Period One: Introduction to Probability and Statistics
Period Two: Academic Composition
Break
Period Three: Technical Writing
Period Four: Computer Science 1
Lunch
Period Five: Beginning Japanese
Period Six: Software Tools: App Development
I wasn’t given my choice of classes, so I can only assume this is Tess’ doing. A warm anger spreads through me as my fingers clench tight around my phone.
“Are you going for a degree in computer science or programming or something?” Lumen asks me, glancing over at me. I give her a look that clearly communicates my distaste with the new schedule, and she laughs. “Right. My mom wants me to be a software developer; I feel your pain.”
“What would you rather be?” I ask, posing the same question to myself. I’m not sure I have the answer right now, but I know that computer science isn’t it.
Lumen looks up at the ceiling wistfully for a moment and then shrugs.
“An influencer, I guess?” she posits, and I hold back a sigh. Of course. Influencer, YouTube star, Instagram model, TikTok sensation, Twitch streamer. Pretty much everyone I know is desperate to find a lucrative career in one of those fields. They may as well buy a lottery ticket and hold their breath. “You?”
I shrug because I don’t even have a basic answer to give.
I thought I knew who I was, but after discovering the Banks weren’t my biological family, and that Tess Vanguard of all people was my bio mom, I have no idea.
“Enjoy your class and find me at lunch,” Lumen says with a wink, opening the door to my first class for me and holding out a hand to usher me in. There isn’t a single person in the hall or the classroom that misses that move, notes it, maybe even snaps a pic of it.
With a deep breath, I slip my phone back into the pocket on my blazer and dive in.
First day of school at Whitehall Preparatory Academy, a school for innovators, engineers, and world leaders. That’s it. That’s their slogan. There are no art classes, no music classes, and only one foreign language class because we don’t really need them, the software is there to make inter-language communication an easy feat.
The only—and I mean only—creative endeavor left at the school is the theater program, headed and funded by Danyella and her family.
“We were able to get committee approval by reminding the board that as technology improves, people seek more real-life ways to connect. Live performances are not dead. Live performances were dead in the early 2000s and during that covid pandemic thing. Live performances are now. They’re human.”
“I’m sort of a … closet theater lover,” I admit, sitting on the edge of the stage and bumping my heels against it while Danyella works on a paper on her laptop. She’s wearing a pair of rectangular glasses with a hot pink frame that are so damn cute, I want to borrow them and pop out the lenses for a day.
“You’re the school’s poly, bi-icon and you’re in the closet?” she asks, smiling, but keeping her attention on her screen. It’s lunchtime now, but I don’t have the energy to brave the cafeteria just now. Everyone wants to talk to me, and it’s exhausting. At CHS, lunches were spent under the old tree out front of the school. But here? We’re not allowed to leave the building during the day. The gilded cage feeling creeps over me again as I scroll through the disturbingly silent group text with my girls.
There are three messages from me and no reply from either of them.
Loneliness sweeps over me like a cloak, but I shake it off. I’ve got Danyella right in front of me, and Lumen’s standing invite for lunch. Plus, even if they dislike me, at least Parrish and Chasm are willing to game with me. And then, of course, there’s Maxx …
“What’s your paper about?” I blurt, adjusting the black blazer and the plaid tie that gets tucked underneath it. I hop down off the edge of the stage and make my way over to where Danyella’s sitting in her academy-issued slacks. Apparently at Whitehall, they don’t give a shit whether boys wear pants and girls wear skirts; it’s allowed either way. Good for them. Sex-role stereotypes are annoying as fuck.
“Sexual dimorphism in mammals,” she says, chewing on the edge of her phone case in thought as she leans back in her seat. “Like, how male peacocks have fancy feathered tails while the females have small brown and white tails. Humans are sexually dimorphic as well.”
“Sounds fascinating,” I say (even though it’s a bit boring), sitting beside her and looking up at the stained-glass mural on the ceiling above our heads. Ten minutes into my second class and I knew that I was in trouble; I had no idea what the teacher was talking about. To be fair Academic Composition here is equivalent to … basically nothing back home. I’m in a different league, and if I’m not careful, I’ll drown here. At my old school, all we had was plain old English. “Is that why boys are so much moodier than girls?”
