I’ve invested a fair amount of time and energy over the last few years being annoyed and snarky about Brynn for President, a.k.a. Brynn Foer-Preston—a fact I’m not proud of. But she made Emily’s life a living hell in eighth grade, when Emily came out. No one harassed Em about it publicly—we were well trained and heavily monitored—but it was eighth grade, after all. Even though everyone knew that homophobia was frowned upon, it didn’t mean everyone was always nice to LGBTQ+ kids. People sort of watched and waited for a leader to show them how to act.

Shortly after Emily came out of the closet, Brynn invited her over to work on a math project, and—miracle of miracles—they ended up kissing. Emily, who’d had a crush on Brynn since sixth grade, went wild. Fueled by romantic delusion (and against my strenuous objections), she made the incredibly risky decision to leave a big frosted heart cookie in a pink paper bag on Brynn’s desk for Valentine’s Day. It would be in a bag, she reasoned. No one else would know.

Emily woke up sick on Valentine’s Day, and bombarded me with impassioned texts begging me to play Cupid or Mercury or whatever ancient Roman god would have delivered Valentine’s Day cookies back in ancient Roman times. I pointed out that Valentine’s Day was not an ancient Roman holiday, but Emily didn’t care. Eventually, I broke down and agreed to help her out.

I arrived at school early and snuck the bag onto Brynn’s desk, and I will be forever grateful that Emily wasn’t there to see what happened next. Ten minutes after the secret cookie drop, I was reading at my desk when Austin Brown—who everyone knew had a crush on Brynn—sauntered over, grabbed the bag, and looked inside. He wanted to know who his competition was, probably.

“Dude, check it out!” he shouted, as he held up the cookie for all to see. “It’s from Emily! Are you guys . . . ?” He made kissing sounds and waggled his eyebrows at Brynn.

There were six or seven kids in the room—Brynn’s little power posse—and they all looked up. Terror flashed across Brynn’s face. “Let me see that,” she said. Austin put the cookie back in the bag and tossed it to her. She opened it and grimaced. “Ughhh, gross. You guuuys. Look,” she said, and handed the cookie off to the others. Everyone made a show of handling it gingerly, with their fingertips, screeching and laughing as if lesbianism were a contagious, fatal, but also hilarious disease.

“CJ, are you sure you want to stay friends with her? What if she starts liking you?” said Brynn. “You’re not gay, are you?”