I flash her my biggest smile. “I’m on it. You know me!”

Mrs. Somboon-Fox smiles back, a wattage to rival my own. “What am I going to do when you’re gone?” And then she’s off, probably to bring food to the new science teacher, since Mrs. Somboon-Fox is sure the woman hates her, which means the poor teacher is a campaign to be won.

Cheng watches her stride away and then slides his hand next to mine briefly. Seriously, we’re not even allowed to hold hands. Everyone (and I mean everyone, teachers to janitors) knows who’s gay at this school, but once we walk through the doors, it’s all straighten-up-and-fly-right. Unlike in my mom’s day, when kids could be kicked out for stuff they did off campus, our private lives are now our own, but our school lives are held hostage by a code of conduct written with a quill pen by Puritans. You have to sign the code to go here, but it’s kind of a formality (like your parents signing that they won’t hold the school responsible if you snap your neck playing soccer, a promise they would never keep). Even my Christian classmates play pretty fast and loose with the pledge to “respect authority as ordained by God.” I mean, we’re teenagers.

Sliding his hand back into his own pocket, Cheng fixes his brown eyes on mine. “Are you sure about this?” I know he means Prom Council and my Big Ask, so I give him a look that says, “For real?” This shouldn’t be in question. Surety is my calling card.

In four years, I have sweet-talked Mrs. Somboon-Fox and the school board into adding an expressive movement elective for PE, un-banning leggings, having dances for the underclassmen, hiring an outside DJ for those dances, and making sure the required reading list is not just full of white people who were already dead when my mom went here.

Not all my quests have been totally successful. Last fall, I tried to get Mrs. Somboon-Fox to require student pronouns on all the class rosters, so people would have no excuse for their misgenderings. To my surprise, Nix thought requiring pronouns was problematic, because not every pronoun stays fixed forever. I pointed out that if it was optional, 90 percent of the teachers wouldn’t do it, and we’d be right back to the old way of making assumptions on sight, but if it was a rule, teachers would have to comply, and kids could change their pronouns whenever they wanted. It didn’t matter in the end: Mrs. Somboon-Fox barely let me finish my pitch before reminding me ASA isn’t “that kind of school.”