But I take off. I push past the onlookers, because I’m sure everyone will know it’s true once they see us together. And while I’d never think it was an insult to call someone a lesbian, this word isn’t informing people of who we’re attracted to—it’s a hateful accusation.
I keep my head down while I walk to first period so I won’t have to watch anyone react to seeing me. Hatred, confusion, sympathy—I don’t want to see any of it. I don’t want people to look at me any differently than they already do, though it’s obviously too late for that.
I make it to the English hall bathroom before my stomach turns over. Afterward, I sit on the cold tile floor of the bathroom. There’s no way I’m going to class today. Not one of them.
The first text from Iris comes in as I’m walking to the infirmary: What the fuck happened to our door???
I ignore it because I don’t know what to say.
I lie down on a cot in the infirmary, but the nurse makes me leave my phone with her, so I can’t check to see if Iris texts again. I try to sleep, but every time I close my eyes I think I hear my phone buzzing. And I can’t stop seeing that word on our door.
I’m starving when the day is over, but by now surely everyone has seen or heard about what happened. The dining hall will be a shitshow, so I hurry to the library, keeping my earbuds shoved firmly into my ears, my eyes cast downward anytime I pass someone.
I wait until I’ve wedged myself into the stacks where anyone rarely goes, near the Latin texts, to check my phone again. I have thirty new messages. Most are from Iris, but some are from the few people I’ve grown to like while I’m here.
Iris’s are the worst to read, though.
You’ve SEEN the door, right??
Suz where are you?
Well chem lab was hell
I really hate this and I can’t believe you’re ignoring me
I’m not pissed at you, ok? Just please come back to our room
When I get back, she’s perched on the edge of her bed, facing the door. Her cheeks are flushed and I imagine they’ve been that way since this morning; her skin is pale and blushes easily and often. Her blond, curly hair is swept back into a French braid. Some pieces have started to work their way loose, and it makes me feel bad to think of her sitting here this morning, braiding her hair for the day and not knowing what was on the other side of the door.
“Someone scrubbed it off,” I say, tossing my backpack onto my desk. My first instinct had been to lock the door, but we both know that’s no longer necessary.
“Yeah, but you can still see it.” Her voice is thin. “Not as well, but the letters are just faded, not gone. They’ll have to paint over it.”
I nod, staring down at the floor.
“Where have you been?” she asks, and the question isn’t accusatory. It’s more… sad than anything else. “I went to every single class and I didn’t see you once.”
“I got sick.” I swallow, still not making eye contact. “Did people say anything to you?”
“Of course they did, Suzette. Everyone in our dorm has seen it. Every time I came back to the room to get something, someone was here staring. Some people I’ve never even talked to were asking me about us. About you.”
She doesn’t sound angry. Mostly frustrated.
“I’m sorry,” I practically whisper. I should have been here with her. I know that.
“I can’t believe I let them win,” she mumbles. “I should have told everyone I was gay when I first got here.” She pauses, then: “Did you know I was president of my middle school’s gay-straight alliance? A couple of people told me they came out to their parents because I was so brave, so open. What would they think if they could see me now?”
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
A couple of times Iris said we should walk out of our room holding hands, or kiss each other in the common room, and I’d agree in the moment. It was easier to think things would be all right when we were safely behind our locked door. When I was lying with my head against her shoulder and her arm was draped over my side, her fingertips tracing invisible patterns along the slope of my hip. I could pretend we were in California, in Los Angeles, where no one I knew cared who I was attracted to.
But as soon as we were out in the hall, under the watchful eyes of my classmates, my bravery vanished. All I wanted was to blend in as much as possible.
“Well, you don’t have to worry,” Iris says briskly as she stands up from her bed. “Nobody thinks you’re a real dyke. I told them it was all me.”
“You what?” I look straight at her for the first time since I’ve walked in, but now her back is to me. She’s rearranging things on her already spotless desk, and I guess she doesn’t want to look at me when she says this part.
“Lily and Bianca cornered me at lunch. Asked if it was true.” She shakes her head and laughs a bit, but it’s more like a bark—sharp and quick and unhappy. “They probably had something to do with it, or at least know for sure who did it. But I knew whatever I told them would get back to everyone else, so I said…”
The air is so quiet I can hear her breathing across the room. Like the many times I’ve listened to her when we were in our separate beds, counting her breaths and wanting to be near enough to feel them on my skin.
“I said I came on to you when we were drunk a couple of times and that it was all me. Everything.” She clears her throat. “So it’s all good, okay? Nobody thinks that about you.”
That. As if girls liking girls is a disease. But it’s how the girls on our floor think of it, and Iris is smart enough to know that nothing she says will change their minds.
“I don’t care if they do,” I say, but my voice is distant enough that we both know that statement is false.
The truth is that I already feel so on guard, I’m not sure I’m up for being put under a new lens to be examined. There’s the fact that I’m one of less than a handful of black kids at the entire school, which is something I’m reminded of much more often than I think necessary. And while I don’t feel great about the fact that I haven’t so much as removed my Magen David from the bottom of my jewelry box since I’ve been here, the necklace that I’ve worn nearly every day since Lionel gave it to me, I know it’s easier than explaining my background to the girls in our dorm. They’re still trying to understand how my mother and Saul can make a family like ours without being married; they could never fathom my converting to the religion of a man who can’t legally call himself my stepfather. They like clear-cut boxes, and I don’t fit the one they know to be Jewish.
Iris turns and we look at each other, finally, her light brown eyes connecting with my own. “Do you… Did you ever feel like I was taking advantage of you?”
Her voice is so small that I want to go over and wrap my arms around her and kiss her until the pain goes away. But I know nothing will be the same between us now. I knew that the second I decided to walk away this morning.
“Never,” I say firmly. “Not once.”
“But we always drank. I know it made you more comfortable, and maybe that wasn’t right… to be with you like that.”