The Inside of Out (15 page)

“Nobody knows that but us,” Raina said slowly. “And I think maybe it should stay that way.”

Everyone's eyes were on me, unsurprised, expectant. They'd talked about this in advance.

I swallowed dry. “What are you saying?”

“In the parlance of our people,” Jack said brightly, like a museum tour guide, “I believe it's called ‘
staying in the closet
.'”

“Our homecoming is a month away,” Raina said, pointedly ignoring him. “After that, you can be as straight as you want. But we can't let anything derail this. If this event doesn't
happen or it's embarrassing in any way, we're a laughingstock. A
headache.
They'll use it as an excuse to bury us again. You get that, right?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Good.” Raina stared at me, unblinking. “Because it sure didn't seem like you got it when you stood up on a chair at the school board meeting.”

Sophie cleared her throat. “This is Daisy's decision. If she doesn't feel comfortable . . .”

“It's kind of the group's decision,” Sean argued, turning to me with an apologetic smile. “I mean, it impacts us all.”

“Why don't we vote?” Kyle rolled back as we all swiveled to look at him. “That's, um, how we settle things in my family. Or . . . yeah.”

“Not a bad idea.” Raina knocked on the desk. “I vote for Daisy to stay in the closet. Sean?”

“Closet,” he said, pointing at me with both hands. “It's just acting, remember? You were so good in
Carousel
!”

Liar.

“Sophie?” Raina nodded down the table.

She sighed. “I vote for the truth. I think forcing her to hide who she is kind of misses the point of what we're doing here.”

Raina didn't react. “Jack?”

“Closet.”

I blinked at Jack, surprised.

“I lie every time I step into my house.” He shrugged. “It's easier than you'd think.”

His smile didn't reach his eyes, making me suspect otherwise.

“Kyle?” Raina went on.

“Truth,” Kyle voted. “
Honestas ante honores
.” He glanced up, eyes wide, like he hadn't meant to say that out loud. “Sorry. Last period was Latin. It means, um—”

“‘Honesty before glory,'” Raina translated. Then her head snapped up. “That's two for truth, three for the closet. We need a majority, Daisy. How do you vote?”

I stared at the Alliance, saw the hope in their eyes, registered the weight of the fact that they'd even given me a vote at this table.

“Closet,” I said.

Raina stood as the bell rang.

“That's settled then. For the next thirty days, Daisy is a lesbian.”

Friday morning, September the twenty-third, at 7:52 a.m., Hannah picked me up for school. Natalie was not in attendance.

“This article,” she said as we pulled out of my neighborhood. “It's everywhere.”

“Pretty nutso, huh?” I rolled down the car window, enjoying the first hint of crispness in the air. “A bunch of reporters have been calling me. We haven't decided how to handle the press yet, though.”

“We?” She raised her eyebrows, smirking. “Have you adopted the royal ‘we' now that you're FOTI?”

I stared at her. “FOTI?”

“Famous on the Internet.” She blinked. “I just made it up.”

“Ooh, I
like
it. But no, ‘we' is the Alliance. Oh! That reminds me!” I pressed my lips together as she glanced over. “I'm kind of playing gay for the next month?”

“You—wha—ga—” Hannah sputtered. “
Daisy
.”

She closed her eyes. It was a good thing we were at a stoplight.

“Just until the event is done.”

“Did it start with that interview?” Hannah's lips were set
tight, her eyes now locked ahead, and I had the sense that she'd been waiting a very long time to ask me this. “Did you lie on purpose, or—?”

“Nonono.” I grabbed her shoulder until she glanced at me again. “I was totally up-front, Hannah, I swear. Adam knew I was straight, but he didn't mention it in the article for whatever reason.
But
now that it's out there—”

“‘Adam'?” She made air quotes with one hand, steering with the other.

“That's his name. The reporter. The first one, the college guy?”

“Yeah, I know, I just didn't realize you were on an Adam-name basis with him.”

I shrugged. “Why wouldn't I be?”

She sighed, turning the corner. “I don't know why you would or wouldn't be. I don't know
anything
about your life right now.”

Whose fault is that?
I thought, but said, “I'm not asking
you
to lie. I know you're not wired that way.”

“No.” She clenched her jaw. “I'm not.”

“But if anybody asks between then and now, just tell them my sexuality is a private matter and you refuse to discuss my personal life.”

“‘Them' being?”

“Other kids? The press?”

Hannah let out a squawk. “Don't you think this has gotten a little out of hand?”

“Pshhh,” I scoffed. “Picture a hand. Like a giant hand.”

She cracked a smile. “Okay?”

“This event is in it.”

Hannah shook her head, laughing. “If you say so.”

But then we turned into the school parking lot.

“This is
in hand
?” she said, while I could only muster a low, long, “Hooooollllyyy . . .”

In the narrow strip of public land between the road and the arts wing, a conga line of protesters stood waving posters. A printed sign along the edge of the crowd read “FREE SPEECH ZONE,” and across the street, a pair of police cars and three news vans were parked, observing the crowd from a careful distance. And it
was
a crowd—way bigger than any protest group my mom had ever assembled. Unless . . .

I leaped from the car, grinning, but turned back to see Hannah hesitating in the driver's seat. “What's the matter?”

She had her fist pressed to her mouth.

“Oh, don't worry!” I waved my hand. “These are my mom's people. They're harmless.”

Hannah shook her head. “I don't think so, Daisy.”

My eyes traveled to where she was pointing. The biggest sign of the bunch, held high by a beaming old man in a brown, too-large suit, read “GOD HATES FAGS.”

“No
.
”

They looked like hippies. But all the signs said horrible things. Nonsensical things, like “Stay strong Palmetto against the QUEER FORCES OF SATAN.” It turned out that's what they were all cheerfully chanting, a tiny girl with pigtail braids the loudest of the bunch. It would have been comical if weren't so horrifying.

Several of them wore T-shirts bearing the words “Christian
Values Coalition.” I wasn't the most religious person in the world, but I had a hunch they were the kinds of “Christians” who only read the same two sections of the Bible over and over, ignoring all those pesky parts about love and tolerance.

Hannah tugged me backward. “I'm not walking through that.”

“It's the way in,” I said, squeezing her hand. “We can walk wherever we want. If we hike all the way around the soccer field, the terrorists will have won.”

She seemed to accept that, but clung on as we stepped forward. When we drew alongside them, Hannah held her breath, her eyes blinking hard as if to blind herself. I stared boldly back.

I shouldn't have. The little girl's eyes darted to our intertwined hands and a second later, the crowd ignited, red-faced and vicious, no longer in any way confusable with my mother's brand of protesters.

“Abomination!” one woman yelled, spitting in our direction, missing by a few inches. Across the street, I saw the doors to the police car open and two officers get out.

“Daisy,” Hannah said as the crowd's roar grew too chaotic to make out individual words. I turned to see tears streaming down her cheeks.

Someone, another student, stepped in front of us and snapped a picture with her phone.

“Almost there,” I said. “Two more steps.”

And then, thank God, we'd reached the steps of the school and then the doors, and the noise of those hateful bastards was silenced by the ordinary hum of morning in the lobby.
Hannah wriggled her hand free of mine and hugged it like it hurt. I hadn't realized I'd been holding it so tight.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said. “Everything's fine.”

She was shuddering like she had a fever. But before I could reach out a hand to calm her, she'd already hurried down the hall to homeroom.

At 8:15 a.m., a senior on the cheerleading squad with the Twitter handle @tmtpiratewench tweeted the photo she took, tagging it #GoDaisy. I'd later learn that this was the same girl who last week called me a ho-bag.

At 12:25 p.m., I made my way to the cafeteria. A quick glance at the stoop showed me where I wouldn't be sitting today. Natalie was pacing the steps, listening to whatever Hannah was saying with a thunderous glare. Watching her viciously rip her red hair out of and back into its ponytail, I decided now was probably not the best time to butt in.

And besides, wonder of wonders, right there at a table smack dab in the middle of the room, if it wasn't the Palmetto High School LGBTQIA Alliance sitting together for once, their heads ducked over Jack's shining tablet like it held the meaning of life. Kyle waved me over.

“The photo of you,” he explained. “People are sharing it kind of a lot.”

The cheerleader who'd snapped the shot had done a surprisingly expert job of framing it. On the left, the mob of supposedly Christian protesters, screaming hate. And on the
right, two girls walking past, heads ducked, hands linked.

According to the tablet screen, someone in Florida had just retweeted it with the caption: “Gay advocate Daisy Beaumont-Smith with her girlfriend.”

No wonder Natalie was mad.
Heh.

“It's all over the Internet,” Raina piped up. “And #GoDaisy is trending.”

“Trending who?” I grabbed the tablet and shook it. “This is a Twitter thing? Show me, show me!”

Jack gently pried the iPad back and opened a bunch of sites. People on Reddit were planning counter-protests for as early as this afternoon. The Facebook group Jack created for LGBTQ Palmetto alumni had, nonsensically, grown to over 100,000 members.

“We're on the
Guardian
website,” he said, opening another tab. “This must be the guy from your voicemail!” He turned to Sophie. “You were right. Not hot.”

“Anything in Spain?” Sean asked, leaning over me to see the screen. “I wonder if Diego's seen this.”

“Probably.” Jack let out a diabolic laugh. “We've gone global, kids. We're huge!”

I glanced up, then quickly back down. It wasn't just online we were huge. Around our table, a group of fifty or more students had just gathered to steal peeks at Jack's tablet—and at me.

“Bathroom break.” I scrambled out of my chair, bracing myself for another angry mob. But as the crowd parted, a few people patted me on the back, murmuring their support.

A week ago, I was the girl who got homecoming canceled.
And now, greeting me in the hallway, the guy I suspected of throwing a Starbucks cup at me was offering me a high five. Why? Because I was FOTI?

“Go Daisy!” said a group of choir members in unison, popping their heads out of the auditorium.
Seriously
? I fled to the restroom and didn't come out until the bell had rung. I wasn't up for eating with an audience. And besides, I'd lost my appetite.

At 1:35 p.m., my stomach growled so loudly during lab that everyone turned to look at me. Everyone but Hannah.

At 2:32 p.m., I was sitting in French, glancing over the quiz I'd just gotten back, upon which Prof Hélène had scribbled
German, Spanish, Latin
next to my wrong answers, when a noise like the ocean roared from outside. We all glanced at the windows, seeing nothing but the eighth-period gym class jogging around the football field.

“What the hell,” the boy next to me muttered.

“En français!”
Prof Hélène admonished, but the bell rang before we could figure out the translation.

The sound from outside grew louder and louder, mingling with excited shouts of students moving between classes, until I reached my history room on the other side of the building, where everyone, teacher included, stood with their faces cluttering the north-facing windows, riveted by the scene outside.

Almost
everyone. Madison sat in her usual seat in the back with prim serenity, as if she alone were above our petty
politics. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me, but she was only five-one. I could take her.