Maybe there was such thing as perfect. Not like, entirely perfect. Not perfect in the way that books wanted to convince you that things could be perfect, that God had crafted a man out of marble just for you, that things would never be messy except when specifically ordained, that love could conquer all. Not entirely perfect. Just perfect in the way that that other stuff could seem smaller if you sat with it long enough. Perfect in the way that the world could shrink a little, improve a little, be better the next morning than it was before. 

Maybe that wasn’t the definition of perfect at all, but Viola was willing to work with it. It was her perfect. Because, right now, this morning was better than the morning before. 

As long as you were willing to call this morning.

The sun wasn’t even up yet. Light had only just started to warm the room, but it wasn’t even proper sunlight. It was that in-between bit, the space before the sun had cracked the horizon and after the night had fallen away. 

But David was up, and she had been so entwined with him that it had been impossible not to wake too. 

David had tried. He’d shushed her when she’d murmured, tried to let her sleep further, even when she’d rolled and mumbled and wondered. It was half that she hadn’t even known where she was. She wasn’t a stranger to waking up in beds that weren’t her own — there were enough nights in the girls’ room to give her that pattern — his bed was just bigger and softer and smelled different. 

And so, she’d stirred more than she’d planned. And David was showering, because he couldn’t very well go around smelling like what they’d gotten up to last night. 

He’d been right. He’d been right about things. She wasn’t sure if you could really call what they’d done sex. Not in the traditional sense, at least. But it had been something close, something that resembled it. And whatever it was, whatever he had done to her, his mouth, his fingers, his body, had worked. It had reoriented her opinion of sex, of what it could be, shifted it from simply being a thing to be done, a correct thing to be done, to a means. Sex wasn’t something people did just to do. Sex had purpose. Sex came with pleasure. Sex had an end.

It had also left her in a puddle, and it had left them both sweaty, and her brain was still sort of trying to wrap itself around the idea that she was currently curled into the blankets of David’s bed, the light of the almost morning peaking through the window. 

The world ought to be made of mornings like this. 

She flipped back into the comforter, rubbing an eye, and positioned herself to watch the bathroom door. It was so ridiculous that he couldn’t stay. And, God, it was a Wednesday, too, which meant she was going to have to get up, and she was going to have to go to class, and she was going to have to pretend that something else in the world mattered right now. That there was another world. That this bedroom, this bed wasn’t the world right now. 

That he wasn’t.

But that was after he left. First, he would have to come out of the bathroom. First, he would have to walk out that door, smile at her, and then he would kiss her. She was so sure of it that she could just about feel his lips already, feel the wire of his stubble, feel the warmth of him. He would.

And all she had to do was watch the door. 

 

* * * * *

 

When she opened her eyes again, the sun was blaring through the window, well past the point of creeping across the floor, forcing her to bury herself into the sheets further. Everything was soft and warm, and she wanted to get away from all the light. 

“You’re up,” said David. 

Viola turned over. He was sitting up, back against the wall, laptop open on his thighs. And he was smiling at her, because of course he was, and Viola squinted at the earnestness. 

“I thought you were supposed to be running,” she murmured. God, her voice sounded like garbage. 

David tilted the screen of his laptop down and smiled. “I already did that.” 

“Shit,” murmured Viola. 

“It’s already 10,” said David. 

“Shit.”

“You were out.”

“Please don’t tell me I have to get up,” said Viola, and she figured that, if she wanted to be funny, now was about the right time to turn over and face away from him again, petulant. She didn’t really want to be funny right now. 

“Why would I make you get up?” asked David. 

“Class,” mumbled Viola. Maybe she could take the blankets with her to class. Maybe she could take David with her to class. Maybe she could drop out. 

David grinned. “You know that no one’s going to kill you if you miss a class. There’s no detention.” 

“My scholarship.” 

“They won’t mind,” said David. 

Viola closed her eyes. “I have to.”

“There’s coffee in the kitchen if you really want to go,” said David. “And bagels.”

“Oh, bagels,” murmured Viola. She hadn’t eaten since having, what, four french fries with him? They hadn’t made it very far into any of that before it had all become irrelevant. And they’d stopped for water, but the idea of picking up the now very much room temperature fried chicken had seemed like a bridge too far. Not on the first night. 

The first night. 

As if it could sense the offer on the table, her stomach growled. David snorted. 

“We can get something more than that, if you need it. I did have a couple already.” His gaze had tracked back to his computer for a second. 

Viola frowned. “Don’t you have classes today?” 

“I can take them here,” he said, nodding towards his laptop. “I’m in class right now.” 

“That’s such bullshit,” said Viola, and she twisted towards him as she said it, rolling so that her head flopped down right by his shoulder. Sure enough, there was a livestream of the lecture on David’s computer, although there was no sound playing at all. “Is this a marketing class?” There was a guy in a clean button down, gesturing silently towards a PowerPoint. “Is this useful for you at all?” 

“I told you,” said David, and he shifted a little, his arm curling back to let her settle in closer to him, “that it’ll be good for our podcast.” Viola flicked his side, and David laughed. 

“I meant without sound,” she said.

“It’s fine,” said David. “I can get an idea of what the PowerPoint is like, and then I can get the notes from someone else later.” 

Viola laughed, and her throat caught. “Shit,” she murmured. “God, water?” David leaned away and passed her a glass of water sitting on his bedside table. Viola wiggled to sit up. “Thanks.” 

“Sure,” he said. 

“Bagels, huh?” she asked, then took a sip. 

David gave her a little smile. “Bagels.” 

“Huh,” she said. 

“You know,” said David, sliding out from under the laptop and putting his feet to the floor, “you could just ask me to get you a bagel.” 

Viola grinned. “I could,” she agreed. “Is it okay if I eat in the bed?” 

“See, I thought you needed to be up and out for class,” teased David. He stood, twisting to loosen his back. “I thought the world was going to end if you missed class. Which,” he ran a hand through his hair, and Viola almost laughed, “means you really ought to be getting out of bed, doesn’t it?” 

“Are you trying to kick me out?” asked Viola, sweetly. 

David shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere until five.” 

Viola rubbed her eyes and nodded. Good. God. 

It wouldn’t hurt to miss one day of classes, would it? No. Definitely not. Besides, that scholarship was probably going to be fudged in a few weeks anyway, and it wasn’t like she had any quizzes. 

In any event, she’d have to leave, like, right now to make it to class. She was just in her underwear now, plus the wig, plus — God — the makeup, which she had completely neglected to wash off, in part due to exhaustion by the time it had seemed like a relevant thing to do, and in part because she was still a little nervous about the idea of David looking at her without it on, especially when she was asking to be treated like, well, Viola, so any sort of return to the real world would require her to go back to the girls’ dorm to get her other clothes. 

And, fuck, she was going to need to renew her makeup before she did that. This had been such a spur-of-the-moment thing that she’d relied on the girls’s makeup last night. Her own had still been in her dorm. And that was fine, really, because most of their stuff was a lot better than her own, but it meant that she didn’t have anything here with her. No little pink bag to dip into to refresh what she had on. She didn’t even want to look in the mirror. 

Sleeping in the wig, too, had to have done things to her hair. She had to look like a disaster, and that disaster was going to, at some point, need to return to the girls’ room. 

“A bagel sounds nice,” said Viola. Better than figuring all that out. Better than getting to class. 

“Bagel it is,” said David.

David got her that bagel. Then, they stayed in bed for another hour, Viola eating, David nominally watching his lecture, sort of just talking about nothing. Talking about PowerPoints, talking about books, talking about childhood vacations and dream jobs and friends and all of it. About nothing. About whatever. 

After the lecture ended, and Viola decided that, regardless of what happened after this, she needed to take a shower, too. She didn’t smell terrible, at least not as far as she could tell, but being in bed for almost twelve hours, and a good portion of those hours not being dedicated to sleep meant that she did feel dirty. That, and the glue was starting to itch on her chest and her scalp. 

“You’re not going to be weird if I come out of the shower without the wig on, are you?” asked Viola, crawling out from beneath the blankets. An older, more nervous version of her probably would have been more tactful with the question. Dodged around it. But she was pretty sure she knew the answer now. She was pretty sure that, after last night, David wasn’t going to mind anything nearly as much as she was. 

David shook his head. “Can’t imagine it.” 

“Me without the wig or being weird?” She realized as she said it that she’d just hopped out of bed in only her underwear, and that she definitely had not been tucking all night, so the question was probably moot anyway. Imagine, David. Imagine. 

“Either,” said David. “Both. I’ve never, ever seen you without a wig on your head.” 

Viola grinned, then went to the bathroom, walking on the balls of her feet. She closed the door behind her, turned to the mirror, and took herself in.

Disaster confirmed.

The makeup was such a mess. It hadn’t even been particularly elaborate before. They’d said casual, and so she’d gone casual, and that meant only minimal eyeliner and no shadow and basically no lip liner, except the bits where she’d wanted to fill in some, but still. It was all raccoon eyes and smudges and God, she looked like such a mess. 

There was no refreshing this. She got to work wiping it away, using the face wash she should have used last night, the one he’d offered when she was mumbling into the pillow. Most of it came away alright, although the corners of her eyes were still too dark to be considered ‘makeup free’, and she decided she could get the rest in the shower or live with it. Fine, because she could just have one of the girls drop her stuff off after class. Easier that way. 

She left the wig on the counter, showered fast, using his soap but ignoring the two-in-one shampoo, and then returned to the clothes she had been wearing the night before. 

And, honestly, sans makeup, she wished she had other options. Her face now rang of stubble, and the clothes looked all weird with her tits set off to the side, and she could see the little bits of leg hair starting to peak back through, and she really, really needed to not be wearing this shit like that. 

She poked her head through the door, hair still damp. David was still on the bed, scrolling through his phone. 

“Can I borrow sweats or something?” she asked. “And, um, a t-shirt?”

David rubbed the back of his neck, nodding. “Sure.” He was up off the bed and to his dresser. Sometimes, Viola forgot that he was an athlete. Even that, the standing from the bed, unfolding himself and walking across the room, was fluid. Natural. Quick, too. He came to the door with a set of gray sweatpants and a t-shirt, which she was certain would hang too far. 

“Thanks,” she said. 

Back to the mirror. 

Better, she supposed, than the halfway version that she’d been before. Maybe? God, maybe not. David ought to be fine, right? Because this version, in his oversized t-shirt, missing breasts and well-styled hair and makeup and all of that, pasted with the beginnings of a morning shadow, looked a lot more like Sebastian than Viola. It looked like him. 

Yes. Yes, it would be fine, because it had to be fine, because if they were going to do… whatever the hell this was, David had to be okay with that. He had to be okay with that because she really, really could not sleep in makeup, because, God there was already a pimple forming on her chin. 

Ick. 

Resolving to never, ever neglect carrying a razor and the basics ever again, she ran her fingers through her hair, detangling a smaller knot, and stepped out of the bathroom. 

“Do you want to do lunch?” she asked, and she kept her voice in the right register. That was the right register. Never mind that it didn’t match her at the moment. 

David looked up from his phone, grinned at her, and nodded. “Sure,” he said. Then, he added. “Your hair’s getting long.” 

“Yeah,” said Viola, twisting a finger into a bit of it. “Just, um, just growing it out for a little while. It’s not getting too long, you don’t think?” Now, just now, she suddenly had the feeling that maybe it was a tad too feminine already. She still needed to go to class.

“No,” said David. He shook his head, as if to supplement. “I think it looks nice. Frames your face.” 

Viola flopped down on the bed next to him, letting the wet hair droop deliberately onto his shoulder. “I’ll need to get it styled. Before I come back, I mean. Sometime over the summer.” 

“Styled, huh?” asked David, brushing her hair off his shoulder. Viola shook her hair again, landing it back there. He laughed. “I just feel like there’s a thing you’re going to do.” 

Viola raised an eyebrow. “A thing?” 

“A thing,” agreed David. “You know, a thing all your friends do.” 

She clicked her tongue, rolled over, and propped a hand on his chest. “Oh, so you think I’m just copying whatever my friends are doing? No personality of my own?”

“No,” said David,this time clearly doing his best to restrain that laugh. She wanted to dig it out of him. “I just think I know you well enough to know where you’re going with this. Besides, it makes sense for you to dye your hair.” 

She ought to kick him. She ought to kiss him. “I think you just have a thing for blondes, David Oliver.” 

“The evidence is not supportive of that, Viola Collins.” He slipped an arm out around her, and she pulled herself onto his lap. Her hair was all over his cheek now.  

“Is that right?” she teased.

“Hair of all kinds,” said David. “And if you wanted to go blonde-”

“Which I never said I did!”

“-I think you should.” He grinned at her, as if it was already a foregone conclusion, and she rolled her eyes and thwapped him across the face with her hair. 

God, she wished it was longer. 

“I’ll think about it,” she said. She paused, leaning back on her haunches a little. “You think it makes sense?” 

David shrugged. His finger was drawing an absent, distracting circle on her lower back. “I mean, if the idea is that you’re trying to come back and have people not know it was you, then yeah. One time, when I was a kid, my mom dyed her hair from brown to red. Not even like a subtle red. Like red red.” He snorted. “And I cried because I couldn’t recognize her.” 

“How old?” asked Viola, now stroking David’s thigh. 

“Young,” said David. “Very young. All I’m saying is that if you’re trying to differentiate more, dyeing your hair isn’t a dumb idea. I don’t think you need to, but if you’re on the fence?” 

“See now, this is making me think you do have a thing for blondes,” said Viola, and David laughed. She pinched his thigh gently. “That’s so, like, contrived.” 

“I think it’s more logic,” he said. 

She leaned forward again, allowing the hair to drip back onto his face. “You could just say so,” she murmured. 

David smiled. “Do you want me to have a thing for blondes?” he asked. 

“Not unless I dye my hair,” murmured Viola. She pressed her forehead against his, grinned, and kissed him. 

They abandoned the pretense of lunch. 

Things really were easy, deliriously simple, in this bed. There was no urgency, no pressing need for anything other than his lips and his skin and his hands in her hair. They could just be there. David could stick his classes on in the background, pretend he was going to listen, but there were no actual obligations. It was just them. 

But only in this bed.

She would need her clothes eventually, and she would need to turn on her phone to get them. It was a Wednesday, after all. It was a Wednesday, and that meant there were things that had to be done tomorrow, and things that had to be done the next day, and then there would be things to do on the weekend, and he was a fucking football player, so he had things to do all the time. She couldn’t stay in the bubble forever. 

And it was a Wednesday.

She really couldn’t stay in this bubble forever.

When she turned on her phone again today, she was certain there would be another missed call. Another missed call, another voicemail from her mother, another increasingly concerned message for her to call back. Another bout of anxiety. Another feeling of slow, collapsing worry. Another chance to think about the inevitability of things. 

It frustrated her. More than terrifying her, it frustrated her.

Maybe it was that she’d finally sorted through so much, finally sifted to the point where this world didn’t feel quite so crushing anymore. Sure, she was still forced to be Sebastian during large swathes of her life, but that was coming to a close soon. She could feel that. And she was pretty sure now that she would not be going back to Calabash. David would be here during the summer, doing some sort of practice for football — he’d said so last night, at least if her slightly faulty memory was correct — so she wanted to be here, too. Calabash wasn’t all that far, but she wanted to be here. She wanted to be here.

And her mother, those phone calls, the incessant messages that were supposed to be loving and doting and kind, were driving her crazy. They were dragging her backwards. All she wanted to do was move forwards, and she wasn’t even opposed to her mother and her family being a part of that. She knew, of course, that the odds were low, but Annabelle had said people surprised her. But Viola just wanted to move forward. She didn’t want turning off her phone to feel like some massive relief. 

She could touch the next few months. In her mind, she was imagining some kind of summer job, something with the school, maybe. Or, fuck, she’d work as Sebastian at one of the drugstores during the week. As long as she got to be Viola during some of the nights, got to be more her than she’d been before, she could live with that for the summer. And then, and then, and then…

Forward was better. Forward had once been this impossible fog, this nebulous world that she could not pierce, and now it was enticing. The fall, when she could sit with the grass on her thighs on the quad, laughing with her friends, being Viola. It was close. It was all so, so close. She could taste it now. 

She’d stopped letting things fall into her lap, hadn’t she? She was practicing makeup now, actually practicing it, and her voice, and David. David, who she’d been falling head over heels for for weeks, for ages, and she’d been waiting, worried that things were going to go wrong, worried that things were bad, worried that things could only get worse. She’d thought she was going to wait for the picnic. 

And she hadn’t. And she hadn’t, because she had wanted to figure this out. She had wanted to see him, so she had.

And now, Viola wanted to carve the path forward as clear as she could make it. She wanted to be able to pick up her phone. She wanted to make Viola as permanent as she felt.

“You okay?” murmured David. He was sort of stroking her hair, his laptop open once more to a lecture. He’d added the sound this time, apparently intent on at least going through the motions. 

Viola nodded, half absent. “Yeah.” 

“You sure?” asked David. “You’ve been sort of just staring off.” 

Viola nodded again. “I think I have to call my mom,” she said, mostly for herself. Mostly to just put the words into the world. “I think I have to call my mom.” 

 

* * * * *

 

She left David in the bedroom with a bit of explanation. It was funny to explain her parents to him, although she supposed it probably shouldn’t be. People told each other about their parents all the time. It just felt so… trivial. The odds that David Oliver ever met them were so low.

But she told him anyway, because she wanted to tell him everything. She told him about the little trips they took, the ones they could afford, the ones to the beach and to the state forests. She told him about how church, about how her father had read her the bible before bed, about how they’d moved churches when she was seven because her mother had disliked the pastor. She told him about the novels her mother used to read, how she’d given them to Viola, how she’d read them to Viola, how she’d sometimes been a good mother when she’d wanted to be. How, at times, they really had been a family. 

And how, at other times, it had all felt like an inescapable prison.

And then, because it was what people did, David had told her about his parents. Richer, more secure, and possibly even less happy than hers. He’d described a pair of climbers, a pair of people who wanted more, who pushed for more, and who had bore a pair of children with gifts beyond their means, and how it had turned them into a version of parents that shouldn’t exist. How they had been a family, and how they had been a prison. Were still a prison, sometimes.

There was a bit of relief in that. Viola wasn’t sure that she’d be able to meet a perfect family. She wasn’t sure they were out there at all, mind you, but she had been pretty sure that, if one existed, they would have raised David. 

Not that she was meeting his family any time soon. 

In any case, she’d left him the bedroom, and she’d gone to the kitchen, and she’d turned on her phone. 

And there was, as expected, the little notification from her mother. 

Nine in the morning. She was moving right on up the list now. 

Calling her was the sort of idea that was terrible right up to the point where it seemed like the only thing you could do. And then, when every bit of your body had been exhausted, it seemed like a relief.

It would be good to get this out of the way. She was under no illusions about how it would go, about exactly what would happen, so she wasn’t planning on telling her mother the whole truth. The whole truth, which would almost definitely involve her mother jumping in her car and racing to campus, immediately launching a statewide search for the supplier of her new daughter’s estrogen, was not an option. 

So she was sort of pacing back and forth, trying to imagine what, exactly, the best way to go about this was. 

The baseline was the bombshell. She would be dropping that, because she needed to. She wasn’t going home, and there could be a million explanations why, but that injection had started the clock anyway. There was no avoiding it. 

Besides, it was what she wanted to do. It was what made this all easier. It was what made this phone call, the one that she’d been avoiding for its finality, approachable. It was taking control. 

She took the long steps towards his front door, turned, and took the steps back. 

Problem was, of course, that she needed to be here in the fall, too. And since Annabelle was sticking her neck out to get her records changed, she needed her mother to not be looking into that. She needed to think that Viola was somewhere else, far away, and she needed to think that Viola was going to be there for good. Or, at least, she needed to think that Viola wasn’t coming back to Garland. 

Viola was still terrified of being outed here. She wanted to remain anonymous. Part of the beauty of Annabelle’s plan, of the one that let her come back in stealth, at least to large parts of the world, was that it was clean. It was a fresh start, almost entirely. 

But that almost entirely could be a problem. 

So, an airtight excuse.

Where would Sebastian go if he couldn’t…

Viola stopped mid pace.

Where would a trapped Sebastian go if he needed to leave? What would the newly out, newly terrified trans girl do if she was going to run? What kind of plan would she make?

She’d made that plan. She’d made that plan. And, sure, she hadn’t followed through, but it had the benefit of authenticity. Fuck, she could even call from the other phone. It would make all the sense in the world, because it was the exact kind of thing she had intended to do. 

She’d call. She’d call, and she’d say that she was in New York, and that she was Viola, and that she’d be happy to talk to them on the phone, but that was it. She could come visit, if they wanted. If they still loved her.

And that last part sounded callous, but it settled her stomach. Even if she wasn’t actually in New York, it would provide all the distance she needed. It would give her the separation. Her mother and her father would need her to come back. They would need her to do the work. 

And then, all she had to do was not get noticed on campus. And, fuck, the campus was huge. Tens of thousands of students. Even if her mother showed up, the odds of her running into Viola were practically nonexistent. 

She started up again, and glanced back towards David’s door. 

As long as she didn’t end up on TV or something, she’d be fine. 

She’d looked up that AJ Aaron guy or whatever. 

It had been weird. 

Future problems. Problems for the fall. Problems that wouldn’t be problems unless everything went right. And if they happened, she’d figure them out. She was getting remarkably good at that, and there was this whole host of people who could help her, who would. People who wanted her to live. 

Shit. 

She stopped pacing and settled herself at David’s kitchen table. Then, she pulled out both her phones, copied the number for her mother into the new one, and stared at it, her thumb hovering over the call button.

This would be good, wouldn’t it? 

Viola wasn’t ashamed of herself. She wasn’t ashamed of who she was, or what she wanted, or any of that shit. She wasn’t. She liked it, because she’d spent so much time not liking it that it felt exhausting to do anything other than like it. Hating it had worn her to the bone, and now she didn’t have to do that anymore. She wouldn’t do that anymore. 

They’d helped press the shame into her skull, though. And she knew, she knew, she knew that it would be near impossible to tell them, but not telling them was a kind of shame in itself. 

What had Annabelle said about not telling people? That she did it because it was easier, because a few people might hate you? 

Telling her mother was easier than not telling her. Telling her mother, even if her mother thought she was a sort of perverted boy, was easier than pretending to be the same hollow boy she’d been. And the choice was different, wasn’t it? Not telling the rest of the world would allow her to be safely Viola. Not telling her mother meant she’d have to retreat inside Sebastian. And if the choice was between pretending to be Sebastian and this?

She hit dial. 

The phone rang and rang and rang.

And then, it clicked to voicemail, which Viola ought to have expected, because she was calling from a random number. But that was fine, because Viola needed a second to catch her breath, and it would be easier to say this without having to listen to her mother. Easier to say it into the void.

“Hi, Mom. Sorry, I’m calling from a new number. Right. I need to tell you something. A couple of things, actually.” 

 

* * * * *

 

It was remarkable how little things changed for two days. After weeks of constant change, weeks of things blowing up, there was a pure, clean forty-eight hour stretch where almost nothing changed. It was just class, and it was just meals, and it was just texting with David and the girls and pretending that her brain didn’t ache. 

The anticlimax of everything unsettled her.

Because Thursday came and went, and Viola’s mother didn’t call her back. Which meant that she’d received the message, and she’d decided not to continue on her run of phone calls. It meant she’d decided it wasn’t worth calling.

And then Friday, and there was still nothing. 

By Friday afternoon, Viola had almost come to regret the plan. Almost come to regret the fact that she’d told her mother the thing she knew might sever their relationship, told her mother that she’d turned her back to God, told her mother that she wasn’t even in the state anymore. 

Viola had wanted to be screamed at.

Her mother had been, at times, a good mother. And now that all of that seemed to be historical, now that it seemed like Viola would not have a relationship with her mother, they seemed like the only moments. 

She’d bought Viola milkshakes after the dentist, and she’d given her the first taste of the tiny strawberries she’d tried growing in the garden, and she’d listened when Viola had talked at length about movies and TV shows and the color they ought to paint the front door. She’d been a good mother sometimes.

And now, she wasn’t going to call.

It added a layer to the day, a day which didn’t really need layers, because Viola had already been nervous about tonight. Tonight, when she was supposed to meet all of Annabelle’s… friends? She supposed that Deb was definitively not classified as a friend, and it felt weird to call herself Annabelle’s friend, since she was literally her professor, but, like, she wasn’t really sure what else to call them. 

Point was, she was nervous already.

Whoever these people were, they’d been presented a version of Viola already, and it hadn’t been Viola who’d presented that version. She trusted Annabelle, really, but she hated that idea. It made her all anxious to think about having to fulfill that, or not fulfill that, or subvert it, or whatever. They were all expecting her to be this girl, Viola, who’d just stumbled out of the closet, and that was the only thing they knew about her, unless Annabelle had filled them in on the fact that she was a below average theater student.

Honestly, she might be more comfortable being presented as the below average theater student. 

It just all felt so… definitive. And she was still building herself. Getting better at it, of course, but the idea that someone might give a one sentence introduction of her made her queasy. 

But it was still a Friday. And that meant that, despite it all, she was in the girls’s dorm room, and they were drinking, and they were going to a party, and Viola was going to a different party, but that they were all here. They were all here together. 

Everything felt lighter here. Everything felt lighter with them. 

“Do you think this works?” asked Viola. She was sort of twisting in the mirror, trying to see around the other side of her body, trying to get a view of herself from behind. That was the other problem with Annabelle’s. The frat parties had dress codes, had ‘frat party chic’, had perfect expectations. Annabelle’s had only expectation of ‘girl’. 

She’d gone for something similar to them anyway, and she couldn’t tell if that was crazy. Annabelle had said it wouldn’t be too many people, but she was welcome to dress as she liked, and that people would be drinking. Age range? Wide. Style? Also wide, apparently. So, it had been jeans and a black top, really almost identical to what she’d worn to the party a few weeks ago, and she had no idea if that was what she was supposed to be wearing. 

“Yeah, of course,” said Anna. “You look great.” Anna was lounging on her bed, nursing an overfull cup. She was sucking her teeth every few seconds. “I think we should get whitening strips.” Viola raised an eyebrow at her in the mirror, and Anna shrugged. “Too much wine.” 

“Too much wine on your teeth or too much wine in your head?” asked Margot. 

“Both,” said Anna.

Lucy stood from her own bed, coming up behind Viola, who was still twisting to see herself. “You want to go with something else?” she asked. 

Viola wished she was about ten years further along on injections right now. She wished she was about ten years further along on everything, actually, but the ten years ought to at least be kinder to her ass. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Is it too… us?” 

Lucy frowned. “Too us?” 

“Yeah,” said Viola, turning now to face the girls. “You know, like not very adult. Like, these are all going to be adults, and I’m going to be dressed like I’m going to a frat party.” 

Anna grinned. “Do you want to break out the penny loafers or something?” she teased. “I mean, we can give you something a little more…” 

“Professorial?” offered Lucy. 

“She wasn’t looking very professorial when she showed up the other week,” pointed out Margot. “I mean, she wasn’t wearing a crop top, but, you know.”

“Yeah,” said Viola, turning back to the mirror. “Yeah, I don’t know.” 

Lucy nodded at the closet. “Just try other stuff,” she said. “Parties aren’t going anywhere.” 

Viola nodded. They did have time. They’d started early, in part because Margot still needed a full rundown on the David situation, and Lucy and Anna still needed the rest of it. All of the things that had happened that night, except for the things that Viola was a little too embarrassed to say out loud, at least on the limited amount of alcohol in her body to this point. Maybe later in the night. 

So, there was time.

“Okay, side note here,” said Margot. “Could we not go to Theta tonight?”

Anna laughed. “Oh, you don’t want to run into your TA at the door again?” 

“He started writing smiley faces on my homework,” murmured Margot. “Which, look, whatever! But I really need to go to the study sessions for the final, and I really don’t want to have to worry about him being even weirder.” 

“Aw, but there’s something sort of hot about a TA thing,” said Anna.

“Boyfriend,” said Margot.

“Oh, are you still dating him?” asked Anna, feigning shock. “I had totally forgotten.” 

“Very funny,” said Margot. “Can’t we just go to Sigma Pi? I sort of want to be outside tonight anyway.” 

“Fine by me,” said Lucy. 

The three of them started talking more about the party, about the boy Lucy was thinking of inviting, then trailing off into the summer. 

Viola, on the other hand, stuck to the closet. 

There had to be something. 

It was an odd situation. For one, Annabelle’s thing was so different from anything she’d ever considered going to. For another, even if she had a solid idea of the night and the energy that it carried, which she didn’t, she couldn’t just fall back on the girls for this. Like, she could, but they didn’t know either, and so they were all sort of grasping at straws, and Viola wasn’t really sure what to do with that. 

She flicked past dresses, all of which seemed either too formal or too slutty, or potentially just too risky to wear on a walk across campus. Then, past jeans, which felt sort of childish, and tops that didn’t really strike her as anything special. And then, again through the closet, seeing again if anything seemed like the kind of thing you wore to Transgender Night at the Transgender Dorm. 

She flipped over to Anna’s closet, not even bothering to ask. At this point, if any of the girls had any problems with that sort of thing, they should have never started all this. And, God, when she came back and had her own closet in the fall, when she’d worked in the summer and started saving up some money and started figuring out how to do all of this, even if everything she owned came from that little thrift shop in Garland, they could wear whatever things of hers they wanted. No problem. 

Down the line she went. Skirts and dresses and jeans and all of it, and then she started to reach the end, and then, just a few items away, she stopped. 

Bellbottoms. 

She pulled at the leg, pulled it out towards her. 

She’d lamented about liking them when she’d first tried them on. The girls hadn’t liked them, except Anna, because Anna owned them, but she was looking at them again. And maybe it was the bit of liquor swirling in her belly, topped by a much larger amount of wine, but they were… they were actually kind of cute? They were a statement piece, definitely. That much she could tell. But she thought that, maybe, if paired right, they might actually work.

She wasn’t a style expert. She knew that. She had almost the same instincts she’d had then, and those instincts were pretty poorly refined, but she also had a little bit more of a sense than she’d had a month ago. In the intervening weeks, she’d looked at enough fashion magazines, watched enough girls on campus to understand that you could make this sort of thing work, if you wanted to. 

Besides, Anna owned them, didn’t she? There had to be something to that.

She pulled them, hung them on the doorknob, and then started back through the closet. She just needed the right top. It just needed to be paired right, and then it might actually be okay. It might be better than okay, actually. Honest to God, she had no idea what she was supposed to wear to this thing anyway, so why not try something? And Annabelle’s friends were probably all expecting her to be out of her depth anyway, so if she looked a little out of her depth, if she only made this outfit halfway work, then so be it. 

She just wanted to see first. She just wanted to see if they could work well with something. Her instinct was white on white, and so she was looking for something with a pattern to it.

There. 

It was a bodysuit rather than a top, but the neck was high enough, and it was sorta slimming at the waist, and had a cascade of florals running down it. It was adorable. And Viola thought that, with the high waist of the bellbottoms, there was really something to this as an outfit. She might not have the shoes, and maybe she’d stick out like a sore thumb at this thing, maybe she’d be way overdressed, but, at the very least, she’d be trying something. 

“Anna, can I wear this?” asked Viola, spinning to hold the bodysuit. 

Anna looked up from her cup, saw what Viola was holding, and nodded. “What are you going to wear with it?” she asked. Viola pushed back the door to the closet a little further, revealing the bellbottoms. Anna grinned and nodded. “Yes.” 

Viola chanced a glance at Lucy and Margot. 

Lucy shrugged. “It could work,” she agreed. “It’s just, um…” 

“Loud,” said Margot. 

“Loud is fine,” said Anna, waving a hand through the air. 

Viola spun back to the mirror, held the bodysuit in front of her, the bellbottoms in front of them, and cocked her head. 

Loud was fine.

 

* * * * *

 

The girls had decided to all walk in the direction of Annabelle’s dorm together, lest Viola have to go it alone all the way across campus. Plus, they were going to have to Uber to the party, and it didn’t really matter where the Uber was called from, so they’d just have it pick them up by Annabelle’s.

It was good, because Viola was nervous as it was, and she still had the swirling thoughts of her mother, and the more people talked to her, the less she had to think about it. Those thoughts liked to weasel, to creep towards the front of her mind, and she was trying to have a nice, pleasant, fun night. She was trying to have a night to set the future for the rest of her life. 

These were the people she was going to spend her life with. The people here. The girls and whoever was at this party, apparently, and David, and, okay, she was being exceptionally presumptuous on at least two counts there, but it really felt like it was a night that mattered. She really didn’t want to spend the whole time thinking about her family, about how there still wasn’t a message from them, not even a text. 

Hatred would have been easy, wouldn’t it? Hatred, vile and putrid and material, would have been easy. If her mother had picked up the phone, spewed something into it, it would have simplified things. It would have been easy. 

But she hadn’t, and instead Viola was left to wonder. She understood that it wasn’t a perfect response to the information. It wasn’t the girls’s response, or David’s. But she had been hoping for something to react to, something to understand. It had been the point of not sending a letter, after all, because Viola wanted to give them the chance to say something. She wanted to not be left in limbo. 

She was pushing those thoughts aside now, because they weren’t all that far from Annabelle’s dorm, and the girls, three near identical, blonde and dressed in simple jeans and dark crop tops, one black sheep, dark hair and dressed entirely in gaudy white, needed to plan for later. 

Viola really would be going back to theirs tonight. Unless, of course, David called, in which case she might not be, but she was seeing him tomorrow, and she really wanted to spend another night with them. The treasured Fridays had become so much more complicated lately. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but definitely more complicated.

Lucy promised that they would stay up and wait for her to get home. Anna promised not to get too drunk and pass out. Margot promised not to go anywhere with Cam. 

And then, they peeled off towards the side of the road, and Viola peeled off towards Annabelle’s dorm. 

She wished she’d bought better shoes. Not, like, more functional shoes. She’d seen people complain about that, but she wished she’d bought better shoes. Some kind of heel. Some kind of boot, maybe. All she had were the sneakers they’d bought, which were better than her old ones, but they did not fit perfectly with the rest of her outfit. 

Really, it was the missing piece. 

And the hair. 

She had looked in the mirror in this outfit, in the clean white, and seen the dark of her hair. It wasn’t bad. But she’d imagined herself in blonde, bleached and dyed and cut, and she’d liked that much better. 

Future versions. 

A version of herself yet unmade, but not so far away.

The summer.

The summer.

She climbed the steps to Annabelle’s apartment, her insides twisting a little. 

She looked good. She knew she looked good. Yes, good in this case happened to be loud, and she was probably overdressed, but so what? She’d been underdressed for eighteen years now, and she’d put this outfit together herself, and even Lucy had admitted that it was cute, even if she’d advised Viola to watch out for the wrong type of girl.

Viola knocked. 

It was Deb who answered. Her hair was different tonight. Not, like, different in the way she’d done it different. It was actually different hair. 

She looked Viola up and down, smiled, and then said, “This is much better than before.”

And then, she pulled Viola inside, and Viola found herself in a vastly more thumping party than she had expected. 

Maybe thumping was the wrong word, because it wasn’t thumping. There wasn’t loud music playing. Really, the noise was just coming from the people. The dozens and dozens of people. It was sort of a wonder that Annabelle could fit this many in the apartment, and it was contributing to the buzzing, surely, because there wasn’t an ounce of empty space for the sound to disappear into. 

And Viola was immediately struck with a thought.

“No,” said Deb. “No, not everyone, darling.” Viola looked at her, and Deb smiled. “What, you think no one’s asked me a question before?”

“I never asked you a question,” said Viola. 

“Yeah, well, I was just getting it out of the way,” said Deb. 

“Is the mind reading a thing you develop over time?” asked Viola. 

Deb took her arm, and started pulling her through the party. Viola found herself glad to have dressed the way she had. The black crop top would have been fine, as would the jeans, but there was such a mishmash of styles in the room. Honest to God, she was pretty sure she could have worn anything and the world would have been none the wiser. 

“No one is as unique as they think they are,” said Deb. 

“That’s a comforting thought,” murmured Viola. 

“I think so,” said Deb, smiling. 

There must have been a moratorium on professors and noise complaints. That, or Annabelle had done something to the walls, because this would never fly in the freshman dorms. Of course, Viola supposed that this was more akin to an apartment, and Annabelle was, like, a real life adult, but still. This was too much. 

She’d kind of expected the group to be mostly people Annabelle’s age. Professors, Deb, randoms that Annabelle had collected. And it was, to an extent. She’d already spotted Dali, the professor who Annabelle had taken over for. But there were also definitely a few other students here, too, and Viola was confused on where they’d come from. Because, as far as she could tell, there weren’t any other trans students at Garland, and she’d never really met gay students with the flamboyance that some seemed to be showing tonight. Not all of them, mind you, but still.

It had to be a little her fault.

Viola had never looked, had she? If they had existed, if they existed, would she have known? Would she have been aware? Would it be possible to know at all? 

Deb pulled Viola across the room, right to a smiling Annabelle.

“Hi, Vi,” she said.

The girl she was talking to, whose eye-makeup was so heavy that Viola worried it might start to drip from her lids in the heat, beamed at her. “Viola,” she said, as if the name had connotation.

Which, well…

“Hi,” said Viola, first to the girl, and then to Annabelle. “Um, lots of people?” 

Annabelle smiled again. “It ebbs and flows,” she said. “Later in the semester, as people have to start getting ready to go home, they come out a little more. Plus, we find more. At the beginning of the year, it’s the leftovers and the adults.” 

“A sad state,” lamented the girl. “Just us remaining youths and- Ow!” Deb poked her in the side, and Viola had to laugh. 

“Sorry,” said Viola, “I don’t think we’ve met.” 

“Carrie,” said the girl.

“Carrie’s one of my TA’s,” said Annabelle. 

“Your best TA,” said Carrie. 

“One of my TA’s,” said Annabelle, with the exact same intonation. 

“I’m giving you a shitty review,” muttered Carrie, and Viola laughed again. Carrie beamed at her. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” 

Viola glanced to Annabelle, who grimaced.

“Sorry,” said Annabelle. “You’re just a fun conversation topic. You know, girl from one of my Shakespeare classes named herself after girl from a Shakespeare play.” She almost laughed in spite of a small look of guilt. “It’s sort of…” 

“It’s hilarious,” said Deb.

Carrie shook her head, face shining with earnestness. “I’m just happy the room’s getting bigger.” 

Annabelle sort of nudged through Deb, took Viola’s hand, and nodded towards the kitchen. “Let’s get you a drink.” 

Into the kitchen, and towards the fridge, and Annabelle opened it to reveal shelves stocked almost entirely with booze and sodas and water. Viola had the distinct memory of her cooking, and made a note that she wanted to be a better cook than Annabelle when she grew up. A better cook, and just as popular. 

“I didn’t really know if this was appropriate,” said Viola, allowing Annabelle to push a beer into her hands. 

“Didn’t know if… oh, your outfit? You look great.” Annabelle shut the fridge and turned back towards Viola, her own beer in hand. “I like the pants.” 

Viola felt her stomach turn a little. “You do?” 

“Retro,” confirmed Annabelle. “Besides, the party is sort of… well, I won’t say no one cares, but it’s a sort of ‘come as you are’ sort of thing.” She frowned. “I’m sure I told you that?” 

Viola shook her head. “Deb told me not to dress like a boy,” she offered. 

“Right,” said Annabelle, twisting the cap off her bottle. “Sorry. Well, you did great.” 

“Okay,” said Viola, nodding. “Okay.” 

“So, what’s up?” asked Annabelle. She sort of lounged back against the counter, letting an arm drape a little. 

And Viola almost laughed, because she’d never really seen Annabelle in a situation that wasn’t either explicitly professional or didn’t require her to take care of Viola. The closest they’d had was the injection, and even that had come with a sort of undertone of mothering. 

“The weeks keep getting crazier,” said Viola, without really thinking about it.

Annabelle raised an eyebrow. “Need to talk?” she asked. 

Viola glanced around.

Did she need to talk? 

She’d been so nervous when she’d walked into this room. And then, it had dissipated almost immediately. And some of that was definitely the alcohol, but some of it was a different bit. It was the room. It was Carrie, who’d said three words to her, three words and put her at ease. And Deb, and the clothes and the makeup and the fact that, in this room, as much as in the room with the girls, as much as that dorm, she wasn’t worried that if her mask slipped for a moment, she might lose everything.

So, she could talk about her mother. She could talk about how her mother had not even bothered to say a word to her, and how Viola had wanted to be screamed at, or loved, or something, because the silence was worse than all of that. She could talk about that.

Eventually. 

But that had never been Viola’s problem, had it? Sure, there was the weight of her parents, the weight of South Carolina, the weight of all of the world crushing her. And she could probably alleviate bits of that if she fought for it enough, if she drove down to Calabash and stood in front of her mother and begged her to yell. 

But that hadn’t been Viola’s problem.

She’d always felt alone. Trapped and alone. Trapped beneath the weight of her parents and South Carolina and the world, yes, but just trapped. Scared. And right now?

Viola hadn’t even noticed it. Somewhere between the girls’s dorm, David’s apartment, and here, maybe the pond, too, she’d stopped feel quite so trapped. She’d stopped feeling like she’d been pulled into a well. The places she was inhabiting, the people she was seeing, they didn’t make her feel alone and scared. 

Maybe it had taken saying something to her mother to realize it, but the world felt slower right now. A month ago, if she had said something to her mother, come out, a feat that would have been impossible in its own right, she would have almost immediately run. She would have boarded the bus to New York. She would have abandoned her life, because she would have felt catastrophically trapped. There would have been no other options. The problems, the big, fucked up problems with her parents and with everything else, would have driven her away. 

And now. 

Everything seemed to have slowed down. And there, in the kitchen, holding a bottle of cheap beer, with Annabelle watching her carefully, Viola realized she was fine. Not tonight, necessarily. Maybe not even in a month. But… eventually?

Viola hadn’t felt the need to run. For the first time, maybe the first time ever, when problems were baring down on her, Viola didn’t feel like she needed to hop on a bus and run away.

So...

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Maybe Sunday. But not tonight.” 

Annabelle nodded. “Sunday, then.”

Viola tipped the bottom of her bottle towards Annabelle, and Annabelle clinked it with her own.