Camilla: ANYBODY But HIM!!

Initially, I didn’t make any fuss about the program. Nobody really did(aside from a few karens who came to protest outside of the school, but they’re too stupid to count as people in my opinion). We essentially got free days to just sit around in the cafeteria and watch an old lady dressed as a sheep talk to adults dressed up as a variety of barnyard animals or see some dude show us backflips for the sake of unity. I don’t have any clue what backflips have to do with unity, but fine. I’ll play ball. I’m a team player, I can deal with that. But I can’t stand the idea of spending any more time with Christian Brown than I have to. I still remember the moment I was told who my partner for the “get-along” program would be.

The school had lifted a ton of bans on attire and appearance, thankfully, and they were actually doing something about bullying again. Something that hadn’t happened because of complaints about children being “silenced” for telling the “truth”. I wish I could find a way to communicate the way I was rolling my eyes when I heard about those cases, but sadly my vocabulary is not advanced enough to explain how little I gave a fuck. Anyway, since the ‘gender expectation’ dress code was removed, I chose to get a little dressed up that day. I wore a light blue dress with a white flower pattern, a white cardigan on top of my dress, a pair of star shaped earrings, and my favorite pair of converse. It was a little thrown together, but it was the best I had.

My eyes scattered around the cafeteria as a I watched kids get picked out of the crowd. My friend, Scott, was trying his hardest not to laugh when we saw Mason getting paired up with Megan. Megan was a super sensitive girl, and sometimes we’d just scroll through her social media to laugh at how soft she was. “How is she gonna get through the get along project when she can’t even get through an anime without crying about the patriarchy?” Scott whispered. I tried not to laugh at what he said, but I couldn’t help but crack a smile. The weirdest thing about Megan was that she didn’t have the look of somebody who would post the type of things she did. In fact, she was very beautiful. She wasn’t the kind of girl you’d expect to be dwelling on twitter and shouting "Misogynist!" at anything she didn’t like online. She was at an average height but she was pretty skinny, she had long brown hair, pale skin, green eyes, and she dressed in a preppy fashion. Hollister tops with washed out jeans or a pink skirt. Typically when I imagined people with her opinions I imagined them being more average. How could she be such a bitch yet so pretty looking? It was odd.

What made the situation funnier was Mason. He was wearing a ‘Space Invaders’ T-Shirt. She had called the fandom sexist because her favorite female character wasn’t popular. (Because, according to her, the only way a female character couldn't be popular was sexism.) I felt something building up inside of me as I watched her take the stage with a pout.

Now, everybody on planet Earth knows by now that the worst thing that could happen to you in a situation like this is one of two things.

One, your friend looks at you and you both know you’re about to laugh at what’s happening. Something about the way they look at you makes you lose it in that moment and you both burst out laughing at essentially nothing.

Two, your friend cracks a joke that you can’t help but laugh at in the moment.

Two is what happened to me. I don’t know why, but while they were shaking hands and promising to be good ‘unity accountability buddies’ to each other, Scott decided to say “Same chick who said that shipping gay ships makes you sexist by the way” in my ear. I had almost forgotten she did that and having that reminder made me laugh out loud. And, of course, this meant the entire cafeteria had to look over at me and Scott. My heart fell down to my stomach and I started praying in my head “God, if there’s a way to teleport away from here or become invisible please show me how”.

My prayers weren’t answered and I was still there. To make matters worse Ms Jones, a teacher I already didn’t like, was on stage. It was a mutual dislike between us, so I knew she’d make this extra hard for me. “Mister Fractor, why don’t you come up next to see who your unity accountability buddy will be,” she said, pointing her boney old finger at me . Her misgendering me made the entire situation worse. Typically I would correct her, but I couldn’t muster up the courage or energy. I sheepishly got out of my chair and smoothed out my dress.

I never understood why, but every little masculine feature felt more obvious when I was in front of other people. My Adam’s Apple felt like it would jump out of my throat, and the tiniest bit of hair on my arms made me feel like I was big foot. (More like “small foot” since I’m really short, but you get the point). I could feel everybody’s eyes on me while I walked to the wooden platform that was set up in the cafeteria. It felt like I was about to get picked for the hunger games. There were labeled boxes filled with different names. Granted, the boxes were meant to represent how we put ourselves into these social boxes, but it still felt weird. I watched as Mr Baker, the chemistry teacher, reached his hand into the ‘conservative’ box.

There were very few conservatives I could deal with being around, I don’t think I could stand any of them at all, but I could’ve taken anybody but Christian. Conservative girls? Annoying and catty, but I can deal with that. I have enough sarcasm and passive aggressive jokes stored inside of me to last a lifetime and a half. Even a conservative boy would be easy to fluster, again I have enough sarcasm in my little 5’2 body to last me a lifetime, but Christian? It doesn’t matter how much sarcasm you throw at him, he’ll always have the dumb satisfied look on his face. Like, for some reason, he’s proud of himself for listening to you try to verbally fight him off. Before I even had the thought of transitioning he picked on me. Granted, he picked on a lot of kids, but I was always his favorite target. I spent so many days in detention after school because I couldn’t help but argue back with him. We’ve been fighting for about twelve years now, since we were still in a daycare, and we’ve never gotten along. Honestly, him being a conservative didn’t matter to me at the time. I just wanted him out of sight and out of mind, and I had managed that for a few months. Freshman year had just started and I already had a pretty good streak. Maybe, I prayed, just maybe his name wouldn’t be called. Maybe I’d get somebody who was still an idiot, but less annoying than Christian. Maybe–

“Christian Brown, come up to the stage. Your unity accountability buddy is Camila Fractor” Mr Baker said, making sure the entire cafeteria could hear him. I looked into the crowd and saw Christian’s equally astonished expression. I half expected him to be excited because he’d get more time to bother me all day, but apparently not. His friends looked at him and they started laughing, I knew why they were laughing. It was written all over their fat pale powdered donut looking faces and forest print clad bodies. How I hated that print. They were laughing because he had to stay with the ‘fake girl’. The ‘weirdo in a dress’, or whatever else they called me. I know they probably call me worse, but I’d rather die than make them sound any more intimidating than I need to. What they actually said probably sounded like “goo goo gaga, me scared cause she look different” “me need mama and dada cause I’m a stupid baby wah wah”, something to that affect.

All I could think was “DAMN IT” and, “Lord, please give me the patience to not lunge myself at this stupid boy as soon as we make eye contact”. Christian scoffed and shoved his hand in his pockets and approached the wooden platform. While his friends snickered and cracked jokes, my friends looked mortified. I knew Christian couldn’t do shit to me, I think everybody knew that much, but I still felt afraid of what his parents could do. What would they say if they saw me with him?

There were already protestors outside the school, what if more came because of me? Because of a laugh somebody could burst down the doors and attack us. Attack me, my friends, the school, maybe the whole town! My mind was racing with frantic thoughts about what could or would happen because of me laughing at Scott’s stupid joke. I was so lost in thought that I barely noticed our principle, Dr Willson, telling us to shake hands. I only snapped out of it once Christian took my hand. As if he read my mind he pulled me a little bit closer and whispered “My parents aren’t snitches like yours, don’t worry”, then he pulled away. I hated how well Christian was able to read me at times. I put on a smile for the teachers that were standing right next to us and leaned closer to him “I’m glad. I hope you’ll enjoy four years of being stuck with me” I whispered in response. “Oh I will enjoy every moment” he spoke with a sense of confidence, he wasn’t teasing anymore. This was a promise. At that moment I had made a deal with the devil, I was partnered with Christian Brown.

That might’ve been a two days ago, but I still remember every little detail of every second I spent in that cafeteria scowling at him. I barely paid attention to the other partnerships, aside from Mason and Megan. All I know is that people are not happy. Everywhere I go online somebody is angry about whatever partner they got, and parents thought it was “government brain washing”.

As always one side thinks it’s racist, the other side thinks it’s grooming. Both sides have one shared belief though.

It’s hopeless.

I hate to admit it, but I often found myself laying awake at night wondering if this program will change anything. If we don’t manage to change there’s countries waiting to attack us. The entire world hinged on us getting along somehow, I think? They were very vague about the importance of what we were doing. All I knew was that it was imperative that we’d get along. Through the power of friendship we’d all get the country back together rah rah something something patriotism. It all feels hopeless. I feel myself sinking into a puddle of doubt and scorn before being ripped out of my sulking moment by my ringtone….

I heard that you’re back together and if that’s true

You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you

I sigh and push my covers off of me. I looked down at my phone and noticed the caller ID, ‘Scotty!’. He was probably calling about whoever he got paired with, I couldn’t blame. If I got paired up with Christian who knows who he could’ve gotten paired up with. Not that there’s too many people in school worse than him, but there’s plenty of people as annoying as Megan. So far my ranking of how annoying kids are, is this

If I had to guess who Scott was stuck with I’d probably say a level five or a level eight, there’s no way it can be that bad. I hope. I pick up my phone and press the green button, cutting off my ringtone.

“Hello?”

“I’M STUCK WITH FUCKING JOSH!” Scott yells.

I freeze up. Josh!? He was basically a running joke in our friend group, we used his name as an insult. If anybody did anything stupid we’d say ‘Come on now you’re acting like Josh’ or ‘That’s such a Josh move’. I would say it was just my friend group but everybody thought he was a little stupid, EVEN THE TEACHERS.

There were two unanimous opinions in the school.  We were divided, and Josh is stupid. 

 Honestly, he was such a laughingstock I almost forgot he was a real person. I don’t want to laugh, because I feel bad for Scott, but come on. It’s impossible for me to not laugh.

“Pfft, J-Josh Cowell?” I repeat, trying to stifle my laughter. Scott being paired up with a homophobe wasn’t surprising, after all he was a bisexual. The entire point of the project was to bring different communities together, but they put him together with the stupidest homophobe in school. He was an atheist who had no reason to be homophobic, that already made him a bit of a punching bag, but he also skipped school a lot. So he had plenty of big fat zeros on his assignments to confirm, yes, he was a dumbass. Scott wasn’t some genius, but he was pretty smart. Him getting paired with Josh felt like an act of God. Like he led the teacher’s hand into that box and made them pull out that paper because “Yo it’d be so funny if you put the idiot with a kid whose pretty smart”.

“I don’t hate Josh, but this is just embarrassing. There’s a reason his friends talk to him after school and not in the actual building” He groans, I can hear him flop down onto his bed after that.

Everybody I knew got paired up with the worst people imaginable. I felt less alone now, but I definitely felt bad for them. And this was only the start of a four year long program!