I wanted to just run into the locker room, but that would look bad. Like I had something to hide. So I paused and looked at them. The questions stopped as soon as they realized I was on the verge of saying something. Problem was, I had no idea what to say.

“I got a game to play,” I finally told them. “You got questions, ask me later.”

Because maybe, just maybe, I’d soon be in a universe where no one wanted to interview me about anything.

I was still shell-shocked from the paparazzi as I stepped into the locker room. Although it felt like forever ago, it had only been a few days since I had come out, so the team and I were still in relatively new territory—and the sudden media attention wasn’t helping.

Some of my teammates were totally cool with me being out. Some just needed time, and told me so. Others were struggling to navigate what they could and couldn’t say, like they had just learned a new language. No one was openly belligerent—but there were those who just didn’t engage, and probably never would.

Norris was one of the non-engagers. He didn’t look at me, but he also didn’t move away when I sat down. He just acted like we were strangers on a bus.

And the funny thing was, I didn’t care.

He was my friend for the sole reason that he had always been my friend. He came packaged like a cable station you didn’t ask for, but got anyway. I realized that I could do without Norris just fine. But it pissed me off that he got to make that decision.

Josh, on the other hand, continued to prove himself as a real friend, and greeted me like he always did. I really do wish he existed somewhere in my original world. He was too good a guy to get stuck out in Elsewhere.

“So are you gonna talk to the reporters?” Josh asked.

“I got nothing to say.”

“Anything you say will be something.”

He was right, and it just irked me. “Just because I’m gay and got the shit kicked out of me doesn’t mean I’m fucking queer Gandhi,” I told him. “It’s not like I’m the goddamn center of the universe.”

And then I realized that, yes indeed, I was. Damn. It made me wonder if this was all part of being the “subjective locus.” Did all of us sub-locs get thrust onto the public stage in one way or another during our accidental reign?

Then I heard a low, deep voice behind me.

“If I was you, I’d use it.”