I lean forward.
“You okay?” I whisper. Normally people would be craning their necks to see a Sasha-Tabitha showdown, but three hundred sets of eyes are glued to the stage. Thursday assembly has never been this captivating. Years of rape-prevention improv shows and organic farming experts and tired local folk bands have programmed us to tune out Thursday assemblies, and I think we are all stunned to be sitting in this room that is suddenly charged with actual feeling instead of just drowning in rhetoric or pretension.
“Yeah,” Sasha says. She wipes her face with her long sleeves. Little pieces of fluffy angora cling to her face after. The downside of beautiful lavender expensive fluffy wool sweaters, right?
“Sorry I did that. It wasn’t to, like, make it worse for you—” I start, but Sasha cuts me off with an adamant head shake.
“Did you tell Zed you were doing that?” she says. She looks so scared for a girl who once had everything I wanted.
“I recorded it,” I say. I click onto LBC and post the recording. It’s quick and painless. It’s a kind of magic, getting my life back so quickly. Sasha closes her eyes for a few moments longer than a blink. “You could go up and talk, too,” I say. I can’t read if she’s mad or sad or relieved or what. She shakes her head and gives me a half smile that could mean anything. Turns out, I don’t know that much about Sasha Cotton at all.
I like her more than I did even five minutes earlier, and certainly a hell of a lot more than I did two months ago. For everyone else in here, the brave thing is to get up there and cry and expose something soft and vulnerable and hidden. But for Sasha Cotton the bravest thing to do is to sit right where she is, and not be the crying, fragile, perfect disaster that she’s always been.
Ninety minutes pass, but Headmaster Brownser doesn’t make a move to get us herded into class.
Two hours pass.
Two and a half.
I can’t count the number of people who have spoken or the number of people waiting to speak. Once in a while someone says something so powerful we all start applauding, sometimes even standing up and cheering. When a senior boy talks about drunk driving and running over a cat and never telling anyone and worrying about it for a year and a half, we applaud. Solemnly, of course. When a really pretty freshman girl admits to having considered suicide, we applaud the fact that she didn’t do it. When a cute dork from the junior class tells a crazy popular girl from his grade that he is totally in love with her, we applaud, even though we know she probably doesn’t love him back.
“This won’t be a shock,” Elise says, when she has made it to the front of the line. I try to make eye contact with her now, but I’m sure she can’t see me. Or that’s what I tell myself. “But I did everything I could to be like everyone else. And I just couldn’t hack it. I’ve been avoiding saying these words for five years, because the second I say them in front of anyone but my . . . um . . . my best friend, Tabby, they’ll become unchangeably real. And I know some of you will make fun of me. I know even after today some of you will say totally horrible things or ask me to make out with your girlfriend or call me a dyke, or whatever. But I might as well say it since I think you know anyway, and since this is probably the only moment I’ll ever have to come forward with this much . . . uh . . . power. So. Thanks Tabby, for, you know, creating the moment. The moment when I can just fucking say it. I LIKE GIRLS. I have a girlfriend. An awesome one. Okay, everyone? I’m gay.”
People clap. People stand up. So many people that Elise has to bow her head and smile and then wave at us all to sit down.
I clap the hardest. I stand the longest.
Three hours have passed since I first got onstage. I’ve cried so much my eyes hurt, and if I look around, every single other person in the auditorium looks the way I feel. The whole assembly has taken on this weirdly casual air: people aren’t returning to their seats—they are sitting on the floor, sitting on one another’s laps, crowding in the aisles to be as close as possible to their best friends.
When a techie chick is onstage, Elise asks the girl next to me to let her switch seats, and the exchange is all smiles and gracious politeness. We are survivors of an attack or a natural disaster or a great tragedy. We are in it together, all of a sudden. And it’s the sort of wonderful, warm thing that you just know won’t last, but you somehow convince yourself to appreciate anyway.
Elise gives me an awkward sideways hug in our seats.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I’m sorry this hug is so awkward,” she says. “I’ll give you a real one later.”