by Mia Archer
“Come on Courtney,” I said. “We should get out of here.”
“No,” Courtney said. “This little preppy bitch isn’t going to talk about my friend like that.”
“And you’re not going to try to get my friend to go all lesbian,” the girl said. “She’s not interested in what you’re selling.”
She sounded genuinely angry and my eyebrows popped up. Could it be that she maybe suspected something about her friend that even her friend wasn’t willing to admit to herself?
The idea was… intriguing.
Intriguing, but not something I wanted to get into here. Already I could see people stopping and staring at us. The last thing we needed was for news of this to start getting around.
I’d gotten used to people giving me shit for what I was, but on the flip side of that coin it had been a long time since someone had given me shit for what I was because I got pretty good at not taking shit.
If the rumor got started that I was hitting on some poor freshman on her first day of class the gossip could get bad. Even if that couldn’t be farther from the truth, but who said high school rumors ever had to have anything to do with the truth?
I yanked on Courtney. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”
Courtney stayed rooted to her spot for a long moment. She stared daggers at the preppy girl in the making before finally allowed herself to be pulled away.
Interestingly the same thing was going on with Chloe. She was rooted to the spot, but mostly because she was staring at me. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I also knew that before first bell wasn’t the time to sort any of that out.
Besides, it sounded like I was going to be seeing her later in the day for drama class. That was going to be very interesting.
I finally managed to yank Courtney away and we melted into the crowd and away from the two girls who’d been hanging out down in the band and drama wing even though it seemed like that was the last place they’d want to be seen.
“What was all that?” I asked.
Courtney stared at me in disbelief.
“What was up with you?” she asked. “That girl was walking all over you and you were just taking it! What happened to the Sarah I know? The one who kicks ass an takes names?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I was expecting some militant dyke back there and all I got was you trying to play nice. What gives?”
I snorted. I couldn’t help myself.
“You know you shouldn’t use words like that,” I said. “You might get away with it in redneck central, but say that around the wrong person out in the wider world and you might find yourself on the business end of a beatdown from some real militant dykes.”
We both stared at each other for a beat. Then we both devolved into a fit of giggles. I couldn’t help it. Where did she come up with this stuff?
Sure I’d gotten in some people’s faces back in the day. Made sure they were never going to bother me again. Still, I don’t know if I would call it militant.
Even if some of the preppy types who’d tried to make my own life hell my freshman year did move to the other side of the hall when they saw me coming their way.
Okay, so maybe I deserved that label just a little.
“I pulled you away because it was pretty obvious to me that there was something going on with that poor Chloe girl and I didn’t like her friend standing there saying all those mean things about her friend without realizing what she was doing.”
Courtney blinked a couple of times. She obviously meant well standing up to that girl on my behalf, but it was also obvious that her gaydar still needed a few more upgrades before it was in good working order.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. She did go years watching me falling all over myself around her without realizing I wanted to be more than friends.
“Oh. Oh shit,” she said. “I didn’t realize.”
“It’s cool,” I said. “At least I’ll maybe have someone fun to talk to when I get to drama class.”
Courtney looked at me with a sly look that meant the wheels were turning in her head.
“Someone fun to talk to, eh?” she asked.
“Not like that Courtney.”
“Sure,” she said. “I totally believe you. Just go easy on the church girl. Something tells me she’s not going to go from getting down on her knees for Jesus to getting down on her knees for you that easily.”
My eyes went wide and I smacked her shoulder. “Courtney! I can’t believe you’d say something like that!”
The half conversation/half argument continued as we made our way off to our first classes of the day, but I did have a lot to think about that was going to distract me from the usual business of teachers introducing themselves and talking about how exciting their totally boring class was going to be.
5
Chloe
I stepped into the drama hall and stopped. I hadn’t even realized this was the drama hall when I was down here earlier with Ashley. We’d been in the belly of the beast and we hadn’t realized it.
At least it was the belly of the beast for her. No matter how many times I tried to convince her that she’d been really rude this morning she wasn’t hearing it.
No, all she’d go on about in the one class we had together was that I needed to drop drama and sign up for speech and debate like everyone else.
As though I could even change my schedule at this point. I mean maybe I could, but telling her I couldn’t was the only thing that finally shut her up.
And now here I was. Back at the scene of the crime. Back at the spot where Ashley had been rude to those two girls earlier.
Even if that Courtney girl had been pretty rude too. The other one, though, the one I couldn’t stop thinking about the whole day, was a different matter.
I shivered. A lesbian. I didn’t think there were gay people in our small town. To hear Pastor Dave talk about it this was a good God-fearing community where people like that didn’t live.
It was a small dig at the way the church presented the world. If there were gay people in this town then what else was Pastor Dave wrong about?
I shook my head. Pushed those thoughts from my mind. They weren’t good thoughts. I reached up and touched my cross necklace and felt a warm shiver as I thought of how much God loved me.
That always helped me whenever I started thinking like that. Thinking bad things. Things that would have Pastor Dave praying over me and embarrassing me in front of the whole youth group if he had even a tiny idea that I was thinking them.
Better to keep those thoughts to myself.
Someone bumped into me and I had to take a couple of steps forward to keep from flying forward on my face.
“Sorry,” the guy said. A bigger dude who was carrying a case that held a massive instrument of some sort.
Other band kids were walking around too. This must be where the band met in addition to the drama club. Interesting. Guess they kept all the performing arts in one wing of the high school or something.
I took a deep breath. I was going to have to do this, after all. I’d signed up for the class and I’d been looking forward to it.
The fact that a girl I’d never met before I came to the high school was going to be in that class shouldn’t make me want to be in there any less.
I walked over to the door. Stepped inside and found myself in a classroom that looked more like a theater than a classroom. There were chairs in a semicircle running down the length of the large room and then at the bottom there was an actual stage with curtains and everything.
“You can do this Chloe,” I said.
This class was different. I mean I knew it was going to be different from the moment that mean girl in the hall this morning said that other pretty girl was a lesbian and…
Wait. Pretty girl? No. I wasn’t thinking of her like that. She was just a girl. Some random girl I saw in the halls. Some random girl I was going to share a class with, and that was it.
I sighed. What was wrong with me? I needed to get this under control. I forced a smile and stepped into the room.
A room that was totally different from any of my other classes, and here’s why.
All my other classes? Most of those were your normal run of the mill classes that anyone would have when they got to high school. A lot of them like English and math, the sort of stuff everyone had to take, were even with people I’d known in middle school. Sure some of the people were a year older than me in math, but they were still people I knew.
This was way different though. I saw people who looked like they were practically adults in here. Juniors and seniors.
Basically this was the first time I’d stepped into a class and realized I wasn’t in middle school anymore. This was the first time I stepped into a class and saw people I didn’t recognize because I’d never gone to school with them. Either they were from one of the other two middle schools in the county or they were old enough that we never went to school together.
Unless you counted elementary school when I was in first grade and they were in fourth, but I didn’t. That was so long ago that I barely remembered it.
My eyes darted around the room as I looked down and tried not to act like I was looking around.
There were a couple of faces I recognized. Freshmen and sophomores, but there were other kids too.
Kids with dark hair and dark clothes. Kids with piercings. Kids wearing berets even though I was pretty sure that violated the school rules against wearing hats in the building, but the girls wearing them didn’t look like the kind of girls who cared about school rules.
One girl with black lipstick caught me looking at her. I smiled, wondering if she was going to be friendly. I could use a friendly face in here.
Instead she grimaced and flipped me the bird. I blushed. Okay then. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but I guess if she was going to be mean then I’d sit on the other side of the room.
In one of the seats that looked more like a theater seat than a class chair. They even had nice little fluffy cushions instead of hard plastic.
I guess that wasn’t so bad. I should look for the positive in this room. Forget about the negative. Forget about people like that girl who flipped me the bird.
I sat down and did my best to pay attention to the floor. I was starting to understand what Ashley meant when she said I wasn’t cut out for a drama class.
If these were the kind of people who were going to be in this class then maybe it wasn’t for me. Maybe I should go down to the guidance counselors and let one of them know I needed to be moved to something. To anything other than this.
A study hall would be better than this darkness. Maybe some people thought it was comfortable or something, but I was feeling the beginnings of a panic attack.
The room felt oppressive. It felt like everything Pastor Dave and other people in the youth group had ever warned us about. Ashley had known, had tried her best to warn me, and I’d ignored her like the idiot I was.
Stupid.
Someone slipped into the seat next to me. I didn’t look up. I didn’t want to look at anyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone in this class.
I needed to remember what Pastor Dave said about staying strong in these situations. I needed to be strong. I needed to be Godly. I needed to remember that this was the world trying to tempt me and the last thing I needed was to give in.
I would be a good girl. I would be the person I’d been raised to be. I reached up and touched the cross on a little gold necklace. A present from my mom on my confirmation.
I smiled thinking of that day. It brought me strength. I still remembered her putting her hands on my shoulders, searching my eyes, and telling me to be who I needed to be.
Right now what I needed was to be strong. Even if being strong was looking down and away from whoever sat next to me. It’s not like it was important. It’s not like I was going to make any friends in this class.
“Hey there.”
The words sent a shiver running down my spine. Exactly the sort of shiver I didn’t get when Craig tried to get up close and personal with me. Exactly the kind of shiver I shouldn’t be getting from a girl’s voice.
I recognizes the voice, of course. It was her. Sarah. The girl from earlier. Not the one who was so rude to Ashley.
In a way it would’ve been better if she was the girl who’d been so rude to Ashley. Rudeness I could deal with. I could smile and be nice to her and kill a bully with kindness because that’s what Jesus would’ve done.
I didn’t look up. I couldn’t look up. Looking up would mean looking at Sarah. Looking at Sarah would mean dealing with feelings I wasn’t equipped to deal with right now.
No, much better to look down. To keep quiet. To avoid the problem entirely. A bully I could kill with kindness.
This girl, though? The way I shivered when I looked at her? The way goose bumps rose on my skin? The way my pulse picked up and I felt it pounding behind my ears as other parts of me started to wake up in ways they never had before? The way my stomach twisted in a way it never had for any boy?
I wasn’t equipped to deal with that. It was all telling me something about myself that was terrifying. So terrifying.
“Y’know we’re going to be in this class together all semester,” Sarah said. “It’s not going to do you much good to stay quiet the entire time. This is drama, after all.”
I turned away. This wasn’t very nice, but right now I wasn’t feeling very nice. No, I was terrified. My breathing was picking up. Her voice did things to me…
“Hey…”
Her hand landed on my shoulder. Landed with all the force of an atom bomb. Landed with all the force of all the hormones running through me.
The touch was electric. It was everything I should’ve felt when annoying Craig touched me. Everything I should’ve felt and didn’t.
Damn it.
“Look…”
A pause. A sigh. As though she didn’t know what to say. I almost could’ve laughed. That was rich. She didn’t know what to say? I was sitting here feeling something in between a panic attack and falling the hardest I’d ever fallen for someone I didn’t even know and she was the one who didn’t know what to say?
My whole world was crashing down. I didn’t know what to do. All I could do was concentrate on breathing. I’d never had a panic attack before but I imagined this had to be pretty close to what it felt like.
“I know we got off on the wrong foot this morning,” she said. “Courtney can be… well she can be Courtney. I’m sorry if she hurt your feelings.”
Damn it. I wasn’t going to get away with avoiding her. She was going to keep sitting there talking to me and touching me and making me feel so weird and I needed to turn around and do something about it damn it.
So I turned. Brushed a strand of hair away from my face. Looked at her. Really looked at her.
And when I looked at her I couldn’t help myself. Something tugged at the corners of my mouth. I shouldn’t be smiling at this girl but seeing her staring at me looking so worried was so funny and so…
Something. I’m not sure what. It made that twisting in my stomach twist even more, if that’s possible.
It felt good.
“It’s okay,” I said, barely above a whisper.
I couldn’t believe I was doing this. I couldn’t believe I was talking to her. This was the sort of thing Pastor Dave warned us about. Talking to someone like her, to a… lesbian. Talking to her was the first step towards…
I don’t know what. He always trailed off after that, but the threat was pretty clear.
“There we go,” Sarah said. “Was that so hard?”
I blushed and looked away again, but this time it wasn’t for as long. I knew looking away wasn’t going to do anything. This was one problem I wasn’t going to avoid by avoiding it.
I wasn’t sure she was a problem I wanted to avoid. I wasn’t sure she was a problem. There was Pastor Dav
e’s voice and everything I’d ever learned in youth group whispering in the back of my mind, but somehow those voices didn’t seem as strong as the feelings pulsing through me.
Which is probably the danger he’d been talking about all this time.
“Sorry,” I said.
Sarah blinked. “Why are you sorry?”
My blush deepened. God I was acting like such an idiot today. I was acting like such a freshman.
“I don’t know,” I said. “This is all just…”
Her smile grew wider. I couldn’t help myself. I returned the smile even though I knew it was wrong, though I couldn’t for the life of me understand why it should be wrong.
She held her hand out.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot this morning,” she said. “Start over? I’m Sarah.”
I eyed her hand. Touching her. Did I dare touch her? There was that electric feeling when she put her hand on my shoulder with clothes in between us. What would it do to me if we actually touched our hands together?
But it would be rude not to take her hand when it was offered, right? Everything I’d been told at church about talking with someone like her warred with my desire to be polite and get along.
And maybe I was kidding myself just a little. Maybe under all of that there was another desire I didn’t want to admit to.
Finally I took her hand. Sparks danced where we touched and then ran up my arm, but I managed to somehow keep it under control.
Barely.
“I’m Chloe,” I said, again barely above a whisper.
Sarah opened her mouth and looked like she was about to say something else, but a clap at the front of the room pulled our attention to the stage. A guy who looked to be in his fifties stood there looking over all of us with his eyes sparkling in the lights shining down on the stage.
It looked like class was about to start. I wasn’t sure if I should be glad for the interruption or disappointed, but I sat back and settled in for my first official drama class lesson.
6
Sarah
