Fridays were Seb’s easiest days. They involved two csses in the morning, both of which were an hour and neither of which required him to take notes, and a single css right after lunch. All of the csses were gen-eds, and Seb had stacked his Fridays like that on purpose. First semester, he hadn’t really taken stock of how important his schedule would be. They’d built it for him in high school, and that had worked out fine.

  And then, he’d ended up with 8 am.’s every day for the whole, entire week, and that was tragic. By week two, he’d pnned his entire second semester down to the minute, and it ended with him taking a two hour acting css on Fridays, from 1:30pm to 3:30pm. Seb could not possibly have less interest in acting; he’d been ensemble in his elementary school’s production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ and that was the extent of his foray into theater, and he was quite comfortable with that. But the reviews had called the css a breeze, and he needed to fill out his arts gen-eds, and that was more than enough reason to plug it in.

  So, on the fifth Friday of the Spring Semester, he settled himself into the middle row just a tick before 1:25 and waited. The cssroom was small enough, just three rows of seats facing what could either function as a stage or as a movie hall, along with the professor’s desk. Seb always sat squarely in the middle. People thought that professors called more on people in the middle, but that wasn’t true. Professors called on people who looked like they were avoiding being called on.

  And Seb was very good at looking like he wanted to be called on, at least in this css. These Friday csses were all filled with athletes looking for the same thing as him -an easy A-, and Seb, 5’10, average build, average haircut, average… well, just average, looked much more attuned to professors than the hulking linemen. Which, okay, Seb was aware that was pretty unfair, and that some of those hulking lineman actually did want to learn, but he wasn’t opposed to leaning in to avoid being called on in css. The hulking linemen had their own advantages. The hulking linemen would get over it.

  The entire semester, Professor Dali had never once been te. But the time ticked, and the three rows filled, half scurrying Freshman, half athletes, and Professor Dali never showed.

  At about 1:40, the backdoor banged open, and David Oliver backed in to the cssroom, still saying something to someone in the hallway, his backpack slung over one shoulder. Perks, Seb supposed, of being the starting quarterback for a college in the south. The program wasn’t even second best in their state, but what did that matter? Welcome to Garnd State, where being tall and talented and having the kind of face that belonged on billboards, and seemed likely to be, if everything worked out, meant that you were allowed to be ten minutes te to every css for the sole reason of ‘wanting to chat with your fans’.

  Okay, Seb was being bitchy. David wasn’t always chatting with his fans.

  Sometimes, he was just te.

  David gnced at the front of the cssroom, ready to make his requisite apology, saw that there was, in fact, no one to direct that apology to, smiled to himself, and started picking his way past his already seated cssmates. He turned that smile on Seb as he went, his golden boy, star athlete smile, pushing down the row, mouthing ‘I’m early’. Seb had to ugh.

  “Dali is te,” he corrected, as David settled next to him. One of the consequences of perfecting his schedule, making it so that he had no csses worth a damn on Fridays, was that he had every css with the man who had professionally tailored his schedule that way. Or, someone at the advising office had. They didn’t want their star athlete failing any csses, did they? That would be very, very bad for business.

  David had asked Seb for notes on the first day in their second css, and Seb had failed to shake him ever since.

  Not that Seb really wanted to. It was nice to have someone to sit next to in css. He was pretty sure that, in the grand scheme of things, David only sat next to him because he was the only one that always had an adjacent empty seat. That it kept working out that way, well, was just convenient. Sitting next to David had benefits! If, for example, Seb was struggling too mightily with his Snapple lid, David was a handy pair of hands to uncap it for him. Plus, David Oliver had defied all stereotypes by being interesting to talk to.

  “That’s the same thing,” argued David, waving a hand through the air.

  “Sure,” said Seb, smiling at him. David pulled out a selection of notebooks, found the correct color, blue, which Seb had quickly learned corresponded to Theater 101, and pushed the rest back in his backpack. Seb had, at one point, tried to tease David about his penchant for hand writing his notes, but it had, like all barbs, bounced off. It turned out to be pretty difficult to tease a man like David. Something about being a millionaire in waiting.

  Funny that.

  “Hey, I’m going to need Film ter,” said David. Seb rolled his eyes and nodded.

  “One day, I’m going to miss a css, and you’ll be high and dry,” he said. David frowned.

  “If you’re missing a css, I’m pretty sure the world would be ending,” he said.

  “I’ll be sure to let you know if I’m missing css, then,” said Seb, but he pulled out his ptop to give David a version of the Film 100 notes he’d taken this morning. On his ptop. Like an adult.

  “Thanks,” said David, before Seb had even booted up the doc.

  “Sure,” said Seb. David finished unpacking and settled himself deep in his chair. Even still, his knees bumped lightly against the seat in front. Seb’s knees didn’t come anywhere close. As always, as he had been since the moment Seb had met him, David Oliver was a comedy of excess. Too pretty to get to css on time, too talented to have time to enroll in the csses he liked (he had confessed to Seb during the third week that his true passion lie in not theater or film but poetry, and the seminars conflicted with practice), and too tall to fit in the seats.

  “What are you up to this weekend?” asked David. Friday. Last day of the week. The requisite question. One that Seb, of course, had a standing answer to, even if it wasn’t the most riveting. Once upon a time, he had said their names when he expined his weekend pns. Now, though after enough time, enough of running the same sentence over and over, he just said,

  “Something with my friends.” By ‘something’, he meant ‘drink in their apartment until they go somewhere cooler’, but who want to say that? Besides, they’d do breakfast tomorrow, and Seb was pretty sure he’d just about die if he attended a frat party with them. Not that it was an option.

  “Cool, cool,” said David, nodding, as if Seb had just given him actual details of a weekend event. “Do I know them?”

  “Don’t think so,” said Seb. He actually knew the answer to that one, but only because both Margot and Anna had said, with excessive excim, ‘The Quarterback!?’ when he had mentioned who he was sitting next to in css. And then, Margot had asked for an introduction, and Lucy had ughed, and it had all gotten lost. “They’re Freshman, too.” David grinned.

  “You’re so funny,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s like you don’t want me to know who they are,” said David. Seb rolled his eyes.

  “If I had said, ‘Margot, Anna, and Lucy’, would that have meant something to you?” asked Seb.

  “No, but it would’ve told me that you’re not just making up fictional people,” said David.

  “I’ve said their names before,” said Seb. True. David shrugged and let his eyes turn to Seb’s screen, his pencil moving to copy down the notes, his fingers wrapped deftly around it.

  “You have,” said David. “You’re just funny, is all.” Seb cleared his throat and looked back to the front of the cssroom. Still no Dali. Weird.

  “What are you up to?” asked Seb. David let the air out of his nose.

  “Practice,” he said. “Too much practice. Maybe, if I can slip it in here or there, something people might consider ‘fun’.” Seb ughed, and David grinned at the ptop screen. “Weekends are barely even weekends anymore.”

  “Oh, it’s so hard to be a big football star,” said Seb, and David waved him off.

  “Careful,” he said. “I’m not going to give you those tickets.” David had promised Seb tickets to a football game in the fall, which he seemed to think was some kind of nice gesture. And Seb liked that he wanted to give him the tickets, because it was the kind of thing a nice friend does, but, well, Seb found himself imagining being at a football game, and that was a comedy. Seb, watching football, enjoying football. No thank you.

  But he wasn’t going to say no to free tickets. Besides, the girls would kill for sideline seats.

  “I was being completely serious,” said Seb, and David ughed. “It does seem hard to be a superstar.”

  “Well,” he said, shrugging. “I’m-”

  The door at the front of the room opened.

  The woman who entered was dressed in a pantsuit, which Seb had never seen at Garnd State. Most of the professors wore button downs without the jacket, or polo’s, if they were men. But she was in a pantsuit, and she was in heels of at least two inches, not that she needed the extra height, and she was striding to the center of the room. Seb sat up. The whole css sat up.

  “Hi everyone,” said the woman, and her voice was warm, warmer than the impression she wore. “Sorry, I’m te.” She settled a ptop bag of her own behind the little desk, and looked up at the css. She couldn’t have been older than forty. “Professor Dali has been indefinitely detained, so I’ll be taking you all the rest of the way.” She smiled. “I’m Professor Bridges.”

  Oh.

  * * * * *

  Seb’s backpack was heavy from the alcohol, and the stairs weren’t helping. If Garnd State was any kind of real school, any kind of school that was spending the insane amount of money they charged properly, there would be elevators in the dorms. That he had to walk up six flights of stairs, in the middle of the South Carolina heat, just to get to the girls’ room, was criminal. Absolutely fucking criminal.

  And if they were any kind of real school, they would have had a different kind of substitute teacher. The 101 Acting css on Fridays was easy because it was taught by Anthony Dali. The Tuesday and Thursday csses, taught by Annabelle Bridges, were hard. And the people who took them, normally, were acting students, not Chem majors trying to fill a gen-ed slot.

  She had immediately scrapped what they were doing, which had been watching recordings of Broadway pys and analyzing them, which was pretty much an excuse to nap, and had immediately moved to ‘get them on their feet’. They’d been allowed to pick their partners, mercifully, and then they’d been assigned cssic scenes. And David and Seb had received a few scenes from Much Ado About Nothing, which had meant nothing before he had read the parts.

  Well, they hadn’t yet flipped for the role of Beatrice, but they would soon.

  Seb managed the stairs, sweating only a little bit by the time he reached the sixth floor. Then, he turned left, down the hallway, past the stickered names on the doors, alternating between boys and girls, down towards Lucy and Anna’s room. When he reached the door, which had been decorated in more excess than any of the other doors in the hall, with glitter and bows and the trappings of all things feminine, he knocked. Inside, he heard the voices hush, then soft footsteps. And then, “Oh!”

  And the door swung open to reveal Anna, her golden hair clearly halfway through a curling, makeup already painted on her face. Anna smiled at him. “I thought you were an RA.,” she said. Seb grinned.

  “Nope,” he said. Anna ushered him into the room, closing the door behind him. Inside, Lucy was sitting on her bed, hair and makeup already done, her bottle blonde hair straight down her back, her skin pristine. She smiled at him.

  “Hiya,” she said. “Bring anything good?” Seb swung up next to her on the bed and settled his backpack next to him.

  “Well, it’s not going to be as good as the party,” said Seb. He pulled a bottle of blue raspberry fvored vodka out of his backpack, then chased it with an even bigger bottle of rose. Lucy gave him a little golf cp, and Seb bowed his head.

  “Good work,” she said.

  “The guy didn’t even hassle me,” said Seb. At eighteen, just now starting the second half of their freshman years, none of them could buy alcohol. Well, none of them could legally buy alcohol. Seb had managed to secure what had to be the worst fake ID anyone had ever made, one where they had managed to both misspell his name (rude) and make his picture blurry (actually somewhat helpful). Of course, the liquor stores around the college didn’t really want to catch eighteen year olds buying from them. It would be ruinous to their business.

  “Has it ever not been fine?” asked Anna, now making her way to sit at the little wooden desk at the far side of the room. The girls’ dorm was pretty typical, with the two twin beds at the edges of the room and the identical light wood desks pushed together in the center. Both had added the requisite makeup mirrors themselves.

  “Next time, I’ll let you take the ID,” said Seb. Anna’s attention focused on the mirror.

  “But that’s what I have you for,” said Anna, sweetly. Seb snorted, and Lucy ughed.

  “Mean,” he said. Anna stuck her tongue out at him in the mirror. Seb had met Anna in his Intro to Chem css, and she had quickly inducted him into her friend group. Never mind that her friend group comprised solely of pretty, proto-sorority types who loved frat parties and football games and dying their hair to the blondest it could possibly get, and Seb was just a guy. Seb had been inducted and it hadn’t been optional and he was, now, intractably linked to them.

  His brother had made fun of him when he had gone home for Christmas and all of his stories had featured exclusively women, but whatever. Seb enjoyed it! He enjoyed them! Sue him. And, yeah, they got to go to these frat parties, because they were all beautiful girls, and Seb could only pregame with them, and they all seemed to think he was gay, a feeling Seb was afraid to dispel, lest he lost access to the only group of friends he’d ever had outside his hometown, but so what? They were funny, and they were cool, and they didn’t treat Seb like some outsider.

  Seb had picked up a kind of inflection from them, one that he was pretty sure was not helping dispel their assumptions of his homosexuality.

  There had never been much reason to dispel their assumptions of his homosexuality. For one, he’d never felt enough of a draw to a woman for it to matter. Oh, they were pretty enough, and Seb had one date in the first semester, which hadn’t been a disaster, just the sort of non-existent, unmemorable forty five minutes that ended with the girl giving him a nice smile and then heading on her way. Things were just stagnant.

  That didn’t mean Seb was gay. Assumptions be damned, being gay required more than enjoying the ptonic company of women. To be gay, you had to want men. Not just, like, see them. You had to want them. And Seb had never, ever wanted them, not sexually and definitely not in a way that screamed ‘romance’.

  Romance.

  “Have either of you read Much Ado About Nothing?” asked Seb. Lucy bumped shoulders with him.

  “I love Much Ado About Nothing,” she said, grinning. Lucy closed her eyes. “‘I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.’” She held a hand over heart. “And then! She asks him to kill the guy who messed with her best friend.” Anna ughed.

  “There’s a py I would actually watch,” said Anna. Lucy giggled and bumped into Seb again.

  “Beatrice rules,” she said. Seb tried to imagine delivering the line ‘I love you with so much heart that there is none left to protest’. Then, he tried to imagine feeling like that. It seemed like a no go. Professor Bridges had insisted that they dig into personal experiences, try and pce themselves in the shoes of the character, that good actors can see themselves in the script. Well, rule out love stories, then.

  “Well, I have a new theater teacher,” said Seb. “And we’re doing Much Ado About Nothing.” Lucy cpped her hands.

  “Thrilling,” she said. “Like, a full production?”

  “No,” said Seb, shaking his head. “No, it’s like, a collection of scenes, I think. And it’s just a partner exercise.”

  “Pity,” said Anna. “I would have loved to see you try and act.” Lucy clicked her tongue.

  “Be nice,” she said, gring at Anna, even though Seb was ughing. God, all he had intended to do on Fridays was sit and watch movies and pys, and now he had to do something? Ridiculous. Criminal. This was supposed to get all his gen-eds out of the way so he could actually go to school, actually do something worthwhile. Maybe come out of all of this with a job that didn’t stick him in South Carolina for the rest of his life.

  “Oh, it’d be something,” he agreed. “There’s a fifty fifty chance I’ll have to be Beatrice, anyway.” Lucy gasped, and Anna giggled.

  “Oh, god, Seb, you have to,” said Lucy. “You’d be perfect.” Seb rolled his eyes at her.

  “Ha ha,” he said. Lucy sat up on her knees and took his arm, looking deadly serious.

  “Seb, she’s so cool,” she said. “I mean, she’s funny, and she’s empowered, and she… well, she falls in love with the guy that she likes to torment at the end, and they’re adorable.”

  “Right,” said Seb.

  “Seb, you’d make such a good Beatrice,” said Lucy, still gripping his arm very tightly. “I mean, what, are you going to be fucking Benedick?”

  “Well,” said Seb. “I was kind of figuring since he was, you know, the guy.” Lucy scoffed and waved her hand.

  “So what?” she said. “Like, who’s going to be Beatrice if you’re not?” Seb squirmed.

  “David Oliver,” he said. Anna snorted, then covered her mouth.

  “Sorry,” she said. Seb flushed, and Lucy shook her head.

  “Don’t listen to her,” she said. “All I’m saying is that Beatrice is fun. She’s fun and she’s the better character and you’d make such a good Beatrice.”

  “Okay, well, this is just an exercise,” said Seb. Professor Bridges wasn’t asking them to be the characters, and he was realizing that, in this crowd, he should have lead with that. The girls were… well, they liked to push boundaries. Seb’s boundaries, mostly, and mostly in ways that would induct him further into their ways. Face masks and nail polish and all of the kinds of things that girls do when they think you’re gay. “I’m not, like, dressing up as her.”

  “Pity,” murmured Anna.

  “Shut up,” said Seb, and Anna grinned and stuck her tongue out in the mirror. Lucy squeezed his arm.

  “We could run lines!” she said, brightly. “You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to run lines with someone again.” She beamed at him, even though he hadn’t said anything, even though he hadn’t remotely acquiesced to the idea that he was going to run lines with her.

  “Let’s start with drinks,” he said, and Lucy gave an overexaggerated sigh, but hopped off the bed.

  “No one at this stupid school has any appreciation for the cssics,” she said, walking towards the little cabinets where they kept their cups. “No one! No one likes Shakespeare!”

  “I like the version with Leo,” called Anna. The scoff was the loudest noise Lucy had made all night.

  * * * * *

  Three drinks in, most of it wine, although Anna’s fingers were already inching towards the vodka after the second, and Seb was feeling warm. The tone of the room had gotten softer, and he was gd that he wasn’t accompanying them to whatever God forsaken frat party they were hitting tonight. Really, they had tried to get him in once, and he had been turned away the door, and they hadn’t tried again since. He had managed it once, back in the fall, before he’d befriended the girls, when the frats were still hoping to recruit freshmen to pledge. They let freshmen boys in, then. Enticed them. Tried to show them what they would be missing if they didn’t join. As it turned out, what Seb would be missing was mostly standing with a bunch of other freshmen boys, drinking beer in the corner, and living with the most appalling selection of men he had ever seen. They were all polo shirts and khaki shorts and bad haircuts. He had not, in the end, rushed a frat.

  Now they were just waiting for Margot to show, and Lucy had put on a pop mix that featured an unusually high amount of Britney Spears, and the pair of them were talking about boys. Specifically, Lucy’s growing attachment to a particur Andrew… well, Seb had never caught his st name. None of the boys around here seemed to st long enough for him to bother with a name, and that was sort of the way Seb liked it.

  “Where is she?” asked Anna. Anna had donned what Seb had come to understand as ‘frat party chic’. It was a pair of dark pants, so that when someone spilled cheap beer, the stain stayed small, the grubbiest sneakers she had, same reason as the jeans, and a top that either cut low or failed to cover the belly. Sometimes both. Unless there was a theme, and, it seemed there wasn’t tonight, each of the girls wore some variation of that. The hair might be down, or the hair might be up, and the purse might vary from girl to girl, but there was a uniform.

  “With Cam,” said Lucy.

  “Boo,” said Anna. She’d twisted the chair to face them. “Is he going to be stuck to her side all night?”

  “Without a doubt,” said Lucy. Seb frowned.

  “Is he in the frat, too?” he asked.

  “Nope,” said Lucy. Seb blinked. Normally, it was just the frat boys that got in. Everyone else had to be a pretty girl. It must have read on his face, because Lucy giggled. “He’s on the football team, babe. Those rules don’t apply to him.”

  “Ah,” said Seb. “Well, I guess if I ever decide I really want to get into a party, I’ll just have to go out for the team.” Anna snorted.

  “You’d have a better shot if you let us have a go at you,” she said. Seb rolled his eyes. Lucy grinned.

  “We’ll find parties we can all go to,” she said. “There’s just not a lot outside the frats that are any good right now. You know, given that…” Given that they were Freshmen. Given that most of the people they knew, unfortunately, lived in dorms, and the dorms weren’t exactly a prime pce to host a party.

  “It’s fine,” said Seb.

  “I’m serious about that makeover thing,” said Anna. “Give me one chance.” She held up a finger. “And I’m going to get you into one of those parties.”

  “I’ve been inside those parties,” said Seb. Just the one, but it counted. It had been a party, and he had been inside it. All qualifications met. “And it wasn’t all that fun. It was a bunch of standing around and drinking beer with a bunch of people I didn’t know.”

  “Well, you make it sound so exhirating,” said Anna. “But you didn’t go to a party with us. Whole different ballgame, Sebastian.”

  “Well, I,” he gestured to himself, “couldn’t get in.”

  “Not like that,” said Anna, sing song.

  “Not happening,” said Seb.

  “Spoilsport,” said Anna. Lucy grunted.

  “Want to run lines now? You said we could.” Seb was pretty sure that at no point had he agreed to such a thing. In fact, he distinctly remembered dodging the request? Homework while drunk was not his idea of a delightful time. But neither was denying Lucy of her requests.

  “Sure,” he said. Lucy grinned and rolled to grab her phone.

  “Thank god,” she said. “Okay, so, have you done any practicing at all? I mean, this is the kind of thing that needs to be practiced. If you go out there and you butcher Shakespeare, I might have to stop being friends with you.” She was tapping away on her phone, scrolling.

  “It’s an intro css,” said Seb. Lucy looked up at him, her brow furrowed, as if he had just lobbed a personal insult at her.

  “Sebastian Collins, do not be glib about Shakespeare,” she said. Anna giggled.

  “I’m so gd I took a dance css,” she murmured, and Lucy stared daggers into her.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll start from the top. Hey! Stop ughing! This is serious!” Seb had been giggling at Anna’s joke, and Anna had stared giggling at Seb’s giggling, and now they had both descended into something that was akin to silent snorting. Seb was so bad at handling alcohol. Every time he came here for one of these pregames, he was reminded just how little he actually drank. “Hey!” Lucy bat him on the shoulder. “Focus!”

  “I don’t even know what I’m focusing on,” said Seb, his voice riding higher with the giggles. “I mean, god, babe, what am I supposed to be reading from?” Lucy slumped her shoulders.

  “Take this seriously,” she compined.

  “Asking Seb to take anything seriously after his third drink is an absolute fools errand,” said Anna. Seb nodded.

  “You’re going to go out there and you’re going to butcher Beatrice, and at the end of it, I’m going to be so upset with you,” said Lucy. “You’re going to ruin her.” Seb giggled, and Lucy bat his shoulder again.

  “I’m sorry,” said Seb, leaning away from her. “No, no, please don’t hit me again, I’ll take it seriously! I promise, I’ll take your Shakespeare tutoring super seriously.” Lucy had raised another hand to hit him, and Seb shielded himself with his hands. “I’m going to practice.”

  “Good!” Anna was still giggling, and Seb pushed himself further away from Lucy.

  “I’ll even be Beatrice.” That softened Lucy. She beamed at him.

  “Thank god, because that oaf of a man would have been a mile worse than you. I mean, can you imagine?” Seb started giggling again, and Anna followed suit.

  “It’s a line read, Luce,” he said. “For a one-oh-one css.”

  “Seriously!” cried out Lucy, and Seb and Anna colpsed into giggles. Somewhere in the giggles, it registered to him that Lucy had referred to David as an ‘oaf’, which seemed patently untrue and deeply unfair. Sure, he showed up te to css, and he never had his notes, and he was on the same, deliberately easy schedule as Seb as a Junior, but he wasn’t an oaf. He was smart! Or, he wasn’t dumb. He wasn’t oaf-like at all. Oafs sounded like the kind of people to avoid, to keep at bay, but David wasn’t anything like that.

  “I think David would be a perfectly serviceable Beatrice,” he said. Lucy rolled her eyes.

  “God, no!” She sat up. “Promise me you won’t let him be Beatrice.”

  “He’s not bad,” argued Seb.

  “Promise me!”

  “Fine,” said Seb, still trying to hold back a fit of giggles. “Fine, I won’t let David be Beatrice.”

  “And you’ll take these line reads seriously.”

  “And I’ll take these line reads seriously.”

  “And you won’t make me pay you back for the wine.”

  “And I won’t- Hey!” Lucysettled back on the bed, tucking her feet beneath herself, and grinned at him.

  “Good,” she said. “Now, you’re going to have to put on a British accent.” Seb rubbed his eyes.

  “I thought the py took pce in Italy,” he said.

  “Yes, but if you don’t put on a British accent, it’ll be way less fun for me while we do this,” she said. Seb frowned.

  “Now, hold on, I thought we were supposed to-”

  “Okay,” said Lucy, shoving the phone into Seb’s hands. The screen had a site called ‘shakespeare.mit.edu’ up, and it was the full script of Much Ado. Apparently, the fact that it was just a line read, just a scene, just a partial scene, was fully lost on Lucy. She smiled happily at him.

  “You’re a maniac,” said Seb. She nodded forcefully at the phone.

  “Find your scene,” she hummed. “And don’t forget the accent. And make it a woman’s accent.” Seb opened his mouth, closed it, and then started scrolling on the phone. Sometimes, he was pretty sure that if his brother could see him now, could actively see him, could accurately see what he was trying to poke fun at, he’d be even more vicious.

  “What is a woman’s accent?” he asked. Lucy nodded and put a finger to his throat. She tapped gently.

  “Like, make your voice sound like mine,” she said. Seb raised an eyebrow. He almost ughed. He never got the chance to dispy his greatest party trick. Such a rarity.

  At eight years old, little Seb had developed a fascination with Keira Knightly in the Pirates movies. She was pretty, and she was talented, and she ended up with the right kind of boy at the end of it all. And he’d decided that he wanted to pick up a British accent. Not just a British accent, but her British accent, Elizabeth Swann. And he had succeeded. Oh, at the age of eight, had Sebastian Collins succeeded at sounding exactly like Elizabeth Swann. It wasn’t exactly popur at school, given that he, Sebastian Collins, looked nothing like Elizabeth Swann, but he had enough fun with it on his own to perfect it, just for himself, just in his room.

  And then, everyone else’s voices had started to drop, right around the age of twelve. By that point, Seb had been trying out all kinds of accents, all kinds of actresses, and it had sort of happened by accident that, well, he’d managed to save them.

  Accident was an unfair way to put it. He’d worked at it. There were tricks, and the internet was quite the resource. People maniputed their voices in all kinds of fun ways, and figuring out how to manipute his… well, he wasn’t the first boy looking to do it. He’d massaged his voice into the right registers to keep it. The trick was to hold your throat at the top. In the end, all it had taken was some extra practice, some extra diligence, some time making sure that he didn’t forget where things sat in his throat, how things sat in his throat. Because, well, Seb had never needed to raise his voice completely. It was already moderately high, and it had turned out that the requirement was more in the intonation than anything else. He swallowed, held the swallow at the top, and…

  “Like, make your voice sound like mine,” he said, in what could only be described as ‘Southern Sorority’. It came out a little rougher than he liked, a little rougher than it had been a year ago, when he’d been impersonating a collection of women back home in his bedroom, back in Cabash, South Carolina. Not that it seemed to matter. Lucy’s jaw dropped. Anna, who had been absently tapping on the side of her cup, dropped the cup on the floor, letting liquor spill out onto the carpet.

  “What the fuck?” said Anna, staring at him. Seb giggled.

  “What the fuck,” he repeated, still in Southern Sorority. Lucy jumped into a standing position on the bed.

  “How are you doing that?” Seb opened his mouth, still giggling, ready to repeat another phrase, but Lucy, now standing and nearly hitting the ceiling, talked louder. “How are you doing that?” Anna was now scrambling to contain the vodka.

  “What, like it’s hard?” said Seb, still in the voice. He screwed up his mind, trying to imagine some kind of British woman to impersonate. It was always easier to copy than it was to go from scratch. Not Kiera. He was thinking older, more dignified. He nded on Judi Dench, specifically Judi Dench in Casino Royale, the scene where she scolds a half shirtless Daniel Craig on the beach. “I’m a man of many talents.” Fwless.

  “What the fuck, Seb?” Lucy was practically bouncing on the bed now, and Seb was doing everything in his power not to keel backwards from ughter. Anna had thrown a paper towel down on the carpet and had jumped onto the bed, too. She grabbed Seb’s shoulders.

  “Say something in Valley Girl,” she said. Seb smiled broadly.

  “Oh my god, Anna,” he started, and Anna’s smile turned to a cackle. “He is so not an oaf.” Anna doubled into Lucy’s shin, who now was, genuinely, bouncing up and down.

  “How did you…” Anna was squeezing his shoulders. “That’s so good.” Seb did a little mock bow, and both of the girls giggled at him.

  “I’m a man of many talents,” he said. Anna shook her head.

  “Uh uh,” she said. “That’s not a ‘man of many talents’ thing to do.” And Seb and Lucy doubled into fits of giggles. Anna squeezed his shoulders again. “Oh my god, Seb, come with us.” Seb managed to stop giggling for just long enough to give her a quizzical look. God, he was so, so tipsy. Anna, though, looked like she’d just won the lottery. “Seb, you can come to frat parties!” And Seb, still half grinning, half giggling, shook his head.

  “What?”

  “You could get in,” said Anna. “Like, with us. Like, as a girl.” Seb snorted and waved a hand. Frat parties.

  “Anna, I don’t want to go to a frat party,” he said. “Seriously.”“No,” said Anna, bouncing off the bed to stand. “No, listen, it’d be so much fun. We could sneak you in. Like, with the voice and… and, well, if we did your makeup and got you in an outfit…” Seb blinked. She was serious. She actually, genuinely thought that was something that was achievable.

  “Anna, the guys there would kill me,” he said. Which was true. If he went cross-dressed to a Garnd State frat party, he was signing his own death warrant. Or, if not signing his own death warrant, at least guaranteeing his need to transfer in a month. Or a week. Or tomorrow.

  Okay, that was a bit dramatic; he was sure they wouldn’t kill him. But he was also sure that the reception to that, to a stunt which involved him pretending to be a girl to trick a bunch of boys would be… unpleasant.

  “Only if they found out,” said Anna, sing song. She was beaming at him, delirious.

  “They would find out,” said Seb. Anna clicked her tongue, and Seb frowned. “They would.”

  “And how do you know that?” she asked.

  “Because I don’t look like a girl,” said Seb. This time, it was Lucy who made a noise, something between a giggle and a cough. She hid her mouth behind her cup. It took Seb a moment to realize he was still hemming towards the Southern Sorority voice he had been doing. Anna gave Seb a sympathetic smile.

  “Right,” she said.

  “I don’t,” he argued, forcing his voice back into the correct register. Anna nodded and reached for the vodka, refilling the cup she had spilled.

  “Totally,” said Anna, and Seb narrowed his eyes at her. Anna didn’t meet them, just smiling at her vodka. Seb looked back to Lucy, who was also avoiding eye contact, still giggling.

  “You guys are so mean,” said Seb.

  “You’re just kind of feminine,” offered Anna. She held up a hand. “I mean, look, you don’t, like, look like a girl right now, but it’s totally doable. And with the voice?”

  “Totally,” said Lucy. “I mean, you’re kind of tall, and your hair could use a little-”

  “I got it,” said Seb leaning back on the bed, grimacing. “I just think that the pair of you are way overestimating how easy that would be.” Lucy and Anna exchanged a look, and Seb let out a sigh. “I’m serious!” Lucy hopped down from her standing position and let a hand fall on his shoulder. Seb wiggled under her touch.

  “We know,” said Lucy, still giggling. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not,” said Anna, grinning. Seb gred at her. “Listen, you could come with us to a party! I want all my friends to be at a party with me, just one time, and you could really do it! And, yeah, it wouldn’t be perfect and we’d have to pn it, but it could totally happen. You’d have to put some effort in, and we’d have to pn it. It could happen though!” Seb twisted his feet under him. This was excruciating.

  “It wouldn’t-”

  “How do you know that?” asked Anna. “Okay, seriously, have you ever worn makeup?” Seb frowned.

  “No,” he said.

  “Have you ever worn women’s clothing at all?”

  “No, but-”

  “Then how do you know that you’re going to be so obvious, then?” Seb opened his mouth, trying to figure out where to start, where to hit her on that.

  “Well,” he started. Because it should be apparent. It was apparent. They were being deliberately obtuse.

  “What about this,” said Anna, sitting forward. “Let me do your makeup tonight. Not to go to a party or anything, but just to… see. Just to test things. You might need to do it for that css, and it could help to get your legs under you.” She grinned. “And even when it looks good, you don’t need to come with us tonight. We’ll just save it for a, uh, rainy day.” Lucy cpped, as if Seb had just agreed to this proposal, and he gred at her, but she just giggled. Seb turned back to Anna, who was sitting deeper in her chair now.

  “No,” said Seb. Anna rolled her eyes.

  “God, you are such a spoilsport,” she said.

  “No,” said Seb again. Anna dropped a shoulder and pouted.

  “Please, Seb,” she said. “Please let me make you an adorable girl.” Seb ughed, and Anna smirked. She held up a hand. “I swear on my life that I won’t tell a soul.”

  “Well,” said Seb. “That works fine, because I’m Not. Doing. It.” He finished his cup. Fvored vodka was so disgusting. “I’m not nearly drunk enough for that.”

  Ah.

  Oops.

  Each of the girls jumped, Lucy’s hand shooting out to grab the vodka, Anna out of her seat and to the closet, as if they had coordinated it. Seb held up a hand, but Lucy batted it away, picking the vodka. He’d had four drinks, and fifth was already approaching a level that his stomach would rebel against, but Lucy poured anyway. She poured and she hummed and Seb almost wanted to ugh because, had they pnned this? No, no of course not, but Lucy had stuffed the cup back into his hand and was staring at him intently.

  “Drink,” she ordered.

  “I was kidding,” said Seb.

  “No taksies backsies,” said Lucy. “Drink.” Seb stared at the cup, and then at Lucy, who was smiling wider than he’d ever seen. He pressed his lips together, and Lucy nudged him with her knee. “Drink,” she repeated. Seb thought about resisting for a longer moment, forcing them to work harder for it, but it felt pointless. Anna was buried in her closet, and she was tossing things onto the bed, and Lucy was practically dancing on her toes, and was he going to be able to stop that?

  “Just in the dorm,” said Seb, trying to infuse as much warning into his voice as he could. “I’m not attending a single party.” Lucy beamed at him.

  “Promise,” she said, nodding. “Now drink.”

  “And nothing crazy!”“Drink!”

  “You’re both so annoying,” he said, but he put the cup to his lips and drank. Still disgusting. When he brought the cup back down, Lucy offered him another pour, and he accepted.

  “Lucy, come over here,” called Anna from the closet. Seb closed his eyes and ughed. They were way, way too into this. His brain was buzzy from the alcohol, and he swallowed another sip. Almost immediately, Lucy returned from the closet, still beaming, and pulled Seb off the bed.

  “Okay,” she said. “Makeup first. Makeup then clothes. Come to my desk.” Lucy’s desk was all of two feet away, and Seb didn’t even have to take a full step. Lucy pushed him into the chair. “Anna, I’m going to mix with your foundation for skin tone.”

  “Perfect,” said Anna. Seb was facing the closet now, and he could see some of the things that Anna was pulling out. Dresses, mini skirts, tops that would reveal almost his entire stomach.

  “Okay,” said Seb. “Neither of you are wearing things like that.” Anna wheeled and grinned.

  “That’s because we’re going to a frat party, and we can’t wear shit like that,” she said, gesturing to the skirt. “Too cold.” She flexed her hands. “And also, they’d get filthy.”

  “Okay, well, I won’t look good in those,” said Seb. Anna rolled her eyes.

  “Shut up,” she said. Lucy was now hovering dangerously close to Seb’s face. The speed at which they were working worried him. She picked at a strand of his hair.

  “Would it have killed you to grow it a little further?” she asked. “I mean, god, you’re this close to a bob.” Seb rolled his eyes.

  “I wasn’t aware it was going to be necessary,” he said.

  “We’ll make it work,” she said. She gnced at his whole body now, and Seb wondered if this was the first time either of them had actually, really, taken a look at him. It would expin their confidence. “Anna, don’t forget, he’s going to have too much body hair.” Anna waved her hand.

  “Right, right,” she said. “We’ll do what we can tonight.”

  “You’ll have to shave if you want this to work for real,” said Lucy earnestly, now pulling products towards her. “Very necessary.”

  “I…” Seb looked at her incredulously. “I don’t want this to work?” Lucy just rolled her eyes at that and popped the top off a tube of something.

  “Hush,” she said. “Less moving, I need to work on your face.”

  “I-”

  “Hush,” repeated Lucy, and Seb gave her look. She giggled. “You don’t want me to mess you up.” Seb was pretty sure that the whole point of this was, in fact, to mess him up, but never mind. He shut his mouth, and Lucy smiled, and she started rubbing clear goo across his face. “Primer.” Seb gave her another look. “What, do you want me to just be completely silent?”

  “Well, I have to be completely silent,” said Seb.

  “That’s right,” said Lucy cheerily. “Now hush.” Seb gred at her with as much force as he could, but obeyed. “Anna, how are we doing on outfit?” They were like a machine. It hadn’t even been a full minute. At this rate, they’d have him spun up in another five.

  “Working on it,” said Anna. “I think I’m tall enough for him to borrow my tights, and then we can work the skirt.” Lucy, still staring deeply at Seb’s face, grinned.

  “Excellent,” she said. She scraped her finger across Seb’s brow. “I want to do your eyebrows,” she murmured. Seb frowned, and Lucy giggled. “Okay, next time.”

  “There’s-”

  “Hush!”

  And the pair of them went straight to work, Lucy humming in his ear while she gobbed makeup on his face, Anna now stooping to his feet to remove his shoes. Seb tried to give her a look, but Anna either deliberately ignored him or was unable to see past the flurry of brushes and sponges, and it didn’t take her long to pry away his sneakers. Seb needed more liquor. Seb needed a lot more liquor. Liquor had, sort of, gotten him into this mess, although he was pcing forty percent of the bme on Anna and twenty on Lucy, leaving thirty five for liquor and five for his inability to stand up for himself, but he was hoping it could get him out of it, too.

  “I need a drink,” he murmured, trying not to move his lips too much. Lucy grinned and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Go ahead,” she said. Seb grabbed the bottle of vodka, poured a bit into his cup, and downed it. He tried to make a mental mark of how many that was. Six? Seven?God, maybe it was more than thirty-five percent liquor’s fault. This was embarrassing. It was stupid. It was a complete waste of time. No matter what came of this, it wouldn’t be him looking anything like they thought he would, and he was terrified by the idea that they had been so sure. If, this whole time, they had been looking at him and seeing something feminine, which was hirious, this might break that spell. And then, poof. Friendships gone.

  He didn’t even want to think about what Margot would say when she showed.

  Instead of thinking, he presented his face again, and Lucy beamed brighter than she had all night. She started working on his eyes, which turned out to be harder to sit still through. Everything seemed like it might poke him in the eye, and Seb was not looking forward to the idea of repcing his corneas, so he did his best to sit very, very still.

  It wouldn’t be so bad to find other friends. He would be beyond crushed, of course, to lose them. Lucy and Anna and Margot. It felt crazy that, all of six months ago, he hadn’t known any of them. But he would figure something out. Maybe, after this, he would attempt to find male friends again. Other than David, of course. But that wasn’t the same. He was… well, he was too David. Too ‘star quarterback, always cool, always busy’ David. Maybe he could convince another set of girls to adopt him, to let him sit around while they got ready for parties and chat and joke and drink. Maybe, finally, he could try dating.

  Maybe there was a girl out there that would make this all work. Maybe, in the end, he could sit in his girlfriend’s room while she got ready to go to a frat party. Was that something boyfriends and girlfriends did? He wasn’t sure. It seemed like no, like most boyfriends would probably be upset by the idea of their girlfriends going off to frat parties without them. Right? Something something jealousy, something something too many dudes.

  “Okay,” said Lucy. “Okay, I think we’re somewhere.” She smiled, checking bits of his face, then leaning back. Anna came to hover over her shoulder. “I would love to take a swing at your eyebrows, but this will have to do.”

  “She looks great,” pronounced Anna. Seb rolled his eyes.

  “Let’s keep the pronoun straight,” he said. Anna frowned.

  “We’re going to need you to get that voice under control,” she said, teasingly. And under their watchful gaze, Seb rolled his eyes and acquiesced.

  “Shut up,” said Seb, adopting something between Valley and Southern Girl. Lucy giggled.

  “Think about it as practice for being Beatrice,” she said, extending a hand. “C’mon, let’s put you in something.” Seb frowned.

  “Now, I agreed to makeup,” he said. He wasn’t sure he had agreed to anything, and he hadn’t pushed when Anna had gone to the closet, but it was good to compin. Smart to compin. Anna rolled her eyes.

  “Are you honestly going to tell us that we managed to get you in makeup but we can’t get you in a skirt?” Seb frowned, but he was already being guided to the bed by Lucy, who had pulled him up with more ease than he would have liked.

  “You’re both…”

  “The best?” offered Lucy.

  “Extremely helpful?” provided Anna. Seb was going to nd on insane, but he was willing to let them hold onto those adjectives. For now.

  “Nothing crazy,” he murmured.

  And then, there was a knock on the door, and all three of them jumped. The smiles on Lucy and Anna’s faces shrank, just a little bit. Anna went to the door. Seb scratched at his face, and Lucy bat his hand away.

  “You’ll mess it up,” she murmured. Seb giggled, and Lucy gave him a smile. From the doorway, only twenty feet away. Anna let out a sigh.

  “Only Margot,” she called, and he heard the door swing open. And then, as if it was the most exciting she’d ever seen… “And Cam! Oh, and… uh, hi, David!”

  It was like a bomb had been dropped in the middle of the room. Anna’s voice had been loud enough to carry, loud enough for the pair of them, and now Lucy and Seb were staring at each other, pulled from the odd, whirlwind transformation that had been occurring just moments before. Back in the real world, the world where people knocked on doors, where women wore makeup and men wore scowls.

  Men could wear makeup. Men could wear makeup. Men could wear makeup.

  Except, the men at the door certainly didn’t, and this wasn’t the kind of college where men did wear makeup, and Seb, this Seb, him, rooted to the spot, was going to have to see David Oliver every day for the whole semester. And if David fucking Oliver walked in and saw him in makeup, all vestiges of masculinity stripped away, that would be… well, it would be bad.

  Fuck.

  Lucy and Seb stared at each other for a long second. And as soon as they did, it registered in Seb’s mind that Lucy and Anna had never intended to take him anywhere. No frat parties, no nothing. It was supposed to stay a secret. Lucy looked near as panicked as he did, and she was twirling around the room, as if looking for an answer hidden against the walls somewhere, a door for him to disappear into, and that panicked him more, because she had been enthusiastic about this a minute ago. Seb’s mind raced. What was Cam doing here? What was David doing here??

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “Oh, just give Lucy a second.” That came loud enough for the pair of them. Lucy and Seb swapped another long, panicked look. He knew he couldn’t see them like this. They couldn’t see him like this. There really, truly, was only one option.

  “Hide!” hissed Lucy, but Seb was already down on his knees, pulling away the bits of the dresser stuffed beneath the bed. Why was Cam here? Why… why was David here?? The beds were tall, so when he’d pulled away enough of the crap that Anna had been storing under it, he crawled. He crawled under, and Lucy started pushing the crap back in front of him. God, it was dirty under here. Anna needed to vacuum.

  “Oh, I’m such a big fan,” said Anna, and Seb arranged himself under the bed, squished to the wall. No time to compin. No noise, either. Lucy gave him a final, remorseful look, mouthed something that Seb expected to be ‘sorry’, but looked like something else, something Seb couldn’t make out, and then blocked him in. Behind all the crap. Entirely concealed.

  Which meant that, as long as he didn’t make any noise, this would be okay, wouldn’t it?

  “No, no, Lucy’s-”

  “What’s going on with you?” asked Margot.

  “Nothing,” said Anna, and Seb heard footsteps, and then a parade of them.

  “Where’s Seb?” asked Margot.

  “Seb?” That was David.

  “Yeah, like, Sebastian,” said Margot.

  “He couldn’t make it,” said Lucy, and Seb bit on his lip.

  “Oh,” said David, and Seb could hear the dawning comprehension is his voice. God, he wished David were more of a meathead. “You’re all ‘the girls’.” Seb mentally cursed himself. If he had ever said that out loud, to David, to the quarterback, well… ‘The girls’. Not exactly doing himself any favors in the male friends department. Might as well have just stayed out in the makeup.

  Well, okay, there were levels of emascution.

  “Do you know Seb?” asked Margot, and Seb almost forgave her for bringing David here. Coy, Margot, coy. Make it seem like he had never once mentioned sitting next to the star quarterback every Friday.

  “We’re in css together,” expined David. “Wait, does he go to parties with you all?” Seb frowned to himself. How many times had he vaguely said ‘something’? David had asked for eboration the first time, and the second, and then never again, after Seb continually blew him off.

  “Nope,” said Anna.

  “Huh,” said David. “Weird.”

  “Drink!” offered Lucy. And it came out more like an order than a question. There were footsteps fading, and footsteps arriving, and then the noise level started to pick up, and Seb breathed again. And then, he took stock of the fact that he was hiding under a bed.

  He was going to have to kill Anna and Lucy for this.

  And he was really going to have to buy them a vacuum, because ew.

  One minute turned to five, and then five to ten, and Seb’s leg started to get itchy, and he hoped it wasn’t because there was some kind of bug under here that was biting him. There were two conversations going on at once now, and Seb wasn’t really trying to keep track. David and Lucy were sitting above him on Anna’s bed, and it seemed like Anna was somewhere in the middle of the room, and Margot was with her new boyfriend on the opposite side, and it was just loud.

  “Oh, I hear you’re doing Much Ado!” said Lucy. Seb closed his eyes and winced. So much for Margot’s coyness. Too many drinks in Lucy, apparently. David, though, didn’t seem to notice.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we got a new professor. And this one actually wants to teach us things.”

  “What a pity,” said Lucy, and David ughed. Seb’s mouth twitched.

  “I don’t know,” said David. “I’ve always liked Shakespeare.” And then, he did something so incredible that Seb nearly fell ft on his face, letting his elbow slip. “‘Then courtesy is a turncoat. But it is certain that I am loved of all dies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none’.” There had been gusto in it, eloquence and verve, and Seb still hadn’t read the py, but David had to have nailed it. His voice had been pyful, and it matched the line, and Seb was trying to blink away his shock.

  “Oh my god,” said Lucy, filling in for him. “Wow, I… wow!”

  “Oh,” said David, and Seb could hear a growing sheepishness in his voice. And of course he had read the py. He liked poetry! And, okay, Seb was pretty sure Shakespeare wasn’t poetry, but it had to be close! Near poetry. Poetry adjacent. Seb blinked, trying to imagine his face, as twisted and bashful on the bed, trying to expin away just how he had already managed to memorize that line. “Well, I didn’t think I’d have time to work on it this weekend.”

  “It was wonderful!” said Lucy, and he could almost hear her trying to bounce on the bed, but restraining herself. “Wow, well, Seb will have to be Beatrice now.” She said that st bit louder, and Seb wanted to kick the bed. He resisted. Stop telling him I told you this story!

  “Beatrice is fun, too,” said David, and Seb really did fall on his face when David unched into it. “‘A dear happiness to women: they would have else been troubled by a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood,’” David trailed off. He hadn’t done any sort of voice, any voice differently than his Benedick, and Seb tallied another kick for Lucy. “Shit, how’s the rest of it go?” Lucy giggled, and Seb felt a stinging pang in his chest.

  “‘I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me’,” she supplied.

  “That’s it,” he said, and Lucy giggled again.

  “I had no idea you liked Shakespeare,” she said. “Seb never said.” Seb’s stomach was churning all over the pce, and he was imagining David sitting on the bed in bewilderment, trying to imagine why Seb, the scrawny, dweeby kid from his Friday csses was mentioning anything. And, importantly, when, between css and now, when Seb had been too busy to be here for some unknown reason, had he found the time to mention all this to Lucy? Seb was already making a mental note to never, ever mention anything about David ever again to any of the girls. They could all find their own seats in the fall, thank you very much.

  “Well,” said David, his voice grabbing a bit of bashfulness again. “I don’t know.”

  “God, you’re both going to be such a…” She stopped, and Seb willed her to say something normal. “Well, an excellent Beatrice and Benedick.” That was, what, a third kick for Lucy? She was going to hit double digits by the end of this conversation, Seb was sure.

  “It’s just a few scenes,” said David, his voice steadying to confidence again. “And we haven’t really done any practice together or anything.”

  “Well,” said Lucy, and Seb could imagine her sitting straight up, her back arched, her hands out like a proper mother, discussing her daughter’s prim accomplishments. God, Seb needed to itch his leg. “I know Seb will make an excellent Beatrice.” Four kicks. Four very, very hard kicks. And a fifth for stuffing him under this bed and making him hear it all.

  “Where is he?” And Seb could just about kiss David for actually getting them off this topic, even if it required Lucy to supply some sort of alibi again. Fortunately, Anna seemed to have overheard that bit, and she supplied it instead.

  “He’s at his dorm, I think,” she said. “He said something about needing to work on the Chem homework.” Okay, well, that made him sound like a loser, but he was currently hiding under Anna’s bed in makeup, so he’d take ‘loser’ over any of the other things David could be imagining. Besides, Anna could at least bullshit about the chemistry homework, since she was currently stuck with it, too.

  “Ah,” said David. “Right.” And Seb, for the briefest of moments, considered that it sounded pretty disappointed. Then, he immediately dispelled that, because David was here, with a bunch of pretty girls, drinking, and there was, in fact, no reason for him to wish Seb was around. That had to be an intonation that Seb had imagined, or one that had been scrambled by the bed.

  Okay, well, they were friends, he supposed. He’d be disappointed if he showed up somewhere, with all of David’s friends, and had found that David was just sitting in his room instead. That would be pretty unfortunate. And, of course, David’s friends were twice as frightening as Seb’s, or at least twice as unpleasant. He’d have to suffer through, from the sound of it, communicating with a bunch of football pyers, and without David as a buffer, it sounded like hell.

  Honestly, even with the buffer, it sounded like hell.

  And then, finally, mercifully, Anna managed to get them up. She had said something about ordering an Uber, which kicked everyone into high gear, and suddenly people were off the beds, shuffling towards the door. Seb closed his eyes and made a note to buy Anna whatever drink she wanted next Friday, right after he’d given Lucy her kicks. God, he needed to itch his leg. Next time he hid, it would be in pce that wasn’t so full of dust. They stuffed people into closets, didn’t they? At least he could stand in there.

  “Okay,” said Anna, and the door was swung open. “Off we go! Uber’s three minutes away! Use the bathroom if you need it.” Then, after a melodramatic pause and a trampling of feet, “Oh, just one second, forgot something.” The door smmed shut. And then, another set of footsteps, and Seb waited for the light to appear. It did, along with Anna’s very, very apologetic face.

  “Hi,” said Seb, keeping one eye open.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Anna, kneeling down. “Listen, there’s makeup remover on my desk, or you can wait for us to get home. I promise we won’t be long.” She grimaced. “I’m pretty sure Lucy is too drunk to be out for more than an hour.” Seb blinked, still trying to adjust himself to the light.

  “I’ve noticed that,” he muttered. Anna gave him a sympathetic smile.

  “Do you want me to keep her away from him?” she asked. Seb did his best to avoid the telling inflection in her voice.

  “Just keep a tally of the kicks I owe her,” said Seb. Anna grinned at him.

  “Sure, babe,” she said. “Okay, I’m going to run. You’re good to get out?” Seb nodded.

  “Push all the shit out of the way,” he offered. Anna grinned and winked.

  “Exactly,” she said. “Okay, well, if I don’t see you ter…”

  “Have fun,” said Seb.

  “You too,” said Anna. And her face was gone, and her footsteps were quickly trailing to the hall, and then they were gone. And Seb let out a massive, hirious sigh.

  He shoved the garbage in front of him away and crawled out the way he came, back into the light of Anna and Lucy’s room. There were twice as many cups as there had been when he’d dived under the bed, and most of the vodka was gone. Seb decided that he, after enduring a physically uncomfortable and emotionally painful thirty minutes, deserved to finish the bottle. He’d bought it, after all.

  Well, the girls all pitched in, but he’d gone to the store.

  Seb scratched his leg, then confirmed that there were no bite marks or cockroaches crawling on him, just dust, and flopped into Anna’s chair. He poured vodka into one of the cups, deciding that, at this moment, he wasn’t particurly concerned with the idea that it wasn’t his, and drank quickly. What an insane thing. What an insane thing. What an insane insane insane thing. He poured another cup of the vodka.

  Okay, makeup off. He turned to the desk, to the mirror on the desk, ready to look for the bottle of makeup remover and the cotton balls, ready to peel away the face, just as he’d seen the girls do a dozen times before.

  Whoa.

  Wait.

  Whoa.

  He hadn’t gotten a look at himself in the mirror before this, hadn’t had the chance to see himself before he’d be stuffed, undignified, under Anna’s bed. And he knew Lucy was talented, and he’d never considered himself to be, like, the pinnacle of masculinity or anything, and he’d seen what the girls could do with makeup, but, like…

  Whoa.

  There were rough spots, including a spot of dust from where his cheek had nded, but he was… well, he was feminine. Girlish. Not even, if he thought about it. Maybe his head was just swimming from the alcohol, and maybe it was the voice and concoction of femininity that Lucy and Anna seemed to brew in this room, the floral scent, but the makeup had covered all the masculinity. He tilted his head forward. Not at the hairline, high, or the brow, still thick, or at the neck, where Lucy had failed to cover all of the bits of scruff, but between them…

  Seb sat back. Crazy. He took a drink of the vodka. Disturbing, actually. Wrong. That someone could do that, with just a brush and a splotch of makeup was wrong. Lucy was getting another kind of kick for being a witch.

  He looked again, and she was still there.

  He stood from the chair, turning towards the mirror, the full length one, the one hanging from the closet door. He stepped to it, letting his hands fall by his side. The outfit, a t-shirt and baggy jeans, was masculine, and the rest of him was too, everything they hadn’t worked on. Masculine hair and masculine shoulders and masculine… legs? Well, okay, legs were just legs, but it was only the inches that Lucy had touched that were really feminine. It was the bit between the hairline and the neck, the bit that she had combed over with her fingers. He stared. It was… it was crazy, wasn’t it? He had to be drunk.

  Okay, well, he knew he was drunk. He knew he was very, very drunk, and so there was an expnation for this, an expnation that made sense, and that combined with the makeup was enough.

  And that was enough of the makeup. That was more than enough of the makeup. His mind was swimming, swimming in flecks of alcohol, it seemed, and the floral scent of the room, and it would all be easier once he took the makeup off. There was no one here to impress. There was no set of giggling girls who would be delighted by his face, by what they had managed, so there, really, was no reason not to just wipe it all away.

  He spun from the mirror.

  He stopped.

  Anna had never put away the outfit, though. And there was this dizzying curiosity. What was achievable? What was possible? Oh, he didn’t have the fingers that Lucy had, but, well, the girls never needed to know, did they? He could indulge that curiosity, just for a moment. He could put on the outfit, the one that Anna had been convinced would provide enough cover for the rest of it, enough cover to get him, pusibly, by, or at least make him satisfactory to the pair of them, and they never had to know. They wouldn’t be back. Seb could see if he really, earnestly, could do the whole thing. If he could go head to toe, minus the hair. Forehead to toe, as you were.

  And… why not?

  The tights were the trickiest to put on, and Seb found he had to hop a little to pull them up. The rest though… well, it was a little weird that Anna’s skirt fit him acceptably well, although Seb was shocked at how much skin it left exposed. He had never considered how short some of these skirts were, and it was weirder with it sitting at his bellybutton. Even alone, with no one to see, he found himself moderately concerned about things spilling out the bottom. And the top, bck with a high neckline and sleeves, was it’s own kind of odd. It clung to his arms and his wrists, everywhere, really, except at the waist, where it fell away, leaving just a sliver of midriff. He supposed that, even though he really only had a bit of chest hair, she had picked things that helped avoid showing his skin, and his shoulders still looked broad in the top, but...

  It worked.

  It really worked. Seb stared at the reflection, marveling at it. They were good at this. Oh, sure, with the hair and the ck off boobs and the thinness around the waist, it wasn’t perfect. But it was something. It was closer than he’d ever been to a girl. Not that, of course, that had been something that he’d really considered before. It was just that this was about eighty percent of the way there. Better hair and a shave and maybe some kind of growth around his chest and…

  Seb fell back into Anna’s chair, away from the mirror. Drink. He needed to finish that drink. Thank god the rest of the girls weren’t here for this, because they might never let him hear the end of it. Seb poured the remainder of the vodka into his cup, or whatever cup was sitting next to him, and drank. One sip, two sip, bigger and bigger. Crazy. It was crazy.

  And he was crazy for putting it on.

  There was a swirling feeling of delight at the mirror, at the vision of himself, and Seb was afraid of what to make of that. He was afraid at what that could mean, at what it might mean to like this version of him, the version of him that looked more like a girl and less like a boy, afraid what it might mean if he saw himself at one hundred percent rather than just eighty.

  Seb had spent a frightening amount of time on the internet. He had spent a frightening amount of time in forums regarding his voice, impressions, regarding the ways in which men needed to throw their voices to be...

  He couldn’t. Not here. He couldn’t be. Not at this college.

  God, another sip. He turned away the mirror on Anna’s desk, lest he be reminded. Male friends. He needed to make male friends, friends who wouldn’t, inevitably, try to put him in some sort of Barbie doll outfit. Maybe he’d see if David could bring him along to a party one of these days, see if things were different when you were attached to the star quarterback. David, at the very least, wouldn’t be throwing him in the shortest skirt in South Carolina.

  How had he known all that Shakespeare? Seb hadn’t really managed to get his head around on it yet, hadn’t really managed to put together that David Oliver had recited, from the heart, two lines from Much Ado About Nothing. And, okay, two lines wasn’t that much, but he was David Oliver! He was the man who was taking Freshman csses as a Junior! And Seb hadn’t thought of him as an idiot, but he hadn’t thought of him as someone who could recite Shakespeare!

  And he’d done the line pyfully, Benedick’s line, and, god, he really was going to have to kick Lucy, because how had she managed to get him into this? His partner was actually good at Shakespeare, actually into it, and Lucy was going to delight at the idea that Seb was working with him. And Seb wasn’t… Seb wasn’t mad at the idea of working with David. Really, there hadn’t been anyone else in the css that he’d want to work with. Really, even if he’d known that it would mean he’d have to recite Beatrice’s lines, he’d still have signed up to be David’s partner. David… well, David was funny, and he liked to spend time with him, and if he had to pick someone to work with outside of css, it didn’t hurt that it was David. David could open his Snapple bottles.

  Seb’s fingers started to go a little loose around the cup of vodka sitting on the desk. Really, his whole mind started to go a little loose.

  So much to drink.

  So much going on.

  So much to drink.

  * * * * *

  “Hi Seb.”

  “Hmm,” he murmured. There was a hand on his shoulder, a gentle one, and he lent his head to it.

  “Did you decide to finish the job?” It was Anna. He could tell now. Her voice was soft, and it was warm. Everything was soft and warm. He wanted to curl into a bnket and sink into sleep.

  “Hmm?” he repeated. Anna giggled, and the door smmed. Seb opened his eyes. Anna was crouched down next to him, her smile broad. Lucy traipsed into the room, stumbling.

  “You’re wearing the clothes,” murmured Anna. And Seb felt a current run through him. Oh. Oh no. He had… he had only meant to try them. He had meant to put them on and take them off, and now Lucy had paused near the end of her bed, her eyes wide, a smile spreading onto her face as well, and Seb sat up, willing this to just be a dream. Anna bit her lip, trying to catch her own smile.

  “Oh,” said Seb. “Oh, well, I…” There was no way out. There was no… there was no way to pretend he hadn’t just put them on himself. No pressure. No asking. No girls begging him to let them make him pretty. Seb had put on the skirt.

  “Sebastian,” squeaked Lucy, putting a hand to her mouth. “Oh my god, you’re…” Seb tried to keep the smile off his face, but he knew he failed. And Anna was giggling again, and Seb covered his own face. What was he doing? What was happening?

  “You really look good,” said Anna, through giggles. “Oh my god, Seb, you really do.” The heat rose in Seb’s face, and he managed to stop himself from giggling.

  “I… I just wanted to see,” he said meekly. And Lucy rushed forward to hug him, as if he’d confessed that he’d managed the most incredible feat in the world. And that made Seb giggle. She smelled so strongly of liquor that Seb had hold his throat to stop from gagging.

  “Seb!” The word was muffled in Seb’s shoulder, and Seb felt the jolt of panic return. He couldn’t be.

  “You tell no one,” he said, putting as much seriousness into his voice as he could muster. “No one.” Anna nodded. He squeezed Lucy’s arm, and she pulled back to nod.

  “Cross my heart,” she said, drawing an x over her chest with an index finger. “And hope to die.”

  “Especially not David,” he said, gring at Lucy, and Anna erupted into a fit of giggles. Lucy blushed and pouted.

  “I didn’t do anything,” she compined. Seb swapped a look with Anna, which confirmed that Anna had, in fact, told Lucy not to keep talking to David. Seb looked at her, as sternly as he could muster, trying to channel Very Serious Sebastian, which was hard to do knowing how, well, he looked, and while Anna covered her giggles with a palm.

  “You kept going on and on about me talking about him!” said Seb. “And offering me up to be Beatrice.” Lucy dropped her shoulders.

  “Oh my god, you go on and on about him,” said Lucy. She looked to Anna for support, who giggled harder. “I was being helpful.” Seb gave her a look. She crossed her arms and scoffed. “It’s so rich of you to compin about being offered up to be Beatrice when you look like this.” Seb felt the heat rise further in his face, and Anna keeled back onto the floor, breathless from ughter.