The Brightest Star in a Constellation

6: Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

☽ Peter ☽

As it turns out, Nicole is thrilled about the whole club idea. I have no idea why, but she's been bugging me about it endlessly, and after a few days of listening to her preposterous club names, I finally shut my locker and give in.

"I will agree to this—"

Nicole jumps to wrap her arms around me, squeezing until I nearly can't breathe. "Finally! I was starting to annoy myself with that."

"If," I continue, turning to look at her, "you take care of the talking."

She nods, nearly knocking her heart-shaped glasses off her face in the process. "Like, for the club?"

"No, for the rest of my life," I joke, shifting my textbooks to my free hand and glaring at Nicole from my periphery.

The bell rings three times, signalling the start of my first-period class, Chemistry. Nicole and I didn't end up with the same teacher, so we walk through the hallways together until we reach the blue wall where she has to head to the left, and I have to go right.

"Think about club names!" she shouts as she departs.

Sighing, I take a step into the classroom. The seat closest to the door is unoccupied, so I set my textbook down and carefully scan the room. My hands are shaking from the stress, and the chairs surrounding me are empty.

Throughout the class, I focus on getting my assignment finished. I'm done before the hour is up, so I log onto my blog. The little icon in the bottom left corner shows over a hundred messages. I move past that to my most recent post, which sits at the top of the homepage.

Facts at midnight was a series I started in my ninth grade year, after staying awake for hours trying to finish my homework. I'd waste my time scrolling through Wikipedia, and I wanted a place to drop the random facts I'd learned, but couldn't include in my projects. It's the only part of the blog that ever gets me views, but this is different. Mostly because I wrote it a few seconds after reading Sam's post.

Tentatively, I open the comments. The first poster, clearly from a new account with no icon, reads, What came first, the obvious dig at culture, or the obvious homophobe?

The response after it chimes in with: Don't be naïve. It wasn't homophobic. Nothing about this town is. We fly the flag in June. We have pride parades. This is not about sexuality, plain and simple.

Both commenters have a thread about a mile long. I rub my forehead and scroll down a little further, spotting Nicole's username amongst the fray. The picture of herself is wearing comically large purple glasses with a flannel she stole from her aunt. There's no text to her response; it's just a screenshot of the timestamp on Sam's Instagram post in comparison to mine.

I'm really not sure what that proves, if anything.

After class, the teacher calls me over to her desk. Ms. Crozier is the head of the science department, and I've taken quite a few of her classes.

She's sitting behind her computer when I approach but stands once I'm in front of her. "Peter, first of all... I can't imagine what's happened. I just thought I should warn you, there are a lot of rumours circulating. And we got the custodian for the—the writing left on the bathroom wall. I'm not exactly sure what it says, but Mr. Kennedy noticed it. It's... it's a lot."