That was a mistake.

When there are no city lights beaming in from the outside, pitch-black hits different. It instantly transforms into the kind of dark sleep paralysis demons and shadow people like to hide in.

Joy clicks the light back on to get her bearings, staring wide-eyed at every corner of her borrowed room. Her phone is charging on her nightstand. She brilliantly decides to leave the screen on all night, brightness turned all the way up. A MacGyvered night-light being better than nothing at all.

The second her head hits the pillow, she closes her eyes, but sleep refuses to show up. Instead, she replays the day over and over. Her memories mostly get stuck around Fox being surprisingly wonderful and Summer blurting out that’s she’s asexual.

In a perfect world, people would just say, “Okay. That’s cool,” but so far that hasn’t been the case. Education goes hand in hand with coming out over and over and over . . .

What Summer did wasn’t anything new. Her brain is just using it as an excuse to dredge up older trauma, forcing her to relive those moments.

After her hashtag miscalculation flung her right into the spotlight, aces from all over the world began leaving encouraging messages on all her posts, her follower count quadrupled, media outlets contacted her for interviews and guest posts, modeling agencies reached out to her—Malcolm had to help her sort through it all.

But everything wasn’t all roses and cake. Trolls came out of the woodwork to harass her. Some even made videos about her, rating her pictures using disgusting made-up scales. A religious community even tried to make an example out of her, which was just weird.

Then, there were the comments that nearly took her out—the ones from other aces who hated her. Joy was “setting a bad example for the movement” and “confusing people” and “making it worse.” She was “problematic” for taking her clothes off because “real aces don’t act like that.” She was faking and making it up for clout.

Instead of creating space for her at the table, they’d chosen violence—to serve her up and eat their own.

So she flipped that motherfucking table over instead.

Joy never asked to be anyone’s role model or ace queen but became intensely anxious of letting anyone down anyway. She researched and boosted other voices and strived to be inclusive of the entire spectrum. No ace left behind.

If someone said they were ace, then that was that. They were welcome in her circle. She made room in her brand of bougie on a budget to include self-care, self-acceptance, education, and awareness. Joy isn’t perfect, but she always, always does her best because it’s the only way she knows how to hold on to people. The only way to keep them on her side.