Dating Sarah Cooper (18 page)

I stood in silence for a moment, thinking. I couldn’t envision a scenario where dropping out made everything right again. LAMBDA would have a lot of questions. And besides… I kind of wanted to win. “Yes. Let’s stay in. It’s the right thing to do.”

“You wanna kick Christine’s ass,” she replied, a knowing look in her eyes.

“That too.”

Winter Formal wasn’t as big as Prom, but it was pretty damn close. People grouped up and packed into limos all over Flowery Branch, and at eight o’clock sharp, we all entered a gym full of refreshments, balloons, and blaring stereos. A stage sat at one end of the gym, and a lone mic rested front and center.

Sarah and I went with a few of the LAMBDA kids in her car, with the promise to meet Dina, Josephine, and the others at the dance. As we arrived, Jake pointed to the stage and grinned. “That’s where your crowning moment will take place, ladies.”

“If we win,” I reminded him.

“Are you kidding? You’ll win,” Hattie cut in, patting us both on the back. “Enjoy your night; I’m making Jake dance.”

“Oh, God,” Jake mumbled, but let Hattie pull him away nonetheless. Sarah and I shared a grin, and she guided me toward the refreshments.

“You look so pretty,” she told me. “I love that dress on you. Blue is so your color.”

“You literally dragged me to the mall and picked it out for me,” I reminded her. “But you did a good job.”

She grinned at me and then turned away to pour us two cups of punch, and I eyed her while she was distracted. She was gorgeous. Her hair was up in a bun with small ringlets hanging down to frame her face, and her dress was a sea foam color that worked perfectly with her skin tone. I hadn’t been able to keep from staring at her back in her car.

“Here you go,” she said, handing me my drink. “I don’t know if it’s been spiked, but I’m kind of hoping it has. I could use the liquid courage tonight.”

“God.” I looked around at our classmates out on the dance floor and grimaced. “They could all hate us by the end of the night.”

“Not all of them. Just the ones with any respect for gay people.”

“But remember: It’s okay to fake it if you actually end up gay in the end,” I joked.

“Right? Good luck to us.”

“More like RIP our social lives,” I corrected, and she touched the lip of her plastic cup to mine. We both took a long drink, and then Sarah set her cup down, took mine away, and then trashed it and led me to the dance floor. I pulled a face. “I don’t dance.”

“Liar,” she retorted, and pulled me closer.

“Hey! Katie and Sarah!” That was Connor, naturally. He barged into our dance, half-drunk already, and was soon joined by an apologetic Graham and Bonnie and a laughing Dina and Josephine.

“Where’s Hannah?” Sarah asked them.

“Flirting, of course,” Dina replied. “She said she’d find us later. So, unfortunately, it seems we have an odd number here. Let’s see… if Sarah and Katie pair off, and then one of us unlucky girls dances with Connor-”

“Hey!”

“-and another gets Graham… we still have an extra girl who needs a boy to pair off with.”

“We’ll switch off,” Graham suggested. “I’ll start with-”

“Actually,” Bonnie cut in, drawing our attention to her, “…I’m gay. So I think I might find a girl to go dance with.” She forced a smile, waved goodbye, and then she was gone. The rest of us stood in the center of the dance floor, stunned into silence. I exchanged a look with Connor and realized we were thinking the same thing: Our lunch table was quite the statistical anomaly.

“Well,” Dina said at last, recovering. “Um… I didn’t see that coming, but since Bonnie’s busy, looks like this’ll work out. I call Graham.” She grabbed his hand before Josephine could argue, and, grudgingly, Josephine settled in front of Connor, who smirked as he took her hand. I looked back to Sarah, who seemed distracted.

“Bonnie, though. Who would’ve thought?” she asked.

I let out a chuckle. “Come here. We don’t have much time left.”

And we didn’t. Half an hour into the dance, Principal Crenshaw called for silence, and stood in the center of the stage, the mic in front of him. “Could all of our nominees for King and Queen please come to the stage, please.”

“Ready for this?” Sarah whispered to me.

“Not really,” I murmured, but gripped her hand and followed her nonetheless.

Chapter Fifteen

S
o here we were. The official winners of our school’s Winter Formal crowns. And there Sarah was, explaining everything. A cold chill had settled over the crowd and I hadn’t stopped feeling queasy since she’d started. I was almost thankful now that Sarah’s speech seemed to be coming to an end.

“I can’t express how truly sorry I am. How sorry
we
are. And… I get that the fact that I’m in love with her now doesn’t change what my intentions were when this started. I know for some of you guys that may not be enough. And if that’s the case, I understand. But…” she trailed off, and I heard her let out a shaky breath. “I have learned
so much
from this experience, and I want the members of LAMBDA especially to know that. I understand what it’s like for you to go to this school every day and feel like you’re out of place, like you don’t belong. I wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone, and you don’t deserve it. Any of it. And for that reason, and because I fell in love, I wouldn’t change any of it. I’d do it all over again, and I mean that in the most sincerest of ways, I swear. I just hope you guys can all forgive us for lying. I’m sorry. Katie’s sorry.”

She stepped back from the microphone to total silence, and moved to hand it to our stunned principal. But I rushed forward abruptly and took it instead with a prompt, “Wait.”

Confused, Sarah handed me the microphone instead. I turned and faced the crowd, and immediately felt my cheeks heating up. I took a deep breath. “Um… hi. Look, I, um…” I trailed off, sucked in another breath, and forced myself to relax. “Okay, I don’t want to get preachy here, because we all know it’s lame and we shut down as soon as we hear it. Like, yes, we tried to do something good here.”

I paused. “But… I think that the biggest thing I learned from all of this is that people are people. When I joined LAMBDA, I had some expectations about what the people there would be like. We all stereotype, you know? But that wasn’t the case with them, and it’s usually not the case with anyone else. And, I mean, the people I eat lunch with every day? Three months ago I thought I couldn’t tell them anything. I thought every conversation we had would always be shallow. But I was wrong. They surprised me. People can surprise you. The kid you helped when he was getting picked on could wind up being one of your best friends. Even if he
is
gay. We’re all human.”

I glanced to Sarah as I continued, and she shot me an encouraging smile. “I love a girl. That’s one part of me. I’m sorry that I hurt people by lying about my relationship with Sarah. But, like her, I’m not sorry I did it. I think we could all learn a lot about each other by spending three months in the shoes of someone gay. Thanks.”

I turned away and shoved the microphone into Crenshaw’s hands, then hissed to Sarah, “Okay, let’s get out of here before we get killed.”

“One second,” she whispered back, then took her crown off and crossed the stage to Christine, who looked less than enthused by our little speeches. “Here’s your dumb crown,” Sarah snapped, shoving it points-up into her arms.

“Ow!” Christine exclaimed, glaring at her. Sarah ignored her and spun to face me, then took my hand and led me back down to the gym floor.

We wound our way through the murmuring crowd, all of whom didn’t take their eyes off of us, and although I was eager to just leave, there was one thing I wanted to do more.

Sarah read my mind. We ducked in between clusters of people and made our way toward the left side of the gym, where, at last, we stopped in front of Jake. Sarah let go of my hand, and he and I made eye contact for what felt like minutes. I couldn’t read his expression. At last, I forced myself to speak.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should’ve been honest with you. I wish I had. I wish I’d just told you everything and… and maybe things could’ve been different. Maybe you’d have hated me, but maybe you wouldn’t have and I could’ve gotten advice from you about what I was feeling, because I really was confused for a while. You’re… you’re kind of one of my best friends now, and I really don’t want to lose that. I don’t wanna lose any of you guys.”

I fell silent, and winced as his eyes coldly searched mine. He opened his mouth, and I prepared for the worst.

“So… that first kiss in Room 405 is kind of hilarious in retrospect, now,” he murmured. I look up at him, not daring to smile, and the corners of his mouth quirked upward. “Isn’t it?”

“I saw Jesus for the first time that day,” Sarah replied before I could, a matching smile on her lips. “Did not expect that at all, that’s for sure.”

“You two are definitely assholes,” Jake told us. But then he shrugged his shoulders. “But you’re gay assholes, and you’re going to do a lot of activism to make it up to us, so I can forgive you.”

“Thank you,” I mouthed, and let him pull me in for a hug.

Two Weeks Later:

“This seat taken?”

I looked up from my spot on the bench on my front porch to see Sarah staring down at me. She was wearing a thin coat and shorts, and I marveled at her.

“You’re insane. It’s freezing!”

“Just as insane as you. Who reads outside in this weather? It’s supposed to snow this week.”

“I’ve only been out here for a couple of minutes,” I explained, setting my book aside. “I’m waiting for Austin to come over.”

“Austin?” Sarah looked taken aback. “Should I be jealous? Who
else
have you been meeting behind my back over Winter Break?”

“Oh, just the usual. Hattie, Dina, Josephine… Jessa invited me over for a threesome with Violet, but I told her I was all booked up.”

“Wait, Jessa and Violet are dating?”

“No, I just threw two names out that made sense. You know, though, a little birdy told me Jake’s got something going on with a guy.”

“No way! Who?”

“Can’t say. I’ll just tell you that it’s someone you know quite well.”

“Henry?”

“Nope. This guy’s not in LAMBDA.”

“Well, given that no one really talks to us anymore other than the LAMBDA kids and our lunch group, that narrows it down to Graham and Connor.”

“It would seem that way,” I agreed, wiggling my eyebrows at her.

“Okay, now I know you’re messing with me. Just tell me who it really is, seriously.”

“Nope.”

“Okay, well… at least tell me why Austin’s coming over.”

“I’m meeting his new girlfriend. He and I are trying this weird thing called friendship, and I hear that’s what friends do, so.”

“Well, you could use more friends,” she joked, “given that most of the school doesn’t like us anymore.”

“True,” I admitted. The homophobic kids hated us anyway, the really gay-friendly kids mostly looked down on us now, and the few who’d taken pity on us were already friends with us in the first place. The rest simply didn’t care enough to strike up a friendship with us anymore than they had before. We’d kept all of our friends from before the Winter Formal drama, which was what we’d really hoped for, although Bonnie’d been a little understandably cold. It turns out we were the reason she’d been inspired to come out, so learning that we’d been living a lie for several months before genuinely dating had rubbed her the wrong way. But things were okay. We’d survive.

“I hear Brett Larson got a girl pregnant,” I said, just making conversation. “Lesbian bonus: We can’t do that.”

Sarah burst into laughter next to me and recited, “Ninety-nine lesbian problems but a pregnancy ain’t one. Nice.”

“Did you just ‘nice’ your own joke?”

“Totally.”

“…Nice.”

She laughed again and shifted closer, resting her head on my shoulder. Her breath was visible on her next exhale, and I followed it as it floated through the air toward the front door. “So does your book have a happy ending?” she asked me. “The one you’re reading?”

“That would require me to finish it first. But I doubt it; it’s a crime thriller about a serial killer.”

“No lesbians?”

“Of course there are lesbians. Every piece of media I consume now must have lesbians. This is how lesbianism works.”

“So do they wind up together?”

“Well, one of them’s the killer’s first victim, so signs point to no.”

She let out another visible breath, this time in the form of a quiet sigh.

“God dammit.”

End