I share my development of a conceptual framework informed by queer theory and women of color feminisms in this paper. I developed this framework as an analytical tool that may aid scholars in engaging in critical scholarship in increasingly fascist and surveilled contexts. Schools across the United States are subject to increasingly volatile and vigilant governing bodies. This reality is reinforced through coded language and overt surveillance that further constrain marginalized populations. Additionally, multiply-marginalized students are often coerced into complying through interpersonal, curricular, and environmental violence (Warren and Coles, 2020). My study focused on the experiences of two Queer Black youth in a high-stakes performing arts high school in Florida. I sought to understand how Florida’s political landscape manifested in a school that would otherwise be described as providing a world-class arts education. I focus on instances that Hartman (2019) would describe as wayward living, small acts of refusal and resistance in this paper. Specifically, I theorize that a well-placed side-eye serves as a compelling conceptual framework for research inquiries and policy analysis.I chose to utilize a Kitchen Table talk method to collect data for this study. The most significant aspect of this method is that it creates opportunities for fugitive spaces that unsettle power and age hierarchies while provoking intergenerational knowledge exchanges (Kohl and McCutcheon, 2014). I specifically aimed to utilize a method that was culturally responsive to the overlapping facets of identity I shared with the participants. I was immediately struck by the ease of communication between the participants and I. Not so much by what was said, but how we communicated through affect. Our kitchen table talks were conducted in a space where various classmates were present. Our mannerisms became cues to signal when someone could make a controversial comment, or a warning that an unsafe person was around. I developed an ecology of the nurturing, critical, and resistant side-eyes. Each well-placed side-eye functions as an approach to understanding and identifying how oppressed and constrained bodies find self-determination and healing in spite of volatile policies, contexts, and environments. Additionally, this conceptual framework is intended to compel action-oriented responses to extant oppressive structures through speculative (Tomin, 2021) theorizing. The implication of this research is significant because it allows scholars to consider resistance as a complex ecology of gestures, affects, and quiet refusals that sustain life, nurture solidarity, and open possibilities for fugitivity within oppressive educational systems.