Title: Out Now: Queer We Go
Edited by: Saundra Mitchell
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Genre: YA, LGBT, Romance
Release Date: 26th May 2020
BLURB supplied by Harlequin Trade
A
follow-up to the critically acclaimed All Out anthology, Out Now features
seventeen new short stories from amazing queer YA authors. Vampires crash
prom…aliens run from the government…a president’s daughter comes into her own…a
true romantic tries to soften the heart of a cynical social media influencer…a
selkie and the sea call out to a lost soul. Teapots and barbershops…skateboards
and VW vans…Street Fighter and Ares’s sword: Out Now has a story
for every reader and surprises with each turn of the page!
This essential and beautifully written modern-day collection features an intersectional and inclusive slate of authors and stories.
This essential and beautifully written modern-day collection features an intersectional and inclusive slate of authors and stories.
PURCHASE LINKS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Saundra
Mitchell
has been a phone psychic, a car salesperson, a denture deliverer and a layout
waxer. She's dodged trains, endured basic training and hitchhiked from Montana
to California. She teaches herself languages, raises children and makes paper
for fun. She is the author of Shadowed Summer and The Vespertine series,
the upcoming novelization of The Prom musical, and the editor of Defy the
Dark. She always picks truth; dare is too easy. Visit her online at
www.saundramitchell.com.
AUTHOR LINKS
Twitter: @saundramitchell
Instagram: @smitchellbooks
EXCERPT
KICK. PUSH.
COAST.
By Candice Montgomery .
Every day, same
time, same place, she appears and doesn’t say a word.
Well, she
doesn’t just appear. She takes a bus. You know she takes a bus because you see
her get off the bus right in front of 56th Street, just in front of the park
where you skate.
You know she
takes a bus and gets off right in front of the park at 56th Street because you
are always at the park, wait-ing to catch a glance of her.
She—her
appearance—is a constant. Unlike your sexuality, all bendy like the way your
bones got after yesterday’s failed backside carve.
Bisexualpansexualdemisexualpanromanticenby
all bleeding bleeding-bleeding…into one another.
That drum of an
organ inside your chest tells you to just be patient. But now, here you are and
there she is and you can’t help yourself.
She’s
beautiful.
And so far out
of your league.
You’re not even
sure what she does here every day, but you probably shouldn’t continue to watch
her while trying to nail a Caballerial for the first time. Losing focus there
is the kind of thing that lends itself to unforgiving injuries, like that time
you broke your leg in six places on the half-pipe or the time you bit clean
through your bottom lip trying to take down a 360 Pop Shove It.
You’re still
tasting blood to this very day. So’s your skate-board. That one got split clean
in half.
She looks up at
you from underneath light brown lashes that seem too long to be real. She
reminds you of a Heelflip. You don’t know her well but you imagine that, at
first, she’s a pretty complicated girl, before you get good enough to really
know her. You assume this just given the way her hair hangs down her back in a
thick, beachy plait, the way yours never could.
Not since you
chopped it all off.
That’s not a
look for a lady, your mom says repeatedly. But you’ve never been very femme and
a few extra inches of hair plus that pink dress Mom bought you won’t change
that.
You hate that
dress. That dress makes you look like fondant. Someone nails a Laserflip right
near where you’re standing and almost wipes out.
Stop staring.
You could just go introduce yourself to her.
But what would
you say?
Hi, I’m Dustyn
and I really want to kiss you but I’m so confused about who I am and how am I
supposed to introduce myself to you if I can’t even get my label right, oh, and
also, you make me forget my own name.
And in a
perfect world, she would make eyes at you. She’d make those eyes at you and
melt your entire fucking world in the way only girls ever can.
Hi, Dustyn, I’m
in love with you. Eyelashes. All batting eye-lashes.
No. No, the
conversation probably wouldn’t go that way. Be nice if it did though. Be nice
if anything at all could go your way when it comes to romance.
You push into a
360 ollie while riding fakie and biff it so bad, you wish you possessed
whatever brain cells are the ones that tell you when to quit.
If that conversation
did go your way, on a realistic scale, she’d watch you right back. You would
nail that Caballerial.
Take a break.
Breathe. Breathe breathe breathe. Try some-thing else for a sec.
Varial
Heelflip. Wipe out.
Inward
Heelflip. Gnarly spill.
Backside 180
Heelflip. Game, set, match—you’re finished. That third fail happens right in
front of her and you play it off cool. Get up. Don’t even give a second thought
to your battle wounds. You’re at the skate park on 56th Street because there’s
more to get into. Which means, you’re not the only idiot limping with a little
drug called determination giving
you momentum.
Falling is the
point. Failing is the point. Getting better and changing your game as a skater
is the point. Change.
But what if
things were on your side? What if you’d stuck with that first label? What if
Bisexual felt like a good fit and never changed?
Well, then
you’d probably be landing all these 180s.
If bisexual
just fit, you’d probably have been able to hold on to your spot in that Walk-In
Closet. But it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit which kind of sucks because at
Thanksgiving din-ner two years ago, your cousin Damita just had to open her big
mouth and tell the family you “mess with girls.” Just had to tell the family, a
forkful of homemade mac and cheese headed into said mouth, that you are “half a
gay.”
That went over
well. Grams wouldn’t let you sit on her plastic-lined couches for the rest of
the night. Your great-uncle Damian told her gay is contagious. She took it to
heart.
No offense,
baby. Can’t have all that on my good couches. You glance up and across the
park, memories knocking
things through
your head like a good stiff wind, and you find her taking a seat.
Oh.
Oh, she never
does this. She never gets comfortable. She’s changing things up. You’re not the
only one.
Maybe she plans
to stay a while.
You love that
she’s changing things up. You think it feels like a sign. It’s like she’s
riding Goofy-Foot today. Riding with her right foot as dominant.
The first time
you changed things up that way, you ended up behind the bleachers, teeth
checking with a trans boy named Aaron. It felt so right that you needed to give
it a name.
Google called
it pansexual. That one stuck. You didn’t bother to explain that one to the
family, though. They were just starting to learn bisexual didn’t mean you were
gay for only half the year.
You pop your
board and give the Caballerial another go.
It does not
want you. You don’t stick this one either.
If pansexual
had stuck, you’d introduce yourself to the beautiful girl with a smaller
apology on your tongue. Hi, I’m Dustyn, I’ve only changed my label the one
time, just slightly, but I’m still me and I’d really love to take you out.
And the
beautiful girl would glance at your scraped elbows and the bruised-up skin
showing through the knee holes in your ripped black skinny jeans. She’d see you
and say, Hi, small, slight changes are my favorite. And then she’d lace her
bubble-gum-nail-polished hand with yours.
But you changed
your label after that, too. It was fine for a while. Your best friend, Hollis,
talked you through the symp-toms of demisexuality.
No wonder
holding the beautiful girl’s hand seems so much more heart-palpitating than
anything else. A handhold. So simple. Just like an ollie.
You take a fast
running start, throwing your board down, and end up on a vert skate, all empty
bowl-shaped pools that are so smooth, your wheels only make a small whisper
against them.
A whisper is
what you got that first time you realized sex was not for you. Not with just
anyone. This was…mmm, probably your biggest revelation.
It was like
you’d been feeding your body Big Macs three times a day and suddenly—a
vegetable!
Tic-tacking is
when you use your entire body to turn the board from one side to the other.
It’s a game of lower body strength, but also a game of knowing your weight and
know-ing your board. You are not a tic-tac kind of girl.
You are not a
girl at all. You are just…you.
That.
That one’s
sticking forever. You know it all the way through to your gut.
You make one
more attempt, which probably isn’t super wise because you are so close to the
spot where she’s sitting that not only will she see you bite the dust, but
she’ll hear that nasty grunt you make when you meet the ground.
You coast by.
The friction
vibrates up through your bearings and you know you’re going too fast because
you start to feel a little bit of a speed-wobble, that lovely, untimely,
oscillatory behavior that means bro, you are about to lose control.
And you hate
that word. Control. You hate that word be-cause it is so very rare that you
have any. Over your life, your sexuality, your gender, your pronouns, your
heartbeat when you’re around your beautiful girl.
But then you
do.
You gain
control. And you nail that Caballerial.
And the three
guys who’ve been watching you make an ass of yourself all afternoon pop their
boards up, hold them over their heads and let out wolf shouts.
And you’re
smiling so hard. You get like that when you nail a particularly difficult one.
You’re smiling so hard you don’t notice the someone standing behind you.
Beautiful girl.
You don’t even want to control your smile here.
“You did it,”
she says.
Excerpted
from OUT NOW: Queer We Go Again! Edited by Saundra Mitchell, used with
permission by Inkyard Press, © 2020 by Inkyard Press
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