Max

Chapter 5

About a month after the sleepover, our school had an event for National Coming Out Day. Everyone in our group was looking forward to it, James and Jillian included. We had all designed our own shirts. Mine had the pansexual flag on the top, and the transgender flag below it. James was wearing a black shirt that had "ally" written on it in all caps.

I got to school early to meet up with everyone and see their shirts. Sidney's had the bi flag on it, along with the words "here, queer, and ready to shed a tear." He always had to be the comic relief, so his smirk didn't surprise me in the slightest.

Bex saw my shirt and gave me a high five. We were wearing almost the same thing, but theirs had the non-binary flag instead of the trans flag.

Jillian was wearing an "ally" shirt like James, but she also did a rainbow design with her eyeshadow, which I thought was adorable. She seemed a little nervous, which was understandable, since none of us knew what was going to happen with the homophobia that day.

Rich and George walked over to the rest of us holding hands, and all of us started cheering. They each had half of a rainbow heart on the front of their shirts, so that when they stood together, the heart became full.

"Oh my goodness, I love it!" Jillian squealed. "The two of you are so cute!"

"Thanks, Jills!" Rich exclaimed. "Hey, George, let's show them the back." George nodded, and they both turned around. The backs of their shirts said "I love him" in all caps.

"You guys are couple goals," Sidney gushed. All of us were smiling as wide as we could, but our smiles didn't last very long.

Isabella came over to us, holding a coffee in her hand. "Oh, wow, Rich and George, the power couple," she scoffed. She turned around to face the rest of us, and smiled her innocent smile. "Hi, James! How are you?"

"No," he said firmly.

"Sorry, I was just asking a ques-"

"Hola, Isabella. Extraviarse, por favor," Sidney interjected. She raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you didn't understand? That's how you say 'get lost' in Spanish. Since you didn't know if I spoke it about a month ago, I felt the need to clarify."

"Yeah, yeah, I know what I said. Nice job using google translate just so you can stand your ground." A small crowd formed around us, and I tried not to notice. But, I'm not wrong, Sidney, all of you are faggots. How about you get lost instead of me?"

"Isabella, please don't use that word," Jillian exclaimed. "It is offensive and mean, and these people are my friends." She looked like she was about to cry.

"Listen, you're straight, so I don't even know why you're offended. And it was your choice to be friends with them." Jillian's sadness quickly turned to pure anger. She marched away from us so that she was about a foot away from Isabella.

"You will not speak about my friends that way!" she fumed.

"It's okay, Jillian, we know it's mean," Rich cooed, trying to calm her down. "I'm just gonna show Isabella something." Without another word, he wrapped his arms around George's waist, pulled him close, and kissed him on the lips. Everyone who was watching cheered and clapped, myself included. Isabella stormed off, muttering something under her breath.

"Richard Christopher Davis, you cannot just fluster me like that," George exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear. He was breathing heavily, and his cheeks were bright red.

"Aw, you know you love it," Rich replied, teasing his hair.

"You guys are officially not allowed to be this cute, all of us are jealous," Bex laughed. The bell rang, and all of us went our separate ways.