In this creative non-fiction story about identity and inclusion, a 16-year-old writer describes how they revived an LGBTQ+ Inclusion group at school. Switching between two different time frames, they relive scenes from five years ago, when they were one of the kids the Inclusion group was trying to reach.
Cocoa-Bee Gliwa is the winner of the University of Warwick’s ninth annual Writing Wrongs Schools’ Competition, organised by the Centre for Human Rights in Practice. This is her winning article which she reworked with Lacuna Magazine during a paid summer internship.
I took a deep breath and opened the door to the humanities office.
“Oh! Hi Miss, I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Yes, it’s been a while honey, you alright?”
“I’m well, thank you. Have you seen Mrs Hodge?”
“Unfortunately not, sweetpea. Before you go – come in, come in. Remember the Inclusion group from the old school?”
“Yeah, it was fun. Why?”
Standing in front of Mrs Dunn I noticed how eagerly she beamed up at me, and we started to reflect on how the year 13s from years ago had a vision for inclusion in school, and how moving to the new building meant that amongst the chaos, it had become a thing of the past.
I wanted to act like I had no idea what she would ask me.
“How do you feel about possibly, maybe – just maybe, totally up to you – running a sort of reboot of the Inclusion groups?”
Miss’s expression was bright and beaming as she stared at me, still.
Oh god.
The air in the room was tense. Sitting down in the armchair, my new therapist asked me the dreaded question.
“What are you in for?” (Am I sick or something?)
Silence.
I looked around the room, probably twiddling my thumbs and letting out a few “Uhhh”s and “Uhmmm”s
Think, think, maybe say something painfully unfunny.
I chuckled, “Y’know”, in a strangely high-pitched voice as I put my hands in the pocket of my yellow hoodie, “My dad said it’s funny that I was late because I was eating even though I have an eating disorder.”
“So you have an eating disorder.” Peeta said plainly.
“Uhm yeah.” I replied. She stared directly at me, her gaze piercing through me, even though I was looking anywhere but her face.
I waved my pen around in my fingers, making myself face the doomed task at hand.
What would 11 to 13-year-old snotty children want to do in a classroom every other Thursday lunchtime with a bunch of tired sixth formers to support them with their most-likely LGBTQ+ identities?
I put my head in my hands and slid down my chair, wondering what all of this was for.
I took out my phone, sighed, and made a group chat named “Inclusion” adding some friends who were also local weirdos.
“So why are we here?” one of them asked.
A respectable question, but I wasn’t quite sure.
“Meet me next Thursday lunchtime in Mrs Dunn’s classroom. Bring your lunch.”
And with that, I left my anxious friends to ponder and bite their thumbs as I went back to making posters, reflecting on a time when I was my target audience.
I was standing outside the science classroom again, staring at the floor. I looked at the clock in the corridor and wondered when this lesson would end, and when this stupid diet topic would be over.
“I’m just having a drink, Miss!” a short, cheeky, blonde boy called back to the annoyed Miss Rani as he walked out of the classroom cheesing.
I jumped back slightly as I snapped out of my daydream.
He took a sip of water, “I used to have panic attacks too y’know,” he said, his voice quiet.
I looked up at him, “Oh,” I wasn’t sure why he was talking to me.
He told me how he used to keep calm, and how his mum would help him, I simply stared back. And I smiled.
I don’t remember exactly what he said to me, but I remember how he made me feel.
He laughed and waved to me as he went back into class, I waved back and followed him in shortly after. 
When Thursday lunchtime rolled around, I started to introduce to my friends the concept of the Inclusion group that would provide a safe space in school and support overall diversity.
“We don’t know what we are doing though,” Remy chimed in between bites of her canteen fish and chips.
We sat huddled around a desk in Mrs Dunn’s room, with me at the head, clutching my notebook like a lifeline, “That’s fine, me neither. We will figure it out,” I reassured her, “We just discuss things with the kids and create a safe space for them.” I leaned forward. “Can you guys put up some posters for me when I’m away tomorrow?”
“Ugh fine,” another said playfully, punching my shoulder.
It felt like a long time since my last lunchtime meeting.
I described my eating habits briefly to the two women from an eating disorder charity, as well as my thoughts, and how I’ve skipped my period for six months but I’m definitely not pregnant. Some more chit-chat ensues.
“At this rate”, one of the women said, “you will lose your period.”
“Lose it?” How on earth do you lose something that is inside your body?
She continued, “You’re damaging your body in ways in which you could do some real irreversible damage. And you’re already feeling the effects.”
After the meeting I went to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, for the first time I noticed how pale I had become, my once tanned skin now yellowed and sickly, my eyes dark and sunken, my hair greasy and untamed. I had pen all over my hands and tie. I was aware of every breath I took.
As I opened the door to Mrs Dunn’s classroom two Thursdays later, a group of rowdy year 7s and 8s were having a passionate discussion and screaming hysterically.
I creeped over to my friends as Mrs Dunn turned to me, “We have company!” she beamed, “Now go out there and do some talking,” she handed me some whiteboard pens, “Have fun!”
Slowly, I walked to the whiteboard at the front of the class and Mrs Dunn raised her voice to get the attention of the room.
I took a deep breath, “Thank you for coming to the Inclusion group everyone. Let’s start with some introductions and get brainstorming.” 
As I walked out of year-8 English, I told some girls in my class about my idea of getting the blonde boy a present for Christmas.
“I don’t know…” one girl questioned, “not in a rude way, but like, have you ever actually talked to him?”
I looked at the stairs we were walking down, “well no, but what’s wrong with getting a present for someone you like?”
“Hold up,” the other girl tapped my arm, “do you like-like him? You totally do!”
“Maybe. I didn’t think about that before.”
Then, the world went quiet.
He walked under us to our next class downstairs, yelling and cackling with his friends. I noticed how warm I felt looking at him.
“Possibly,” I finally admitted.
“So I was right!”
“You guys aren’t exactly in the same groups y’know, people might talk about it.”
My head snapped back to the other girl. “Hm,” I muttered.
As we went into the art room following behind him, I decided to accept my place, he was only being nice to me anyway.
He passed me as we went to our seats, “You ok?”
“Yeah!” I smiled, thinking about how I will eat all the chocolate I’m carrying in my bag.
I laid on my bed, messing with the string of my hoodie, holding my phone close to my face. I could hear the distant taps of a keyboard from the other side of the call. The counsellor said, “Alright dear, just updated your pronouns – sorry I didn’t ask sooner. So, we’ve talked about your parents, and your worries about school and friends, but how does this exactly impact your anxiety?” 
I looked down at my phone. Wasn’t it obvious?
“Oh – uh, well.” I sighed, “I mean, constantly worrying about what other people think of me is quite stressful. Like, I start to think I should isolate myself if something someone makes me uncomfortable because I get too nervous to tell them.”
Tip tap tip.
“Yeah, ok. Just a side note – you mentioned you had therapy a couple of years ago. Was it for your anxiety?”
“Kind of. It was mainly for dealing with experiences of bullying due to me coming out as non-binary and having an obvious eating disorder in a sea of uninformed 12–13-year-olds.”
“Alright, ok…”
The therapist said after a review of my case, I would get a call back. I laid in my bed for a while, wondering if I was back in the same place I was before.
“Christ…” I don’t think she understood.
I was painting stripes of bright colours with different meanings, hunched over in child’s pose on my bedroom floor in my favourite black skirt that cloaked my body.
Singing along to Penelope Scott, I cut up pieces of card and stuck the final products to my wall. Sitting on my chair, I beamed up at one flag in particular that made me feel like myself. The non-binary four horizontal stripes – yellow white, purple, black.
“So what do we call you at school?” one of my friends asked.
I thought for a moment before answering, “don’t worry, I’m telling our friends too, and my name is being changed on the register, so you won’t have to worry about that.”
“That’s so cool! So now you don’t have to use your dead name,” she said back, celebrating with me. “What about the others at school, are you going to explain it to them?”
I stuffed some crisps in my mouth, muffling out, “Yeah, yeah. I’m sure it will be fine. It’s not their business anyway.”
“Go loose guys!” I smiled, holding out a box for the kids to grab chalk from. “Remy, Violet, take some too,” I said, handing brightly coloured pastels to my friends. “Let’s do this!”
Me, my friends, and the Inclusion group kids covered the path in the middle of the sports courts, sprawled on our hands and knees, colouring, drawing, creating. Near the top of the path, we drew in bright pastel rainbow “P-R-I-D-E” with some year-9s giggling and drawing flowers and stars around our declaration of love. 
A couple of girls from year 9 lay down on the path, drawing the outlines of each other before colouring in a face and a heart in the middle of each character, filled in with sunshine yellow. They laughed at the smudges of chalk brightening their hands and blazers.
“Oi oi!” I heard from the other side of the path. Looking up from the blue ‘E’ I was finishing, a group of year 10 boys approached the girls.
“Can we join?” one asked, taking a piece of chalk from the box, some other boys following suit.
I turned to one of the year-11s, “I really want to trust them, but I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
Within seconds they had scrawled across our creation, words and pictures none of us wanted to see. They laughed at the year-7s’ stars and suns, before vandalising them.
A teacher came to our rescue. “All right, that’s enough. Off you go!” She ushered the group of boys away, confiscating their chalk.
“Thank you, Miss,” I sighed.
She stared back, tired, shaking her head, and told me to just make sure I remove the “inappropriate” artwork.
“Got a water bottle?” I asked Remy, feeling defeated.
“Yeah, let me grab it” she flashed an awkward smile.
I sat at my desk, excitedly tapping at my phone screen.
So do you think you’ll kiss? My friend asked.
A boy from a different form told me he had feelings for me, and I had decided to give him a chance, he was cute after all.
I looked up at the ceiling, sort of picturing it and blushing. Maybe. He did talk about it when we were on the date.
Oooo ok, good luck, if you need any tips, I’m here 😉
I chuckled. Okkkk I’ll keep that in mind T.T
I turned to put my phone on charge, feeling all giddy, like a little child at Christmas. Then I stopped, noticing my wall.
It was a riot of pride flags of different colours. Some of the chunky paint had held its shape, sticking out to me like a sore thumb.
I observed the different meanings and messages on my wall, feeling heavy at the thought of him looking at whatever all this was.
Opening my drawer, I pulled out a large piece of paper, drawing some random shapes and words on it. Grabbing some Blu Tack, I stuck it over the rainbow vomit.
“Too bad about the low turnout this year,” I huffed and kicked at the gravel on the pavement as we made our way to the bus stop after school.
I had been thinking about the scale of success I should measure the Inclusion group against, and how the dwindling participation as the weeks passed by probably meant it was all for nothing.
“I don’t know, I actually kind of just liked going to the meetings together,” Remy smiled, “I know that numbers are important and all that, but for me the best part was just being there together in Mrs Dunn’s classroom.”
I turned to her, perplexed, “Oh yeah?”
Remy linked arms with me, “I know that not a lot of people ended up coming, and you felt a lot of pressure from that, but I think the real beauty of it all was being together with people you like, doing a good thing.” She beamed.
“Remy…”
“Yeah?”
“Where was this when I was worrying about getting people to join?” I shook her. “I swear, you’re killing me. I thought no one could be bothered, and I was trying so hard to make it work. You could’ve told me you actually enjoyed it!”
She laughed and pulled me back into an arm-hook, “It’s ok.”
“I give up!” I wailed.
Mrs Hodge beamed at me, “These interviews are very informal. We just want to know your ideas for the school. Miss Nichols is here to just keep track of time, so no pressure.” She shuffled in closer. “So what do you envision for the future of the school?”
Here we go.
“Ah – umm,” a great start, painfully awkward, “a-as I have been leading the Inclusion group this academic year, I have found that a really big issue amongst not just the younger students, but also older students, is connection and conflict.” I reminded myself to stop and breathe.
“Through the Inclusion group, I’ve worked with my friends to organise bake sales, to create the chalk path behind the canteen, and to produce the mural that hung off the balcony in June. Managing different people with different roles was a little challenging, as they are also my peers. But I’ve done my best.”
“That’s great”, said Mrs Hodge. “Anything else?”
A long, deep breath.
“Even in myself, I have noticed that people are always changing, your personality and character adapts to your situation and surroundings, whether you realise it or not.”
“And I think that you always risk being disappointed, hurt, embarrassed, or misunderstood, therefore having the Inclusion group has been especially enriching to me as I have been able to help other people who I relate to.”
“But it’s hard not to get upset at people when you rely on them, or work with them, and they let you down. That’s been difficult. But there is always something you can do, things you can change. I don’t think it’s ever too late if you take ownership.”
Mrs Hodge stopped writing, “Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you for this. You have done well. Please, can you fetch Ahmed next?”
“Will do, Miss. Thank you.”
All artwork by Lacuna’s student artist Jiraporn Puengprayotekij.
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