When Cassie was in elementary school, she made friends with Ben, a ballet dancer who seemed unrestrained by gender norms. They quickly became inseparable, and in the world they created together at the creek, Cassie began to face her own queerness—until they were caught by judgmental classmates, and Cassie betrayed Ben. He left for another school, and they didn’t speak again… until he joins St. Luke’s high school in Cassie’s junior year.
Cassie is determined to prove to Ben that she’s a better person now, to win back his friendship. She decides to help start an underground GSA, along with a nearby public school, to show Ben that she’s a good “ally”… while still repressing her own queer identity. Now she just has to maintain her straight A average, keep up with student president duties, go to volleyball practice, do her chores, volunteer for church, mend a broken friendship, help run an underground GSA at a Catholic School, and push down her crush on one of the girls at said GSA. What could go wrong?
I was raised in a queer-accepting and agnostic household, so I couldn’t tell you why religious queer stories get to me so much, but they do. Cassie is determined to be a good girl, to be perfect, in the particularly painful way that manifests in a Catholic queer girl of colour. Even while she accepts her new friends’ queerness, she doesn’t feel like it’s possible for her.
But it’s not just acting straight that restricts Cassie. She truly is trying to be perfect, which has worked for her pretty well so far. She lives up to her parents’ and and teachers’ high expectations. She colour-codes her schedule to balance all of her responsibilities. But once she adds Crosswalk (the underground GSA), mending her relationship with Ben, and making new friends to her plate, it’s too much for even the most carefully constructed schedule to contain, and she begins to fray at the edges.
I felt so stressed for Cassie, especially near the end of the book. In my very brief time as a high school English teacher, I worried about how easy it is for high school students to fall through the cracks. Where in elementary school, you have one teacher most of the day who hopefully can see if something’s wrong, that responsibility is split between a bunch of different teachers in high school who are seeing hundreds of students in a day. As Cassie burns the candle at both ends trying to keep up her image of perfection, she flies under the radar for far too long. (When I got to the acknowledgments, I found out the author is a high school English teacher!)
I cried through the last section of the book as Cassie fails to live up to her own exacting standards and begins to mentally berate herself. I think this is really common for girls in general, but especially marginalized girls—to stake their self worth on being perfect. It sets them up to fail, and it’s devastating for their self esteem.
I don’t read a lot of YA these days, but this was a good reminder of how much it can still affect me, even now that I’m double the main character’s age. Despite me crying through a good chunk, this ultimately is a hopeful and healing read, and it deserves to be on high school library shelves—especially in the Catholic schools.
Content warnings for homophobia and racism.
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