The Inside of Out

by Jenn Marie Thorne

  I’d just handed them a new angle.

  Famous lesbian caught kissing a boy.

  Raina was at my elbow in an instant.

  “Let’s recamp,” she said, and not knowing what that meant, I let her lead me away, her arms blocking one side of me while reporters swarmed the other. I ducked, my own hand raised, as we reached the edge of the square. The Secret Service were guarding Andy Lawrence’s car. At the sight of them, most of the press dropped away, but the cameras kept rolling from a distance, getting footage of me leaving in disgrace.

  I should stay, I thought numbly. I should explain.

  Lie, you mean. Again.

  It felt better to run.

  I risked a glance back at the flagpole as we took to the sidewalk. Hannah was sitting on the flag’s pedestal. Still crying. Natalie was gone. Had they broken up?

  Raina’s phone beeped with a text. She glanced down and quickly up, then tugged me faster down the block.

  “Cal says good job, now go home and get some rest,” Raina announced. “The photo’s popped up online. He says we’ll figure it out in the morning.”

  I stared at her phone as she pocketed it. The actual text read: “SEND HER HOME.”

  “So, are you dating QB?” Raina asked the question past me.

  “No.” We turned into an alley. “Definitely not. At all.”

  “Then let’s see about pressing charges.”

  “No!” I stopped walking to face her. “He’s an idiot, but no. We can’t do that to him.”

  “Why? Why can’t we do that to him?” She dug her fingers into my shoulders. “That was assault, Daisy. Why won’t you admit this to yourself? This seems to be a pattern with—”

  “Trust me, this is totally different from . . . yeah.”

  “Why? What are you not telling me?”

  “Nothing!”

  She let go and spun away, then turned back. “Maybe we say you’re bisexual.” Raina ran her hand over her face. Paused. Peered past my shoulder. Voices rose up around the corner. “Come on, walk, this is about to get ugly.”

  Sure enough, the reporters had doubled around the security barricade to corner us.

  “Daisy, are you dating that boy?” “Daisy, does this mean you’ve broken up with your girlfriend?” “Daisy, were you ever gay?”—and that one was so asinine that I actually looked to see who’d asked it.

  Instead, I turned to find Adam Cohen staring at me from the center of the press horde. There was a closed look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen since that first day at the Moonlight Coffee Shop when I’d sent his computer hurtling to the ground. Just as I was about to bum-rush the crowd, grab his hand, and make a break for it, both of us, together, he took one step back, tucking his iPhone into his pocket, and disappeared into the sea of faces.

  A warm arm wrapped around my shoulder.

  “No more. We’re going home,” Mom said into my ear, then turned to the reporters. “No comment, folks!”

  Her hand shook as she walked us quickly away from Raina and the reporters, down the alley to the waiting Veggiemobile. My feet skipped every few steps to keep up with her. I could tell what she really wanted to do was sprint, but she was trying to preserve our dignity.

  We had a second to breathe once the car doors slammed shut, and then reporters surrounded us, shouting melodramatic questions, like “What does this mean for America’s Homecoming?”

  Mom rolled her window down an inch, then thought better of it, yelled “Shoo!” and revved the engine. It worked. They scampered like rats, and away we drove. We’d made it two blocks, both of us still panting, when she turned to me with a painfully hopeful smile and said, “Your speech was excellent, sweetheart. I’m sure that’s what they’ll report on.”

  I didn’t dare look at my phone until the next morning. And then I wished I hadn’t.

  The first message was from Jack. “We’re in trouble. The only thing they’re talking about is that kiss. Call me back. We need to fix this.”

  I peeked at the morning news. First headline:

  GAY ACTIVIST DAISY BEAUMONT-SMITH CAUGHT WITH HUNKY BOYFRIEND

  I couldn’t tell you what was more excruciating, their use of “hunky” or the photo that accompanied the headline. They must have found the one millisecond in which my eyes had closed from the shock of having QB’s giant head squished against my own, so it looked romantic, like that World War II photo of the sailor kissing the nurse, probably as unwilling a recipient of affection as I’d been.

  The second voicemail was from Adam. “You could have told me.”

  That was it. What the hell.

  Third one from Mr. Murphy. Dear, reliable Mr. Murphy, who was just “Calling to check in and see whether you might be able to finish that mural!”

  I replayed that message three times as a distraction.

  Fourth message. Hannah. Except she sounded more like the ghost of Hannah, her voice dry and raspy, wind through leaves.

  “We broke up. Thought you’d like to know.”

  I was right. I felt a shameful rush of glee.

  And then, on the message, a sigh.

  “QB, Daisy? Just a rumor? Really?”

  She should have known better than that. And yet . . . was she that far off? I’d gone on three pseudo-dates with the fool. I knew about his childhood, his hopes and fears, his everlasting devotion to his one true love, Natalie Beck. We were— perversely—kind of going out.

  The last message was from the man himself. Romeo. Casanova. Pepé le Pew.

  “I’m really sorry, Daisy. I feel like an asshole. Yeah, okay, I am an asshole. Call me if you want to talk?”

  QB meant well, but he also meant “listen to me talk.” I’d had just about enough of that.

  I called Adam back first, partly because his beat poem of a message was by far the most intriguing, and partly because of reasons I wasn’t willing to examine at this particular juncture. He picked up on the first ring.

  “What.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “I’m calling to find out what exactly I could have told you. You already knew I was straight, yes? Thus the speech dilemma?”

  “So you’re dating this kid?”

  “Kid?” I snorted. “He’s like a year younger than you, college boy. And no. I’m not dating him.”

  “Just a casual thing, then. Were you with him last night? Is that why you’re only calling me back now?”

  “What?” I snapped, unwilling to dignify his crazy question with a rational answer. “Why do you even care? You’ve got your articles. Aren’t you supposed to be maintaining a journalistic distance?”

  I don’t matter to you, I thought. I’m only a story. Tell me I’m wrong, please tell me I’m wrong.

  I gripped the desk so hard it jolted, making that awful photo pop up again, this time in a new article questioning whether the whole event was a hoax.

  “I will from now on, that’s for damn sure.” While I was processing that, he started to sputter. “College boy? I’m college boy now?”

  “Why is that insulting?” I stood from my desk chair. “It’s what you are, remember? Or have you spent so much time on James Island that you’ve forgotten where your own campus is?”

  “I’m there right now.”

  He sounded confused. I made it clearer.

  “Good. Maybe you can make some friends your own age.”

  I leaned against the desk and waited.

  “You’re right,” he said.

  Not what I expected.

  “This whole thing . . . making friends, or whatever, with . . .” He sighed, cleared his throat, and when he talked again, it was with Reporter Voice. “It was inappropriate. It won’t happen again. So good luck with your event.”

  “Thank you,” I said, my voice as polite as his. “Good luck reporting on my event.”

  �
�Bye, Daisy.”

  There was something wistful about the way he said my name, like he’d never say it again. I clutched the phone.

  “Adam?”

  But he’d already hung up.

  Back to the news, I thought, drawing a cleansing breath that felt like tear gas. Let’s face this head-on.

  I made popcorn. Then I googled myself.

  “Daisy’s straight. She’s been dating QB Saunders since . . .”

  “The beginning of the year?”

  “Yeah, at least. She’s just doing this for attention.”

  “Definitely for attention. I mean, the whole country’s talking about her, right?”

  Jenna Jeffers and Kim Shoemaker, freshmen at Palmetto High School, interviewed by the New York Post

  “She was gay. She was a lesbian with that Chinese girl—”

  {Off-camera: “Hannah von Linden?”}

  “I guess, yeah. They were dating for like forever and everybody knew it but nobody wanted to say anything. But then QB turned Daisy straight. She comes to all his games and they’re always together. Like, making out everywhere. They’re obsessed with each other. I don’t know why she’s pretending she’s still gay. It’s weird.”

  Whitney Jenkins, Palmetto sophomore, TMZ video interview

  “Her soul is still in jeopardy, even if she’s not an active homosexual. I’m praying for all of them.”

  Reverend Tom Rawlings, in The Post and Courier

  “She’s been straight all along. Since eighth grade, anyway. That’s when we were together. I don’t really want to kiss and tell, but let’s just say she is very, very, very straight. It was intense. I’m gonna be honest . . . she broke my heart.”

  Seth-Freaking-Ross, basking in the News Channel 7 camera’s glow

  “Your heart? I broke your nose!”

  Daisy Beaumont-Smith, Palmetto junior, screaming at the computer screen

  “The barest, quickest web search reveals a worrying pattern of grandiose promises and outrageous assertions by Ms. Beaumont-Smith. Only two years prior, she made local headlines by claiming to have written an original opera on the life of famed pirate Stede Bonnet. Though she was hailed as a young prodigy, the opera never materialized. It begs the question—were we complicit? Too rabidly eager to laud and crown a sixteen-year-old whom the harsh glare of hindsight reveals quite clearly as the narcissist and pathological liar she was all along?”

  Editorial in The Guardian

  “We’ve been talking.”

  Sophie’s eyes were kind, her voice soothing. It felt like I was being dumped by my fairy godmother.

  “And we think it would be better for us to keep going . . . without you as our spokesperson.”

  I nodded. “I totally agree.”

  Sophie let out her breath in one big shuh, relieved that I didn’t put up a fight. Sean patted my hand, but the old thrill at having him in close proximity was no longer strong enough to boost my mood.

  “It’s not that we don’t appreciate what you’ve done, Daisy,” he said. “It’s just gotten so complicated, right?”

  He leaned in, grimacing, like we were gossiping about somebody else.

  “Yeah, I can see that.” Everyone looked wary, half expecting me to go Hulk-mad and overturn the conference table. “So how else can I help?”

  “You’ve done enough,” Raina said, and it came out so harsh that she herself winced. “I mean . . . you’ve helped enough. You can sit it out from here.”

  I nodded as if I understood. “Sit it out, um, completely? Or—”

  “It’s nothing personal,” Raina said, to a chorus of wild-eyed agreement from the group. “We should never have put you in this position in the first place. You’re not a bad person, you’re just . . . unqualified.”

  My mouth made an “oh,” but the sound didn’t come out.

  “Sit with me at lunch,” Sophie said, stretching her hand out, not quite far enough to reach me. “You’re still our friend, even if you’re not . . . technically . . . an Alliance member anymore.”

  So I was out of the Alliance too. It took my lungs a second to recover from having the air smacked out of them.

  I looked to Kyle, but he glanced away. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him to go to bat for me. All I’d done was ruin everything he was fighting for. The narrative we’d been promoting all along was gone. The Alliance had gone from Gallant to Goofus in one stupid lip-lock.

  “Got it,” I said, and tried to leave with as much grace as possible—only to remember in the hallway that I’d left my backpack, forcing me to double back and round the table again to get it, before ducking out a second time with yet another sheepish wave just as the bell rang, at which point everybody got up and walked out with me. Awesome.

  Sophie and Jack both gave a tiny wave good-bye, which made me feel a smidge less awkward, but then Raina, the last to leave the room, hit me with her backpack as she waltzed past. Didn’t even look back, like I’d ceased to exist the instant she ousted me from the group.

  Because it was her, wasn’t it? She’d always wanted me gone. And now I was.

  “Congratulations!” I shouted at her retreating back. She stopped walking. “I’m the villain after all. Right, Raina? This whole situation . . .” As she slowly turned, I drew a big circle in the air. “It’s on me. I mean, it’s not like you held a meeting and voted for me to pretend to be a lesbian. Oh! Wait!”

  “What exactly are you fighting for, here, Daisy?” Raina asked, smoothing a stray curl into her headband as she strolled over. “The right to hang out with us?”

  I flinched. She smiled.

  “To help us put up tents? Hang streamers for the dance?” She pretended to consider. “Tell you what. You really want to do that? You can do it. There you go, you’re hired.”

  “You can’t rehire me,” I snapped. “I quit.”

  She let out a laugh like a gunshot and pointed at me. “There. There it is.”

  I glanced down at my outfit. “Where what—?”

  “Your blind spot.” She dropped her bag on the ground, spread her stance. “Here’s what you don’t get. You can quit. Because you, Daisy Beaumont-Smith, are privileged.”

  “Excuse me?” I scoffed. Raina was looking at me like I was a princess. A mean girl. Natalie Beck. “Privileged? How am I—?”

  She cut me off, eyes alight. “You really want to argue this with me? Let’s see, Daisy.” She counted off on her fingers. “You’re white. You’re cisgender, you’re straight, you’re rich—”

  “I’m not rich!” I gawked at her. “We’re comfortable, but—”

  She sighed like it hurt. “Are you gonna go to college?”

  This was ridiculous. “Yeah. But I don’t see—”

  “So you’re looking into financial aid programs, then. Scholarships.”

  My mouth clamped shut. I looked away. “No.”

  “No,” she parroted. “You’re rich. And the fact that you think ‘comfortable’ isn’t rich? That’s your privilege showing.”

  I sank into myself, feeling like I was being cross-examined into a lengthy prison sentence. Raina was going to make one hell of an attorney. Not that I’d know her by the time that happened.

  “You don’t get it.” Her voice grew gentle, almost sad. “You’re never going to get it. Because this is the problem with privilege, Daisy. It’s a blindfold with a pretty picture of the world painted on the inside. You think it’s the truth. But it’s just your truth. You think homecoming is something you can play with, be reckless about, never mind the consequences—because there have never been consequences for you. And you’re lucky, I’m happy for you.” As if to demonstrate, she shot me a grim smile that fell away instantly. “But that is not our reality. Our reality is that this fucking matters. Our cause is not a toy.”

  If she’d been holding a mic, she’d have droppe
d it. Instead, she picked up her backpack and continued down the hall, while I stayed shuffling in place like a lame horse, knowing that if I argued any further, I would only prove her point.

  Besides, I agreed with her on one thing. I should never, ever have gotten involved.

  28

  Hannah once taught me the German word for vicarious embarrassment: fremdschämen. It sounded like an infectious disease, and for good reason—my entire school appeared to have come down with it.

  No one acknowledged me—not to mock, yell, offer words of sympathy, hold the door before it smacked me in the face, call on me in class. QB was keeping his distance, as well he freaking should. No matter how many times I checked my phone, Adam wasn’t texting. The Alliance was formalizing our divorce by pretending I’d never existed, and Hannah . . .

  Hannah was really good at running.

  “Hey!” I shouted, rounding the corner of the school toward the parking lot. She walked faster. “Han!”

  I caught her by the shoulder and she turned with a bewildered headshake.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Then how did you know there was something to hear?” I grinned, nudged her, realized too late that joking around was the wrong tack to take.

  She sighed. “What do you need, Daisy?”

  One friend in the entire world?

  I clung to my backpack straps, fighting to stay sunny. “I just wanted you to know that I got your voicemail, and if you need somebody to talk to, or a distraction, or anything else . . . I am here for you. And I suddenly have a lot more free time for hanging out. So yeah.”

  “Duly noted.” She shifted her weight and looked away. “Listen, I need a week. Just to go to school and do my homework and go to bed and not think about anything. We’ll talk after that.” She crossed her arms, looked at me. “Is that okay?”