I'm in my room, towel drying my hair vigorously when my mom comes home from work. She opens my bedroom door and looks at me. "You know, I heard that drying your hair with a shirt is supposed to work better than a towel."

   "Is it true?"

   "I have no idea, but I have a blow dryer beneath the sink in the bathroom."

   It sounds like it would take too long, and I don't really know how to do my hair. One of these days, I'm gonna sit down and go on YouTube on my phone and watch nothing but hair tutorials. "I think I'm good, but thanks, mom."

She smiles. "I have some makeup, if you want it. You can put on some mascara or something." It feels like I would be stealing—I've only worn makeup once, and it was super cheap and it was back when I was a "guy."

But it's a really tempting offer. "Does mascara take awhile to put on?"

"Not really, I can help you." I follow her to her and my stepdad's room. One of the end tables, she picks up a small makeup bag. I sit on their bed while she rifles through it—she pulls out an almost gaudy looking, gold tube before she slowly spins the lid off. "Contrary to popular belief," she says. "Your makeup doesn't run too easily if you cry or it starts to rain—it's just too much water, but I bought waterproof mascara to avoid that." I nod. She tries to teach me how to apply it—I get most of what I use on my nose and below my eyes instead of my eyelashes, but she wipes it off while it's still wet. Because I cannot be trusted with makeup anymore, she puts the lipstick on me for me.

She smiles when she's done. "You look perfect," she says, softly. She squeezes my shoulder. "Did I ever tell you that I wanted a daughter?"

I shake my head.

"Well, I did." She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "I mean, ideally, I think I would have had a daughter from the start who didn't hate her body and felt comfortable in her own skin, and I could afford hair products and more makeup and stuff." I nod. "...If you ever need to borrow my makeup, I can share."

"Okay, mom." She kisses my temple—she wasn't as supportive as I wanted her to be when I first came out. I think she's trying to make up for how long it took to come around. "Thank you."

"Of course, honey." I get to my feet and change into one of the few articles of girl clothing I have—a blue dress. It's simple, but I like it and I'm wearing makeup. I feel like that means I should make sure I should dress my most feminine? Despite dressing my most feminine, I put on my glasses with the black lenses. In a matter of moments, my stepfather has pushed a plate of cookies, covered in tin foil, into my hands and I've marched off to next door.

   I shift the plate to my right hand and raise my left one to knock—the door flies open before I have a chance to even touch it. A girl my age looks up at me.

   Her hair is dyed various shades of blue, purple and magenta and is styled int his weird way that makes it look like it's rising off of her head, simultaneously appearing like a sunset and the bisexual flag. She has a silver stud on her nose, is wearing heavy mascara, eyeliner and purple lipstick, and is dressed in a black t-shirt dress with black and white striped leggings and half-zipped boots. That's not even mentioning the black choker she's wearing, the bisexual flag drawn onto her upper arm and the spiked black bracelet on both of her wrists. "Oh," she says and looks at me. The roots of her hair are dark, her eyes are dark, and she has a light olive tint to her skin. "Hi."

   "Um, hi." How do you talk to people again? "I'm Rozhan, I live next door. My parents sent me over with cookies, to welcome you and your folks to the neighborhood."

"Oh, that's nice—but it's just me and my mom. I'm Akila." She takes the plate out of my hands. "You wanna come in for a sec'?"

   I don't wanna be rude. "Sure."

   She holds the door open for me and I step in.

   Like the vast majority of the houses on the block, the house looks good from the outside and the inside looks good at first glance—but there's a large crack on the ceiling, the kitchen's likely from the eighties, and the shower in the bathroom likely doesn't work and will cost a lot to fix. The living room has a single, small couch and a bean bag chair, but most of everything is in boxes. I follow Akila to the kitchen, while she places the plate on the counter. "Can I offer you a glass of lemonade? That's all we have right now besides these cookies." She pauses. "...We don't have cups."

   "It's good," I say. "I'm not thirsty."

   "I have a tendency to, first thing in the morning, make an entire pitcher of lemonade." She pulls off the tin foil and grabs a cookie. "...What are in these?"

   "Um, chocolate chips. They're just Toll House." My stepfather didn't think I saw the tub on the counter, but I did.

   She nods. "Just making sure. At our last house, one of our neighbors gave us kale and cabbage cookies and didn't understand why she found them in our trash when she went dumpster diving." She frowns. "And then a college age girl gave us weed brownies without mentioning it had weed. I ate like, six."

   "Geez."

   "Yeah, people are weird." I'm not sure if she can be qualified as normal—the ends of her hair are in pretty curls, but still in this weird updo. I can't stop staring. "So, you said you're name is Rozhan? What school do you go to?"

   "Scarlet Skies."

   "Oh, no way!" She exclaims. "I've been enrolled there, I start Tuesday. Because I don't wanna go Monday."

   "Cool, what are you enrolled for?"

   "I'm a fucking amazing blacksmith."

   I laugh. "You're joking."

   "Of course I am—I do robotics."

   "Oh, that's cool!" I exclaim. I keep saying 'cool.'

   "Yeah, I'm really proud of it. I'm not super good at it, but I'm above average." She takes a bite out of her cookie. "I was just about to go on a walk around the neighborhood. It's nice to see someone my age around here, I was worried it was just going to be a bunch of like, toddlers or something."

   "Nah," I say. "Lots of teenagers live around here. A lot of people move here to go to Scarlet Skies."

   "Oh, nice."

"Yeah."

She finishes off her cookie in one more bite. "So you live right next door?"

"Yeah." Oh fuck, how do I talk to people? "Have for most of my life." I had always hoped to get into Scarlet Skies—near the end of middle school, I had been ecstatic when I was accepted. "It's a..." I wasn't going to say 'nice.' "...neighborhood." She nods. "It's home."

"Cool."

It is so awkward. Oh my fuck.

"Sorry, I'm not good at talking to people," she admits. "I think I'm shy or something, I'm still kind of in shock over the fact that...I'm here." She looks around. "America is a lot more different then London."

"Wait, you moved from London?"

"Yeah," she says. "My parents uh...divorced and my mom chose to move over here. For a new start."

"Sorry about that," I say. "That must suck."

"Honestly, I'm glad." She rubs at her arm. "I know divorce is supposed to be this horrible, horrible thing to be avoided at all costs, but they just weren't right for each other."

"Yeah, I get it. Still though—moving from London to...here doesn't sound like fun."

"It's not. We stayed at my mom's sister's house for like, three months and she kept trying to imply I needed to lose weight." She rolls her eyes. "Lord forbid I be happy about my body when I can't see my ribs." A strand of hair falls out of her strange updo, falling in front of her eyes—she tries to fix it, but I don't think she can. "So, can I count on seeing you Tuesday?"

"Sure thing. I should probably get going, it was nice meeting you."

"You too," she says. I leave quickly, feeling my face heat up because I suck at talking to people.

That Monday, Deming talks with me on the way to school about the girl I met.

"Oh, Roz, we need to teach you how to speak to people."

"Yeah, I know, I suck at social interaction."

"Not really—you talk to me just fine." I want to say that's different, but Deming's still talking. "You just get nervous and then all your people skills jump out of your mouth if you don't choke on them first." I sigh. "Did she seem nice?"

"I guess—she makes a pitcher of lemonade every morning, I guess? And her hair was crazy—it was like, curly and it's have taken a lot of hair spray and gel and stuff because it stuck straight up, like...fire? I don't how to describe it." Deming's looking at me weird. "And the colors looked like the bisexual flag."

"...That's weird," he says. "Because yesterday, I totally saw this girl with weird hair on her bike—she was like, on it with her chest on the seat and her hands on the pedals, going around the neighborhood."

"You're joking," I say. "I don't believe you."

"I'm dead serious, I even took a picture because I knew no one would believe me. Well, a video." He pulls out his phone and shows me.

Sure enough, on the screen, Akila with her crazy hair (though she's in tight black shorts and a tank top instead of what I saw her in before) is on a bike, her chest on the seat and her hands on the pedals, her legs in the air. Right when I think it can't get any stranger, she hops over a fire hydrant too. The video doesn't look real. "What the fuck?"

"I know, right? I caught it on video, but I'm still not totally sure if it's just some crazy dream or not, it was like, six in the morning."

I frown. "What were you doing at six in the morning?"

He flushes and shoves his hands into his pockets. "...I visited Kohl the night before. ...In his bedroom."

I feel my own face flush. "What, oh my fuck, really?"

"We didn't like..." His ears are red. He can't meet my eyes. "We didn't like, go all the way or anything. Butwetotallymadeoutand..." My mouth is open in shock. "ItwasgreatIguess."

I laugh. He punches me in my arm. "Shut up, girl."

"Bro, holy shit."

"Yeah, I'm surprised too. We haven't gone that far, yet and...At first it was just to hang out, you know?"

I snort. "Yes, because it's totally normal to just hang out in someone's bedroom in the middle of the night when you're dating them and not expect to make out at least."

"But I go into your room in the middle of the night all the time," he argues.

"But we're not dating is the thing, and we will never make out."

"Well, yeah, obviously." He moves some hair out oof his eyes. "Girls have cooties. All girls. Sorry, Roz."

"Yes," I say. "I am disappointed I will never get a chance to kiss my gay best friend who is basically a brother to me. I will never get to kiss my gay brother. Woe is me?"

"Shut up, I'm funny."

"'To hang out,'" I repeat.

"You suck."

"I love you too, Deming."

He ducks beneath a tree branch so he doesn't get stabbed in the eye again. "Did I ever tell you that my mom, back when she thought she was gonna give birth to a girl, was originally going to name me 'Demi?'"

   "Wait, what, really?"

   "Yeah, girl." He straightens out his blazer. "She really thought I was a girl, but when the doctor was like, 'yo, this is definitely not a girl,' she was like, 'shit, shit, oh, fuck, what do we name him? Let's just add two letters, what about Deming, that sounds like a name?' And it just so happened that that was a legit Chinese name, so I got lucky." He thinks for a minute. "...And I think she only wanted to name me after a pop star?"

   "That sounds like your mother, alright."

   "God, I sure do love my mother," he says.

   Another note falls out of my locker when I open it—just as Zane Ferro walks by, in his letterman jacket. "Morning."

   "Morning," I say, but I'm somehow not staring at him.

   "What's that?"

   I think for a minute. "I dunno, probably nothing." I look up at him. He moves some of his hair out of his face. "Did you need something?"

   "Not really, but um..." She reaches into the pocket on his jacket and pulls out a candy bar before holding it out to me. "Some other student came out to me, didn't tell me who they were, said to not tell you anything about them, but asked me to give this to you?"

   I grabbed it and looked it over. It's chocolate...and peanuts! "...Wow, that's weird."

   "Yeah, really weird. Is someone like, harassing you or something?"

   "I...don't know." I flip open the note and smile. "Um... sorry, I hope it didn't bother you at all."

   "Eh, it's just a delivery, when I was younger, I wanted to be a mailman." That's kind of weird. "...And also, he gave me a delivery fee of another one of these under the promise I gave you one. So, I benefited from this, I'm not that altruistic."

   I laugh and throw the candy bar in my backpack. "Thanks, Zane." We don't talk much. We don't like, never talk or anything, but this is a bit weird. But like, a good weird! ...Totally not because I have the biggest crush on him or whatever, that'd be so cliche, a nerd head over heels for the popular jock, ha.

   "Anytime, Rozhan." He walks off, hands in his pockets.

I shut my locker—I literally didn't need anything from it, I just wanted to check for another note. It does mention that someone should walk up to me and give me a candy bar and that that's from ¿.

I'm basically skipping when I get to class.