“Okay, I hear you!” The look they give me clearly says if you heard me you wouldn’t be talking over me, but I plunge ahead anyway, because I have like twenty seconds before the bell. “Let me get through today’s meeting and we’ll talk.”

“I think you’ll be hot for changing the royalty thing after you’ve been prom king.”

Best friends are the worst. Because they know.

Once Nix sees in my eyes that they have me dead to rights, their job is done. They grin, a champion without a prize belt. “Go on, you selfish bastard. Whatever happens, I’ll pretend to be all excited about it when everyone else is.”

I know that’s a real promise: Nix always has my back. I want to hug them but they hate hugs and, you know, bodily autonomy is a THING, so I blow a kiss instead, and they’re off.

Comfort and the Cutting Edge

Comfort and the Cutting Edge

The morning flies by, and it’s already time for Ms. Silverthorn’s Senior Lit, the one class Nix, Cheng, and I all have together. Our essays on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court are due. If no one ever made you read it, this guy Hank from New England gets bonked on the head and ends up in Old England (though I don’t really know why). It’s a little slow at first and then all battle scenes later on, so I’m not a huge fan, even though I love time travel stuff. (Before you get carried away, I’m not a huge geek: I like my sci-fi confined to this world, which means no aliens and hard pass on any series beginning with the word “star.”) I’d bet money that most of the class wrote on expected (read: boring) themes like chivalry and the use of technology. Naturally, I wrote about the white male fragility of Hank, who blows things up or shoots people when he feels threatened. Ms. Silverthorn will eat it up.

She got a new weave over the weekend, and it’s really working. Her hair game is fantastic and ever-changing, which is especially impressive because few people in a town this white would even know a box braid from a lace front, and I have to give credit where it’s due. “That look is everything,” I say, and she just shakes her head.

“Go on now,” she says. She always waves off my compliments—tells me to focus on the real things—but I’m sure she likes it. Cheng, already seated, is using his bookbag to claim the desk next to him for me so that Douchebag McDouchebag (real name: Brad McDougal) won’t sit there and flirt with him in that way only a super cocky het-bro can do.