It took a second. A long, long, long second of Annabelle Bridges grinning at her, her head cocked to the side, for Vio to get it.

  Like her. Annabelle Bridges was…

  “That’s impossible,” she said, and she had no idea why that was the reaction, but it had to be. Annabelle’s life was so simple. She was working here, teaching here, and Vio had literally no idea how she’d managed that, and she had no idea how she had managed this either. She wasn’t wearing a lick of makeup as far as Vio could tell, and her fingers were all thin, and she was just all woman.

  Annabelle Bridges had tits. Annabelle Bridges had a soft face. Annabelle Bridges had the voice and the look and the-

  Annabelle Bridges had a deepening frown.

  “Good news for you,” she said, moving towards the fridge, “is that it’s really not.” Vio matched her frown. It didn’t make sense.

  “Why are you here?” That came with even less thought. God, fucking here? Why would anyone choose to be here? Of all the pces in the world, fucking Garnd? Annabelle’s frown deepened.

  “Because they offered me a good job,” she said, simply. “I grew up in North Carolina, so it didn’t seem like too much of a stretch.”

  “Why not a city college?” asked Vio. They had theatre departments in New York. They definitely had theatre departments in New York. God, she could even be in like, Atnta or something. Annabelle was stuffing dishes into the sink now.

  “I’m not that big on cities,” she said.

  “But there’s so many better options than here.” Annabelle gnced over at her.

  “I’ve built a life here,” she said. “I have no doubt that there are, in fact, better cities or colleges than this one. But this one has my life in it. It has my friends and my csses and my students, dear Vio, and if I ended up in some random, but better, school, I’d be all alone.” She abandoned the dishes unwashed. “And I’ve done that. And it’s not all that fun.” Vio took a deep breath.

  “That’s about me, huh?”

  “No,” said Annabelle, sitting again. “That’s just why I’m in Garnd.” She smiled. “That it happens to line up with you not fleeing, well, we’ll call that convenient.” Vio picked at her fingers. Time for the rest of it, then. The bits that made all this more complicated.

  “Right, well, there’s more to it than just that I’m… well, you know.”

  “Sure,” said Annabelle.

  “It’s really much worse than that,” said Vio.

  “Try me,” said Annabelle.

  “You’re not going to believe it,” said Vio.

  “Try me.”

  Vio ced her fingers together, tightened them, balling the stress right into her fingertips, and then started.

  First, there was the night with the girls. And then came the creation of Vio, the temporary, fleeting girl who was supposed to keep him safe, but had spiraled way, way off course. Because then there was Cam, and then there was David, and when she started talking about David, her mouth went a little dry, but she pushed past it because it was really, really embarrassing to be confessing this stupid crush to her professor, especially when she’d already tripped over herself in front of the entire css st week. And then she swung back around to her parents, and by the time she’d managed to express just how much she needed this schorship, her eyes had started to wet again.

  Vio didn’t so much end the story as peter out.

  “Yeah,” said Annabelle, tapping her fingers on the table, lost in thought. “Okay, yeah.”

  “And I can’t just stay, because David likes Shakespeare, and if he puts it together and… and, God, if he looks at me for too long…” Annabelle shifted.

  “I just… I’m sorry, I want to be clear here. You were able to sneak into a frat party?” Vio nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t do my makeup. Oh! Lucy stole some breast forms and a wig. I… I probably shouldn’t have told you that.” Vio swallowed. “I know they’re expensive.” Annabelle seemed tickled. She shifted again, pced her elbow on the table.

  “And you… you haven’t even started hormones?” she asked.

  “No! That’s what I’m saying!” Vio sank back in her chair. “I can’t.”

  “Wow,” said Annabelle, mirroring her. Vio was once again struck by how little she could read this woman. “I mean, listen, consequences aside, you’re… well, I might call it genetically gifted, but I’d have to ask about your family again.” Vio shook her head, and Annabelle let out a breath. “Well, at the very least, you might be able to blend back into campus.” Vio wasn’t entirely blind to the luck of that. But even that wasn’t enough to grant her run of the world. Constructing the girl from glue and fake breasts didn’t allow her to be. It definitely didn’t solve the David problem, and it didn’t do anything to give her the knowledge of the girls who’d been drilled from birth.

  Bell fuckin’ bottoms.

  “But I can’t be Vio either,” she said. “Because…”

  “Because,” offered Annabelle, “you’d have to come out. And then, you’d have to admit that you didn’t come out before.” She fred her nostrils. “And you happened to pick a big, scary, football pyer.”

  “He’s not…”

  Vio stopped herself from saying ‘he’s not scary’, because, yeah. Yeah, he was. That was the whole point. He scared her. Not David especially, but any man who had been on the opposite end of this would. Pick a random man, plop him in David’s enormous shoes, and Vio would be scared of them, too. Nevermind that Vio didn’t want to feel like David was scary, and that David had never done a scary thing in her entire time knowing him, except, perhaps, insist on that podcast a bit too much. It didn’t matter. David was scary. David scared her.

  She balled her fingers together.

  “I do like David,” said Annabelle, gently. “He’s a good student. And people can surprise you on some of this stuff. But, yes. He’s very much a guy.” Implication? David was worthy of fear.

  God, but he was a sweetheart, wasn’t he? Like, not someone pretending to be a sweetheart, and not someone halfway down the chart between sweetheart and asshole, but an actual, genuine sweetheart. Everyone kept saying so. The girls had said that, and now a professor, an adult, and that should mean something, shouldn’t it? They couldn’t all be wrong.

  Or…

  Or they could all be wrong. Vio wrapped her arms around her stomach and squeezed.

  “Okay,” said Annabelle, pushing her chair back. “More coffee. And while I pn to come back to David, I want to talk to you about you.”

  Annabelle refilled both of their mugs and started in. Annabelle did most of the talking; Vio was entirely comfortable to sit and listen. Oh, sure, some of the things Annabelle talked about, particurly the medical care here, felt entirely ungraspable, but Vio was so relieved to be told what the hell was going on that she didn’t care. The information might not be useful, but Vio’s brain had been running full speed for a month. When it wasn’t panicking, it was flooded with dopamine or hiriously, crushingly depressed, and now it was just quiet. It was like Annabelle had this great map, and it wasn’t perfect, and Vio felt entirely left behind and only half believed that the map could lead anywhere close to what Annabelle was, but it was better than the fog. It was better than staring out at the ocean.

  Providence. Annabelle knew a couple who lived in an apartment with a couch, and they were some of the loveliest people she’d ever had the fortune of meeting. Hormones. Annabelle had supplies, and she was willing to share for now, but Vio ought to try and figure out how she could get blood work done. Doses, apparently, weren’t identical. Surgery. Vio mostly tuned out of that one, on account of the insurance and the general fear of anesthesia and saying something so horrifically awful upon waking up that her life would be ruined. That, and the whole being cut open thing.

  It had to be way, way down the road. If it was going to happen, that was, like, mile marker twenty. She’d just passed mile marker, like, three. Baby steps. Annabelle knew it, too, because she’d really only listed out options, things Vio had once seen back on those forums. No details. No blood, no money, just futures.

  For a little while, it was nice. Nice to be told. It felt like there might be direction. But, eventually, the anxiety crept.

  Vio was sitting in a ball cap and t-shirt and baggy jeans, and she was staring at a full fledged woman, a woman who had fifteen years of progress on her. Nevermind the people who were supposed to be her peers, the girls who walked about campus. Annabelle, who had been her, had been her at the beginning of this, wasn’t her anymore. She was whatever came after. Whatever came after you pushed through all of this. And maybe she would be there, too, one day, after fifteen years and whatever the hell it all cost, but until then?

  This was still Sebastian’s body. And Sebastian had some fortune; he could put on a wig and makeup and glue breast forms to his chest and find the body of a woman, but it was still Sebastian’s body.

  She swallowed.

  “Can we talk about something else for a bit?” she asked. Annabelle, who had polished off that second cup of coffee very quickly, nodded.

  “Whatever you want,” she said. “And, listen, I won’t push you on anything right away, but the… well, you’ll want estrogen. I won’t stuff it in your pocket on the way out, but you’ll want it.” Vio knew that. She knew that. It just… it was so… well, that would make it impossible to keep being Seb, wouldn’t it? Not that she really, really wanted to be, but what was the pn here? Because everything in her mind pointed towards Providence. It pointed towards that bus. And if not, Vio wasn’t exactly welcome on campus.

  But Annabelle managed it.

  “Are you from around here?” asked Vio.

  “No,” said Annabelle. “North Carolina, originally.”

  “Oh, right,” said Vio. Annabelle had said that already. “Did you like it?”

  “Yes,” said Annabelle. “As much as anyone can like their hometown, I liked it. It was a little dull at times, but yes.”

  “Do people there…” Vio trailed. Inappropriate to ask? Annabelle smiled.

  “Are you asking if my family knows about me?”

  “Yeah,” said Vio.

  “They do,” said Annabelle, leaning back in her chair.

  “And they’re okay?” asked Vio. Annabelle frowned.

  “It’s a mixed bag. For a long time, there was no water at that well. But fifteen years is a long time. I wouldn’t say that we’re close now, but it’s better than it was. People can get better.”

  “I guess,” said Vio.

  “It’s not going to be perfect,” said Annabelle. Vio shifted. She wasn’t asking for perfect. No one had said she was asking for perfect. Fuck, her family hadn’t been perfect before. All she wanted was to be able to have both. She wanted to be able to have Vio and have some modicum of the life that had once seemed like destiny, the bits that had once seemed inevitable. Family. Love. Friends. A fucking job. Just… just some of that. She wasn’t asking for perfect.

  “It just doesn’t seem fair,” she murmured.

  “It’s not,” agreed Annabelle.

  “I’m so mad,” she whispered. She hadn’t even thought the word before now. All the emotions had been drilling at her for weeks, and she’d ignored that one. But she was mad. She was mad that this was so fucking complicated, that her life had become some huge fucking screwup, and she was mad because it wasn’t her fault. God, there were bits that she had done, but not all of it. Not all of it, and not the big parts, and she wanted to scream. She was so fucking mad.

  “Yes,” said Annabelle, quietly. “I know that, too.”

  “It’s so unfair,” repeated Vio. “God, and my parents. My parents.”

  “You’re not wrong to be worried,” said Annabelle. “It’s a big one.”

  “I just know them,” said Vio. It would be bad. No, bad implied that there was something to be salvaged from the situation. Like she could pull a retionship from the ruin. What it would be was final.

  “People can surprise you,” offered Annabelle.

  “They won’t.”

  “Okay,” said Annabelle, nodding. “If there’s a ‘you must come out to your parents’ gal, it’s not me. But you will have to think about it.” She inhaled. “What about Lucy?” Vio looked up at her.

  “What about Lucy?”

  “Well, you’re running, aren’t you? Have you told your friends?” Annabelle was looking at her with the intensity of a woman who already knew the answer to that question. It called for a very deliberate sip of water. Annabelle didn’t jump to supply an out, so Vio swallowed, then shook her head.

  “They’d all try to get me to stay,” she said, quietly.

  “Good friends, then,” said Annabelle.

  “Yes,” agreed Vio. Her stomach still roiled at the idea of abandoning them without a word, even if it seemed the only option.

  “And have you spoken to David since the party?” Vio pursed her lips. The idea of admitting to the texts was embarrassing, because, well, duh, so she’d left them out of her retelling. Annabelle cocked an eyebrow. “You’re going to need to figure out how to manage your face.”

  “I’m not an actress!” Vio crossed her arms across her belly again. Annabelle’s face softened.

  “Sorry,” she said. “So, you’ve been talking to David.”

  “Texting,” corrected Vio, arms still tight.

  “And he doesn’t know?” asked Annabelle. Vio shook her head.

  “He hasn’t said anything.”

  “Okay,” said Annabelle, nodding. “Okay. Well, that’s something.”

  “Good something?” asked Vio, hopefully. Annabelle shrugged.

  “Look, I don’t know. I would guess so though, yeah.” She shook her head. “But I wouldn’t know for sure. This, him knowing you before and now, well, it’s not unprecedented or whatever. But normally that’s like, seeing someone after years. It’s sort of weird to think about it over the course of a week.” Not enough of an answer, so Vio prompted further.

  “So, you think…”

  “I think,” said Annabelle, “you shouldn’t freak out just yet. If he knows, I… well, if you’ve been talking, I would’ve guessed he’d say something. And if he doesn’t and still hasn’t put it together, he might have just put you in two very different boxes and not even considered it.” She shrugged. “People are, on the whole, pretty good at that. And if he figured it out and he didn’t say anything, I don’t think you’re in any danger.” Vio shifted in her seat.

  “I still think I need to go,” she said. Annabelle matched her eyes, so Vio looked back at the table. It seemed like the only way out was out.

  “I sympathize with the impulse,” said Annabelle, slowly.

  “It’s just… It’s too much,” murmured Vio.

  “If you could,” asked Annabelle, “would you stay?”

  “Of course,” said Vio, immediately. “Of course I would.” Annabelle rocked in her chair.

  “I’m going to ask you to do something, and it’s going to sound bitchy, but I want you to listen to me.”

  “Okay,” said Vio. Annabelle took a breath.

  “Just rex for a second. I just want you to rex. I know things are crazy, and I know things feel like they’re spiraling, but if David isn’t chasing you with a hammer right now, I don’t think he’s about to pick one up. I don’t think that if he looks at you in css and sees its you, he’s all that likely to kill you, okay?” She thumbed the edge of the table. “I know it all seems urgent. Like, everything. I remember that. But if your goal is to stay under the radar with this, then you’re going to have to be a little patient.” She drummed her fingers. “Give me time to work on this. Administratively, I mean. I’ll try and figure some of the things out at the school.” A current ran through her. The school. They’d tell her parents. If Annabelle- “Vio, darling, please rex.” Annabelle’s eyes weren’t anywhere close to piercing. Back to gentle. Warm. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, I promise. I’m not going to use your name. I just want to see if there’s a way to do this smoothly.”

  “My schorship,” offered Vio, hopefully.

  “That would be my main concern,” she said. “That, and your name and your housing. And if I’m looking, I want you to stay. If you want to be here.” Vio bit her lip.

  If she could stay. If she could stay, could have the girls and the csses and somehow slip into the fabric of the campus, would she want to? It wasn’t even a question. One thousand percent. Absolutely. If Annabelle could work the schorship, get her csses under her name, with the money and some kind of housing or something, something that let her stay and didn’t force her to tell her parents and everyone else, then yes. If she could have a bit of the life she had only dreamt of, then yes.

  There would still be the rest of it, and she knew that. David, the version of Vio that had appeared at the party, Cam and the apparently swelling number of people who knew about the girl. There was his face and her face, two faces near identical, and there was the csses that were upcoming. Problems abounding.

  But those were physical problems. Problems, yes, and problems she was going to have to figure out, but, worst case, she could just start skipping csses, at least in the short term. If there was a potential to get her to be a girl on paper, and the question was about the girl in the flesh, then Vi knew she could get that down. She just had to find a way to make the girl in the flesh positively distinct from the boy in the flesh.

  She’d have to be the boy in the flesh for a bit longer. Weeks at least, probably at least til the end of the semester. And then, there was the whole bit about going home, but maybe she’d be able to manage that, too. Find a job in town, stay for the summer, something.

  But she might get to stay.

  She might not have to say goodbye.

  She dared to hope.

  “Okay,” she said, nodding slowly. “Okay.” Annabelle let out a long breath.

  “Good. Good. I’ll get working on that this week, and I’ll… actually, I won’t put it in your school email. Do you have a personal one?” Vio nodded. Then, Annabelle frowned and shook her head. “Forget it. Just give me your phone number.”

  “Is that allowed?” How taboo.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Annabelle. Her gaze had slipped back towards piercing. “If you need anything, you text me. Or call me. Promise me.” Vio rummaged into her pocket, nodding.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  “And,” said Annabelle, “I want you to rex. Don’t twist yourself up too much right now. I know it’s scary, but, darling, you’re only nineteen.” Vio was eighteen, but that wasn’t the point, and she knew it. She nodded again.

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  * * * * *

  If Vio felt like all the other students before, lumbering back to their dorms with sand-crusted suitcases, she really felt like it now. Back to the dorm. Back to her dorm. Back to his dorm. All her clothes in tow, exhausted and dehydrated. Exhausted and dehydrated and a little bit free.

  Was it as simple as having someone tell her to rex? No, of course not, but that hadn’t hurt. Vio needed to rex and having someone tell her to do so, someone who was taking the reins away from her and the rest of the girls, even if just in part, made everything feel a little bit easier. Because, ultimately, the problem had been that there hadn’t been a future. She couldn’t see one. There hadn’t been a path through.

  And now?

  Now, now she saw one. It might be a ways away, or it might be right around the corner, but if Annabelle could figure out how to change those records? Get her into csses? Vio Collins might get to stay here. She might get to stay here, and not just for a few weeks, but for a few years.

  The campus, oppressive just three hours ago, was freeing now. Oh, she was still walking like Seb, his gait, his jeans, but that might not be forever. There might be a way through. A needle to thread, but Annabelle Bridges felt like the woman who could thread it. She talked like an adult. And she, in some way, had done this all before.

  Vio could manage as a boy for a couple weeks, couldn’t she? It’d be hard; moments of doubt, of course, and even more days of resigning herself to being him, but she could push through if there was an ending in sight. If there was a world after all this, a point to the pain, one where she just got to be like the rest of them, if she was the kind of girl lounging on the wn of the quad, her legs tickled by the wind and the grass, she could wait a couple of weeks.

  She wanted those things. The family, the friends, the life that didn’t feel like it was teetering constantly on the edge of colpse. And, if any of this worked, maybe there was a way to have it. Not all of it. She wouldn’t dare to hope for all of it. But pieces? Bits of it? She could settle for that.

  Hope renewed, then.

  And amongst it, determination.

  She would need to be smart now. David. Cam. The girls. She would need to manage this. These weeks, when Sebastian Collins needed to be very alive and very real, had to be careful. She needed to be very, very smart about this. Maybe she had no born skill for acting, but she would figure out how to thread that needle, because that was what this called for. She’d find Sebastian again. She’d make him more Sebastian than he’d ever been, more real than he’d ever been when she’d inhabited him for eighteen long, heavy years.

  And for when she couldn’t, because she wasn’t blind to the fact that she was unable to avoid being Vio for long, desperately unable to avoid being her, she’d find outlets. She’d pn for that. In the room again, if it had to be, and elsewhere, if it was at all possible. She’d still be alive. More alive than she’d been before now. More alive, with a future in sight, one that existed here, one that kept the things she loved intact, the people she loved pressed against her shoulders.

  Vio walked straight back to her dorm, the sun kissing her forearms, and she smiled to herself all the while. Inside, she ignored the urge to empty her suitcase immediately; she would, in time, have to reckon with the fact that she had just donated every scrap of clothing that resembled masculine that she owned, but not right now. Right now, she had another pn.

  Backpack slung over her shoulder, phones tucked neatly into the outer pocket, a book stuffed in for good measure, she descended the stairs to the quad again. Ten minutes of walking, and into the drug store at the far corner of campus, away from the bus stop and the garages, away from the thronging crowds. She loped into the back, picked a Diet Coke out of the fridge, and then returned to her real aim.

  Cosmetics.

  They would all need to come together eventually, if for no other reason than that Vio had no idea the scope of what she needed. They hadn’t shown her in Emerald Point. But there were some basics, basics that she knew she needed for certain, and she thumbed through to the mascara, then to the concealer, and then to the lipstick. For a moment, she hesitated on the colors. Bold, right? She was being bold today. Today, and tomorrow, and until the end.

  Some shade of red, then.

  And then, because she wasn’t entirely stupid, she picked a pack of cotton balls and the same makeup remover Lucy’d had her use before — familiarity in some sense would be nice — and then skipped to the front of the shop.

  Empty, as expected and hoped for. She hurried herself through the self scanner, putting the makeup in her backpack first, then the remover, then the cotton balls, and leaving the Diet Coke for her to sip along the way.

  And then she was gone. It felt like a heist. She’d paid for all of it, digging into her teeny, tiny savings, but it felt like a robbery all the same. The boy who was a girl buying makeup from the CVS at the corner, her eyes darting around in fear and trepidation only occasionally, acting as though she belonged.

  Because one day, even if it didn’t feel like it just yet, she would. In that drug store, she’d belong. It’d be her drug store if all this worked out.

  She cracked the Diet Coke and giggled to herself. Delirious. Maybe she ought to be institutionalized. The idea that any of this would work itself out was still ridiculous, but she believed it. Had to. It had been so tiring, so overwhelming to sit in her own brain and try and solve the unsolvable. She didn’t have access to the administration. She didn’t have the ability to solve the crushing world that loomed over her. Vio Collins was just some girl.

  Annabelle Bridges on the other hand? A woman who might be able to fix some of this. And that was progress. She’d been digging holes, and she’d finally found someone with a dder. It might be missing a few rungs, but it was better than nothing.

  Vio would work on the other rungs.

  Williams Hall was squat where all the other halls were tall. Extraordinarily wide, but only two stories. It was the kind of building you construct when you’re all but certain you have the space for it, because there’s nothing but space in middle-of-nowhere South Carolina. And they’d been right for the most part about the space, but it had resulted in the ugliest building on the entire campus.

  It worked in the favor of the pond, though. By the time you reached the far side, a fifteen minute walk or so, because ‘pond’ was a retive misnomer, everything had faded behind the tree line. The path that circled the pond, narrow and poorly maintained, bobbed on and off the shoreline, sometimes weaving into the trees for a stretch, before emerging once again on the water.

  Vio had never seen a soul here. Annabelle had recommended it for that reason, but it was still astonishing. Privacy, even in the open, even in the South Carolina sun and humidity. There were just too many easier options for a walk. Campus itself, the town, and the trails that dived into the woods off on the North side. All of them more appealing, all of them better maintained, all of them less likely to harbor growing swarms of mosquitoes.

  But Vio was in it for the privacy, and she could suffer through the mosquitoes for that.

  She’d picked her spot already. She’d walked by it twice before, and stopped the third time through. It was shaded from view from the path, requiring one to push through some bushes to reach it, and seemed near impossible to see from anywhere else on the pond. Trees dipped in front of the little beach, obscuring her from everyone but the most uncommonly nosey, who would have to crane their necks to get around the trees. And even then, even when Vio did her best to spot it on her walk around, it had been an effort.

  It was a hideaway. Somewhere no one would see her.

  She settled her backpack on a rock, wanting to avoid getting sand in more of her belongings, and started unpacking.

  What Vio needed, more than anything else, was practice. If this dream was supposed to work, she needed to be able to be a freaking girl, and she needed to be a girl convincingly. Like it had been drilled into her since birth. She needed to know clothes and makeup and how to do her hair in a pretty way, and she needed to know it as soon as possible. And she could look up bits of that. Fashion magazines still existed, didn’t they? And she could watch the girls on campus.

  But makeup…

  And the voice, for that matter. She needed to have the voice perfect. It got tired if she was in it for too long, and it started to slip back towards his. And neither of those things could be done in the room. If the skinny jeans had been too much for Danny Evans, she was pretty sure he’d be telling everyone on the floor if Vi started applying lipstick in the bent mirror that hung in her closet. No, no, it had to be done somewhere else, and it had to be a pce that was Vio’s.

  She’d practice with the girls, too, but they had things to do from time to time. Csses, friends, boyfriends. Vi couldn’t simply drop herself onto their doorstep and hold out a makeup brush. That wouldn’t do.

  Concealer first.

  Oh. Hmm. Immediately, the realization split her brain that she had not bought anything to put on makeup with. The girls had always dabbed at her concealer with the little sponge.

  Okay, well, future problems. She’d go back to the CVS next time. Gosh, the whole point was to realize what she was missing! Imagine if she’d bought these the day before she needed them?

  She pat herself on the back for being proactive, and then pat herself on the back again for being optimistic. Look at her, the girl who was sobbing all of five hours ago. Totally okay! Or, totally insane! In any case, not having a breakdown for the first time in about two weeks.

  She opened her phone camera anyway. Woof, it was obvious that she’d been sobbing not all that long ago. Concealer very much required. She did her best with her fingers, dabbing it under her eyes where the girls had, trying to smear it evenly. She blinked into the phone. It looked… it looked too bright. She made a mental note. They probably had darker shades? Or, maybe she’d just never paid close enough attention with the other girls.

  In any case, she moved on, and before long she’d covered her face with all the bits she bought, which wasn’t much in the scheme of things. And, in the phone camera, it looked it. She smacked her lips together, hoping it might do what it had done when the girls had applied it, hoping it might be the problem.

  It wasn’t. It looked like what it was: a first attempt, a first real attempt, and not a very good one at that. Everything looked wrong. Totally and completely not the makeup of a girl who had been drilled from birth, and she had known that it wouldn’t be. She’d steeled herself for that. But she had sort of been hoping.

  Vio swallowed a sigh, and closed the camera.

  It was okay.

  It was okay to still be bad at this. Only day one. It was only day one of trying.

  Urgency, yes, but no panic anymore. She slumped back against the rock, away from the water that might show again her reflection, and tested the thing that she knew would work.

  “Hello,” she said, softly, as herself. Again. “Hello. My name is Vio.” Just a whisper, that one. Even here, it was a risk to go louder than speaking volume, and she wouldn’t be daring to sing any time soon. But, still.

  She’d brought the book. Nothing particurly special; Her mother’s love for mysteries was genetic. Vio had always loved them near as much as she did, and had been slowly accumuting. She opened the first page, cleared her throat, and started, high and soft.

  “Renisneb stood looking out over the Nile.”

  * * * * *

  Saturday

  5:22 p.m.

  David: So

  David: What are your thoughts on a face to face meeting today?

  David: I mean that as what are your thoughts today

  David: We don’t have to meet today

  David: I actually can’t

  Vio: what a pity today was the only day i could meet

  Vio: why are you so busy

  David: I’m going off the assumption that you’re joking

  David: What I’m always doing hahaha

  Vio: oh are you throwing a ball today

  David: You really don’t need to say it like that

  Vio: how do you want me to say it

  David: Maybe practicing? Lmfao

  Vio: like, oh my god david, how was practice?

  Vio: are you stronger than all the other boys

  Vio: do you throw the ball harder than them

  David: See even when you’re teasing me you know nothing about football

  David: Your teasing could be a lot better if you knew more

  Vio: hmmm

  David: Much more pointed and much less

  David: Whats it like to be so football

  Vio: i’ll think about it

  David: I still didn’t get an answer

  Vio: i guess you’ll have to try again tomorrow

  * * * * *

  “Absolutely not. That’s hideous.”

  “It’s masculine.”

  “Okay, but it doesn’t need to be that masculine.”

  “I thought the whole point of this was to make ‘Sebastian’ really, really ‘Sebastian’. You know, make sure that you can make it through an interaction without David imagining you in a crop top?”

  “Yeah, but it’s… it’s terrible.”

  “It’s a button down, Vi. A pin button down. You asked me to help you do this.”

  “I know that.”

  “Would you just put it on?”

  “Wouldn’t it be sorta formal to wear to css?” “Oh my god, put it on.”

  Vio grumbled a little more, just a tad, and then shouldered the button down Margot had picked. They’d come back to the little thrift shop. Vi had given away everything masculine that she owned in the world, and she had just resigned herself to staying as, at least in presentation, a man, which meant she needed to get some that back. And since she had spent nearly all her money between the makeup and the phone, this was the only option.

  It also offered a bit of an opportunity.

  They’d decided that Vio skipping every css was a no-go. She needed that schorship. Even gen-eds needed to be attended once in a while. Besides that, most of the people at the party were probably too drunk to care. And, since she was here and she had to go to css, and she couldn’t very well go to css as Vio, she needed to go to css as Seb.

  Seb had been invisible stylistically. Just a boy. If the goal was to make up Vio to be A Man, big capital M, big block letters, to avoid David peering through the t-shirt and seeing the girl beneath, then she needed something that resembled A Man’s wardrobe. Seb’s? Seb’s was a boy’s wardrobe, according to Anna.

  They’d proposed this without the knowledge that Vi had already bagged up all of Seb’s wardrobe, but she didn’t feel the need to mention that. Why would she? She had no pns to tell them of her pn to go, especially now that it had been scuttled. As far as they had to be concerned, this was just the pn as given. There were enough difficult conversations without adding this one to the pile.

  They’d hiked past the women’s section, Vio doing her best not to be too put out by the fact that she was about to spend a full day rebuilding her wardrobe in the complete wrong direction, and settled into a set of racks lined with colrs.

  This was the best pn. It was the best one they had while Annabelle Bridges did whatever Annabelle Bridges was going to do, and Vio was rolling with it. Loving it? No. But she was rolling with it.

  “This isn’t bad,” said Margot, cocking her head to the side, assessing Vi. “It’s a little wide on the shoulders, but it’s not bad.”

  “Wide in the shoulders is bad,” stated Vio.

  “It’s fine,” said Margot.

  “I don’t-” Margot gave Vi a look. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t like dressing you like this either, Vi,” murmured Margot, now thumbing back through the rack. Vi gnced around, double checking. The store had been near empty, and still was. Vi had been using a quiet version of her voice, and neither of them were being particurly careful.

  It wasn’t going to be perfect. Couldn’t be, if she intended to stay and not be swallowed by despair. Letting Margot call her Vi in a quiet store in a hushed voice was the right kind of acquiescence. It was one she needed. Margot continued thumbing. “But, this is what we have to do.” She paused at a particurly ugly polo shirt, forest green with a great white stripe across the front. “Hmm.”

  “No,” said Vio, immediately. Margot let it fall into the rack, shaking her head.

  “You’ll have to pick out something,” she said.

  “Not that,” argued Vio.

  “You don’t have to like them,” said Margot. She paused on another polo, this one pin, and Vi did her best not to grimace at that one, too. All she could imagine was herself, the fabric just hanging off her body, failing to give her anything but the least fttering figure ever known to woman. But they were all going to do that. They were supposed to do that.

  “Fine,” she said. Margot nodded and pulled the price tag.

  “Five dolrs?” she asked.

  “Sure,” said Vio. She could live with that. Makeup had already pushed her through a chunk of her budget, and this day was sure to blow through the rest, but whatever. If she had to run now, it would be to a free couch in the great state of Rhode Isnd. She’d been learning a lot about Rhode Isnd, mostly because she needed the distraction, and her body still occasionally itched to run. It seemed a sort of silly state, mostly because it wasn’t an isnd at all.

  “Thank god,” said Margot. “Okay, let’s push through a couple more, and then look at pants. Don’t give me that look, Vi, you know we have to. At the very least, you’ll need something that’s a bit lighter since you can’t go around fshing your legs.”

  “Yeah,” said Vio. She hadn’t even meant to give her a look.

  They’d agreed on no shorts. For one, Vio was completely unwilling to give up shaving her legs. Oh, it was a chore, but shaved legs? Feminine. Feminine, and given how much of that she was being forced to hide again, she wasn’t keen on the idea of stopping that. The girls might have fought her harder on that if it wasn’t for the great bruise still blossoming on her ankle, the one where David had punctured her. It had, for the most part, started healing, but Vi was pretty sure the bruise would carry for days, and the mark, the bullseye, would stay for much longer than that.

  Given that the goal was to avoid detection by David in particur, well… pants were favored.

  But it was going to be hot soon. Vio, while never exactly the biggest fan of showing off her body before, had never worn pants deep into the year, because you had to be an absolute psychopath to do that. At her high school, there had been a boy who had managed a hoodie all the way into the boiling heat, and that guy had been crazy. More sweaty than crazy, but it was near equal.

  Vio was looking to minimize both, so to the pants section they went. Margot started picking through the racks.

  It took them about an hour to build something that resembled a wardrobe. Golf pants, light and flowy and extraordinarily douchey, made up the vast majority of Vi’s pants. She’d also gotten another pair of baggier jeans, a pair of slightly beaten chinos, and had ended up with several colred shirts. It was, if not the full representation of masculinity, at least the start of it. She’d still have to really dig for Seb when the time came, but she could manage the part.

  They swung back around to the front of the store. Vio and Margot set the clothes they’d collected in front of the register, and Vi fished into her pocket and pulled out her wallet, all leather and magnets. Ratty old thing. Her father had given it to her when she’d gotten her first job.

  “Oh, make some mistakes?” asked the woman working the front desk. Vio blinked.

  “Sorry?” she asked. She could feel Margot shift uncomfortably beside her. Vio’s eyebrows weren’t that thin, were they? Surely not. And surely this woman, stuffed behind the counter of a thrift store, wasn’t one to make judgments on clothing, was she? The woman grinned.

  “Sometimes people come and get stuff they didn’t realize they wanted after donating,” said the woman. “Funny thing, people. Think they’re happy with something until they’ve gotten rid of it.” Vio swallowed the fear, and had it immediately repced with anxiety. It was the same woman. The one who had been here when she’d dropped everything off and run into Cam. Drat.

  “Oh,” she said. “Um, no.” The woman started pulling through the tags, scribbling prices onto a notepad. Vio, though, was mostly focused on the lingering feeling of a stare emanating from Margot.

  “You had some good stuff in there,” continued the woman. Vio twisted her fingers together.

  “Sorry,” said Margot, very sweetly, “when was she in the shop before?” Vio dug her finger nails into her palms so deeply she thought she might draw blood. She. The woman gnced up at Vio, reexamining her. Margot’s tone evened out. “I mean, when did you st see him?”

  “On Friday,” said the woman, going back to the tags, ignoring the poorly concealed bomb Margot had just unloaded in front of her. “Dropped off a few bags of stuff. Posters, clothes, just kind of a bit of everything. If you wanted to look for anything in particur, I’m sure I can point you in the right direction.”

  “Oh,” said Margot. “Posters? Oh, um, no, thank you.” Vio gnced at her, and immediately read the concern.

  “It… I just wanted to clear some stuff out,” she said. Margot gave her another concerned look. “I’ll tell you ter, okay?” Margot nodded, then leaned against her for a second.

  “Good,” she said. “Okay, good.” Then, barely a whisper, she added. “Sorry.” All it took was the tiniest of headshakes for Margot to lean back.

  The woman ignored all of it, either oblivious or uncaring, scribbling little numbers and then stabbing at the clunkiest looking calcutor Vi had ever seen. Well, at least one person wasn’t paying attention. Her mind ran around, trying to collect all of the things she hadn’t told the girls, and all of the things she was willing to suddenly divulge. She could, really, just say she wanted to get rid of some stuff. Three bags was a lot, but if she was ridding herself of all her guy stuff?

  Maybe. Maybe. Of course, that would depend on Margot ignoring the ‘bit of everything’, which included more than just her old clothes. It had been just about everything that couldn’t go to New York. She wasn’t Danny Evans’s biggest fan, but she would have felt a little bad leaving him with every bit of junk she’d managed to collect into the tiny room.

  The woman tallied up the damage and handed it off to Vi. It was, all in all, not too bad considering the volume. They paid, collected the clothing into a pair of bags, and then started out onto the street. Vio made it ten steps before Margot grabbed her wrist and stopped her.

  “Vio,” she started. Then, she stopped. Closed her eyes, shook her head. Vio shifted on her feet. “Vi, I told you to tell me if…” She stopped again. “Why did you donate so much stuff?”

  “Well,” said Vio. “I don’t know. It felt like the thing to do.” Margot seemed completely unpcated. She loosened her grip on Vio’s wrist, and gestured for her to keep following.

  “Vi, I know how small our closets are. If you donated three bags worth of clothing, then you donated nearly everything you own.”

  “I didn’t like the things I owned,” argued Vio. Margot gred at her.

  “You don’t like the things we just bought either,” she said.

  “Well, that’s different. That’s to make me more masculine or whatever.”

  “And what about the rest of the time?” asked Margot. They were out on the street now, and Vio was a little worried about noise, but whatever. Most people here weren’t from campus, and if the woman at the counter hadn’t called her for the stupid stumble, then the people here would be way too busy to.

  “It’s just… I just did it, okay?” Vio dug her nails into her palm again.

  “You just did it,” repeated Margot.

  “Yeah, Margot, I just did it,” said Vio. “Why is that so bad?” Margot stopped again, wheeled to face her.

  “Because Vio,” she said, swallowing hard. “Because st week I saw you looking like you wanted to kill yourself. And you had this big, scary fucking thing happen, and I know things are bad, and you’re scared.” She closed her eyes. “And then, you secretly give away all your stuff. And, God, Vi, that’s what people do. They… they put their affairs in order. They make it easier for people to clean up their houses. They give away pets and shit and, yeah, they give away anything that might be a hassle.” Margot took her other hand. “And you just gave away everything you owned. And, like, okay, if it’s not that, then great, but I need you to look me in the eye and tell me that.”

  “Oh, fuck, Margot,” said Vio, scrambling to find the words to deny that. It wasn’t that. It really, really wasn’t that. “No. God, no, Margot, that’s not what this is about.” Margot didn’t release her.

  “Then what?” she murmured. Vio closed her eyes and swallowed. Better she imagine this than something else. Better this than death.

  “I was going to run away,” admitted Vio. Margot’s eyes went wide. “I’m not anymore! I’m not, I just, it was all too much, and staying here felt like too much, and going felt easier, and so… Yeah, so I donated everything that I couldn’t fit in my suitcase.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, I just knew that if I told you guys, you’d try and get me to stay, and I’m sorry.” Margot let out a breath.

  “God,” she said, and she sounded relieved. “God, okay, yeah.”

  “I’m really sorry,” repeated Vio.

  “It’s fine,” said Margot, releasing her hand. “I mean, fuck you for not saying goodbye, and when I get over the rest of it I’m going to kick your ass, but it’s fine.” She grimaced. “Really, though, fuck you for not saying goodbye.” Vio let out a little ugh.

  “I’m going to stay, if it makes you feel better,” she offered.

  “No fucking shit,” said Margot. “No fucking shit you’re going to stay.”

  “It just seemed easier to go is all,” she said. “Like, there’s so many things that I can’t do. Things that will require me to be, like, out there. And I guess I could be okay with that, it’s just like, I don’t know. There’s this allure to a fresh start, you know? Like no one would know me in New York. They wouldn’t… there wouldn’t be this old version of me they could think about, I guess.” Margot was looking at her intently, and Vio smiled. “But I wouldn’t know anybody, either. I just want to be able to do both. I want to be Vio, and I don’t want anyone to just be putting me back in this Seb sized box, and I don’t want to die. And I want to be here.”

  Want. There was want. Less the pce and more the people. New York had the allure, and she sat with that long enough to understand what it could give her, and Providence was stone neutral, but she did want to be here. She just couldn’t really figure out who she was here. How those things all came together.

  “People won’t see you that way,” said Margot, quietly. “Or, well, I don’t, I guess.”

  “It won’t be the same,” said Vio. “I just can’t. I can’t come out. I don’t want to. And there’s still the parties and all of that.”

  “Parties? Plural?” Margot grinned at her. “Have you been moonlighting without us before?” Vio rolled her eyes and hooked an arm into Margot’s, starting them off towards the bus station again.

  “My makeup isn’t nearly good enough for that,” grumbled Vio.

  “Yet, girl, yet,” said Margot. “Your makeup isn’t good enough for that yet.”

  * * * * *

  Thursday

  1:12 p.m.

  David: You’re never going to guess what I’m about to ask you

  Vio: at some point this becomes harassment doesn’t it?

  David: It would if you didn’t also keep flirtily responding

  Vio: im not flirtily responding thats not a thing youre imagining that

  Vio: im stoic and unmoved

  David: Is that what you’re calling yourself now?

  David: So how about that meeting

  David: We could go to a party

  Vio: im actually all out on drinking for the next forever

  David: :(

  David: You know I’m going to have to scale back this asking

  David: Rejection once a day is bad for the heart

  Vio: what if i was stoic and slightly moved

  Vio: would you still text me every day

  David: For slightly moved?

  David: Not sure

  David: Might need you to bump that up to marginally moved

  Vio: i dont think marginally moved is bigger than slightly moved

  David: Are you an English major now?

  Vio: no its just what i believe

  Vio: fine im stoic and marginally moved

  David: I’m going to get you to moderately moved by april I can feel it

  Vio: sure you are

  David: Qualifiers gone by May

  Vio: im looking forward to you trying

  David: If you change your mind about the party just lmk

  Vio: ill keep it in mind

  * * * * *

  The second phone stayed in her bag when she was with the girls. Despite her admittance to Margot, there was no need to reveal the other hole she was digging for herself. Because if she was staying, then she really, really, really needed to stop doing this thing where she texted David all the time. And yeah, she was being flirty, because of course she was being flirty. Of course she was being flirty.

  But, God, it felt so easy. And during the week, this week, when she had spent full days back in button downs and ugly pants and had purposely ignored the stubble returning, barely, to her upper lip, texting David was an escape. It was the girl’s dorm. It was the beachhead out by the pond. It was freeing in its own right, because David was really texting Vio, and this week, she had needed it more than ever.

  So the phone went into her bag before Anna and Lucy could return with their lunches, and it stayed there while Lucy compined about the ck of dining options. No sense in pretending that she was going to stop, but even less sense showing them exactly how dumb she was being. Besides, if Margot hadn’t yet told them about her old pn to run away, then she wasn’t about to spring the phone on them now. Only Annabelle and David had that number, anyway.

  “Okay,” said Anna, “It’s been a full week, and there’s been no drinking. I say-”

  “Anna,” whined Lucy, “We spent an entire week being drunk. My skin is all… oily.” She mimed to rub her face, but held her fingertips aloft of the skin. Vio smiled. Protecting the foundation. Probably, at least. Vio had struggled in the heat and the sweat not to end up with hers splotching everywhere when she practiced.

  “Yeah, and it’s been a whole week off, so we’re all banced out,” said Anna. She poked at a bit of broccoli on her tray, then frowned at the bounciness of it. “We don’t have to go to a party or anything! Just a night in. You know,” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “just us girls.” Vio snorted at the verve of it, and Anna grinned. “It’d be fun!”

  “I’m so tired of drinking,” compined Lucy again.

  “You don’t have to drink,” said Anna.

  “Yeah,” said Lucy.

  “You’ll just want to if we do,” said Vio in her Sebastian voice.

  “Yeah,” said Lucy again. Vio shifted. She’d been hoping one of them would offer something like this. Something like this was the perfect opportunity to bring Vio out and send Sebastian away. Not that Vio wasn’t always present; she was, but here, in the dining hall, she was more theoretical than flesh. Vio was aware of her existence. She was aware of her desires, of her potential, of what she ought to be in this room. But she was aware of the fact that those things were very much not in this room. Here, right now, she was very much tucked into Sebastian.

  “I think it’d be nice,” said Vio. Then, she switched to Vio voice, just for a second, and murmured. “You know, for me.” Lucy blinked.“Gosh, it’s weird that you can do that on command,” she said. Vio giggled. She returned to her Sebastian impression.

  “I’m getting better at it,” she said. That was half a consequence of all the reading at the pond. She’d finished ‘Death Comes as the End’ and had moved on to ‘Five Little Pigs’. For that one, though, she’d started switching the voices. By the end of ‘Death Comes as the End’, she’d started to run into difficulty switching back to Sebastian easily. Now, she swapped each chapter. Losing Sebastian’s voice was non-optional at the moment.

  “Yeah,” said Lucy. “That’s the weird part.” Vio giggled again.

  “I just want a night,” she said. “It’s been a long week. I, uh,” she gestured down to the button up she was wearing, fitting better than she expected and putting a damper on her mood, “would like to do something else.” Anna nodded.

  “Yeah,” she said. “God, yeah, girl.” Then, she gnced around. The tables around them were rgely empty thanks to their timing — they’d arrived well after the lunch time rush and in the middle of a css block — but they still had to be careful. Funny. They’d been calling her ‘babe’ and ‘girl’ for months, and it had never seemed a thing before now. God, even she’d been doing that.

  “Fine,” acquiesced Lucy. She smiled at Vio. “Fine, we’ll do something tomorrow. Hey! Maybe I’ll try to do brunch in the room Saturday morning, too. I stole the griddle from the house so I could totally make eggs and stuff there.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Anna. “And tomorrow night…”

  “It’s so bad,” said Lucy again, gesturing to her entirely fwless skin.

  “You’re such a drama queen,” said Anna, ughing. “You had one zit.”

  “It was two!” argued Lucy. “Gosh, and even when I was eating better… Now back to this junk and the drinking?” She poked at a bit of mashed potatoes on her pte and sighed. “They need to do better here.”

  “I think you’re just spoiled,” said Vio.

  “Is it spoiled to want to eat something that either has, A: fvor, or B: doesn’t make me imagine my body sting a thousand years from all the chemicals?”

  “The second part is actually some sort of weird psychosis thing you have going on,” said Vio.

  “Just you wait until we die,” said Lucy, waggling a fork in Vio’s direction. “I’ll be decomposed and you’ll all be this weird mushy thing. Too many chemicals!” She poked at the mashed potatoes again. “And everything without is all… bleh.”

  “You’re not using butter,” argued Vio.

  “You know what,” said Lucy, pushing the pte away from her. She paused, clearly looking for a follow up to that sentence. “Whatever, okay? I’m keeping my skin nice and clean.”

  “And we’re all oh so proud of you,” said Anna.

  “Shush,” said Lucy. Vio giggled and took a bite of the very-much-buttered mashed potatoes she’d been ignoring.

  “Where’s Margot anyway?” she asked. Lucy and Anna gave her a look.

  “Take one very good guess,” said Anna.

  “God,” said Vio. “Again?” Lucy screwed up her eyes and started on what Vio assumed was supposed to be a Margot impression.

  “He’s so busy with practice and so they’ve had to just find any time they can to get together. So, she’s not coming.” Vio shook her head.

  “She’s so locked in,” she said.

  “Destined to make it to the end of the year at least,” agreed Lucy. “I’m hoping things just get too busy for him when the season comes. I mean, okay, he’s not like the worst guy in the world, but she could do so much better.”

  “I like him,” procimed Anna. “Keeps us on our toes.”

  “Are we arguing that’s a good thing now?” asked Vio, giggling.

  “I think so,” said Anna, nodding. “You know, it’s really all thanks to him that you made it to that party. Really, he deserves a lot of credit for the current iteration of,” she gave a passing gnce over her shoulder, “Vio.”

  “And I’m so thankful to him,” whispered Vio, in her own voice. “What a nice guy.” Anna grinned at her.

  “Could be worse,” she said. “You know, could be that he was some sort of psychopath who thought eating potatoes with butter would turn his skin into lead.” Lucy gred at her and Vio ughed. “Could be even higher on the football pyramid, too. You know, could be like… god, what’s that position again?”

  “Kicker,” said Vio, nodding. Anna ughed.

  “Any word from your little boyfriend?” she asked.

  “Not little,” mused Lucy.

  “Not boyfriend,” corrected Vio. Anna shrugged and bit into her potatoes. “He hasn’t texted since asking for Vio’s number.” Half true. David hadn’t texted Seb since he’d asked for Vio’s number. Now, the rest of it? She was pretty sure there was a text waiting for her once they’d finished lunch.

  “That’s good,” said Lucy. “I mean, if he knew, he’d probably have said something, right? Like, he wouldn’t have just let things lie.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Vio. That’s what she’d decided, too. It felt like, at this point, David hadn’t managed to put it together. That had been part of the pn here, the goal. The idea had been that, if ‘Seb’ worked his voice and he trained himself to be better about being a man around David, then that ought to throw him off enough when they finally saw each other again. It was sort of a stupid pn, and it hinged on ‘Seb’ flirting the line between being so obviously, heroically masculine that he aroused suspicion and not masculine at all, lending itself to David believing he could really be Vio, too.

  It was a tricky line. The clothes had been the first step, and Vio had been wearing them since she’d bought them. And the practice with the voice had been another bit. It hadn’t really been for that, but it had been a bit of help, and she was hoping it would at least throw him. That was such an unusual skill, wasn’t it? The final piece of the puzzle had just been general aura, according to Lucy. Acting like a guy would act. Not, like, deepening the voice and puffing her chest out or whatever, but finding something in the same zone as that, just, like, less.

  They had offered zero specific examples, so Vio had looked for her own. It wasn’t all that hard. Just about every action movie ever made seemed to extol the virtues of masculinity, dialed all the way up to eleven. And, sure, she probably couldn’t run with whatever the hell was going on in Top Gun, but she could pull some of that in. Take the eleven, turn it to, what, a seven? Call it a day.

  She’d started Friday Night Lights, too. Her parents had talked about it enough, and it was set around football in the south, so she’d figured she’d kill two birds. Do a bit of research on football, do a little research on men. If nothing else, she could come away knowing what the hell a wide receiver was.

  Regardless, the version of Sebastian that showed up tomorrow had to be a bit of a man. It wasn’t thrilling. It wasn’t exciting. It was acting like a man, and it was acting like a man in front of David, more than she ever had before, and she really didn’t want to have to ham it up, but she’d committed to this. She’d committed to sticking it out, so, fuck it. As long as David kept Vio separate from the new and improved Sebastian in his mind, she could live with it.

  “What are you wearing tomorrow?” asked Anna.

  “Probably this again,” she said, gesturing down towards the button down. She’d paired them with chinos; heavier, but she might not have the chance to keep using the heavier pants for much longer. The heat was only going to get worse.

  “That’s good,” said Lucy.

  “You look… Well, you look like you have to look,” said Anna. Vio nodded.

  “A glowing endorsement,” she said, a fork in the air. Anna grinned.

  “Just make it through tomorrow, and then tomorrow night, we’ll get very, very drunk.”

  “Amen,” agreed Vio.

  * * * * *

  1:27 p.m.

  David: Doesn’t have to be a party

  David: We could go hang out on the quad

  David: We could hang out with my very cool teammates

  David: My sister would love to meet you

  3:12p.m.

  Vio: see now wasnt there this whole thing where your teammates were already teasing you

  Vio: that might make it worse

  5:03 p.m.

  David: It wasn’t teasing

  David: They don’t tease

  David: Sarah’s teasing is guaranteed so

  10:33 p.m.

  Vio: is sarah the sister

  Vio: she seems cooler than you

  David: Sarah is the sister yes lmfao

  David: She’ll be delighted to hear that

  David: She’s always looking for approval from girls I like it’s her demographic

  Vio: wow so you like me

  Vio: thats so middle school of you

  David: Is there a way to say that thats all mature Vio

  Vio: idk i figured you of all people would have one

  Vio: shakespeare and all that

  David: I told you I’m all about the comedies and tragedies

  Vio: uh huh

  Vio: makes me rethink all of the party stuff tomorrow

  David: So you were thinking about coming to a party tomorrow

  Vio: well not anymore

  David: I’m penciling you in

  David: No

  David: I’m penning you in

  David: Whatever the equivalent is

  David: Writing it in blood

  Vio: dramatic!

  Vio: except im not coming to anything tomorrow

  David: That’s not what my calender says

  David: It says I’ll see you tomorrow

  Vio: goodnight david

  See you tomorrow.