The Inside of Out (9 page)

“We can share him, you know,” I said as she pulled the car to the next window. “My dad's pretty low-maintenance. And he's good at pep talks if you tell him exactly what to say.”

A smile fluttered on her lips. Didn't quite land. “I appreciate the offer, but I've sort of leaned into the whole ‘fatherless child' thing. Or how did I put it?” She turned to me, eyes brighter
than they should have been. We'd had this conversation before. Every time, I hoped it would be different.

“‘Half-foundling,'” I supplied.

“Right!” She put her hand to her forehead. “Abandoned, discarded, cast away.”

The Cluck-Cluck window slid open. She broke pose and smiled like a normal person as she paid.

“No word from Austria, then?” I asked quietly, as if that would make the subject less delicate.

“I assume someone has heard something from Austria lately,” Hannah said. “Just not, you know . . . me.”

She shrugged.

I shouldn't have asked. If Hannah had spoken to her dad, her very next call would have been to me. I was only depressing her by bringing him up. While she turned to grab our food, I racked my brain for a subject change. But she beat me to the punch.

“So what's this Alliance business?” She grinned, her teeth waggling a chicken finger like a cigar. “And how may I be of assistance?”

“Oh! Right!” I took the bag of shreddie fries she offered. “I've got this thing tomorrow night. The school board's having an open meeting, so I'm gonna show up and ask them to change the rule banning same-sex dates at dances. Hopefully by homecoming. We'll see.”

Hannah stared at me. “The
school board
. The governing body for the entire school district.”

“That's what ‘school board' means, yes.” The huge truck behind us honked. We were blocking the drive-thru.

“And . . .” She shook her head. “
You're
doing this.”

“Yeah. You might wanna . . .” I motioned forward while glancing back. “That guy's getting a little road-ragey.”

She turned her head and drove, eyes on the road but wide, like she was steering us through a forest of lollipops and unicorns. It was hitting her in waves, a series of incredulous blinks. I smile-chomped my way through a handful of shreddies, waiting for her to congratulate or thank me, express wonderment at my dedication and bravery. But what she said was:

“Natalie's mom's on the school board.”

Natalie. Amazing how the Beck could claim shotgun even when she wasn't riding in the car.

The news wasn't that surprising. I seemed to remember Cindy Beck going hog wild with parental responsibilities when we were little kids. When she was snack mom, she'd bring in petit fours and pinwheel sandwiches. Natalie's birthday parties were the biggest productions you'd ever seen, Mrs. Beck front and center as the gracious, lovely hostess. Once, they'd thrown me a party at the tearoom of a fancy hotel. All the girls from my class had come, and Natalie and I both wore Alice costumes with little White Rabbit purses, and why was I even thinking about this?

I locked my grin, remembering my promise to the Alliance. “Maybe Natalie could get involved? She could talk to her mom for us—pave the way?”

“Maybe.” Hannah sounded doubtful. “I think they have a pretty complicated . . . yeah.”

She pressed her lips together and I pretended not to notice. We never used to have glitches like this in our conversations.
There was an object between us, a speed bump, desperately in need of bulldozing.

“How are things with the old ball and chain?” I asked.

“She'll be back tomorrow. Just a stomach bug.”

Odd response.

“She's really sick?” I raised my eyebrows. “Gotta admit, I thought she was faking.”

Hannah slammed the brakes as the light ahead turned yellow.

“Hang. On.” I pried the seat belt off my collarbone, gaping at her. “What was
that
? Did you just
lie
to me?”

“I—I—” Hannah sputtered. “It's not exactly—”

“So this is a thing we're doing now?” I forced a fry into my mouth. “Casual lying? Or has this been going on all along? Is your name really Hannah? Are you and your mom in witness protection?”

Hannah's cheeks grew redder with every blink. “It's just, Nat's having a hard enough time and she asked me specifically not to talk about it with you. Which . . . is . . . what I'm doing right now and I should really stop talking.”

“
Specifically?
” I hacked a cough. “‘Anybody else is fine, but don't talk to Daisy'?”

Hannah let out a slow breath. “You two have this awkward history, and as much as it would be
nice
to help you work through it, I really don't think I should get in the middle.”

“Um, Hannah? You are the definition of in the middle.”

She stopped the car. We'd arrived at my house. And the shreddie fries were gone.

“Changing the subject,” she announced, taking off her seat
belt so she could face me. “You're lobbying the school board for gay rights.”

For
your
rights,
I mentally corrected. She'd been out a full week now, but she still said “gay rights” the same way she'd say “the European Union.”

“I am,” I said, sitting up straighter. “On Wednesday.”

“This is seriously your next hobby, then. Protesting.”

“What?” I squinted at her, wondering how this conversation had gotten so off track so quickly. “I wouldn't call it a
hobby,
no, and it's not protesting exactly. It's . . .”

As I searched for the right euphemism for “grand declaration of love,” she sighed and said, “It's the Stede Bonnet opera all over again.”

And I reeled like she'd slapped me.

The opera. She knew I didn't like talking about it. Or thinking about it.

Well, here it was. Early freshman year, in the throes of my longing for Sean Bentley, I'd told the music teacher, the drama teacher, and Sean himself that I was going to write a rock opera about Stede Bonnet, Charleston's most notorious pirate, and that Sean was going to star in it. I'd scribbled some lyrics to show them, and outlined a whole first act—the juicy part, in which Stede transforms from Barbadian landowner to Gentleman Pirate.

The school got a little excited. Found a slot for it in the production schedule. Made an announcement in the school paper. And the local paper. With a photo of me, and the caption: “Young Composer Spotlights Charleston's Rich History.”

A month before auditions, I was forced to admit to
everyone that I didn't actually know the first thing about musical composition. At the time, I hadn't felt all that guilty. If these so-called experts wanted to rally around an untested freshman with a half-baked idea for a musical, it was their funeral. But now, every time I passed the Stede Bonnet plaque in downtown Charleston, I felt his ghost staring back at me, whispering
“J'accuse . . .”

“Or the banjo Christmas carol thing.” Hannah was still talking. “Or the
mural
. Daisy, you promised that guy you'd finish it over the summer and you only painted one whale. Are you just planning to bail on that completely? I mean, what's the deal? Why don't you just change it to something easier to paint? Not everything has to be—”

“This isn't any of those,” I snapped, blocking out her last set of questions. “It's show up and give a speech. I'm more than capable of that.”

“Of course you are,” she said. “You're capable of anything.”

I let out a breath, finally hearing the response I'd wanted all along. But then her eyes drifted, fixing on the branches of the old oak tree stretching across my front yard.

“If there's anybody in the world who can pull this off, it's you.” She scrunched her forehead, straining for words. “I'm just . . . I guess I'm not sure it
should
be you?” Before I could analyze that, she refastened her seat belt. “Ugh, don't listen to me, I'm . . . I don't even know what's going on with me lately. Just—text me the details.”

My hand paused on the car door. “You'll come?”

“Of course.” When she smiled, her eyes went blank. “Can't wait.”

I was making popcorn to bring up to Dad, who'd just restarted
Everwander II: The Glimmering,
when Mom blocked my way to the stove with a piece of notebook paper.

“When were you going to tell me about this?”

Her voice was dangerously quiet. I was forced to take the page from her to figure out what she was even talking about.

Aha.
My list of arguments to put before the school board. On the top, I'd written in curling calligraphy:

School Board Open Meeting: Wednesday 7 p.m.

“This?” I said. “Um. Probably right beforehand, so you could drive me.”

Her foot was tapping furiously on the kitchen tile. But when I looked up, it wasn't anger flashing in Mom's eyes. It was pride. Mounting, steaming pride, frothing into maniacal glee.

“I can help, you know!” She gripped my arm so hard it hurt. “You've made a good start, sweetie, but four and five need rewording, and you should flesh out the legal aspect—hit them where it hurts.”

“Obviously!” I snatched the page back. “I'm not done yet.”

This was a lie—I was one hundred percent planning to walk into the school board meeting with this document as my only armor. But as I retreated upstairs, I realized that I hadn't even considered a legal aspect. Was the school's policy against the law? If so, this would be even easier than I'd imagined.

When I shut myself in my room to “prep” alone, Mom took the hint and backed off, which for her meant poking her head in every half hour to ask if I wanted a snack. She also couldn't resist sending email after email from her iPhone with links to “articles you might find useful!” I let them sit unread. I was plenty prepared. Cramming would only elevate my nerves, throw me off my game.

But after dinner, after homework, just as I was brushing my teeth, it hit me.

What this would mean for Hannah. For the Alliance. For every gay student who would follow us at Palmetto. Not just gay students,
any
student who wanted to speak his or her mind and be heard by those in power. Basically: Every. Student. Ever.

Tomorrow, I would either become the heroic junior who forged a new path of empowerment for generations to follow or I would be Crazy Daisy, that psycho who showed up unprepared to a public forum, was laughed out of the room, and forgotten forever.

The toothbrush fell from my mouth. I attacked my inbox.

At four a.m., I was still working my way through Mom's articles, scribbling notes and assembling them into an argument. Sometime between then and sunrise, I fell asleep on my keyboard, my cheek typing 1``1111`1 until my alarm woke me
up and I had a speech of 475 pages, only two of which made any sense.

Without the benefit of nine-plus hours of sleep, the morning was rough and the rest of the day a queasy slog. At lunch, Raina tried to flag me, but I feigned blindness and ducked outside to read through my speech with Hannah. I'd expected a few notes, but she just stared ahead at the faculty parking lot while I recited it, then smiled tightly and said, “Sounds good. Fingers crossed.”

Maybe she's nervous too,
I thought.
This is
her
fight, after all. I'm just her champion.

I was way too tired to perk her up. “Fingers crossed” would have to suffice.

Back home, with two hours to go until the big showdown, I tried to take a nap, but my brain would not. Shut. Up.

So instead, I downed like seven Coke Zeros in quick succession until each individual thought blurred, becoming a nice, low hum of white noise, perfect for nodding off. Unfortunately, that only happened after I was sitting next to Mom in the Veggiemobile on our way to the school board meeting in—I pinched my leg to stay awake—nineteen minutes and thirty-six seconds. Thirty-five. Thirty-four . . .

When we entered the municipal hall, a wide space with a dais in the front and folding chairs lined up in five neat rows, I thought,
Maybe this isn't actually that big a deal. They probably won't show.

But there they were, clumped along the right side of the
room, eyes fixed on the doorway as if they'd been waiting hours for me to appear. Kyle “I'm a Freshman” Hornsby sat flanked by two cheery adults who had to be his parents. One row up, Raina, Jack, and Sean craned their necks to greet them.

I wondered whether their families knew where they were tonight. It was hard to imagine Raina having parents at all. I pictured her living in an apartment by herself, doing SAT prep amid ultra-modern chrome furniture while sipping a nice glass of Cabernet.

Next to Sean sat Sophie, and beside her,
another
Sophie, thirty years older—thick braid, peasant shirt, milkmaid skin and everything, leaning over both of them to talk to Raina.

“Ellen!” Mom waved wildly.

Future Sophie turned and, the caffeine fuzz clearing from my bleary eyes, I recognized her as one of Mom's community farm ladies, pinching soil samples in the middle of that vacant lot. She sure cleaned up nicely. It took twenty seconds for her voice and my mother's to mingle, crescendo-ing over the hum of the gathering crowd with exclamations of pride over their two activist daughters, and weren't we
so adorable?

Sophie closed her eyes, drawing a calming breath. I smiled in commiseration—but didn't walk over. There they were, the true, legitimate members of the Alliance, counting on me to make a difference. Ignoring the eager glint in their eyes, I gave a quick wave and continued down the aisle.

Don't think about them right now,
I told myself.
Don't think about all the past generations of oppressed students, either. Or all the students to come. So many students. Millions. Gazillions. Oh my God—STOP. Just. Think. About. Hannah.

The front row was my best option. I wouldn't have to shout to be heard by the school board. And I could pretend I was alone. Focused. An island.

I spun to scan the growing crowd. Hannah wasn't there.

She'll come. She promised.

I sat and laced my clammy fingers together, peering up at the long table in the front of the room, and behind it, the empty row of microphoned seats staring back at me. Stars danced in front of my eyes and I realized I seemed to have forgotten the basic mechanics of breathing.

To make matters worse, Hannah's words from yesterday were suddenly echoing in my head.
I'm not sure it should be you.

Damn right it shouldn't be me,
I thought. Okay, Sophie was petrified of speaking out and Raina didn't want to do it in the first place and Kyle was new, but . . . why hadn't I tried to convince
Sean
to do this? He was an actory actor-person, for Christ's sake, used to giving big bombastic speeches. Also? He was gay! What was I
doing?

Stop.
I gripped the edge of my chair.
This
is
my fight. I'm part of the quilt bag. I'm asexual. I'm asexual. I'm—

“Fancy seeing you here.”

I recognized the voice over my shoulder. It didn't compute. It was male. Northern. It didn't belong here.

But here he was, College Adam, he of the shattered MacBook, shouldering his computer bag to join me in the front row. Uninvited. Smiling so unguardedly it made my heart stutter.

“I'm working on my Southern accent,” he said, apropos of
nothing. This kid was seriously strange, and seriously cute with his Clark Kent glasses, and possibly actually stalking me. My perplexed stare must have lingered a beat too long, because his grin dropped away. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

Right?
I thought, but said, “I
go
to this school.” Which was a much better reason than any he could come up with.

“Oh . . . kay?” He dropped himself right next to me and pulled out a notepad and pen.

Even turned away, I could feel him smirking. He probably thought I was some civics groupie, obsessed with local government meetings.

“Actually,” I piped up. “I'm here to speak—”

A pocket door in the side of the municipal hall slid open and my mouth clamped shut. Six beige, middle-aged people stepped through, waving to the crowd as if they were expecting a standing ovation instead of awkward sudden silence. As they settled into their name-plated seats behind the table, I took one last anxious glance backward, hoping in vain for a glimpse of the one person who could remind me why I'd thought this was a good idea.

Up on the dais, a bald man in a crinkled suit coughed into his microphone and called the meeting to order. My hands started to shake, so I sat on them. Then, remembering my notes, I yanked them from my pocket and uncreased them against my knee.

In the school board seat directly in front of me, Natalie Beck's platinum-blond mother, Cindy, was adjusting the seam of her peach cardigan so that it ran straight down her side.
When she looked up, her eyes met mine—and was I imagining it, or was there a sparkle in them? Had Natalie spoken to her? Encouraged, I attempted a wave, but as I did, Mrs. Beck blinked over my shoulder like she hadn't noticed me after all.

The suited man smiled blearily at the crowd.

“Today's meeting is an open session, so as always, we'll open the floor to questions and concerns prior to conducting scheduled business.”

He scanned the room.

My brain went “Stand up,” but my legs went “Nope!” falling asleep in instant pins and needles.
Traitors.
In the time it took for me to bang life into them, an elderly gentleman to my left was already up and talking.

“I know there's budget cuts coming up. Y'all aren't planning to cut wood shop, are you? That's my main question.”

A mousy school board member at the far edge of the table leaned into her microphone to answer, but the old man cut her off.

“Because if you're gonna get rid of something, why not
music
? Or . . . those classes where they're sketching flowerpots? They're picking up real skills in wood shop and making real things and that's all I came here to say.”

He sat down and the school board members glanced at one another in confusion, until the suited man who appeared to be their spokesman leaned into his microphone.

“Thank you for your input, sir, and we'll certainly take your thoughts into consideration as we look at the budget for next year. Anyone else?”

I hesitated. Again.

“I have a question about those dead hedges outside Palmetto High School,” said a woman in the back of the room. “And could I suggest rhododendrons as a replacement?”

I'll stand up after she's done talking about plants,
I told myself. After my hands stopped shaking. I just needed to gather my nerves and bludgeon them into submission.

Or maybe Hannah's right. Maybe this is just like every other overreaching idea I've ever had. Maybe I should stay quiet and go home without humiliating myself for once in my goddamn life.

There was a silence, and I realized the man in the suit had asked the room, one last time, for any more comments or questions. I felt eyes on me.

Adam's. His brow was furrowed, his eyes dancing between my nervously clutched speech and my face with something like encouragement.

“If there's no further—”

I stood. “I have a matter to bring before the school board!”