Marie had left with assurances that Kate Monroe was flirting with me and that I should make a move on her. I was still skeptical. I moved downstairs to the dining room slash house office with my textbooks in an attempt to get my mind off Kate. And now my sister—who, it turned out, had stayed after school for one of her clubs—was standing in front of me looking aggravated, which did not seem fair, since she was the one bothering me as I tried to get some homework done.
"There's been talk."
Forgetting about Kate Monroe for the first time in about ten hours, I felt my chest start to hurt as the panic began to roll over me. This was what I had been afraid of when I’d decided to be honest about who I really was. I much preferred anonymity to notoriety.
I swallowed. "What kind of talk?" I managed to push through the closing of my throat as the panic spread.
“That Madison Philanuzzi is going to beat me for student class representative.”
“What?” I responded, confusion quickly replacing the panic.
Eddy sighed in frustration. She did that a lot. Her no-nonsense vibe was pretty accurately conveyed through her bob haircut and daily sweater vest/skirt ensembles.
“I have a pretty good coalition going, but there are a couple of people who are up for grabs. Madison Philanuzzi mentions her two moms every time we are in biology with those two girls who are always posting petitions about male privilege and gender discrimination in pronoun usage. Do you know how hard it is to bring up my lesbian sister in conversation when you don’t do anything?”
I opened my mouth to respond, even though I didn’t really know how to answer, but she didn’t stop there.
“You had that little bit of personality bump when you came out, but even that was underwhelming. Why couldn’t you have announced you were gay in some big, lasting way that people would still be talking about months later?” The glare she was giving me was so intense, her eyebrows almost met in the middle. But again, no pause for me to answer. “You don’t even post anything on Facebook or Twitter. Are you even a real person?”
After a few seconds of silence, I realized that she was waiting for a response. “Yes, I am a real person,” I began before she cut me off again.
“And now no one remembers that you’re a lesbian, and Madison Philanuzzi will be student rep, and my four-year high school plan will be ruined. And that means my four-year college plan needs to be modified, which throws my twenty-year plan off. So basically you’ve destroyed my life.”
I rolled my eyes at her dramatics. My sister was incredibly smart and driven, but she was still a teenage girl.
I turned in my chair so that I could look at her face to face. “So to recap: you insult me a couple of different ways, then make it sound like you want to help me, but really you just want something for yourself. Do I have that about right?”
“Yes, exactly!” she yelled, raising her arms in triumph. My attempt at shaming her went right over her head. I wondered if whatever ailment she had was in her psychology book.
Eddy continued. “I tried to be tactful, but obviously it didn’t work. Next time, I’ll just cut all the nice stuff and go straight to what I really mean. You are ruining my life and you have to fix it. Be more of a lesbian.”
My mind went directly to Kate Monroe and her smiles earlier in the day. Me wanting to kiss her would definitely be considered more lesbian, but no way was I telling my sister about any of that. About how I could tell it was Kate Monroe in the hallways just by getting a glimpse of her wavy blonde hair. Or that every time she crossed her legs in history class, sitting just two rows in front of me, I wanted to build a temple to worship those perfectly muscled calves. I especially couldn't tell my sister about how I dreamed about Kate Monroe at night, always in her short cheerleader skirt and nothing else. I was taking that last one to the grave with me.
So instead of telling my sister just how much of a lesbian I really was, I deflected. “I’m not changing myself because you want to win an election. What you see is what you get with me. And I don’t need to make a big production of who I am. I’m the same Haley, it’s just that now everyone knows I like girls.”
Eddy stared at me for a few seconds. “I don’t think you’re as comfortable being out as you say you are. I saw your face when I said that there’s been talk. You looked like you were going to have a heart attack. You thought I was saying that people were talking about you, didn’t you?”
Behind that selfish, calculating personality of my sister’s, there was also a perceptiveness that I was now silently cursing. “I’m fine with being out.”
And I was. It was good not feeling like I was lying to everyone. I’d never dated guys or pretended to like them, so I’d never actually lied about being a lesbian, but inside I’d felt guilty letting people assume I was straight.
“You don’t act like you’re fine sometimes. You haven’t joined the Gay Straight Alliance, even though I know for a fact they invited you because I’m the secretary and I know everything that goes on with that group. You also avoid Jenny Jeffries like she’s looking to murder you.”
In addition to tormenting me, Jenny Jeffries had also been the only out lesbian in school before I’d shuffled my way out of the closet. My school had had a few gay guys throughout the years, but Jenny had been the sole lesbian. Even before she’d said she was gay, everyone had just assumed she was. She always kept her hair short, played on a traveling softball team, and signed up for the auto mechanic class any time it was offered as an elective. Stereotypes exist for a reason.
Sarah, who had been in college with an actual girlfriend, had seemed so much more exotic and interesting than Jenny did, though she had been just as equally out. It probably had to do with the fact that Jenny had always been really mean to me. Ever since elementary school, she had called me names, told people that I smelled bad, poked at me when a teacher wasn’t looking, and anything else she could think of—short of physical abuse—to show how much she didn’t like me. It had always been more annoying than anything else. And to be honest, I had wondered if she'd been so bad toward me for all these years because she was secretly in love with me. Like the old saying that a boy pulls the pigtails of the girl because he really likes her. Jenny didn’t bother anyone else but me.
So I had avoided her since my English class confession, notwithstanding the occasional hallway staredown, but only because I didn’t know what I would do if she confessed her love to me one day. Actually, I knew exactly what I would do: run away, as fast and as far as my legs could carry me.
“Jenny Jeffries has been awful to me for years. Of course I’m going to avoid her,” I said to Eddy. “I'm not entirely sure she won't murder me.”
“So it has nothing to do with her being the only other lesbian at school, then?” she responded with a bit of disbelief in her voice.
I took a second to think about it. Maybe I did avoid Jenny because she was the only other lesbian. I didn't want people to assume that we would be friends just because we were the only two out females in school. I wasn’t going to magically forget all the aggravation she’d caused me over the years just because we now shared one single thing in common. Being known as a lesbian did not mean I was required to hang out with, or date, Jenny. I was all for solidarity, but Jenny Jeffries and I would never be friends.
“Whatever,” Eddy said, any empathy she had shown vanishing with a shrug. “All I’m saying is that I have a certain reputation to uphold. I’m a winner. And losing an election would make me a loser and ruin that reputation. So get your stuff together and start wearing flannel or dating or anything that reminds people that you're a lesbian and that a vote for me would be a vote for diversity and inclusion and all that other stuff.”
Before I could again point out the ridiculousness of her reasoning, she had left the room, probably going upstairs to plot more political intrigue. Madison Philanuzzi had no idea what she was in for by going against my sister, who in twenty years would either be super successful or bring shame to us all when she went down in flames.
If she knew that there was a possibility, even a slight, almost nonexistent one, that Kate Monroe wanted to go out with me, she would do everything in her diabolical fifteen-year-old power to get us together. If we were dating, it would be the biggest news in the school. Everyone would definitely remember that I was a lesbian.
So it was a good thing that Kate Monroe and I would never be a couple. My drama-free life would come to a swift end with all the attention that dating the most popular girl in school would cause. I shuddered just thinking about being the subject of so much gossip. Just another mark against that entire crazy fantasy.
But I could not get rid of that little part of me that thought all the kissing and cuddling would be totally awesome.