15-year-old highschooler Dakota Feller is currently unaware that the assertions of the kids who are currently bullying her are cruel, yet extremely correct.
“They keep calling me a dyke,” says Dakota, who will soon realize her feelings for the first chair saxophonist, who is very pretty. “It’s so fucked up that they would call me that.”
Feller has few positive queer role models in her Ames, Iowa high school, setting her up for late self-realization and some confusing, unfair bullying that she will later realize was tragically prescient.
“They keep telling me I’m ‘butch’, which is so mean,” says Dakota, about something that will someday make her a lust object for hundreds of beautiful women. “I can’t wait to graduate from high school and go somewhere different, like Chicago.”
“Yeah, Dakota is a total lesbian,” says 16-year-old Lindsay Dolan, who is correct. “She’s so weird. It’s like, she looks like a football player in a dress.”
Dolan, who also doesn’t know she is gay, will soon realize that her taunts hid a complicated kind of attraction for Feller, which will really make things complicated for the varsity Basketball team their senior year.
Feller adds: “I just can’t wait until I have a boyfriend so they’ll all shut up.”
