Free Fan Art by Sarah Tregay

said it was fluff.”
    “Fluff?” Challis asks. “It’s not fluff.”
    “That’s what I said, but he wouldn’t budge.”
    “He? You mean Michael, not DeMarco, right?” Her jaw pops open. “Michael-who-won’t-come-to-the-GSA-because-some-jerk-called-him-queer?”
    Crap.
    “Tell Michael I don’t do fluff!”
    I want to tell her to tell him herself, but I don’t. “Hedidn’t want to lose funding.”
    Challis barks out a laugh. “Funding? More like censorship!”
    I nod.
    She must see my face just then, because she stops and says, “Thanks, Jamie. I know you did what you could.”
    I manage a smile.
    And, awkwardly, Challis gives me a hug.
    After school I still feel awful. I feel like I let Challis down, and for some reason, she’s someone I didn’t want to let down. Maybe because I put her on a pedestal, admired her because she was everything I couldn’t be—out at school and in the GSA. I couldn’t imagine how much guts that would take.
    I have tons of friends at school, and honestly, it’s a calculated move. I never say no to anyone who offers me friendship, from football players to band geeks, cheerleaders to brainiacs. Even though I was voted most likely to have the most Facebook friends, I still feel like I don’t fit in: I’m one of the guys, but I’m not into girls; I’d hang out with girls, but I don’t understand them.
    My mom says that’s why students created GSAs—that they are a place to fit in, no matter what brand of different you are. But walking in through that door—room 302—at 3:30 on a Thursday would be like getting a tattoo on my forehead. It wouldn’t ever wash off. Mylittle secret would be out in the world and I could never take it back.
    Challis’s comic is under my skin, itching like poison ivy. If I told my mom, she’d call Dr. Taylor or Principal Chambers and make a big fuss. And the last thing I need is a big gay fuss.
    I have half a thought to talk to Mason about it because he’s logical with a clear-cut sense of right and wrong, and he’d see that censoring Challis’s story was wrong. But talking to him about this might lead to talking to him about other things—like me.
    I call the one person I can talk to.
    We meet in the park a few blocks from her house. “Challis understands,” Eden tells me, twisting the chains of her swing to face me.
    “I guess,” I agree. “But it’s the principle of it all. Her comic should be in Gumshoe .”
    “It should be. But that isn’t how the world works. We should be able to get married in the state where we live.”
    It takes me a minute to catch up. She didn’t mean “we” as in us, but “we” as in all same-sex couples. I adjust my backside in the pinch-y rubber swing.
    “You’ll see it more when you’re out,” she says. “Or is that why you’re in the closet?”
    “I’m out,” I say defensively.
    Her eyebrows go up.
    “To my mom,” I admit, and dig the toes of mysneakers into the wood chips.
    “Cool,” she says. “No wonder she looked at me cross-eyed.”
    “Yeah. I don’t have a lot of friends who are girls.”
    “Aw.” Eden reaches over and grabs the chain of my swing. We twist to face each other.
    “That makes me feel special.”
    I smile as a wave of shyness passes over me.
    “You’re, like, totally cute, Jamie. And you haven’t had any girlfriends?”
    My cheeks warm at the compliment. “One,” I say. “In kindergarten. Before I knew girls had cooties.”
    “Before you knew what gay was?” Eden prompts.
    “Yeah,” I say. “I didn’t figure that out until junior high.”
    “I hated junior high.”
    I nod sympathetically, and then tell her about the day that I began to think that I might be gay. “In eighth grade,” I begin, “we had a substitute teacher for a whole week. He was barely out of college—like, twenty-two, tops. Mr. Middlebrook. The girls went into insta-flirt mode the second he walked into the room—I swear the wind from their batting eyelashes blew his