The previous section of this draft was posted a month ago.    This outcome is something I had not at all expected would happen, but it seems inevitable, really.   I know it ends pretty weak here; in draft it’ll be smoothed to segue better into whatever ends up happening next.

“You’re in my chemistry class, aren’t you?” he said, to the burly human in line in front of me.

Ralph’s smiles were infectious, even with my face cracking them. At least, they felt that way from the inside. The guy was not won over. “Yeah… so what?”

By the look he gave me, you’d think I was some new species of pond scum—uninteresting and distasteful.

“I just thought that—”

“I’m not interested in speaking to you,” the guy said, and turned back to face the front of the line.

Ralph turned to face the mouse girl in line behind him. “What was that about,” he said.

“Everyone knows you’re gay,” she said. “You do realize that limits your social circle, right?”

I didn’t know what people thought about me, so of course Ralph couldn’t have.

I’d like to say Ralph handled it gracefully, made a joke, and shrugged it off, but he didn’t get the chance—I took over, fled the cafeteria, and hid under some stairs in the music building, crying, for a good long time.