Free Bad Idea by Erica Yang

fulfilled Emmy’s
worst nightmare, acting as if their relationship hadn’t even
counted because Emmy was a girl. It didn’t matter that they’d been
together for over a year, or that they had said they loved each
other. It was as if all that had been erased. Within a week, Nico
Mathis had been meeting Iris’s parents as her boyfriend. Emmy had
never gotten any sort of official acknowledgement, even though
everyone had known she and Iris were girlfriends.
    She broke off a piece of the clay by accident
and snapped back to the present with a groan.
    “Was that on purpose?” Daisy asked from
alarmingly close to Emmy’s shoulder. “Is that part of your, um,
method?”
    Emmy turned, glaring. She sort of wanted to
cry, and she really didn’t want an audience for that. “What are you
doing here, Mejia? Mrs. Figueroa’s in her office. Shouldn’t you be,
I don’t know, trolling the mall with Jo, looking for dumb college
boys willing to buy you piña coladas?”
    Daisy stumbled back as if she’d been slapped.
She said something, way too quietly to be heard above Penelope’s
howling rage. Emmy almost felt bad for being mean, but why
should she? Daisy had never said two words to her before. She
hadn’t given Emmy any particular reason to be nice, and lately,
Emmy hadn’t felt like being nice to anyone.
    Emmy turned back to her project. That
snapped-off clay messed up her whole plan. She’d either have to
repair it or change the proportions of the entire object. Neither
option sounded appealing. She wanted to grab the piece and drop it
on the floor.
    She could hear her dad’s encouraging voice in
her head, assuring her that her work was awesome and would totally
get her into SCAD, RISD, or whatever art school she wanted to
attend. But she’d already been waitlisted at RISD, and it didn’t
matter anymore if she got into SCAD because she didn’t need to
worry about going to school close to Iris if Iris was with Nico
Mathis, did she? Emmy wanted to forget everything and just move to
LA. She had a cousin out there who was also a lesbian and had a
bunch of queer friends. Emmy knew there must be queer women at SCAD
and RISD, too, but she was so sick of being the only visible one at
her school that she just wanted to jump straight into her cousin’s
big, interconnected group.
    “Actually,” Daisy shouted, “I wanted to talk
to you .” She’d chosen a moment between songs, and her words
echoed through the studio. The darkness of Daisy’s cheeks
deepened.
    Emmy couldn’t help thinking of Iris’s
awkwardness the first few times they’d talked. It had seemed like
everything Emmy did made her blush. Argh. What would it take
to get that girl out of her head?
    “So talk,” Emmy growled.
    “Can you…would you mind…can you turn down the
music?” Daisy wove her fingers together in front of her body, then
separated her hands and wove them together a different way. “Or
maybe we could go somewhere for a while? It’s almost
lunchtime.”
    “I’ve got lunch already.”
    “Please. Look, I know we don’t really know
each other, but I really need to talk to you.”
    Oh. Emmy knew what this was about.
She’d lost track of the number of times girls had come to her with questions . It was like they thought being out meant she was
a certified counselor, not that she didn’t know how to be anything
else.
    “I don’t really have time to reassure you
that you’re not a lesbian for not wanting to have sex with your
boyfriend yet, no matter what he tells you. I’m working on
something.”
    Daisy flinched again. Emmy felt another curl
of conscience in the back of her head, but she didn’t want to let it affect her. She put on the sort of fierce expression she
imagined Penelope would have had all the time in the 70s, before
she became a folk singer.
    “I don’t have a boyfriend,” Daisy said, her
voice oddly stiff. “And I’m not asking you to tell me I’m not a
lesbian. I, um, know I’m a lesbian.”
    Emmy stared.