The Inside of Out (33 page)

“No.”

A forkful of zucchini-wrapped grouper hovered a half inch from my mouth, forcing me to set it down in shock. “That's it? Just ‘no'?”

Natalie had no problem taking a bite of her meal. “How about ‘hell no'? That clear enough for you?”

Hannah eyed us nervously, her takeout still untouched on her lap.

I leaned over a pile of throw pillows to grab the remote and pause the TV. “
Miss
Beck. Have I not adequately described to you how important it is that we have a spokesperson right now?”

“And have I not adequately described just how very in the closet I am right now?” She took another giant bite of food as if to throw another obstacle in the way of this conversation. “I'm taking baby steps,” she added through a full mouth. “Showing up to homecoming is a baby step. Going on national news to talk about how gay I am constitutes
throwing myself off a cliff
.”

“I get that,” I said, using my kindest voice. “And I would never want you to throw yourself off a cliff.”

Natalie lobbed a pillow at me, knocking the fork out of my hand. She giggled so maniacally that Hannah let out a giant snort through a mouth full of food.

“Okay,” I groaned. “I tried. I'll tell them I tried.”

“We'll be there early to volunteer,” Hannah said.

“Yeah, about that,” I started.

“Yes, you can have a ride.”

Natalie shouted “Shotgun!” a millisecond before me.

“Gah!” I fell backward.

Hannah grabbed the remote. But before she pressed
PLAY
, she grinned. “This is fun.”

“This is weird, is what this is,” Natalie said, echoing what I was thinking. “
Weirdly
fun.”

“This is what I pictured,” Hannah added. “Except in like a castle where we're staying because we got lost backpacking in France in the
middle of the night
but the owner was really nice and gave us our own wing for the week. And there's a vineyard. With horses.”

“A horse vineyard,” Natalie said drily. “Yes. We should definitely do that.”

“Spring break, maybe?” I suggested.

Natalie and I exchanged a veiled smile before our eyes darted away again. Fun might take a little longer for us. But seeing her happy made it worth the effort.

“So, hey.” Since we were already in Hannah-weird territory, I turned to the two of them and asked, as casually as possible, “Which of you is better with scissors?”

Saturday morning, October the twenty-second, as Hannah
followed signs to the “America's Homecoming Staff Only” parking lot, a beautiful sight greeted us.

Protesters. Mobs of them. Hundreds, carrying hateful signs, chanting sick, offensive, cheerful rhymes.

Sigh. But hey—at least we were still relevant!

The press siege had begun in earnest too. Their vans formed a satellite-dish-festooned wall just outside the blue police barricades penning in the tent-covered field. Reporters hovered outside their vans, holding microphones in one hand and paper coffee cups in the other, chatting while scanning the parking lot for somebody to accost.

If they saw me, they'd stampede. Luckily . . .

“You're in disguise!”

At the sound of Adam's voice, I couldn't stop myself from doing a wobbling pirouette to greet him. He grinned and loped across the field, hoisting a Starbucks bag.

“This is the guy?” Natalie muttered. Hannah shushed her. “Surprisingly hot.”

“Your hair,” he said, motioning to his own head. “It's—”

“Blond,” I offered. “Light brown, depending on how picky you are. Hannah cut it for me. It was time for the blue to go.”

“Nice job,” Adam said to Hannah. She smiled at her loafers in reply. “Smart too. They won't recognize you without the stripe.”

“
You
recognized me.”

He shrugged. “Of course.”

“Awwww,” Natalie said.

My hand flattened, slap-ready, and she danced away, grinning.

Adam glanced between us. “I was just at Starbucks, so I grabbed you your usual—fruity soda, cookie?”

“That's so sweet,” I said, taking the bag from him. “Literally!”

He chuckled, pointing at me.

Natalie made a gagging noise.

“I think they're waiting for us,” Hannah said over her, nodding to the volunteers gathering outside the main gate.

“I'll catch up in a sec,” I said, waving them on.

Adam rocked back onto his sneakered heels.

“So . . .” My heart started to thud so hard I wondered if he could hear it through my Bertie and the Bots hoodie. Here went nothing. “I don't know if you were thinking of coming to the dance tonight, but I have an extra ticket. For a date. So it's yours if you want it.”

His hands started tapping against his pockets. “Oh.”

“I mean, I know you're over the whole high school thing, but it's technically an
all-ages
event.”

“Yeah, of course.” He glanced over his shoulder as if looking for the best path to run screaming, but I kept. On. Talking.

“We've got a DJ and a local band, I think. Not exactly the biggest band in the world, but oh well. Can't have it all, right?”

Whatever horrible thing I'd just said had sent his glasses careening off his face. He caught them as they were falling and shoved them crookedly back.

“Yeah, I don't know,” he said, wincing. “I'll have to file my homecoming story tonight. My last one. Crazy.”

“Crazy,” I echoed, sinking steadily into the mud. “Yeah. You should do that. Just . . . let me know if you want an interview
with anybody. I'm not the spokesperson anymore, so it won't be me!” I laughed for no reason. “But I'll see who I can get for you.”

Adam looked regretful as I waved and raced away across the field. He must have meant to let me down more easily than that, but hey, at least I knew now, right? At least I wouldn't spend the whole day pining after somebody who I'd so completely, ridiculously, disastrously misread the entire time I'd known him.

It was a good thing. I appreciated his timing. I could focus on the day ahead, instead of daydreaming about the dance. The dance wasn't for me, anyway. It was for my friends. This whole event was about their romances, not mine. Which was convenient, because I was clearly going to die alone in a forest cabin where I would live out my life with only deer and songbirds for company. That actually sounded kind of awesome, so whatever, I'd be
fine
.

Raina pulled me aside as soon as I got to the clutch of gathered volunteers waiting for Sean and Sophie to hand out assignments. Before she could ask, I shook my head. “She said no.”

“Just like that? Just no?” Raina glared at Natalie's head.

“It was a stretch, Raina. She's not out to her family yet, and her mom is—”

“Captain of the Hate Squad, yes.”

I raised my eyebrows. Had Raina just made a joke?

She sighed and brushed her hands off on her jeans—by far the most casual thing I'd ever seen her wear. “Okay. We'll
deal. I'll tell Cal that we'll all do interviews and pull people from the crowd to do sound bites. The important thing is the event itself, right?”

At my nod, we broke and joined the group, where Sean was looking dazed and Sophie was asking each person who walked up, “What would you enjoy working on this morning?” to which every single person was answering, “Parade floats.”

Hannah raised her hand and ducked through the crowd. “I'm not sure if it's my place, but if this is helpful . . .” She handed Sophie a printed-out list of tasks, along with several sign-in slots under each category, from Ticket Collection to Vendor Management to Football Game Coordination. “Daisy told me a little bit about what needs to be done and I . . . well, I like to organize things.”

“You're a
genius,
” Sean breathed, snatching it out of her hand and brandishing it like a flag. “Come! Sign up! Who's got a pen?”

“I already signed myself up to take photos.” Hannah pointed to the bottom of the list. “Hopefully that's okay? Obviously
anybody
can take photos, on their phones or if they brought cameras or . . . yeah, I'm gonna stop talking now.”

Natalie kissed her neck. “You're an excellent
visual
communicator, my dear.”

Hannah glowed. “Thank you.”

I watched her dig through her bag and pull out a camera. An unfamiliar one.

Her eyes flew up to meet mine. “It's . . . um . . .”

“A thirty-five millimeter,” I said. “Nice.”

“I got it for her. As a homecoming present. A
real
camera.” Natalie popped gum into her mouth, grinning as she chomped, like a hyena gnawing on a zebra leg.

She offered me some. I snatched it out of her hand.

“Don't be mad,” Hannah said.

“I'm not mad!” I chewed my gum. Chewed and chewed. “There is
no
getting mad today.”

Natalie pouted.

I whapped her arm. “I'll get mad at you tomorrow.”

“You'd better.”

I was faux-growling over my shoulder at Natalie, scribbling my name onto the list under “Misc,” when my mom's farm group ladies turned up wearing matching T-shirts saying: “We're proud of our gay children!”

A few feet away, Sophie's face went sickly green when she spotted them. It struck me that she was probably the only gay child they had between them, so the shirts should really have read: “We're proud of Sophie!” I was glad for her sake that they didn't.

A familiar face, pale and bewildered, was bobbing between all the women as they approached us. My mouth fell open.

“Dad?”

I reached out to steady his elbow, but he perked up at the sight of me.

“I'm here to support!” He shot me a shaky thumbs-up. “Plus your mom needed a date to the dance.”

I snickered at the thought of the two of them dancing romantically to the dulcet tones of the Rhythm Squad. But then my fake smile became a real one. When was the last time my
parents had gone out together, or danced together, or even spent a Saturday together, uninterrupted by video games?

Mom rested her head on his shoulder, poking him in the side. Even though it was heartwarming and everything, I thanked them both and darted away before they could ask to tag along with me for the rest of the day.

My first “misc” job was to set up trash cans throughout the venue, which turned out to be the perfect job. I got to wander the lot, marveling at its transformation.

There were multicolored tents everywhere—the biggest strung with fairy lights for the dance—aisles upon aisles of sponsor-branded food stands, booths selling America's Homecoming T-shirts and distributing free rainbow flags and buttons, and off to one side, a fully lined gridiron where, sure enough, teams were already lining up wearing competing fuchsia and silver uniforms. Our fifty-plus volunteers seemed like a skeleton crew as they milled through the sprawling grounds, checking off Hannah's “To Do” boxes. As I shook an industrial-strength plastic bag into the last trash can on my map, I spotted a laughing group led by Diego and Sean putting the final touches on astonishingly ornate floats—pirate ships and fortresses, a submarine float, a giant peacock—like Mardi Gras, with even more sparkles.

Just as I was wondering whether Diego ever got roped into building a pseudo bonfire, I wandered into the center of the lot—and stopped in abject wonder. Lovelorn as he was, Sean hadn't exaggerated one bit about his boyfriend's talents. Our bonfire was incredible, a colossal, swirling pyramid of gauzy orange and yellow cloth that caught the light and shone so
brightly, you could swear it was emitting heat. It wasn't just gorgeous. It was
homecoming
.

Around noon—one hour from opening our gates and seven hours until the dance—I was hanging streamers above the unnecessarily large bandstand of the dance tent with Hannah and Natalie, when we all heard the same sound and paused to listen. Across the street at Palmetto, above the chatter of press and police and gathering crowds, the thrumming of a marching band.

“JV football game,” Natalie said. She turned her head toward the school, eyes closed as if breathing in the soundtrack of her old life. If things had been different, she would have been Palmetto's homecoming queen. “I wonder if the Pirates won against Lewiston yesterday.”

She was thinking about QB. Hannah quieted, probably with the same realization, but went back to pinning up streamers. She knew it wasn't a fair comparison, right? Natalie could never love QB the way she loved Hannah. Even so, she missed him. You could see it in her eyes.

The tent was positively mildewed with nostalgia. I felt myself backing away to the fresher air of the exit and the homemade gridiron beyond.

“I'll go find out who won,” I said.

Hannah, Natalie, and I might have been the only Palmetto students who didn't attend the big homecoming game last night—Alliance included. Raina would know the final score. But when I found her by the newly erected bleachers, she was crouched beside a middle-aged man gripping his ankle in agony.