. “I don’t know why I said I’d see you there. This week has been . . . yeah, do you ever just feel like your brain’s going in so many different directions that your mouth goes into autopilot—or, no, like you’re sleepwalking—”

  “So you weren’t planning to come at all?” I pulled a loose thread on my jeans.

  “It’s just—” She pressed her lips together as if debating what to let out when she opened them again. “They seemed pretty standoffish.”

  “They’re not,” I lied, my head jerking back up. “They were super welcoming. And we have all sorts of plans already.”

  “Yeah?”

  I nodded. “Big ones. Confidential. I mean, you’d have to come to a meeting . . .”