If you really want to know the whole goddam truth about it, I stood outside Room 214 for like twenty minutes, not ten. Just frozen there like my feet had grown roots into the linoleum. My hand kept hovering over the doorknob, this trembling, useless thing I couldn't control. That's what happens to bodies sometimes—they betray you in the smallest, most humiliating ways possible.
The sign screamed "GSA Meeting Today - All Welcome!" in these rainbow letters that looked like they were trying too hard to be cheerful. Like if they used enough colors, they could trick you into feeling safe. I kept imagining everyone walking past could see right through me—not just seeing me standing there, but seeing inside me, which is so much worse.
I'd screenshot the flyer last week. "Gay-Straight Alliance - A Safe Space For All." Kept it hidden in that secret folder on my phone where I store things I'm not ready for anyone to know about. Looking at it late at night, the blue light making my face look like a corpse's. If that isn't the most pathetic thing you've ever heard, you're probably just as messed up as I am.
When this kid with purple hair appeared beside me, I nearly jumped out of my skin. "You going in?" they asked, and their voice had this gentleness that made me want to cry or scream or maybe both at once.
"I don't know," I said, which was the first honest thing I'd said all day. Most of what comes out of my mouth is carefully constructed bullshit.
"First time?" They had these pins all over their backpack—pronouns and flags and quotes from people who probably changed the world while I've been hiding in my room. They existed so loudly, so unapologetically. The space they took up seemed to vibrate with certainty.
"Yeah," I managed, the word like glass in my throat.
"I'm Zoe," they said. "They/them."
"Mason," I replied, the name suddenly feeling like a costume I'd borrowed from someone else.
"Cool. Come sit with me. It's not as scary as it seems."
And then they just opened the door like it was nothing. Like we weren't standing at the edge of a cliff. So I followed because staying out there alone seemed suddenly more terrifying than whatever waited inside.
The chairs were arranged in this perfect circle, which is exactly the kind of torture I try to avoid. Fifteen faces turned toward us momentarily, then away. Some I recognized—Carlos from English, Tasha from the debate team. Others were strangers. They all looked so... ordinary. Not that I expected them to be wearing rainbow capes or something, but there was this strange disappointment in realizing you can't actually identify your people on sight.
Ms. Ramirez sat at her desk, glancing up with this smile that didn't make a whole thing of our arrival. She's one of the few teachers who doesn't perform her acceptance like it's a TikTok challenge.
"Hey everyone, we'll get started in a few minutes," she said, and her voice had this confident quietness to it.
Zoe sat and patted the chair beside them. I lowered myself into it, my heart pounding so hard I worried it might actually crack a rib. What the hell was I doing here?
"So, Mason," Zoe whispered. "What brings you to GSA?"
Sweat bloomed across my skin like a rash. "Just curious," I mumbled, the lie so obvious it practically glowed in the dark.
They nodded like my answer made perfect sense. "Cool. No pressure. Some people come for a year before they say anything."
Something in my chest loosened slightly, like a fist unclenching.
Ms. Ramirez clapped her hands. "Alright, welcome everyone to another year of GSA. For our new faces, I'm Ms. Ramirez. I use she/her pronouns. This is a safe space where what's said here stays here, understood?" Her eyes moved around the room, seeing each of us individually.
"We'll start with introductions. Your name, pronouns if you're comfortable sharing, and maybe why you're here today."
My stomach collapsed like a dying star. Introductions—the cruelest invention in human history. I contemplated fifteen different escape routes, calculating which would cause the least attention.
Aiden started. Captain of the debate team, known for destroying opposing arguments with surgical precision. "I'm Aiden, he/him, and I'm gay. Been out since freshman year."
He was objectively attractive in that clean-cut way that made teachers trust him immediately—sharp jawline, perfect hair that somehow looked both effortless and deliberate. Not my type, though. Too polished, too confident. Boys who've never doubted themselves are exhausting.
They continued around the circle. Jamie (they/them), whose graphic novel sketches I'd secretly admired in art class. Tasha (she/her), whose two moms brought homemade cookies to every school function. Carlos (he/him), who always wore these vintage band t-shirts and seemed perpetually confused by his own existence, which I found weirdly endearing.
Each person shared a fragment of themselves, and the room absorbed these offerings without judgment. The air felt different here—thinner somehow, easier to breathe.
Then Devon started talking, and something in his voice made me actually listen.
"I'm Devon, he/him. I came out to my parents last year. Dad didn't talk to me for two months." He paused, jaw working. "But then one day, he came to my room and said he'd been doing some reading. Said he didn't understand everything, but he was trying. Now he asks about boys I like, which is mortifying but also kind of amazing."
Devon was beautiful in this unintentional way—tall, with dark skin that seemed to absorb light and reflect it back somehow improved. His hands moved when he talked, creating invisible sculptures in the air. When he smiled, which was rare, it transformed his whole face. He wasn't attractive like Aiden—he was magnetic, which is entirely different and much more dangerous.
Another girl, Lily, talked about coming out to her best friend. "I was so scared she'd hate me. But she just hugged me and said she knew something was up because I never shut up about Florence Pugh."
The laughter that followed felt like a secret language I was suddenly learning to speak. These stories were all different but somehow forming a single narrative I recognized in my bones. That terrifies me, how you can feel connected to complete strangers just because they've named the thing you can't say out loud.
The circle was shrinking, voices moving closer to where I sat. My heart hammered against my ribs like it was trying to escape, and honestly, I couldn't blame it. My palms were slick with sweat, and the room seemed to contract around me, the walls inching closer with each introduction.
"I'm Zoe, they/them," Zoe said when it was their turn. "I'm here because this was the first place I felt like I could be myself. And now I want to help others feel that way too." They turned to me with an encouraging smile that felt like the gentlest form of pressure.
It was my turn. All these eyes on me, waiting. I opened my mouth, but my voice had evaporated. The silence stretched into something physical, something with weight and texture. My face burned hot enough to melt steel.
"I..." The word hung there, pathetic and incomplete. Black dots swarmed at the edges of my vision. Oxygen seemed to have been sucked from the room entirely. I couldn't breathe. My lungs had forgotten their one job.
"Hey," Zoe said softly. "It's okay. You don't have to say anything."
But it was too late. The panic had already claimed me, tears streaming down my face, breath coming in desperate gasps. In that moment, I would have given anything for invisibility—to dissolve into particles and reassemble somewhere else, preferably alone.
"Let's step outside," Zoe said, standing. They nodded to Ms. Ramirez. "We'll be right back."
Before I could protest, Zoe was guiding me into the empty hallway. My legs moved beneath me without my permission. They sat me on a bench and knelt in front of me.
"Breathe with me, okay?" they instructed. "In through your nose, out through your mouth. Like this." They demonstrated with exaggerated breaths, their chest rising and falling in slow motion.
I tried to match them, but panic had its hooks in me too deep. The humiliation burned worse than the fear.
"You're safe," Zoe said firmly. "No one in that room is going to judge you. And you don't have to say anything you're not ready to say."
Gradually, my breathing normalized. The black dots retreated. I wiped roughly at my face, hating the evidence of my weakness.
"Sorry," I muttered. "That was so stupid."
"No, it wasn't," Zoe contradicted. "My first time at GSA, I threw up in the bathroom beforehand. Coming to terms with yourself is scary as hell."
I looked at them, surprised. Their confidence seemed so innate, so fundamental to who they were. Nothing like the chaos inside me.
"You don't know me," I said. "You don't know what I'm... what I'm dealing with."
"No, I don't," Zoe agreed. "But I recognize the look in your eyes. I've seen it in the mirror."
We sat in silence, the fluorescent lights buzzing faintly overhead. The panic had subsided, leaving behind a hollow exhaustion and the bitter taste of shame.
"I can't go back in there," I said finally.
"Sure you can. We'll say you felt sick. No big deal. Or we can just leave. Ms. Ramirez won't mind."
I considered both options. Part of me wanted to run home and lock myself in my room, where it was safe to be nobody at all. But another part, a tiny rebellious fragment, wanted to go back. Wanted to hear more stories that sounded like mine. Wanted, just for an hour, to feel less alone in my strangeness.
"I want to go back," I said, surprising myself.
Zoe grinned. "Cool. And next time will be easier, I promise."
Next time. As if this wasn't a one-time moment of insanity but the beginning of something. The idea terrified and exhilarated me simultaneously, like standing at the top of a very high diving board.
We returned to Room 214. A few glances flickered our way, then away. The conversation continued uninterrupted. No one stared or whispered. Ms. Ramirez gave me a small nod, and that was it. The normalcy was almost shocking—how something that felt world-ending to me barely registered to anyone else.
They were discussing the Day of Silence, dividing into committees. Ordinary club business. I sat and listened, saying nothing, but feeling a strange new sensation unfurling in my chest. Not belonging, exactly, but the possibility of it. Like maybe these people would understand the real me. Ellie, not Mason.
After the meeting, Zoe gave me their phone number. "Text me if you need anything. Or if you want to talk. Or if you don't want to talk but don't want to be alone. Whatever."
"Thanks," I said, and meant it. A rare moment of sincerity.
As I left Room 214, I felt different. Not fixed—I'm not delusional enough to think one meeting could repair what's broken in me. But something had shifted, almost imperceptibly. A tiny crack in the wall I'd built around myself, letting in a sliver of light.
I don't know what I'll do next. I don't know if I'll ever have the courage to say "I'm Ellie" out loud in that room. The thought alone makes my throat close up.
But for the first time, I can imagine it as a possibility, however distant. And that's something. In a life of nothing, something is everything.