“Samantha?” came a soft voice. “Is that y— oh, honey, what happened?” Arms encircled his shoulders and he didn’t even know who it was but he didn’t particularly care. He just clutched back and cried all over her shoulder.

A few minutes later when he pulled back, he found Zoey looking down at him, concern written across her face. It was full dark, with the university lit up behind her so bright that there are no stars in the sky. “’M okay,” he mumbled.

“No, you’re not,” she responded immediately, and looked him over. “Are you hurt? Physically, I mean? Injured.” He shook his head. “Well let’s get you inside and cleaned up.”

He didn’t want to explain what happened, but he managed to admit:“I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Zoey snorted as she threaded her arm under his and lifted him up. “Yes you do. My dorm room’s right upstairs.”

He let her carry him more than he probably should have. He was not exactly small and she was not exactly beefy. Meanwhile he was patently aware that his student host was in this dorm somewhere upstairs, and the last thing he wanted to do was cross paths with him again. But getting taken care of and getting cleaned up sounded lovely. He closed his eyes to go through the doors without balking.

Zoey guided him into an elevator—how did he miss the elevator earlier?—and punched the button for 15. When the doors finally slid closed, a good chunk of the tension in Sammy’s back unravelled. His host was on eight; they’d go right past him.

On 15 he was able to walk his own damn self down the hallway, although Zoey kept hold of his bag. She pushed through an intensely decorated and half-open room door. “She followed me home,” she quipped on entry, “can we keep her?”

“What? Ohmygod, Samantha!” and then suddenly Rowan was there, hugging Sammy tight. “What happened, have you been crying?”

Sammy cast around, confused all over again. The dorm “room” had two rooms and in the next were two beds. The decorated dorm room door they’d come through bore two construction-paper hearts in its center, labelled with Zoey and Rowan’s names. A full-length mirror on another wall confronted him with his reflection. He did look a fright: hair impressively mussed and mascara dribbled all over his cheeks.

He let himself be guided to sit on a bed. The two girls cooed over him, scrubbed his face with wipes, finger-combed and then brushed his hair. They asked a few questions, which he barely answered, so they shifted to soft nonsense phrases like “you poor thing” and “there, isn’t that better?”

They fed him a microwave burrito, which was objectively terrible but tasted like the best thing he’d ever eaten.

Eventually they got the story out of him in bits and pieces. Zoey was aghast and horrified; Rowan just nodded grimly and made comforting noises. He cried some more, and they wiped away his tears.

“Well obviously you’re sleeping here,” Rowan declared when he had regained some semblance of coherence. “You can do your Preview Days things tomorrow, and then the day after we can check in with the dads and put you on your bus. Okay? So the weekend proceeds onwards.”

“Unless you want to go home now,” Zoey suggested gently.

Going home sounded really good, and Sammy was about to nod when Rowan said, “Or you can come with us tonight.”

“Rowan, she is in no condition to go to a frat party!”

His cousin only snorted at that. “Hey Sammy, you wanna go get drunk for free?”

“God, yes,” he croaked.

“Alright then,” Rowan crowed, and consulted her bare wrist. “We’ve got just enough time to get you ready.” Leaping off the bed, she grabbed Sammy’s forearms and hauled him to his feet. A moment later she draped a towel around his neck and pushed a mesh toiletries bag into his hand. “Shower’s down the hall.”

“Oh fuck,” Sammy thought and then realized he also said out loud. “I can’t just—”

But Zoey waved a hand. “The first bathroom is a gender-neutral single-stall setup, you don’t have to share space. But you really do need a shower, honey.” Almost apologetically, she added, “And a shave.”

Rowan nodded. “Yeah. You’ve got dark hair, boo, so you’ve really got to shave, like, every day. Maybe even twice a day. It suuucks.” She gestured into the toiletries bag. “I popped my razor in there, which is gonna be unweildy cause it’s for legs, but it’ll do the trick.”

The cogwheels in Sammy’s brain struggled to turn over. “You don’t… need to shave? Like, your face?”

“Not anymore,” his cousin replied with a perky smile. “My last electrolysis session was, like, a whole year ago. You get to have laser, though, which is kind of lucky even if you have shaving hell up until then.” Her hands on his shoulders, she steered him towards the door.

“I don’t understand—”

“It’s okay, it’s a thing for later,” she cut him off. “Listen, we don’t have a lot of time, so go shower, you’ll feel better. Oh!” She waved at a line of hooks by the door. “Grab a room key. Always take a room key to the shower, you don’t want to get locked out. Take mine.” She unhooked a keyring and dropped it into the toiletries bag. “Rowan’s keyring is confusing because she has two dorm room keys.”

“…why?”

“You’re not supposed to share or copy your dorm keys, but she and Aggie are insatiable horndogs and sometimes she has to go upstairs and service her girlfriend in the middle of the night.” Rowan smiled. “Aggie’s roomate loves it when that happens.”

“I can’t help it if Agatha is loud and I’m skilled,” Zoey said, not the least bit apologetic. “Samantha, we’ll put together an outfit for when you get back.”

“Um, thanks,” Sammy mumbled, and turned down the hallway towards the showers.

As described, there were two bathrooms, and the first one was… almost single-use. Half of the room was one big stall for shower and bath. There were, though, two toilets, so not really single-use. But there was also a lock on the door, which Sammy employed to give himself a little privacy.

He dropped Rowan’s toiletries bag into a convenient sink and exhaled. “The fuck am I doing,” he asked his reflection. “I think that’s becoming my fucking mantra.”

But they were pressed for time and the siren call of a free alcoholic stupor still sang in his ears, so he stripped. Clothes went into a pile on the relatively clean floor. Fake boobs went jiggling into another sink.

He scowled into the mirror. He was very stubbly; unsurprising, since he hadn’t shaved for more than a day. Between his five o’clock shadow and his wipe-scrubbed face, he looked like he always did at home: disappointing.

He pulled out Rowan’s shaving supplies and got to work, trying and failing to not think about how it was to grow up in a house where your mom was angelically beautiful and your dad was ridiculously debonair and you were just some squat, dusky gremlin who shared none of their DNA.

He desperately wanted to rush shaving so he could stop looking at himself, but he also wondered if he’d have got the same reception from his student host if he’d been clean-shaven. He forced himself to make sure every speck of facial hair was gone, scraping his skin raw in a few places doing so. Luckily Rowan had some aftershave moisturizer, which he applied liberally.

The shower was spacious and the water was hot, and he probably spent too long under the spray. But the drubbing the stream delivered on his skin was too good to pass up and he stood there, thinking about absolutely nothing, for a blissful few minutes.

And then it was time to get out and jump back into this farce that was somehow his life right now.

Blouse on but bra and fake boobs still in the sink, he squinted at his reflection. He looked ridiculous. He hung the towel around his neck, ends covering his lack of a bustline. He could walk down the hallway like this, right? Fuck it, he’d also just throw on the skirt and skip the annoyingly lacey underwear.

He was halfway down the empty hallway, thinking that yeah, he was going to get away with this after all, when the elevator up ahead dinged. His stomach dropped all the way to the ground floor. Who was going to saunter out? His student host? Suit jacket? Some other cooler, more put-together college kid who’d see right through him and sneer?

But no, it was some old lady who shuffled out, purse clutched in her hands, looking bewildered. Somehow the universe had found somebody even worse for him to—through some obnoxiously implausible series of events—end up exposing himself in front of. Or something even worse.

The little old lady saw him and waved, taking little arthritic steps towards him. “Excuse me, I’m looking for room 1514. Can you help me?”

“Uh,” Sammy stammered, glanced left, and saw that he was actually standing next to 1514. He pointed mutely.

“Oh, thank you,” the lady said, eyes crinkling happily. “I’m visiting my granddaughter. This place is so big!”

He gave her a shaky smile and proceeded on his way. Behind him he heard a knock on the door and then an excited “Grandma! You made it!”

Just as he reached Rowan and Zoey’s door, he could hear the little old lady say, “That nice young lady there was kind enough to point me in the right direction. Do you know her?”

Sammy flushed beet red and pushed his way into his cousin’s room. Sure, he was wearing a skirt, but there was no way he looked like a nice young lady. No makeup, no boobs, shower-mussed hair. He cast about for the girls’ full-length mirror and looked.

Okay, no. He was definitely a guy in a skirt. Even if it cinched his waistline and flared around his hips, he was most definitely a guy. That grandma’s vision must be going.

This blouse looked so stupid without boobs to hold it up and out, though. He had to get out of it. Like, now.

“Sammy?” Rowan called from the inner room. “Everything okay?”

He doffed the towel and then the blouse as he went in to join them. “Yeah, somebody just needed directions. Did I take too long in the shower?”

“Not at all,” Zoey assured him. “Besides, you looked like you kind of needed it.”

“And it’s just a frat party,” his cousin put in. “We don’t have to be on time. We’re just going for their booze, anyway. But first—” She reached forward and grabbed Sammy’s wrist, pulling him towards an outfit laid out on the bed. “Zoey had a few things that are too small for her, and I had a couple things that are too big for me, so we put them together and voila!”

“That’s very… sparkly.”

“Sequins,” his cousin supplied helpfully. She lifted up the crop top, which sent reflections of the room lights skittering everywhere. “I couldn’t resist when I saw it in the store, but it never fit right on me.” She laid it across Sammy’s bare chest. “But I think it’ll be perfect on you.”

“These were my favourite jeans,” Zoey told him, patting them lovingly. “Until the freshman fifteen hit me, and then sophomore thirty sealed the deal.”

“Shut up,” Rowan remonstrated, “you know you look fine as hell. Curves suit you. And what’s more, they please Aggie.”

Zoey flushed at that comment and then cleared her throat. “Anyway. They’ll probably fit you well enough. And Rowan said you’ve got giant boat feet like me—”

“No more body-shaming, honey,” Rowan put in warningly.

“You try buying cute shoes in women’s eleven,” Zoey groused back, and then held up a pair of rather plain-looking women’s sneakers.

Sammy took them, confused. “These are cute shoes?”

“Oh god no,” Rowan shook her head. “No cute shoes at frat parties. There’s spillage.”

“On a good night, it’s just spillage.” Zoey nodded at the shoes in Sammy’s hand. “Those can get whatever on them and nobody will get upset.”

Nodding, Sammy looked uncertainly towards the door. “Should I change out there, or…?”

“No, we’ll bounce out to the sitting room,” Rowan said, putting a faux-classy accent on the last words. “But once you’re dressed I’ll do your hair, okay? I have an idea.”

And then there was nothing left to do but fish out of the toiletries bag the underwear he hadn’t worn in the hallway, pull them on and then the rest of the outfit. The jeans were snug up against his body, so snug he had to reach in and shuffle his junk around so he wasn’t uncomfortable. The crop top left a wide band of his belly exposed, which made him all kinds of nervous.

He tried going out to the “sitting room” to look at his reflection, but Rowan pushed him back into the bedroom. She sat him down on the bed and got to work on hair and makeup. “We’re going a little heavy and a little sloppy,” she narrated, “because we are honestly just a bit rushed and also it’s just a frat party.” She yanked his hair up on top of his head and secured it with something tight in two places, then sat back on her haunches with a triumphant grin. “Yeah, I’m a genius. One more slight adjustment, though.”

She went rooting around in a drawer and came up with an odd little plastic circle with two interior prongs. When he asked what it was, she only shook her head and told him to turn around. When he did, she reached up under the back of his shirt and did something with his bra straps. Suddenly his fake boobs bounced up higher beneath the crop top. She turned him around, ogled his tits, and patted them lovingly. “There we go.”

Taking him by the hand, Rowan led him back out to the sitting room. Zoey looked up from her book, pointed at him enthusiastically, and shouted, “Fuck yes!” And then he was positioned in front of the mirror.

“Pigtails? Really?” said his mouth before he had a chance to stop it. Because his cousin had indeed put his hair up in punky pigtails and done his makeup a few degrees of magnitude beyond “a little heavy.” His eyes were rimmed with dark eyeshadow. His lips were a bright red pucker. And his fake boobs were lifted so perkily high that his exposed belly somehow looked flat by comparison. The jeans clung to him like a second skin. He turned sideways. “How do I have a butt?”

“Pretty sure you’ve always had a butt.”

“Yes, but not this much butt!” For the second time in two days, he didn’t recognize himself. He looked… he looked good.

“They were my favourite jeans for a reason,” Zoey grinned. He belatedly realized that at some point she’d changed her clothes (a top that was only slightly more shimmery sequins than cleavage, hip-hugging jeans, forgettable shoes) and done her makeup (far less than he was wearing). “And here. Your fracket.” She held out a dark blue cardigan for him to slip his arms into.

“Fracket?”

“Frat jacket,” Zoey explained. “Like the sneakers, it’s semi-disposable. Gets lost, gets puked on, no big deal. But it’s nippy out there, and we don’t want to be walking home without something.”

“The booze will keep us warm,” Rowan muttered defiantly. She was digging around in his backpack, pulling out his phone and his wallet. From his wallet, she pulled out his driver’s license. Phone and driver’s license she handed over to him and tossed the rest into a comfy-looking reading chair. “Obviously you don’t show anybody your ID if you can help it,” she advised. “But you should have something on you for emergencies.”

He took them both and slid them into pockets only to be scolded. “Not the fracket pockets,” Zoey advised. “Might get lost, remember? Don’t want to lose your phone and ID, too.” He slid both into the jeans pockets. It was a tight fit.

“One last thing,” Rowan said, opening her pill box and offering it to Sammy. He took one and so did she, holding it under their tongues.

Sammy looked to Zoey, who only lifted an eyebrow at Rowan. “You sure you should be sharing those with her?”

His cousin snapped the lid closed. “Positive.” She tossed the pill box into the bedroom, presumably onto her bed, and linked arms with Sammy. “Okay. Let’s go get drunk!”

They went out into the hall, called an elevator, and complemented each other on their looks for the night (he could, apparenty, just do that now). Rowan made a slight adjustment to Sammy’s right pigtail. An hour ago, Sammy just wanted to drown his sorrows in free beer, but he had to admit he was now getting a little excited. Going out with Rowan seemed to have that effect on him.

“Should we review the girl rules?” Zoey said as they came out of the dorm. While phrased as a question it was undoubtedly a demand.

“Yes, let’s,” Rowan agreed, and linked arms with Sammy.

“Girl rules?” he asked, looking from one to the other.

Zoey linked arms on his other side. “Safety rules, because you’re now walking around looking like the girl you are, so the world is going to treat you like a girl, and the world treats girls like shit, and the only people who are going to have your back are other girls.”

“Rule number one,” Rowan all but shouted into the night, “Do not leave your drink unattended, do not accept a drink you did not see poured or is in a sealed can that you yourself opened.” Seeing Sammy’s look of confusion, she explained, “Roofies are a real thing. They are not fun.”

“Rule number two,” Zoey went on, with slightly less enthusiasm than her roommate. “We arrive together, we leave together. If any of us wants to leave, we all leave. Immediately. We will not get mad over it.” She nodded to Sammy. “If you need a code phrase, tell us that Jessica called and needs help. And we will all pick up and leave then and there, okay?”

He nodded obediently.

“Rule number three, stay in the public area with the rest of the girls,” Rowan intoned. “Do not go upstairs to see their bedroom. Trust me, you don’t want to see it. Do not go out back if there’s nobody else out there. Do not step into a bathroom with anyone you don’t know.”

“Rule number four, when it’s crowded, we link arms,” Zoey said, tugging a little on Sammy’s arm to demonstrate. “If we ever lose somebody into a crowd, we find them. We do not shrug and move on.”

Sammy’s nodding was getting a little numb.

“Rule number five, always charge up your phone ahead of time,” said Rowan, and touched the side of her head to Sammy’s shoulder. “I already checked yours, you’re at 88%.”

When that seemed to be the last one, Sammy stammered, “Guys is this… is this safe?”

“Of course not, it’s a frat party,” Zoey said with a shrug.

“But that’s what makes them fun,” Rowan insisted. “It’s like… skydiving or white water rapids. Just keep yourself safe and you’ll be fine.”

“Probably.”

Rowan shot a look at Zoey, and then rolled her eyes. “Okay, let’s make this super safe, okay? Let’s just make this a girls night out, yeah?”

“Is that… a different set of rules?” Sammy asked hesitantly.

“Same rules, different intent,” Rowan pressed. “We’re going to this thing to drink their alcohol, hang out with each other, dance with each other, find a corner and gab at each other. We’re not going to try and pick up anybody.”

Zoey looked dubiously at her roommate, then winked at Sammy with a “watch this” expression. Then she said, “But if you do pull…”

“Well, if you pull, then by all means—” Rowan started, and then shot exasperated daggers at Zoey. “Okay, fine. It’s purely catch-and-release tonight. If you pull, you can toy with them a little, and then let them go. It’s Girls’ Night,” she repeated with a determined nod.

It was a short walk down one block and up another, and no question where the frat party was at. The bass could be heard from the corner; the spill of flashing lights strobing out the windows was visible from four doors down. The miasma of hops, yeast, sweat, and parmesan hit them as they went up the front steps, arms still interlinked.

Zoey looked sidelong at the other two. “Are you ready for this, Samantha?”

He nodded uncertainly. “I’ll be ready as soon as I’m tipsy,” he promised.

“Well let’s get on that!” Rowan grinned and pulled them inside.

The brownstone was not large, and the venerable institution was old enough that the rooms weren’t, either, but they were packed wall-to-wall with people. Thumping music suffused the building, muffled so that little things like lyrics or harmonies could not be discerned. Most of the party-goers here just kind of bounced gently to the beat, heads dipping in time as they chatted. Rowan waved her free hand in the air as she waded into the crowd.

The dining room was the bar for the night, the table set with tubs of canned drinks on ice and an impressive array of bottles. A pair of kegs stood in the corner. The girls, plus Sammy, helped themselves to cans.

That seemed simpler and safer, which was not what he’d envisioned as the train of thought he’d entertain at his first frat party.

The dining room was less crowded and quiet enough that Rowan could shout and be understood: “Let’s make a circuit of the ground floor, see what’s what, and decide what do to from there, yeah?”

And so they did, winding their way through the six rooms full of people. Rowan and Zoey waved at those they knew, but the trio pressed on.

Sammy had beer spilled onto his borrowed shoes for the first time in the second room.

The room with the music system was by far the loudest and most raucous, with a great mass of people bouncing to the beat and a thin crust of onlookers plastered to the wall. Hands clasped, they bounced their way across the dance floor.

Other rooms, by dint of placement away from the speakers and the insulation of century-old construction, were a little quieter, at least in terms of music. One room was full of shouting.

Sammy boggled at what was happening across the tables. “Is that really…?”

Rowan nodded, sighing. “Yup. Beer pong.” She leaned closer to speak into his ear: “The thing you have to understand about frat parties is that they’re like a year-long competition for which frat can throw the most stereotypical party possible.” She pretended to check her watch. “The keg stands will start in, like, ninety minutes or so. Clockwork.”

They completed their circuit in the dining room, just in time to help themselves to a second drink. Zoey declared that this was her last for the evening; she wanted to keep a clear head, if only for the sake of the other two. After a brief conference, they resolved to head to one of the quieter rooms where the two girls had seen some friends.

Their friends had claimed a couch and there was (tight) seating available, so they all settled in and piled on top of each other. Rowan and Zoey introduced their friends by name, which Sammy repeated with a nod to try and remember them better. It didn’t work. He let their conversation wash over him—classes, spring break plans, and gossip about people he didn’t know—and nursed his drink.

He and Rowan and then he and Zoey returned to the dining room to resupply, and then Rowan dragged them both into the blaring music room so they could dance. By that point Sammy was agreeable to nearly anything, and he bounced and flailed along to the beat. The press was tight—much tighter than the club—and he honestly couldn’t be sure if anybody was dancing with the girls or with him. It was more like everybody was dancing with each other, and it was kind of soothing to just be a part of a big, twitching mass of humanity.

He danced until his brain finally turned off, and then he danced some more. The bass was his heartbeat; his limbs were tendrils waving in the wind. He was nothing, he was everyone, he was here at the party, he was a thousand miles away.

Sammy found himself standing over the nearly-depleted tub of canned cocktails, uncertain if he really wanted to bother with another fruit fusion whatever, or if he was done for the night. He’d been out super late the night before, it had been an emotionally trying day, and he had danced all of his remaining energy reserves away. He couldn’t remember what was on the schedule for tomorrow but he should probably be awake for it.

He turned to find the girls—he hadn’t wandered off, they were in the same room, just over by the kegs—and stopped in his tracks. At the end of the long table, mixing himself a drink in a red solo cup, was his erstwhile student host.

He was right between Sammy and the girls.

Sammy tried to catch his cousin’s attention, but she was deep in discusson with her roommate about something. He couldn’t go the other way around the table, which had been pushed up against stacks of chairs.

As he turned his head, one of his pigtails tweaked his hair. Ah, that’s right. He was still pigtail punk girl, wasn’t he? If he didn’t recognize himself, this asshole wouldn’t recognize him from their thirty-second interaction earlier. He could just walk right past him.

Sammy took a deep breath, wondered if he would be this confident in his plan if he hadn’t lost count of how many drinks he’d already had, and started moving.

At first, the guy’s attention was entirely on his drink, and for a moment Sammy thought he’d slip by without even getting noticed. But then he looked up, and Sammy realized he’d been looking directly at the asshole’s face, so their eyes locked.

The asshole smiled.

The jerk’s hand shot out to encircle Sammy’s waist. “Hey, beautiful,” he said merrily. “I’ve been looking for you all night.”

“The fuck?” Sammy spat back, but he was getting reeled in, physically pulled closer. For half a second he wondered if it were true: if this guy had been looking for him, if he’d reflected on his actions, if he wanted to apologize. But that was nonsense. Sammy stuck with his plan of being a completely different girl. “You don’t know me.”

“But I’d like to,” he rejoined drunkenly.

Sammy shoved his way out of the jerk’s embrace and ended up staggering backwards. The asshole reeled against the table, grinning despite everything.

That was when Zoey and Rowan rushed up beside him, interlinking arms, and pulled him out into the next room. “Ugh, frat boys,” Zoey sympathized. “You okay, Samantha?”

He took a shaky breath and nodded. They’d ended up in the beer pong room, but the game was over and now it was comparatively empty and quiet. “He’s not a frat boy, though. He lives in your dorm.”

“How do you know that?”

He gave her a wan smile. Yeah, he was definitely still a little drunk. “He was supposed to be my student host for the weekend.”

“That’s the fucker?” Rowan growled, looking daggers through the doorway arch.

“You wanna go home?” Zoey asked immediately.

Before he could answer, Rowan spat, “No. I have a better idea.”

Rowan stalked through the frat party like a hunter, circling around to a different entrance to the dining room, then following her quarry through two more rooms. Sammy and Zoey trailed after her uncertainly. Finally her prey settled into a circle of couches and was laughing along with a bunch of other men, most of them shirtless.

Rowan nodded. “That’s what I thought.” She didn’t look away from him when she asked Sammy, “What’s his name?”

“Uh, Scott?”

She nodded, still watching him. “Okay, Sammy, we have a choice. You have a choice. If you want to go home, we’ll go home. But if you don’t want to go home right now… I’m gonna go fuck up this asshole’s entire fucking life.”

“You’re not going to, like, hit him?” he gulped.

Now Rowan turned to him. Her smile filled his veins with icewater. “Oh no. Much worse.” She waited a beat longer, and without any call to refrain from Sammy, made her approach.

She strutted into the room with a wiggle to her hips that Sammy swore everyone would think was hilariously exaggerated. But the guys on the couch only looked on approvingly, especially as she asked if she could sit down among them.

Sammy and Zoey followed in her wake, much further behind. “Should I be as scared as I am right now?” he asked her.

“You know the quickest route to the door, right?” was her only answer, her attention focused on her roommate.

“My cousin Samantha is here for Preview Days,” Rowan was saying, her voice pitched at least an octave higher and disturbingly kittenish. “Do you guys remember your Preview Days? Did you come?”

There were scattered nods all around, including Scott, and she leaned across the space to place her hand on his knee. His eyes, and the eyes of the guys on either side of him, widened. Sammy was positive they could see right down her top.

She patted his knee. “You remember our Preview Days, don’t you, Scott?” A flicker of doubt passed over his features, but she didn’t let him answer. “We were at this very frat. You told me how this was the best fraternity in the country and how you were going to pledge here, and now you have, huh?”

He forced a laugh. “Well, uh, not yet. That’s up to these guys.”

“Guyyys,” she pouted, somehow, at all of them at the same time. “You’ve got to let Scott pledge. This place is his dream. You wanted to pledge even back then, that’s why you came to their party. Not me, though.” She flashed a wicked smile at them all. “I just came to get drunk and laid.”

The frat boys laughed, well-lubricated with cheap beer and excited at where this was going.

Rowan locked eyes with Scott. “And you did… such a good job helping me out with that. See, boys? He’s helpful. You need a helpful kind of guy in your frat, right?”

Sammy could see the calculation on Scott’s face, his glance at the other men to gauge their reaction, his estimation of how many points he’d earn with them if he’d bagged this girl, in this frat house, before he was even a freshman.

He spread his hands. “I did what I could,” he laughs along with them.

“We stumbled up into somebody’s bedroom upstairs. Who’s got number fifteen? Oh, you? Well it wasn’t yours then, but we made good use of it, you know what I’m saying? We made out on the bed, and we got naked, and that’s when you sucked my dick.”

The circle of men howled in surprise. Scott’s face fell.

“I still had my dick back then,” Rowan explained to the hooting frat boys. “I only had The Surgery right before my freshman year. But that night—wow. It was, like, the best possible last hurrah for the little guy.”

Scott sat up in his seat, trying to laugh it off like it was a joke. Rowan went in for the kill.

“And he went at it,” she told her audience, voice all awed. “You know what I’m saying? He had technique.” She gestured with a hand, flat and splayed, to the men on her right. “Obviously not his first cock. He played me like…” She smiled, rapturously, to the men on her left. “…like I was a flute and he was motherfucking Lizzo. You know? It was a performance.”

The poor asshole squirmed in his seat, trying to deny everything. He couldn’t seem to find his voice.

Rowan leaned forward to pat his knee again. “I’m just saying: your oral skills might be why I chose to go to Columbia. So be proud, Scott.” She stood up. “I just wanted to thank you. But now I’ve got to go. It’s past my bedtime. Night night, boys.”

The frat boys wished her good night as she pranced away towards the coat room, half their eyes glued to her ass. The other half of the men stared at Scott, appraising and re-appraising.

Sammy and Zoey darted after Rowan, who bolted as soon as she turned the corner. The three of them frantically dug through the massive pile of coats and scooted outside as fast as they could without looking like they were in a rush.

“Holy shit, what was that?” Sammy laughed as they pelted up the night-dark street.

Only when they had most of the block behind them did Rowan and Zoey slow down, gasping and giggling. They crashed into each other, crashed into Sammy, and the tangle of the three of them staggered up to the corner.

“I don’t think they’re going to ask him to pledge,” Rowan giggled. “Ever. There or anywhere else. He’s gonna be tomorrow’s main character around campus.”

“You too,” Zoey panted beside her, gently reproachful.

Rowan snorted. “I’ve been the noisiest trans girl on campus for two years, I’m never news anymore.” She turned and pointed a finger at Sammy. “That’s the trick, see. If you keep being outrageous, they stop paying attention to you. That’s how it works.”

Zoey wearily looked to Sammy and shook her head. “That’s not how it works.”

The light changed; they crossed the street in a handclasped line. The largest buildings on campus rose on either side of them.

“Anyway, serves him right for being a transphobic asshole,” Rowan half-purred, half-growled. She reached out and pulled Sammy back in so they staggered forward together, hugging. “Made my Sammy cry, so I fucked him up good.”

He couldn’t help but giggle. “I don’t think anybody’s ever nuked an asshole from orbit for me before.” His giggle faded. “Or stood up for me at all, really.”

“Of course I’d stand up for you, Sammy,” Rowan protested, squeezing him tighter. “Not cause we’re family, we’re more than that. We’ve got to stick together, whether that’s us girls, or us queers, or us transes, yeah? I got you, boo.”

She nuzzled her cold nose into the crook of his neck, forcing him to squeal and giggle again. When he stopped gasping, he leaned back into her. “Thank you.”

“We stick together and we trust each other, yeah?” she whispered to him, suddenly serious. “We’re always up front, we don’t hold back, we left all that shit behind with the gender they told us we had to be.”

Sammy opened his mouth to say something, but the words didn’t come.

Without warning, Rowan lurched out to grab Zoey and pull her in, too. “And all the shit we left behind along with the sexuality they told us we had to be.”

“Aw, I’m included in the drunken rambling,” cooed her roommmate.

“No, you see?” Rowan insisted, whisper shifting to entreaty. “We’re free to be honest with each other like the cis and the straights never can be. Because we had to say fuck you to everything they told us was true, just so we could be ourselves.”

“Uh, yeah,” Sammy sighed, happy to be squished up against her so she couldn’t see the his face. Honest, up front, and not holding anything back… that did not really describe his relationship with his cousin, did it?

“Ro, honey,” Zoey croaked from her own headlock, “is it radical honesty if I say you have to let me go so I can unlock the door?”

“We were having a moment,” the noisiest trans girl on campus pouted, releasing them both.

“You were having a moment,” her roommate sniggered, then darted up the steps to unlock the front door and hold it open for the both of them. As they passed by, though, she allowed, “But yeah. I hear you. I’ve had friends before—all with cishets, all from the closet in high school—and what we’ve got is… completely different. Different in kind, not just in degree.”

“Oh, you used fancy words to say what I said,” Rowan squealed and slapped the elevator call button until it glowed. “I love it when you do that.”

“You hate it when I do that.”

“Yes, but I love it, too, because I love you,” Rowan mooned drunkenly at her roommate, “because of our different-in-kind-and-not-just-degree relationship.”

As they rode the elevator up, Rowan rested her head on Sammy’s shoulder “just for a minute” and was very shortly snoring. Working together, he and Zoey maneuvered her down the hall, into the dorm room, and into her bed.

“Love you guys,” she sighed as her body relaxed into the fluffy bedding.

“Love you too, honey,” Zoey murmured, and shared a smile with Sammy.

“Love you, too,” Sammy echoed, both the words and the smile.

“I’m actually going to shower before bed,” Zoey said, collecting her own toiletries bag and towel. Suddenly Sammy realized that she had, in fact, stopped drinking hours ago, and was completely sober. She flicked at her clothes. “I don’t even know how much beer I got on me.”

“I just need some pajamas, I think,” he told her, and went looking for his bag in the sitting room. She collected her key ring and closed the door to the hall behind her.

Sammy couldn’t help smiling at nothing in particular as he hauled the bag out from under the table it had been stowed behind. He’d meant what he’d said: he’d never felt protected and backed up before, not in his whole life. But Rowan was ready and willing to do that for him.

All she wanted in return was honesty from him, so he obviously couldn’t tell her that he’d been lying to her all weekend. He could come back in the fall, say he detransitioned, but he was still queer. He rather liked kissing Vikram, and kissing Finley probably counted as queer in some way, too. Being queer qualified him for all that fierce love she was so willing to pour out for him, right? Girls, queers, transes: one out of three wasn’t bad.

All he had to do was preserve this ridiculous white lie through the rest of the weekend. Then he could fix everything so he could still keep Rowan in his life. He just had to make it through the weekend.

He threw open the bag, but there were no pajamas inside. No skirts, no blouses, no lingerie. There was only a tangled mess of balled-up fabric, all greys and blacks. Hoodies, sweatshirts, briefs. His clothes. His clothes from home.

This was his bag.

Sammy slapped the bag closed and hissed into the empty sitting room, “Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”