Cam was wearing the exact same thing that he had been wearing in the liquor store. Bck jeans, button down shirt, sneakers that looked like they’d been left in the rain for a couple of hours. His hair hadn’t changed and his face hadn’t changed and Vio was pretty sure that when he opened his mouth, the voice that escaped it would be the same as the voice she had heard at Royal Liquor three hours ago.

  And then, Vio briefly considered herself, briefly considered the wig and the tits and the halter top that was showing her belly and stretched further up than she was remotely comfortable with, and Anna had to tug her again. She squeezed her hand, and Vio tried to remember to breathe. This was bad. This was so, so, so bad, and she was going to have to drop out of school, and she was going to have to figure out a new schorship, and in the meantime she was going to have to go back to fucking Cabash and live with her awful parents and her awful brother and try and forget how, exactly, she had destroyed her life.

  “Hey Anna,” called Cam. His eyes passed over to Vio, and Vio did her best to act like that didn’t make her want to scream. Did he recognize her? He had seen her all of, what, three hours ago? How much did makeup do? How much did the wig do?

  And he knew that she hung out with the girls, that the girls were her friends, her only friends, and here was this girl who, on the bance of things, looked simir enough to Seb to be his cousin, if not sister, if not him, and oh god.

  But Cam was smiling, and it didn’t seem… well, it didn’t seem like the smile she would have expected if he had known. He had just seen her. He had just seen her. And the liquor store had those horrible fluorescent lights, and it should have been easy to put it together, to realize that the girl who was here was the boy who had been there, but the smile… Well, it wasn’t what he had given her in the liquor store, but it wasn’t malicious. It didn’t scream ‘gotcha’.

  Small victories.

  “Hiya,” said Anna, in a voice that Vio could tell was infused with forced friendliness. “What are you doing here?” Cam grinned.

  “Well, I know that Margot said we’d meet there again, but…” Anna squeezed Vio’s hand very hard, as if to say, ‘fucking guys’, and Vio squeezed right back. Fucking guys. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.” Cam was looking at her again, and, oh god. Well, the voice had to work now, didn’t it? It had to work now, and if it worked now, then it would all be okay.

  She imagined Anna tapping gently on her throat.

  “Oh, I’m Vio,” she said, and she could almost jump. Fluent. Fucking. Sorority. “I live in the hall.” Oh, and quick thinking?

  Suddenly, Vio felt moderately in control. Not in control enough to follow up with another sentence, to ask his name, since she wasn’t supposed to know it, but more in control than she’d been ten seconds ago. She could py girl. She had the voice and the clothes and the look, and what mattered was that no one put together the connection between her and Seb. And, as long as Cam was a little bit of a himbo, she might make it through the next five minutes!

  She wasn’t in control enough to look him the eye again, though.

  “Yeah, she came over to have a drink with us,” said Anna. “Something she was invited to.” And just then, the door swung open, and Margot and Lucy were standing in the doorway, taking in the little trio assembled at the foot of the door. Margot looked from Cam to Anna to Vio. And then, back from Vio to Cam. Her face, for just the tiniest of moments, fshed into anger. And then, it dissipated into a smile.

  Lucy, for her part, just rolled her eyes, grabbed Vio’s hand, and pulled her through the doorway. Behind her, she called in feigned, or maybe real, exasperation, “I thought we were meeting at the party!”

  And then, after twirling Vio around the corner, she let out a long breath and closed her eyes.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Why is he here?” asked Vio. “God, fuck, Lucy, why is he-”

  “Hold on,” whispered Lucy. “We didn’t fucking invite him.” She grimaced. “God, Cam is so-” She stopped herself, shook her head. “Okay, so not the point right now.” Vio felt like her throat was closing. Out in the hall, she could hear Margot giving Cam a light scolding, the kind that was supposed to be disguised. Didn’t we say we were going to meet at the party?

  “He’s going to fucking know,” said Vio. Lucy shook her head.

  “No, he won’t,” she said. “Vio, you look nothing like Seb, I promise. I mean, at worst, like a way hotter sister, but he won’t be able to tell. Not with the wig and the boobs and the voice, I promise.” She took Vio’s hands. Vio hadn’t realized her palms were so sweaty. “Look, you need to act really, really cool, okay? Just, like, act like one of us for a half hour, and then make up some sort of excuse about needing to stay in for the night.” Lucy peered down at her outfit, and Vio took stock of the fact that she, Vio, didn’t just look like a girl. She looked like a girl who was going to a frat party. She had asked for frat party chic, and they had given her frat party chic, and now…

  “Fuck,” said Vio.

  “Voice,” hissed Lucy. Vio blinked hard. She hadn’t even realized she’d slipped out of it. Oh, god, if she slipped out of it while Cam was in the room, she was complete toast.

  “Fuck,” she said, infusing it with all that she could. Lucy nodded.

  “Better,” she said. She squeezed Vio’s hand. “You’re going to do fine. You spend, like, all your time with us. You can talk like us, and you can talk about all the things we talk about, and… well, you look the part.” She smiled. “Rex.”

  Vio couldn’t tell if Lucy actually believed it. She wanted to believe that Lucy believed it. She wanted to believe that Lucy thought that she, Vio, could pusibly fool a random man, could blend herself into a crowd of women and remain only one of the crowd, a girl not to be commented on.

  She wanted to believe that Lucy believed it, but it didn’t matter right now.

  Oh, god.

  Lucy swung her onto the bed, which Vio appreciated, because she was starting to feel a little dizzy, and she could not believe that this was happening, that something this stupid was happening to her, that, after everything, she had ended up here. It was only supposed to be the four of them. No Cam, no anyone.

  And then they were in the room, all three of them, Anna leading the pack, doing a poor job of disguising her anger, Margot doing a much better one, and Cam seeming completely and utterly unaware that anyone might be upset at him for arriving.

  Anna pushed herself up onto the bed next to Vio, leaving her squished between Lucy on one side and Anna on the other. Anna y a little finger on Vio’s hand, the one Vio was currently using to brace herself of the bed, and Vio gave her a smile.

  Cam and Margot settled on Anna’s bed, across the room, and Margot hopped to get him a pour of something.

  “What are our options?” asked Cam, and Vio felt Anna tense at the word ‘our’. And… had Vio been holding the liquor when Cam had met her in the shop earlier? Had she yet nded on something? She’d had the wine already, that was for sure, and she’d been standing in the liquor aisle, because she could still see Cam’s frame at the end of it, hulking, but she couldn’t remember if she’d made a decision yet.

  She hoped not. Fewer clues, please.

  Clues.

  Her eyes fshed about the room. Were there bits of Seb somewhere? There had to be bits of Seb somewhere, scattered across the floor or on the bed or in the closet or somewhere. His backpack, for one, or his jeans or something. She did a once over as subtly as she could manage and saw nothing. Empty floor, empty beds, definitely no bright blue backpack.

  She gnced to Lucy, who gave her a knowing wink.

  “Not my first rodeo,” she whispered. “I know where to hide your junk.” Vio gave her the smallest smile she could, now remembering that she had needed to dig under Lucy’s bed to find her backpack st time she’d had to hide.

  Thank god they made these beds so high. All the easier to hide the trappings on manhood under. And men, occasionally.

  Or, well…

  Whatever.

  “How are you, Cam?” asked Anna. Cam, now looking supremely comfortable on Anna’s bed, pushed all the way up against the wall, grinned.

  “Good, good,” he said. “You know, end of week, can’t compin.”

  “Sure,” said Anna. Margot, still standing, offered the bottle of wine to the rest of the girls. Vi wished she wouldn’t. That bottle, that exact bottle, had been in Seb’s hands just a few hours ago. She was pretty sure of that.

  “Oh, I saw your friend at the store earlier!” Cam was staring at the bottle of wine. Okay, Seb had definitely been holding that bottle when Cam had approached him earlier. “Um, Sebastian, right?” Well, it would be nice to go home, wouldn’t it? Cabash was a real winner of a town, and it would be amazing to be back there, just wasting away, applying to schools where no one had registered her as the rogue cross-dresser yet.

  “Yes,” said Margot. “Yeah, Seb.”

  “He was buying that wine, too, I think,” said Cam. The way he said it, it sounded more like a passing curiosity than anything else. “You all must be rubbing off on him.”

  “There’s an argument for that,” said Anna, and Vio snorted. Then, she covered her face with a palm. Cam grinned at her, and Vio tried to cover her face further. Don’t look at her while thinking about Seb. It would be very, very bad for Cam to look at her closely while he was thinking about Seb.

  “You know him?” asked Cam, and Vio had to fight not to giggle. She succeeded, but she was pretty sure her face still shone.

  “Yes,” she said. “Um, sort of.”

  “He’s pregamed with us before,” offered Lucy, just a tad too quickly. “They’ve met then.” Margot offered Cam his cup, then came to deliver each of the girls a bit of wine. With her back turned to Cam, she mouthed a very subtle ‘I’m sorry’ to Vio.

  “Right,” said Cam. “Nice guy.”

  “The best,” agreed Lucy. Vio giggled again. Lucy gave her a wide eyed smile. Okay, she really was going to need to stop reacting like that. She was a little tickled that the giggles had made an effective migration to Girl Voice, but she did not need Cam tying her to Seb. Even now, with another set of giggles, Cam was giving her an odd look, and Vio did her best not to look Seb-like. Sit up straight, knees together, think pretty girl, ignore the drinks.

  “What’s with her?” asked Cam, his eyes flitting to Margot. Vio started. He’d said it as if Vio was not in the room, as if he couldn’t have asked her. And, well, she was trying to use her voice as little as possible, to be as invisible as possible, it was at least a little rude for Cam to act like she wasn’t there at all. She felt Anna tense again.

  “Uh,” said Margot, her eyes slipping across the room to Vio. Cam studied her, and Vio steeled her face. Pretty girl. Girl. Calm. Cam looked inquisitively back to Margot, and Vio frowned.

  Okay, maybe she’d gotten the wrong read on Cam back in the liquor store. Maybe he was, in fact, kind of a dick. Margot was supposed to answer what was going on with her? Weird.

  “Oh,” said Margot. She gnced at the three of them, then back to Cam. “Um.” Quicker, Margot, be quicker. A long second, and a deepening look of interest of Cam’s face, and Vio needed Margot to whip into shape much, much faster.

  “She has a crush on him,” blurted out Lucy. She… what? Vio stared at her. Lucy gnced at her, bit back her lips, and then pressed forward. “Yeah, you know, um, she…”

  “Likes Seb,” finished Anna, and Vio whipped to look at Anna. Anna took a breath and grinned at her. “Sorry, babe, it’s, uh, kind of obvious. You can’t even talk about him without getting all flustered.” Vio was imagining a strong, sturdy pair of steel toed boots and a pair of matching bruises on everyone’s legs. She’d even get one on Cam. Ridiculous.

  “That is not true,” she said, and the second the words left her lips, she knew they had buried her. It was exactly what she would have sounded like if it were true; indignant, frustrated, and embarrassed. And, well, feminine. Cam ughed on the opposite side of the room, and Vio felt the heat rise in her face. She gred at Lucy, who was clearly trying to act normal, like it was a normal thing that she had just said, and then back to Anna, who was, at least, looking a little apologetic.

  “The dy… Shit, how’s that thing go again?” Cam was frowning into his cup.

  “The dy doth protest too much, methinks,” supplied Lucy, reluctantly. Vio leaned into Lucy, trying to put as much weight on her as she could without arousing attention from Cam. Lucy grimaced at her. “He’s very cute.” It was in the same sort of mollifying voice that she had used when they had unearthed her attraction to David.

  “I-,” started Vio, with no idea how to finish the sentence denying a crush on herself. Seb! She couldn’t have a crush on Seb. That wasn’t possible, physically speaking. Cam, though, had already turned his attention to Margot, who had settled close to him on the bed, snaking his arm around her, and Vio let out a heavy breath. God. Good fucking excuse for her to be weird, she supposed. Good fucking excuse for her to find the mention of Seb funny. She gred at Lucy, now with the attention gone. “I’m paying you back for that.” Lucy closed her eyes and grimaced, and Vio shook her head.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “Worked, though,” said Anna, from the other side.

  “Yeah, except now I have a crush on myself,” whispered Vio.

  “Well, you are-”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Vio, and both girls giggled.

  * * * * *

  An hour ter, and the room was drunker. Not just each of the girls, mind you, but the actual room felt drunker. It smelled of it, and it sounded of it, and every fshing sign pointed towards an unenviably hungover set of girls in the morning.

  Par for the course, then.

  Except that Vio, after about three more drinks and enough time that she had managed to slip with retive comfort into her role as ‘Vio’, was starting to see a problem. If, in this theoretical scenario, she was going to stay behind, and the rest of the girls and Cam were going to head off to this party, and Vio was supposed to be Vio, why in God’s name would she stay in this room? If she, Vio, was supposed to live in the hall, and she was dressed for a frat party, what kind of excuse: A. Got her out of the party and B. Gave a pusible expnation as to why she wasn’t just going back to her own dorm room?

  And Vio couldn’t very well go back to her own dorm, because Vio didn’t have one. Seb did. And this getup might trick Cam, but if she strolled into the dorm with it on, she was pretty sure that Danny might do more than disapprovingly grunt.

  And there sort of had to be a good excuse, because Cam, while not exactly perceptive, was apparently nosy enough that he was liable to ask questions.

  She was chewing on it, and she had to chew on it while maintaining the aura of a woman, and that was proving to be it’s own kind of particur challenge. The voice was okay, and after a few minutes, a few calm minutes, it had become her natural voice. More than that, it had taken on less imitation of the girls and more it’s own nature. It sounded like someone had candied her old voice, the one that growled out of her stomach. Still her, just sweeter.

  She felt fortunate now for the slippage of the girls vocabury into hers over the months. It meant that, all and all, the words coming out of her mouth weren’t especially masculine. They were just as girlish as the voice.

  The rest of it, though, was another story. She was supremely aware of every bit of her body and every tiny, segmented movement that that body took. And where before they had felt neutral, now they felt like blinking signals, failures at the edges of curling paper, paper that would soon colpse to reveal that the girl it covered, the one presented to the world, was, in fact, not a girl at all, but something else disguised as a girl.

  The other girls weren’t like that. Their paper was clean and pristine and was not curling, was not folding towards the middle, and they were not half monstrosities. Lucy didn’t need to be nudged to put her legs together, and Anna didn’t need to be prodded to stop fussing with her hair, and no one had ever, ever needed to remind Margot not to rub her eyes, lest she mess up the delicate makeup sitting on her shes.

  But Vio needed all of those things.

  If there was some kind of fortune, it was that Cam noticed none of it. Not even the tiniest bit. It felt hirious that Cam hadn’t even noticed, because the whole time, they had been steadying her, fixing her, making sure that she was adequately and accurately reflecting the role of ‘woman’, starring Vio Collins, and Cam had barely crossed over from looking at Margot.

  And maybe that was the answer. Maybe, of course, the answer was just hope that Cam would remain as oblivious to the oddness of her staying in the girls’s dorm, regardless of how she tried to expin it away.

  It seemed like quite the risk, though.

  Then, Cam was up, and he was out the door, and Vio and all of the girls watched him go. Margot stood and tiptoed to the edge of the room, just to make sure he was gone from the door. Then, she turned and held her hands out.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t-”

  “Is he gone?” asked Anna. Margot bit her lip.

  “Bathroom,” she said. “Listen, I didn’t invite him, okay? I swear I told him we’d meet him at the party.”

  “We believe you,” said Lucy. Anna nodded and let out a breath.

  “Yeah, we just think-”

  “Okay, focus, please,” said Lucy, talking louder. “We need to, um, well…”

  “We need to get me out of this,” offered Vio. She made to rub her eyes, and Anna grabbed her wrist.

  “Stop doing that,” she muttered.

  “Sorry,” said Vio. It was hard. It felt like there was something on them. Of course, there was something on her eyeshes, and she suspected that it might be the issue. She bit her lip instead, something that also elicited a frown but not any sort of movement from Anna. “Please tell me someone has a pn.” Margot grimaced. Vio turned to Lucy, who shook her head. And then, back to Anna.

  And Anna let out a heavy breath.

  “Look,” she said, “I think you have two options. I mean, well, there’s three, but there’s really only two. Two good ones.” Vio shifted. Anna grimaced. “And the first option, well, the first option is to tell Cam.”

  Vio let out a sort of involuntary guttural noise. Tell Cam. Tell Cam that, after all of this, after sitting here and pretending, after acting like she was just Vio, just a girl, just some random girl that had been plucked from the hall, Vio was really Seb. And the thought of it made her queasy. Admit this. Admit this to someone, to their face, even as, right now, things… well, it felt like surrendering the kind of information that would crush her.

  Tell Cam.

  “What are the other options?” asked Vio. Anna nodded.

  “Look,” she said, turning her whole body on the bed to face Vio, “I… I don’t know how to tell you this, but,” she took a steady breath, “if you want to convince him, really convince him, you need to lean in.” Vio frowned. Lean in?

  “What do you mean?” she asked. Anna looked like she might just about die. She twisted her hands together.

  “Okay. Okay, imagine for a second that you’re Cam, right? And, look, you look like a girl, Vi. You really, really look like a girl, so that bit’s not weird. But you also sorta, kinda, look like that guy Sebastian that he ran into in the liquor store, and you’re hanging out with us, and you bought the same wine that he bought. And, so, maybe, he thinks, ‘oh, hey, isn’t that weird?’” Anna paused and looked at her. Vio raised her palms. None of that sounded good. “Right, well, the question is, how ridiculous is it for you to be cross dressing in our room, right? Like, is it so ridiculous that no one in their right mind would believe that you, the girl who looks, kinda, sorta like that guy that his girlfriend and his friends - and I’m really, really sorry about this - all think is gay, and he always hangs out with them on Fridays, and now it’s Friday and you come over and…” She trailed off, clearly lost in the sentence, but Vio grasped where she was going. And then she recovered.

  “It’s not the craziest leap in the world, Vi. And if you’re really worried about him knowing, and you’re really worried that he’s going to realize that it’s you, then you need to make it a crazy leap.” She swallowed. “And what’s the one thing that this version of you would never do? What’s the one thing that’s so, so, so ridiculous that, if that inkling appears in his brain, it would quash it immediately?” One more swallow. “What’s the kind of thing that’s a bridge too far to believe?”

  And Vio got it. Vio got what she was pitching.

  But it was ridiculous. It was so, so ridiculous, and she couldn’t.

  “Tell me you don’t…” said Vio, her heart racing. That had not been the answer she was expecting. Really, it made no sense. More people? The answer, surely, could not be seeing more people? Anna winced and nodded.

  “I… I know, I know, but think about it,” she said, sitting up straighter. “Maybe he could guess that you’re in here dressing with us, just for us. That’s guessable. It’s crazy and it’s a leap, but it wouldn’t be… well, it wouldn’t be unbelievable.” She shifted in her seat. Lucy’s hand had started gripping Vio’s. “But go to a frat party? Honestly, who would believe that? Like, it’s not a total leap to imagine someone cross dressing in the room, right? But, going out into Garnd State like that, it’s… well, it’s so impossible.” Vio swallowed and stared at the floor. Anna shifted and continued.

  “Let’s imagine for a second that we come up with some kind of excuse to keep you here. It’s going to be kind of shit, and you and I both know that, so we’re counting on Cam just deciding not to care.” She swallowed. “But let’s say it’s not terrible. And he buys it. And then, for the rest of the time that he’s dating Margot,” Anna gave her a look, “which should be short,” Margot rolled her eyes, “he’s never going to see Vio again, right? So lets say that, tonight, you don’t come, and he doesn’t think too much of it, right? You’re just some girl who got sick or whatever and couldn’t come to a party.”

  “But then, he never sees you again, even though you, like, live in our hall and were close enough to come to a party.” She swallowed. “And then he’s thinking about the wine and the fact that you sort of, a little, look familiar, and then he comes over one day when Seb is in the room or something. Or, god, he could run into you in the liquor store again, or just see you on the quad or whatever.” She frowned. “And you do look different enough, different enough that right now he’s not thinking about it. But you’re still you. You still, right now, sort of look like you. You have to squint, and you have to know, but if Cam wanted to...” Vio could feel her stomach tightening, and she wanted Anna to stop, but Anna was barreling forward. “And it’s kind of weird that that girl was just our friend for one night and then disappeared, and she found that excuse to stay in the room. And like, Vio doesn’t feel like a person in his mind, because he knew her for all of an hour, but if you come to the party too, if you make her different from Seb, then maybe.” Anna took another heavy, long breath.

  “Look, I know it’s crazy, but I think the less suspicious thing, is, well, for you to go to the party. Because no one in their right mind would believe that a boy would go to a frat party dressed as a girl. Dress up in our room? Maybe. But going to the party is a whole different thing.” She winced and shook her head. “I just mean, if you go to the party…”

  “Ridiculousness is on your side,” said Lucy, softly.

  “Right,” said Anna. Vio closed her eyes.

  She had thought, maybe, she could just pretend to be sick. That, in the end, it would all come down to the logistics of hiding her, of getting her away. She hadn’t even considered tomorrow. Or next week, when one of Margot’s friends, one who was, apparently, close enough with the rest of the girls to get ready with them, and was close enough to them that Anna and Lucy had basically bodied her on the bed, and was close enough that they knew her freaking crush, disappeared from the pnet? What happened then? At what point did Cam wonder why this girl, the one who had appeared for one night, and had seemed like a very, very close friend to all three of them, disappeared into smoke?

  And, god…

  Someday, Cam, if he thought about things for even a second, was going to wonder why the fuck this girl, the one who lived in the hall, didn’t exist anymore. And Margot couldn’t show him an Instagram, and she couldn’t show him that she was more than a construction, and, fuck, maybe Cam would be stupid enough to miss it all, or he would be fine with it or something, but Vio wasn’t that distinct from Seb. Hotter sister, same height, always hanging around the rest of the girls.

  Cam would do the math.

  But if she went to the party… Well, it was too ridiculous to guess.

  It was too ridiculous to guess.

  But… Vio couldn’t...

  “There’s going to be so many people,” she murmured. “One of them…”

  “How many people do you know that go to frat parties?” asked Anna. “Besides us.” Vio wracked her brain.

  “Just you guys,” she said. And David.

  “Exactly,” said Anna. “Look, the risk of you getting recognized there is so, so low. No one’s going to put together that you’re also, well, Seb. You can just blend. All you need to do…”

  “Is be convincingly a girl,” finished Vio. Her heart fell through her chest.

  “Right,” said Anna. She took Vio’s hand. “Which you can do. You’re already doing it.”

  “Right,” whispered Vio. Anna squeezed her hand and gave her a sympathetic smile.

  It felt like her brain had been fttened by a semi truck. The neurons had to be working wrong, had to be malfunctioning, because oh no. She couldn’t. She really, really couldn’t. It would kill her.

  But it didn’t sound wrong. It sounded… well, what it sounded was logical. When Anna had pitched her going to the frat party two weeks ago, that had been contrived. It had been so obviously constructed to get her into makeup, so obviously a fiction. But this was different. This… this was the path of least resistance, the easiest path forward, and that it was the easiest path forward, the one that didn’t out her…

  “Say something,” murmured Anna. Vio swallowed.

  “I’m thinking about moving to Rome,” she said, and Lucy sighed.

  “Georgia? Gross.” Vi bit back a smile, and Lucy tried to share it with her.

  “It’s going to be fine,” said Anna. Vio shook her head. Fine. It was going to be fine. It was going to be fine.

  “Maybe it’s easier just to tell him,” said Margot. “Or, you know, to try the sick thing…” But Vio looked at Anna, and Anna gave her a half smile, and Vio knew she was right.

  Easiest way forward.

  “He has no idea,” said Anna, gently. Vi looked to Margot, who nodded. “No one’s going to realize.”

  “Right,” said Vio again. It was so easy to say that here, in the comfort of the dorm, miles away from anything that might be considered a party. It was so easy to say that she was convincing as a girl right now. It was so, so easy to look in the mirror and see no fws, nothing that might reveal her, suddenly or otherwise, as something other than the woman she looked like.

  But it would be different out there. It would be different at a party, with people who knew what it was like to be a girl, who knew what to expect from her but weren’t sympathetic and weren’t breathing down Margot’s neckline.

  Speaking of, there was a knock at the door. Margot grimaced.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered again, and Vio gave her a small head shake and smile. Best she could offer right now. Steel toed kicks to come in the morning.

  * * * * *

  It had taken all the strength she had not to immediately panic when Lucy announced she was calling an Uber. If the two options were fight or flight in any given scenario, Vio, same as Seb, was flight. Flight and not even a consideration for fight, not unless she had been desperately convinced that flight, appealing as it was, was probably the option that made fight more likely.

  She’d excused herself to the bathroom, and Anna had hurried after her, and now they were standing against the sink again, and Lucy had barged in after them, bag slung over her shoulder, and Vio was doing her best to breathe through the growing panic.

  “I brought the liquor,” procimed Lucy. Then, when a girl exited one of the stalls, she dropped to a smile. “Oh, sorry Ellie. Um, don’t tell Candace?” The girl snorted, gave passing smiles to the rest of them, washed her hands, and exited. Lucy wheeled back. “Liquor.”

  “Thank you,” murmured Vio. She accepted the bottle and drank straight from it. Liquid luck. Wait, no, it was liquid courage.

  The luck might be more useful.

  “Deep breaths,” said Anna.

  “Super deep,” agreed Lucy. “Listen, we’ll stay for an hour, and then we’ll come straight back. And, when we’re there, I’ll pretend to twist my ankle or something and we can all sit in a corner.”

  “Thank you,” said Vio. Anna frowned.

  “Did they not ask why you carried the rum straight out of the room?” she asked. Lucy rolled her eyes and mimed shooting herself in the head.

  “They started making out the second you two left,” she said. “God, I don’t think I’ve ever met a man that I hated as much as him.” Anna nodded. Vio grimaced.

  “The way he talked over me,” she murmured. “Like I wasn’t there.” It had been so weird. As if she couldn’t answer the question for herself. As if she wasn’t capable. And, sure, she hadn’t wanted to, but still.

  “Sorry,” said Anna, grimacing. “Yeah, that was bad.”

  “Very trivia boy coded of him,” said Lucy. Vio cocked an eyebrow at her, and Lucy frowned. “Listen, if you want to keep faith in men, do not attend a trivia night with them. I mean, god, it’s,” she shook her head, “I had a guy try and override me in a Broadway py category.” She held up her hands. “Me! Theater major! Broadway pys! You know his major?” She looked at the pair of them, as if they might supply the answer. “Political science.” She reached out for the liquor, and Vio giggled and passed it to her.

  Then, a fleeting thought.

  “I’m not like that, am I?” she asked. Then, she shook her head. “I mean, Seb, or whatever.” Lucy giggled and Anna shook her head.

  “No, babe,” she said, gently. “We’re friends with you because you are, explicitly, not like that.”

  “You’re very not trivia boy coded,” said Lucy. Then, she gave her a once over and giggled again. “Very not boy coded.” Vio kicked her gently in the shin, and she giggled harder. “Sorry.”

  “Give me the rum,” she said, and Lucy passed it over.

  “He’s such a dick,” said Anna, shaking her head. “Like, listen, I know I was making a joke about the socks thing, but who the fuck picks at someone they just met for having mismatched socks on?” She rolled her eyes. “I mean, he would not let it go. Dog with a bone, that one.” Vio took a heavy sip of the rum.

  “How long?” she asked. Lucy checked her phone.

  “Nine minutes,” she said. Vio took a heavy, steadying breath, and nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. “It’ll be okay.” Lucy nodded, then smiled.

  “It’s going to be fun,” she said. “Think that it’s going to be fun, not just okay. Think… well, don’t catastrophize.” Vio closed her eyes and nodded again. Fun. It would be fun. It would be fun to be surrounded by a million people, dressed like this, trying to hold back the encroaching walls. That was fun. Frat parties, with their polo shirted boys and their booming speakers were fun. They were fun and Vio was going to have fun.

  Fun.

  “There’ll be more alcohol there,” said Anna. Vio snorted, then took a sip of the rum. She wanted to be really, really drunk, and she knew that was sort of a bad idea, that being so drunk that she couldn’t function was terrible when she needed to concentrate on functioning in a particur way, in a particur feminine way, but she didn’t care. She wanted to be bsted. If she was going to have to do this, if she was really going to have to stand in some sweaty backyard with glued on tits and pretend that she was a girl, then she wanted to be drunk.

  “Do you really think they’re going to stay together?” asked Lucy, reaching out for a hand to take the rum back. Then, she shook her head. “Sorry, I know you’re in crisis or whatever, but I would love for her to break up with him.” Vio grinned and passed the rum back. She actually liked that they kept flitting away from the more obvious conversation topic, back to something they would be talking about anyway.

  “Who knows,” said Anna, shaking her head.

  “I hope not,” pitched in Vio.

  “If he keeps showing up to these pregames…” said Lucy.

  “He better not,” said Anna.

  “Agreed,” said Vio, and all of them giggled.

  “Okay,” said Anna. “We should go back before they start having sex on my bed.” She gave an over-dramatic shudder. “Are we all ready?” Lucy frowned.

  “Are we not actually going to pee? Because, well, we’re going to a party, and,” she shrugged, “I’m not all that worried if they have sex on your bed, but I am worried about standing in line for ten minutes to use the tiny bathroom at Sig.” For a second, it looked like Anna might protest that point. Then, she nodded.

  “Good idea.”

  * * * * *

  The Uber was an XL, and Anna and Vio had tucked themselves into the back of the SUV, letting Margot and Cam sit in the middle row and Lucy in the front. And Lucy, after all of five seconds of being in the car, had requested control of the music from the driver, a man of nearly fifty, who had seemed completely unprepared for the request and needed to spend a full thirty seconds rooting around to find the right cord.

  But he had, which was how they came to be listening to another Brittany Spears pylist, something Vio was assuming that Lucy had been turned on to in the st month, because she hadn’t ever featured this heavily before, bsting louder than any music they ever dared to py in the room. In the room, if they weren’t careful, the RA might come and confiscate the alcohol, a tragedy, so the best option had remained a quiet bit of music.

  Not in the Uber though.

  Vio appreciated it. In part, because it felt like it was drowning out any st qualms she had, any st ditch efforts she could imagine to get out of this, and in part because it meant Anna and her could talk without the threat of Cam overhearing them.

  “Have you been to this frat before?” asked Vio.

  “A lot,” said Anna, nodding. They were leaned up close to each other. Too loud to sit straight. “It’s normally a pretty rexed party. Not like a dancing frat. More of a drinking games frat.” She frowned. “Well, there is a dance floor, they just py really bad music.” Vio giggled.

  “Right,” she said. “Well, that’s fine.” Anna pouted.

  “What, you don’t want to dance?” she asked. “Extremely not cool of you.” Vi imagined herself in the middle of the dance floor, trying not to look like the least rhythmic, most fictitious girl on the pnet. Knees together was one thing, but dancing?

  “I liked standing in the corner very much, thank you,” said Vio, and Anna giggled.

  “Well, we can certainly make that happen for you. Lot’s of corners. Huge opportunities to shuttle yourself off to some silent, sad pce to sit and watch the rest of the world have fun.” Vio poked her, and Anna clicked her tongue.

  “Don’t forget that I’m terrified out of my mind over here,” whispered Vio. Anna nodded.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “But, you know, having fun is kind of the best strategy for blending in with the crowd here.”

  “You know, I’m only like half convinced that you didn’t put together this whole pn two weeks ago to get me to come to a party with all of you.”

  “You think I would involve Cam in one of those pns?” asked Anna. Cam shifted in his seat, and Anna and Vio exchanged a knowing gnce and a giggle.

  “Point taken,” said Vio.

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Anna. “If for no other reason than that it has to be okay.” Vio rolled her eyes.

  “I hate optimists,” said Vio.

  “Well, fine, it’s going to be shit and you’re going to have no fun,” said Anna, and Vio ughed. Margot turned to look at her, an eyebrow raised, and Vio grinned at her.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “What for?” asked Margot.

  “For being a huge spoilsport and killjoy,” said Anna, and Vio kicked her very hard in the shin. “Ow!”

  “I’m not a huge killjoy,” she said.

  “Well, okay, not a huge killjoy,” said Anna, and she pulled her feet up onto the seat. Vio stuck her tongue out at her.

  “Rude,” she said. Margot rolled her eyes and turned back to the front, curling herself into Cam’s shoulder. Anna rolled her eyes at that.

  And then the car was slowing, and all of a sudden, Vio felt the urge to be a huge killjoy. Maybe she could get the driver to take her back to the dorm. Maybe the driver could drop her at Popeyes and she could wait for them to all be finished. Fast food patrons would leave her alone, wouldn’t they?

  Maybe she could just start walking.

  But Anna grabbed her hand, and she pulled her out of the door of the SUV, out into the warm, South Carolina night, her feet squarely on the pavement, the frat house squarely in front of her, and she squeezed her hand. Margot wrapped her arm into Cam’s and started off towards the party, pulling him along, mouthing a ‘I’ll see you inside’ to the three of them, something Vi was grateful for, if for no other reason than Cam being out of her fake hair while she had an existential crisis sounded nice.

  Lucy came and wrapped an arm around Vio’s waist.

  “It’s going to be easy,” she said. “You’re going to be shocked at how easy it is.”

  “Right,” said Vio. Anna tugged her hand again, pulling her up off the pavement, towards the house, towards the gate to the backyard, towards the boy standing guard over it, the one waving girls through and holding up boys, a steady stream of people flitting in. “Right.”

  “It’s going to get worse if you keep standing here,” said Anna. “And, well…” She tugged again, and Vio, her stomach still turning, her head dizzy from the alcohol and the fear and the heat, let Anna pull her towards the gate.