"God..." I say. "...damnit." Beside me, Deming is muttering all sorts off curses beneath his breath. Some of them are in, what I assume to be, Mandarin, because they don't sound like English, and that's the only other language that Deming speaks—which, he only ever uses to curse.

"Tā mā de," he groans. "Wǒ bùxiǎng xǐng. Tā mā de wǒ pǎobù."

"Deming," I say. "I don't have a clue what you're saying."

"Let's play hookie," he says. "I hate this shit."

"Does 'tā mā de' mean 'fuck?'" I ask.

"Shì a," he mumbles. "Yep."

"...Then what does 'w... wǒ..."

"Wǒ pǎobù," he says. "'Fuck me running.' ...According to Google Translate, or whatever—you know I'm teaching myself."

"...Isn't there like, apps that can teach you Chinese?" I ask.

He shrugs. 'This is more fun. And even if actual Chinese speakers don't understand me, at least I can still curse in Mandarin. ...I think I'm speaking Mandarin. ...Wait..."

I sit up and grope the makeshift table by my bed. It's really a large, plastic tub full of blankets for the winter when the heat gets really expensive and I need to suffocate beneath them so my family saves money. Either way, I put things on it—mostly just books and my glasses and the occasional soda.

My glasses are still in their case—I've been told no one is as careful with their glasses as me, but my family really can't afford to pay four hundred dollars on some plastic, even if it's the only way I can see, so I protect them with my life. They're simple with pink frames—I have another, cheaper pair that are just plain black, but I feel a strong urge to defend my femininity today, and I feel like pink frames are a way to say, "No, I'm a girl," I guess. I don't even like pink that much—I prefer yellow, but I don't think I look good in yellow. Once, I went to the mall with Deming so we could browse and pretend we had more than five dollars and I tried on a yellow skirt, but it looked like I was wearing a skirt made of mustard.

I put my glasses on. "I need to get dressed," I sigh, swiveling my legs so they touch the carpet. It's rough, dirty, and barely even stuck on the floors. I dream of hardwood floors, ever since Deming and I started to get into home improvement TV shows. They fit my aesthetic, I guess. I go to my closet.

"This a feminine day?" He asks. I'm always relatively feminine, but sometimes, I just really feel like I need to act super feminine so everyone looks at me and goes, 'oh, yeah, that's a girl.' Sometimes I feel like I look more like a boy trying to look like a girl.

"Every day is a feminine day," I say, trying to pretend I'm confident. It doesn't work. "...Yeah, today is a really feminine day." I look at my clothes in my closet, skipping over my uniform for school, but I really don't have a ton that's as feminine as I feel, or want to feel or want to look or whatever. I grab the Scarlet Skies Academy uniform and go to get dressed, I'll figure out accessories in a minute—about a month or two ago, I got a folding screen in my bedroom so I can still get dressed when Deming is here—I used to do it in my closet, but my closet is cramped and dark and it makes putting on clothes difficult. (Plus, I came out of the closet three years ago, anyway.)

It is the newest addition to my room—and for the most part, it's simple, just something I stand behind when I get dressed, but it's white and looks like it's splattered in different colors of paint. I don't feel too weird even though Deming is still in the same room as me—we've been friends for so long, a lot of stuff that would be weird with anyone else is normal with him. The folding screen might just be more of a formality thing.

I hear Deming stretch while I pull my skirt up, and I know his arms are above his head like they usually are, his back arched. "My back is killing me, I might actually die, Roz," he said.

"Just get it removed," I tell him. The skirt I wear reaches my knees. I frown. I know most girls want shorter skirts at school, and I don't blame them, but I want to tug it down. Floor length skirts would be so cool for me—but Scarlet Skies only has three uniforms, called Uniform A, Uniform B, and Uniform C. I'm wearing Uniform A, which is usually worn by girls. C is usually for guys, and B is for people who don't like the others for whatever reason for their own. Most schools just have one based off of gender, but Scarlet Skies is incredibly progressive compared to them. I guess it is pretty prestigious, though, so maybe it's justified, considering the school thinks they’re teaching the kids who will shape the world’s future—or maybe, most of the students are rich enough to get what they want so the school just tries to avoid doing anything they don’t want.

"That's a great idea!" I just know he's grinning, probably holding back a laugh. "What's my spine ever done for me anyway?"

I smile to myself and tug my shirt on—then realize I should tuck my shirt into my skirt. Scarlet Skies has a weird Uniform A—it consists of a white button up shirt, white skirt with red detailing (not available in black or red or anything, but considering it's mostly worn by cis girls, I think that was a poor decision.), black dress shoes and a red blazer. The dress code, despite the fact that it demands we wear uniforms, isn't very strict. People get away with hiking the skirt up until it shows off most of their legs, people leave a few of the top buttons unbuttoned to show off their chest, you're allowed to dye your hair and accessorize as you will. And the uniforms don't suck ass either! It’s a pretty awesome dress code!

I tuck my top into my skirt. My blazer's thrown over a chair in the dining room, I'll grab it in a minute. I step out from behind the folding screen. "Absolutely nothing," I tell him.

He grins and gets up, goes over to my closet and takes out a Uniform C I have—it's his. Yeah, we've gotten to the point where I keep his clothes in my closet, I know, weird. No wonder some people think we're dating. "My turn." He steps behind the folding screen himself—but he dresses much more quickly. Likely because he doesn't stop to hate how flat his chest looks or how masculine his hips look. At least I'm thin, I guess. Or maybe that's a bad thing? Maybe I need more curves to feel more like a girl?

He follows me out into the kitchen. My step father is at the counter, sipping a black coffee. "Morning, He—Rozhan. ...And Deming." He still sometimes, almost calls me by my dead name.

"Morning, Mister Martin." My step father took my mom's name when they married—which she took from her own step father, I've been told.

"Morning," he says again. Nods. "...Still gay, right?"

"Gayer than a Xuèxīng, damnare rainbow," he says. "Wǒ shì tóngxìngliàn, wǒ shì zuì tóngxìngliàn."

"...I don't know what you just said," he says.

"Well, one word was Latin, if that helps." I go to the freezer and put two waffles in the toaster before finding my blazer over a chair, like I mentioned earlier.

My step father nods, but obviously, this doesn't make Deming any easier to understand. He struggles with English sometimes and it's his only language—Deming is a god when it comes to Google Translate. I'm not sure if it's like, an actual talent or if Google Translate makes things a lot easier, or if everything he says is pure gibberish. It could be any and all of them, knowing Deming.

Deming and I have an uneventful breakfast before we start walking to school. It's windy and overcast, but I doubt it'll rain so I don't grab an umbrella—it rarely rains here. I settled on a simple silver necklace and put on some white knee high socks, because I felt like that was the best choice to make earlier, but now, I'm wondering if I still look alright. 

Deming glances at me. "You know you worry too much, right, girl?"

I rub at my arm. "I feel like I don't worry enough." We walk past a yard with a giant tree—the branches extend past the side walk, over our heads, long and large.

"Yeah, feel," Deming says. "Feeling isn't reality."

"I know that—"

Deming walks straight into a tree branch. "OH, Tā mā de, SHIT, MY EYE!" It's a bit of an overreaction. He stands still and rubs at his eye, blinks and then ducks under the tree branch and keeps walking. "...You were saying, Rozzie?"

"...I know that," I say. "But that doesn't really change how I feel, y'know?"

He nods. "You need a therapist," he says. "Like crazy. Or maybe you need a therapist because you're crazy, with a crazy low self-esteem."

"I can't afford a therapist, Deming," I sigh. There's no therapists in the area. None that are even remotely good, at least, and my parents can't really get me there anyway.

He sighs too. "I know. But it's not fair—you're like, mood to the max, you're so totally awesome, and I feel like you should know it."

I laugh. "You talk so weird, Deming."

"Um, excuse you, I'm bilingual—I speak English and Google Translate." He flicks some hair out of his eyes—a car speeds by on the street, running through a puddle of dirty rain water. It splashes ahead of us, splattering on the sidewalk, but I just get a drop on my shoes and otherwise, Deming and I are good. "In all seriousness, though, my trying to use Google Translate to learn Mandarin maybe has really made me appreciate people who are actually bilingual, because oh my fuck." I nod—I'm trying to learn French for class. Deming knows one sentence in French: J'aime avoir des trios. I don't know what it means. I feel like I'm supposed to. Learning a second language is hard, I guess.

We continue walking for a few more minutes before the academy is visible.

Scarlet Skies Academy was founded in the late nineties by Cyapress Watson, a nonbinary college professor who quit teaching at a prestigious college after being repeatedly misgendered—they immigrated from Chad when they were eight with their twenty something year old mother who wanted to peruse a relationship with a female doctor who was visiting family, and they and their mother struggled to make ends meet for years, at one point, living in their car for about half a year. Eventually, Watson grew up, got a PhD and studied human behavior and engineering and entered a relationship with a transman named Ronald James who was hella loaded. After quitting, they went ahead and created their own school, meant for people who were talented in various things with amazing teachers. It's pretty difficult to get in—in part, due to tuition.

The academy is large, almost futuristic looking with how incredibly new everything is. Half of the building seems to be made out of glass. And then like, the rest is marble and chrome or whatever an incredibly modern, beautiful piece of architecture would be made of. I think I partially like it because it was made by someone who was trans and nonbinary. But also, it's a good school!

When Deming and I enter, we have to split up—our lockers are pretty far from each other. The moment I enter, I feel sick. It's not that I feel like people are looking at me—I mean, some do, but for the most part, no one really cares about me until they need me for something, but it's just that so much as a glance feels violating. 

I push my glasses up my nose and get to my locker, taking out a few books and tucking them under my arm. I glance in the mirror I hung up on my locker door on the inside. Yep. I still have a face.

I shut my locker and go out, looking for Deming. To my total lack of surprise, he is flirting aggressively with Kohl—a huge math nerd who has an algebraic equation tattooed on his shoulder that Deming thinks is really hot. I walk over right as Kohl kisses Deming on the cheek and grabs his hand. "Morning, Rozhan," he says. We aren't close, but he genuinely loves Deming, so I tolerate him. He's cool, we just don't really get along.

"Morning, Kohl." Kohl is an inch or two taller than Deming, with olive skin and dark hair that likely earned him his name, but he has the most piercing, icy blue eyes I've ever seen—one that made Deming fall in love with him. Sometimes his words have a faint Italian accent. He's attractive, I think. Sometimes we go to the gym together and run side by side on the treadmills—every time, he gushes about his huge man crush on his boyfriend, because I think, to him, I'm just his boyfriend's best friend. But I'm okay with it since I only really see him as the boyfriend of my best friend.

He grins at Deming and kisses his cheek again. "Sorry, gorgeous, I have to go talk to my math teacher since I was sick yesterday. ...Also, since I was sick yesterday, I probably shouldn't kiss you."

"We'll be fine," Deming says and kisses him anyway. "See you at lunch, babe?" Usually, I hate it when people call people "babe" but with the two of them, it's kind of cute.

"Of course, Dem." He grins, squeezes his hand and walks away, carrying his books with him under his arm, while I've brought mine close to my chest. Deming is blushing like crazy and grinning like an idiot when he turns to me.

"The two of you are cute together," I say, like every morning. Deming nods. Usually, he says that of course they are, but sometimes, he's more lovey-dovey than usual and can't. This is one of those times. "I really don't want to do P.E."

"Mood." He slams his locker shut, his face going back to it's usual pale complexion instead of his crazy blushing. "Well, now we're focusing on..." He shudders. "Sex ed. Oh, god." He shakes his head. "Like, no offense, girl—but I don’t like girls that way, girl.”

"I already know you're gay."

"A lot of the girls in my class don't, though," he says. "Which is weird. I thought it was obvious!"

"We should make it obvious," I suggest. "Wear a rainbow flag around your shoulders, like a cape."

"I will be GayMan," he decides. "The most fabulous student at this school."

"That will be awesome," I say. "I'll write comic books about you, or an epic."

"Yeah," he enthuses. "I'll like...shoot rainbows out of my hands."

All around us, people share conversations, buzzing as we walk by. "What will the rainbows do?"

"Virtually nothing," he says. "They're for aesthetic purposes. But I can fly and I'll wear a suit of armor for the hell of it."

"Armor is gay now."

"So is flying!"

I sigh—I can feel a headache forming, right behind my eyes. "I don't want to go to gym," I say, quietly.

He smiles, quiet and reaches over and squeezes my arm. "Survive gym and I'll give you a donut at lunch."

"And if I don't survive?"

"I'll give you a peaceful funeral. Cremation. I'll keep some of your ashes in like, a necklace or whatever so I can always have a part of my best friend with me, and I'll bury myself in my studies, become an engineer and an inventor, and I'll work really hard and I'll make a time machine and I'll go back in time to save you. ...And I'll buy you a whole box of donuts."

It's very effective and heartwarming. I decide I can survive gym, just so I don't have to put Deming through years of grief and college.