“Faggot!” echoed down the hallway after him. It reverberated off the walls into a dozen voices, bouncing against doorways and ricocheting off lockers. He spun around and saw no one but his own shadow. He heard nothing but his own heavy breathing and the tap of his shoes on linoleum. He sighed and turned back to the direction he had been traveling. “Faggot.” He heard it again, clearly directed at him. Erik didn’t flinch. This time he recognized the voice inside of his own head, a conglomeration of all the characters who had hurled it at him at one time or another in his life. “Faggot!” his father’s voice boomed. “Faggot,” his brother taunted. “Faggot! Faggot! Faggot!” the whole football team chanted in unison. “Faggot,” he whispered to himself as his shoes clicked down the hallway to the double doors that led outside. He pushed against the handle and sunlight slipped into the hallway and illuminated his face.
“Hey,” a familiar voice called, “I’ve been waiting for you forever.”
Erik’s eyes adjusted to the light, but he didn’t need to see who the voice in the silhouette belonged to. It was a voice that had grown up with him from Kindergarten through ninth grade. Just by her stance alone, Erik would know his best friend Isabelle anywhere.
“Hi Bella. Sorry it took me so long. I had to get the work I missed from Mr. Carello’s class. You know how long-winded he is about history,” Erik pretended to complain, as he blinked in the sunlight.
“S’okay. I’ve been keeping myself entertained.” Isabelle led Erik to the bench where she’d set her book bag.
“Uh oh, I’m scared of you.”
“You should be. I’ve been mocking the cheerleaders doing their lunchtime practice. ‘Ready? Okay!’” she mimicked, thrusting her small chest out of her “Nobody Knows I’m Gay” t-shirt and crossing her arms in an X over her head. “God, what total imbeciles!”
Erik looked at the girls practicing a V-formation. “Try out. You might get a date.”
“Yuck. I would never date a cheerleader. Please!” Isabelle retorted. “You’re the one who should try out.”
Erik’s smile turned into a wince. “I’m sure that would make me really popular. I’m trying to lay low, you know.”
“Just kidding. Don’t be so sensitive,” she said, poking him in the ribs.
“You’re acting a little bit too chipper.” Erik squinted at Isabelle. “Who is it now?”
Isabelle cocked her head. “Whatever do you mean?” 
“Is she at least gay this time?”
“Erik!”
“Well, is she? It’s an important question, Bella.”
“Well, not yet, but...”
“Not again! How many times do I have to remind you that you can’t convert straight people?” Erik chided.
“I know, but I think that she just doesn’t know yet. Whenever she’s near my gaydar rings off the hook!”
“Hormones.” Erik shook his head. “I thought you said you were above dating high school girls. Who’s the unsuspecting victim?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s nobody you know,” Isabelle answered. “Come on, let’s go.”
Erik needled Isabelle all the way to their English classroom. “Come on Bella—you can tell me. I have no love life of my own to speak of. Indulge me,” he pleaded.
Isabelle was just about to relent when Ms. Turner’s voice simmered down the chattering around the room. “This, my friends,” she said, holding up a stack of papers, “is your final project for Oedipus. You can choose one of many themes from the play and present it in a creative way. Read it over while I match people up.”
Various grumblings erupted around the room: “Can’t we choose our own partners? I want to work with Sarah. You always let us choose our groups.”
“Well, not this time,” Ms. Turner stated. “I’m pairing people up who have never worked together before. You guys need to branch out a little bit.”
Without a question, Erik and Isabelle knew that they wouldn’t be allowed to be partners. Parting eyes, they each looked around the room at their prospects. Isabelle dreaded her options. “Please, please, please, anybody but the cheerleader, who on some unexplainable whim, got herself a spot in Honors English.” As she chanted her silent mantra, she heard Ms. Turner call her name and pair it with none other than Mandy Jenkins, resident head cheerleader. Isabelle and Mandy sized each other up, neither looking too pleased with the union.
“Let’s see, Darren and Felicia. Aaron and Jimmy. Shikoya and Clemente.” Ms. Turner rattled off partners. Finally she came to, “Erik and Salvador.” Erik smiled and nodded at the boy who’d just joined their class days earlier.
Isabelle whispered, “Hey, not bad. You could do worse. But can you believe my luck? What in the world are Ms. Cheerleader and I possibly going to agree on?”
“Okay, everyone, find your partner and get to brainstorming,” Ms. Turner said.
Isabelle sighed loudly as she gathered the mess that had spilled out around her desk. She thwacked Erik on the arm and then sauntered over to where Mandy was sitting.
“Hey.” Isabelle plopped down into the desk adjacent to her new partner and sprawled open her legs.
“Hi,” said Mandy, crossing hers a little tighter.
Everyone knew about Isabelle at Foresthill High: her reputation preceded her. There were different versions to the rumors about her, and the ones floating around the cheerleading squad were the least flattering. Girls avoided her in the locker room, sure that she was checking them out, a game that Isabelle often played along with for her own amusement. Being the only out lesbian in Foresthill was a title Isabelle wore with pride. As she always said to Erik, “Might as well be notorious for something than invisible for nothing.”
Neither girl spoke for a few seconds, until Mandy affected a friendly tone and said, “Tell me your name again. I have a terrible memory.”
“Isabelle. You’re Miranda, right?” Isabelle purposely butchered Mandy’s name. She didn’t want Mandy to think that just because she was head cheerleader it meant that she was automatically a campus celebrity.
“Close. Actually, it’s Mandy.”
“Alrighty, then. Did you look at the paper yet?”
“Yeah, I read through it. What option do you want?”
Blackening the hole-punched circles on her paper, Isabelle yawned before answering. “I’m interested in the one where you create an art project to symbolically represent the play. How about you?” Isabelle suspected that Mandy would want to do the assignment where you had to make up a cheer about one of the main characters.
“Well, I was considering the original music composition that reflects one of Oedipus’s central conflicts,” Mandy replied, chewing on the tip of her eraser. “I’m not sure I have much talent in the other areas.”
“Well, aren’t there any others that we might both agree on?” Isabelle asked, slightly rolling her eyes.
They read back over the options and tossed ideas back and forth, but each of them kept coming back to their original selections. “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Mandy offered.
“What is it?” Isabelle asked, uncrossing her arms.
“Maybe we can combine the two options and you can create a piece of artwork that goes with my musical composition or vice versa.”
“You mean like create a story around the artwork through music?” Isabelle leaned forward, resting her forearms on the desk. “I’m in ceramics right now so I have access to lots of materials. What kind of music do you know how to compose?”
“I’ve been playing piano and guitar since the fourth grade,” Mandy answered. “It can be classical, rock or pop—I’m pretty flexible.”
“Okay, now you’re talking. Let’s go check with Ms. Turner.” Isabelle jumped up and ran over to her teacher, forgetting that she had resigned herself to be reticent over this unwanted union.
Meanwhile, Erik and Salvador were off to a slower start. After struggling over the topic handout for nearly thirty minutes, Erik said, “Well, maybe we can pick a theme and then figure out what to do. I’ve always been fascinated with the metaphor of Oedipus’ blindness. What do you think?”
“I like the idea,” Salvador agreed. “But how are we going to put it into a presentation?”
The bell rang in the middle of Salvador’s query and, just as Isabelle snuck up behind him, Erik said, “Let’s sleep on it and figure it out tomorrow.”
“Sleep on what?” Isabelle asked suggestively, batting her eyelashes.
Erik shot her a warning look, but luckily Salvador didn’t catch the innuendo. “We’re still working on coming up with a solid idea for our project,” Erik explained. “See you later, Salvador.”
He turned back to Isabelle. “What about you? How did things go with Ms. Head Cheerleader? Did either of you convert the other?”
“Actually, it was okay. We already have a potential design. Working with Mandy might not be as terrible as I thought,” Isabelle admitted. “Now, I want to hear all about your new man. Don’t spare any details.”
“It’s not like that, Bella. I don’t fall in love with every cute guy I meet,” Erik said pointedly.
“Ouch. What’s that supposed to mean?” She tugged a loose strap on his bag.
“I’ll tell you on the way home.” Erik slung his backpack over his shoulder and out of Isabelle’s grasp. He closed his eyes and guided himself down the emptying hallway, practicing blindness, hoping for some inspiration for his project. Though his eyes were closed, the darkness didn’t linger long. Negotiating the hall with only his sense of hearing, a locker banged right in front of Erik and a voice said, “Watch where you’re going, loser.”
Erik’s eyes popped open just in time to help him maneuver around the laughing cluster of boys hanging out at the end of the hallway. “Sorry,” he mumbled, heading shoulder first out the doors, like a pinball avoiding the bumpers. Though he made it through without a confrontation, he distinctly heard the word “faggot” attach to his heels as they plodded down the corridor.