Waylon—

By now I guess you’ve heard that I dropped out of prom court. I was only in it for you, honestly, and I’d rather people vote for Hannah instead of me, anyway. Before I quit, I talked to Principal A and got the OK for us to paint a wall in the 300s hall. I marked it with an X. I can still help you with the project, though. All you have to do is ask.

—Tucker

Ask Tucker Watson for anything? Fat chance.

The real problem is that I need something from Kyle, and in order to talk to Kyle, I have to talk to Kyle.

I stay behind after choir is dismissed, shooing both Clem and Hannah ahead of me, and catch him on the way out the door. “I think we should talk,” I tell him.

Alex looks to Kyle, who nods.

Kyle leads me back into the choir room, which is empty since Ms. Jennings left for lunch.

We sit on the bleachers, and at the same time, we both blurt, “I’m sorry.”

“Let me go first,” I say.

“No, no, please. Let me,” Kyle says. “I need to say something.”

I nod. “Go ahead.”

“I . . . when you said all those things you said the other day, my first instinct was that you were wrong and that you couldn’t see past yourself. So that’s why I apologized, because I figured I would say sorry and it would be over and we could graduate in two weeks and move on. But then everything you said started to really fester inside of me, you know? It’s hard for me to even think about what my life was like when I was still . . . bigger. And I’m starting to think that maybe that has less to do with how I looked and more to do with how I felt about it.”

He takes a deep breath and shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear his thoughts. “What I’m saying is I guess I have a lot more things to sort through than I realized, and what you said brought up a lot of things that I’d pushed to the side . . . things that I thought I was magically cured of after I lost weight.”

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “That’s a lot to have to deal with.”

“No, no,” he says quickly. “Those are my issues to work out. I’m the one who’s sorry for the way I’ve made you feel and that this has apparently been going on for so long.”

“Well, that’s a little bit my fault too. I could have said something instead of being all passive-aggressive.”

He laughs. “I do thrive on clear and direct communication.”

“Yeah. Not exactly a strong suit of mine. I’m doing amateur night, by the way. Or at least I’m going to attempt to, so thanks.”

“Yes!” Kyle clenches both his fists. “Me and Alex are totally going. We can say we knew you when.”

I take a deep breath. “But Kyle?”

“Yeah?”

“I need a favor.”

The Prism Club is bigger than I’d imagined. There are thirty-six members in total. Clem’s jaw drops when Hannah and I walk in, signing our names to the clipboard.

“Welcome,” Kyle says with a smile. “We have one—no, two!—new members with us today.”

You better believe I coerced Hannah into coming to this with me.

Behind Kyle, a few ninth graders who I vaguely recognize give each other brief excited glances before feigning indifference, and beside them Corey from choir gives me a small wave.

Even though I say I’m not one for organized groups, it hits me that I’ve never actually put myself out there enough to be considered part of a group and I feel a little regretful that my beef with Kyle held me back from this one. Except it wasn’t just Kyle. It was me and my fears and anxieties, too, that I wouldn’t be the right kind of gay and that I would be alienated by the one group where I should belong.

I feel like a real tool for only showing up here when I need something, but—“I need your help with something,” I say, and look to Kyle for his express approval before I continue.

He bows his head solemnly. “Anything we can do for our once and future queen.”

I laugh. “Okay, well, it’s not that serious. Actually, nothing is ever that serious. But this is time-sensitive. Like, tomorrow time-sensitive.”

“Well, consider our schedules cleared,” says Alex.

Thirty-One

When I filled everyone in Prism in on my plan, they were completely on board. We would paint the wall outside of the cafeteria in the 300s hall. Corey had the idea that we should paint the wall the colors of the Pride flag.

Dad helped me source the paint and supplies, so on Thursday, after school, I showed up prepared.

Thirteen members of Prism, including Clem, Alex, Hannah, and Kyle, volunteered to come help me, which was way more than I expected on such short notice.

Like Tucker promised in his note, he marked the wall with an X.

“You’re a genius!” Kyle calls to me as I carry the paint down the hallway with Clem and Hannah.

“Well, yes, of course,” I say. “But why exactly?”

He gently knocks his fist against the wall. “For priming this thing last night.”

“Um, that wasn’t me.”

Clem and Hannah look at each other knowingly.

“My heart is not the gates of heaven or something,” I say to them. “He can’t get back in with a prayer and a few good deeds. It’s going to take a lot more than paint primer.”

“Everything has a price,” Hannah says ominously as she pulls her hair back into a floppy bun.

“I don’t want to think about it anymore,” I say. “Can we get to work?”

The three of us set our buckets of paint down, and Alex is already hard at work taping off the wall for each color.

On top of a plastic tarp, we lay out small rollers and brushes alongside trays of paint. As people file in, Kyle assigns jobs. Some of us do edges while others take on the work of filling in the larger spaces. The wall Tucker secured for us is so big, I almost second-guess that we got approval for the whole thing. But Tucker did prime all of it, so I guess this is right.

Around six o’clock, Mom shows up with take-out boxes full of tacos.

“Wow,” she says. “You can’t miss this wall. That’s for sure.”

“Is it cheesy?” I ask her. Originally, I assumed we’d paint the wall white, or maybe even yellow if I was feeling a little wild, but the rainbow really screams we’re here and we’re queer! I’ve spent so long wearing fugly cargo shorts and boring polos that rainbows are really speaking to me lately. It’s more than a flag or a symbol to me now. It’s a message. One that says I’m unafraid.

She leans against my shoulder and pulls me to her. “You say cheesy like it’s a bad thing.”

“So it’s cheesy.” I let out a full-body groan.

“It’s earnest,” she says. “Not everything has to be sarcastic or edgy. It’s okay to be vulnerable and sincere.”

It is viciously unfair how easy it is for parents to read their kids sometimes. There are days when I think my mom is clueless. Like she’s from another planet. But then she goes and says the kind of thing that strikes me right down to the core, reminding me that she’s not so unaware after all.

“Vulnerable-shmulnerable,” I say. “I’m working on it.” I say it as a joke, but the thing is, I don’t think I’m joking. Maybe it’s why finding out Tucker was going to prom with Melissa cut so deep. Before him, the only person I’d ever let in close enough to hurt me was Clem . . . and maybe Lucas, too. Until this whole nomination thing, I would have laughed in the face of anyone who told me I was even going to prom. The fact that I’d be so invested in who Tucker Watson was taking as a date? Perhaps the funniest joke of all time.