My Flower

Chapter 5

Lydia
The rest of the week was simple- it seemed to fly by.

On Friday, around six o'clock, I arrived at Mila's house. At that moment, I realized I had never been there. I looked in the front two windows and saw Mila putting popcorn in a bowl. I knocked on the door, praying that I was on time.
"Hello!" She bellowed, while opening the door. I smiled and gave her a hug.

"Okay... Monsters inc or Bolt?" Mila asked.
"Monsters inc!" I laughed, while making myself comfortable on the couch.
She put the disk in, then retreated next to me.
We snuggled up under a fuzzy blanket and enjoyed the movie.

About a half hour into the movie, I fell asleep.

Mila
Lydia's head was resting on my shoulder and I leaned over and kissed it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a person in the window. I quickly turned my head to see Julia peering in.
I flipped out. I immediately stood up and ran to the door.
"What's wrong?" Lydia pulled herself out of her sleep.
I was going so fast, so I couldn't reply to Lydia. I sprinted after Julia, which lead me to her car.
"Julia!" I called after she jumped in her car. "Open this window!"
She actually listened to me and rolled down the window.
"Why are you here?"
She leaned very, very close to me and whispered, "I knew you weren't straight."
I lurched at her, raising my hand, threatening to hit her but I didn't because then she would definitely expose me. "Please don't tell anybody. It would ruin my reputation."
"Your reputation was already ruined when you started hanging out with Lydia."
Lydia came out too. "What's going on?"
"Oh, I'm going to post the pictures and inform everyone about you guys."
"You took pictures!?" I yelled. "Delete them!"
She smiled and ran her tongue across her teeth. "No thanks. I'm going to Six Flags now- ah-more like Six fags," She laughed and drove off.
Lydia and I picked up rocks from the ground below us.
We hurled them at Julia's little Nissan. One went right in through the back windshield. The other hit her tire.
"Oh no," Lydia said after the car started to reverse.
We ran inside and started to barricade the door. "We're so screwed."

After refreshing my Instagram feed a thousand times, I figured that Julia was too scared to post. But wait! She did post. She posted a picture of me and Lydia sitting on the couch, but it was blurry so you couldn't really see our faces. The caption said "six fags" with our usernames tagged. Lydia and I reported that picture repeatedly.

Lydia
After I drove home, I collapsed on my bed. "I'm so dead."
"Lydia? Is everything okay?" My mom knocked on my door.
"No," I cried. "Mila and I just started dating and we were having a movie night and her old friend came by and took pictures and now the whole school will know that we're not straight."
"Slow down," she said. "You're dating a girl? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I feel like you wouldn't accept me," I wiped tears from my eyes. "I wanna move schools."
"Of course I accept you!" She said. "You can't switch schools, though. There's no school that will accept you this late in the year."

I stayed in my room for the rest of the night, crying. I called Mila. "I don't follow Julia, has she posted anything?"
"No."
"Did her first post get taken down?" I asked.
"Yes, thank God."
I sighed a breath of relief. "I still don't wanna go to school."
"Me neither, but maybe it will be better than we think."

The next few days
At school the next few days, we were ignoring negative comments and looks, but we could still hear and see.
"The fag couple acting like they own the place."
"So full of themselves."
"Maybe they should go to a conversion camp."
"Awww look they're trying to make a name for themselves."
I sat in the office, waiting for the secretary to tell me that I could talk to the principal.
There was a clock violently ticking, there were phones ringing, people talking, it was overwhelming. I started feeling really hot and my anxiety started to choke me. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. 

"Ms. Lydia, Mr. White is ready to see you."

I hopped up out the chair, and walked into the principal's office. "Mr. White?"

"Why, come on in," the short, white-haired man said with a gravelly voice. "So, Lydia, tell me what's going on."

I sighed and sat down across from him. "Well," I looked around the room. "I recently started dating Mila. We kept it quiet because people at this school think being LGBT is bad..."

"What did they do?" 

"They call us 'faggy'..."

"There's not much we can do, honey."

"Can't I tell you the names of the kids and you can talk to them or?" 

"Yeah, that's too much work for such a small cause. Ya know?" 

"Sorry for wasting your time, then." I was burning, but I couldn't even do anything.