Ship It(66)

“It was my decision to make. Mine.”

“Oh yeah? Like how it was my decision to tell Forest Reed what happened between us? You went ahead and took that decision away from me.”

“I already apologized for that, Claire, what do you want from me?”

“I don’t want you to be embarrassed of me. Of this!” I point at the convention center, towering above us just across the street. “I want you to be proud of the things you like.”

“It’s not that simple. They don’t understand this stuff.”

“What’s to not understand? You’re obsessed with a TV show. You draw sexy fanart of it. You read fanfic. It’s not that big a deal.”

“You don’t know anything about my life, okay? Look at my friends, I’m already different from them. I’m black, I’m queer, I don’t have a damn thigh gap. You think it’s easy going through high school like that? I can’t just throw ‘draws sexy fanart’ into the mix and expect everything to stay the same.”

“If they’re really your friends, they won’t care,” I say.

“What would you know about friends?” she shoots back.

I take a step back.

Wow.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she says in a kinder tone, “but it’s true, there’s nothing stopping you from being the crazy, beautiful weirdo you are inside. Which is why you should just come out, Claire!”

“Tess, stop it.” She’s being too loud, people are going to hear her. I take another step back, but she doesn’t stop.

“Just do it! You’re clearly queer, so just own it.”

“Tess!”

“Say the words. Gay, gay, gay, bi, pan, lesbian, homo-sex-u-al.”

“I said stop it!”

“Claire?” a voice says nearby, and my chest seizes up. Because it’s Mom.

I spin around, and see she’s walking toward us, frowning, clearly able to tell something is wrong. Did she just hear that? How could she have not?

“Mom, we gotta go.” I intercept her and grab her arm.

“Hi, Tess,” Mom says before I start pulling her away.

“Hi, Trudi,” Tess says, then, with a dark look at me, she pulls the pin on her own grenade and lobs it at me. “Your daughter’s gay.”


We are quiet on the way back to the hotel. I don’t know what my mom is thinking. Is she giving me space to express myself? Or is she quietly swirling?

As we enter through the revolving door of our hotel and cross the lobby, I’m still shaking with anger at Tess. I can’t believe she would say that to my mom. Maybe I was wrong about her. Maybe she’s just as mean-girl bitchy as those trolls she calls her friends. Maybe I never really knew her at all. She said she wanted to be my friend? Well, forget that. Forget her. If this is what having friends is like, I’m better off without.

And then there’s that thing she said about me not caring about anyone but myself. Is that why I’m so hung up on queer representation? Of course I care about seeing more black characters, too. Don’t I? But why haven’t I been pushing for that as much? Or at all? How many things can I advocate for at one time? My ears burn as I realize I could have done more and I haven’t. Even if we do make SmokeHeart go canon, there’s still no one on the show who looks like Tess.

Mom and I step onto the elevator and the doors close. The silence is heavy. Mom quietly clears her throat.

“What?” I say sharply because I can’t take the quiet anymore, and I want her to get it off her chest.

“Nothing,” Mom says. “What?”

“Nothing!” I’m mad now. She’s playing games. The elevator dings and we step onto our floor. She swipes her card in our door and we walk in. I can’t handle the silence anymore.

“Tess and I had a fight,” I say, flopping back onto my bed and pulling my pillow over my face.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mom says. I feel the bed move as she sits down on the edge of it.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, my words muffled.

“Okay.”

I move the pillow a bit so I can breathe, but my eyes are still covered. “And I don’t want to talk about what she said.”

“Okay.”

Mom gives it a long moment before she says. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m starving,” I say miserably.

“Room service?”

“Room service.”

I get the chicken piccata and Mom gets the crab cakes, and we watch HGTV home renovation shows all night and she doesn’t try to make me talk to her, even when I crawl over and lie next to her in her bed instead of my own.


“A DOLLAR THIRTY-FOUR is your change.” The girl behind the counter hands me the money, then turns around to make my Peanut Buster Parfait. She doesn’t appear to recognize me, even though she seems like the right demo. Maybe she’s more of a Time Swipers type.

I haven’t had DQ in, god, I don’t even know how long. Probably since around the time I moved to LA. Dairy Queens are few and far between there for some reason, and besides, as my agent likes to tell me, “Your body is your résumé,” and these abs don’t make themselves. But honestly, I deserve this parfait. Jon Reynolds is never going to hire me after that disastertown of a panel yesterday. Not to mention the Demon Heart finale airs tonight, and unless our numbers are magically higher than they were all year, there’s no way we get a second season. And then that’s it. My career is over as soon as it began.