There weren't many stores on campus so I actually had to take a bus into town. I was a little scared at first. I had heard horror stories about the kind of people who caught buses. Luisa told me she had once seen a guy punch straight through a window, and the bus driver didn't even pull over. 

That didn't happen on my bus ride. The seats were really uncomfortable, and it smelled pretty bad, but mostly it was just a bunch of college kids. It was still kind of exhilarating. I had spent my school years surrounded by rich boys in school uniform, but all kinds of people went to Great Oaks.

A couple stops before we reached the local mall, a girl got on who caught my eye. She looked... alternative. She had winged eyeliner and dark lipstick and what looked like a black collar fastened around her neck. As she walked down the aisle her short, pleated skirt swished around her thighs, and I realised too late that she could totally see me staring at her.

She didn't seem to mind, though. She smirked as she passed me by and continued to the back of the bus. I lowered my eyes and didn't dare look at her for the rest of the ride.

God, she was so pretty. That makeup! And... that skirt...

If I was a girl, would I have the confidence to dress like that?

If I dressed like that, would I have the confidence to be a girl?

When the bus reached my stop I hurried off and tried to put the pretty alt girl out of my head. Those questions were gonna stay hypothetical, at least until I had my room back to myself. If Nick was going to yell at me for my very reasonable complaint about not wanting to sleep on a dirty pillow, I did not want to hear his opinion on me possibly being.... whatever. Especially if it turned out I wasn't.

So that meant for the next few days I was going to continue being a 100% straight boy.

I kept that in mind as I was browsing through pillowcases. Nothing too girly. The problem was, that didn't actually leave me too many options. I could just get a plain white pillowcase, like the one I was replacing, but all the ones at the store had an abysmally low thread count. The highest they went was 800. I might as well just sleep with my head on a sheet of sandpaper.

As I kept looking I got more and more annoyed. The whole point of coming to Great Oaks was to try things out without anyone judging me, and now I couldn't even have a bare minimum level of comfort without getting crap for it!

I turned away from the display of cheap trash pillowcases in disgust. Just across from me was the Women's Sleepwear section. For the first time in years, I didn't force myself to look away. There were so many cute things there. I saw this little matching pajama set, champagne-coloured silk with a lace trim, and it just looked so... comfortable.

If everything had gone to plan I would have been here anyway, shopping for clothes. I could have bought those pajamas and taken them back to my private room and tried them on. Maybe I would have ended up feeling like a total weird pervert freak, but maybe... it would have felt right. And I would actually confirm the thing that I had spent so many years trying to avoid thinking about.

But that wasn't going to happen tonight, because right now Nick was in my room. Walking all over my floor with dirty shoes.

I scowled and tore my eyes away from the cute pajamas. I snatched an 800 thread count piece of garbage off the shelf.

I just had to live with it for a few days.

And then I was going to set it on fire.