"Can you legally drive it?" I ask.

"Yes," she says, flicking some hair out of her eyes. "I mean, technically, it's not legal with you in it, but it will be in a few days, and I obey all the laws so we won't get pulled over."

I don't like breaking the law—but the law that you need to wait like, six months before you can legally drive with someone else in the car with you is kind of dumb. My mom says it has something to do with experience, but whatever, I don't really care too much.

I follow Lada out to the front door. She tells Cili (the maid, who's simultaneously on her phone and cleaning off a counter in the kitchen) that she's going out and Cili nods, says her mother will likely want her home by seven thirty-ish. We walk out the front door and Lada pulls a keychain out of her pocket. "She's on her phone a lot—she usually leaves her kid at home, and she's going through chemo right now. She worries."

"Oh," I say.

"Yeah," Lada says. "I was literally there for her birth—she chose the name Opal because she thought it was pretty. Sweet kid."

"That's terrible."

Lada nods. "It really is." She looks kind of glum—I guess I'd be glum if I witnessed someone's birth and they got cancer.

Lada has a black BMW, sleek and brand new. I hesitate a minute before riding shot gun and Lada immediately turns the AC on and slowly backs up out of the driveway. "You can put on some music," she says. "Whatever you like." She gestures to the AUX cord and doesn't take her eyes off of the road for even a second.

I hesitate for a minute. "You listen to Katzenjammer?"

"Bless you," she says.

I put on Mike Krol's Fifteen Minutes.

"Ooh, I like this song!" She exclaims, taking a hard right. "You're in charge of the music now, I trust your taste." My taste isn't very good—it's gonna be like, a mix of Katzenjammer, the Noisettes, Green Day, My Chemical Romance, and Three Days Grace, and a few Taylor Swift songs that are gonna sound really out of place, I think? My taste might be kind of trash? I'm not sure.

I just keep Fifteen Minutes playing out of sheer panic and hope she doesn't question how long Fifteen Minutes is today. She doesn't—we just keep driving.

I let her pull me into a store of her choice. "Do you know what size you are?"

"...Medium?"

She turns and looks at me. "Medium?"

"Medium everything." I don't mention that things will fit me weird with my male body. ...I really hope we manage to pull this off so it doesn't look like I'm just cross dressing or something.

"...That's not going to actually be of much help, but you know what? That's what dressing rooms are for." She looks around and finds the woman's section. "We'll find something over there."

This feels weird. All I can think about is how this feels weird. Lada keeps glancing at me. "Are you okay? You're sweating a lot."

"Yeah, I sweat when I'm nervous."

She nods. "Do you and Deming not go out a whole lot?"

"I do nearly everything with Deming," I respond. I rub at my arm. "...I don't have a lot of girl friends."

"Ah," she says. "Well, I mean." I can tell immediately she doesn't understand. "I mean, friends are friends, right?"

I shrug. I love Deming with all my heart—but talking to people I haven't known my entire life feels really hard. I struggle—I don't want to be quiet and reclusive, a part of me deep down yearns to speak to everyone, to form human connections, but I look into someone's eyes and sometimes, I just don't know what I'm seeing and my words die in my throat. And I feel so embarrassed, and frustrated, and irritated, and lonely sometimes, but there's no words to say that to convey all of that and do I want to convey all of that? I never seem to really know. I feel calm around Deming, but everyone else is unfamiliar—and ever since I begun transitioning even people I knew relatively well look at me like strangers, so I don't see people I know. I see strangers right back.

"I don't know," I respond.

"You say 'I don't know' a lot for someone who's in a school for smart people," she points out. "Like, don't you at least have an idea?"

"Yes, " I say. "Many. So many, in fact, I don't know what to say."

She pauses and nods, accepting that. "Well, we're friends now, right?" She says.

"We are?" Maybe it's kind of dumb to not think we are, but a part of me feels like if I call someone my friend when I don't know who they are, they'll think I'm crazy.

"After this, if we're still not friends, I don't think I have any friends," she says. That sounds reasonable.

We browse through clothing. I look at the clearance. On a nearby rack, Lada excitedly points out a white, a-line dress, pauses and then holds up a black one and suggests it instead. I ask why. "Because you wear white and red a lot, I feel black will be more...costume-y." I feel like it could potentially make me look like I'm emo or something, but I' not against looking slightly emo.

She grabs three of them because we aren't sure on sizes. We discuss fish nets, but we settle on a pair of knee high red socks we think will work better and she flips when she finds a pair of black Mary Jane shoes and makes me try them on on the spot.

I kind of like how excited Lada is about this. It makes me smile.

After trying on ten pairs, (I'm not kidding, ten pairs, we almost run out of shoes to try on) we realize, in women's shoes, I'm a nine and a half. Even then it's a little tight, but that might be because my right foot is a bit bigger than my left foot, but I can't but a size ten right shoe and a size nine and a half for my left. Any worry of how much this will cost I express, Lada dismisses.

While we're serpentining through a dozen racks of various shades of jeans, Lada's phone vibrates. She whips it out and looks at it, frowns and puts it back in her pocket.

"Who's that?" I ask.

"Just my ex," she responds. Her tone isn't as bitter as people would expect when someone refers to the ex—or, isn't as bitter as what TV has lead me to believe is the norm. "She can wait a bit."

She. The amount of gay in her room was intentional after all. This knowledge brings me a weird amount of joy.

We eventually find the dressing rooms. I decide to try on the largest size of the black dress we found first, but I hesitate in the entryway to the dressing rooms.

Lada looks at me weird. "...What is it?"

"...Is this allowed?"

She blinks, repeats, "Is this allowed?" And then it seems to click. "Oh. Right."

I hesitate, but she just shrugs it off. "It should be. You're a girl, just like me." I look at my clothes and then back at the dressing rooms. "Go ahead—what are they gonna do? Call the police?"

"I don't know, and I don't really want to find out!"

She pauses, glances around. "It's fine, Rozhan."

It doesn't feel fine. "Do they not have like...?" I don't even know how I planned on finishing the sentence. Reluctantly, I go into a dressing room. For a minute, I just stand there, unsure before I finally think to take off my clothes and change into the dress.

My head goes in so easily, I realize, as the collar falls on me, fitting in all the wrong ways, that this dress is too big on me. It falls to below my knees, baggy and the collar shows a lot of my chest.

"Does it fit?" Lada asks.

"Nope! Not a bit, way too big." Lada tosses a small one over the door and I tug it on.

This one fits pretty well, actually. I'm not swimming in the cloth, at least.

"Does this one fit?" Lada asks, right outside the door.

"...I think so," I say. I tug at the Queen Anne neckline, but it looks good.

"Let me see," she says.

I open the door and just kind of stand there.

Lada nods, looking me up and down. "It's nice," she says. "...But I don't think a-line is the right type..." I look at her. "Don't get me wrong, a-line is cool and all, because like, it's basic but good and basically everyone looks good in it, and you look good, but I feel like we need more of a..." She trails off. "Hold on—what size is that?"

"Eight, I think?"

"Eight," she says and then turns around and leaves me, standing there. A woman walks by, goes into the dressing rooms and looks at me. I offer a small wave. She looks me up and down and walks off with a scoff, like I did something that personally offended her.

After a few more minutes, Lada comes back, holding a black dress in her arms.

"What—" Before I finish my sentence, she throws it into my arms.

"Pouf," she says.

"...What?"

"Try it on," she says. "It's an eight."

I go back into the dressing room and strip down again. "What's with the neckline?" I ask.

"Décolletage," she says. "Do you like it?"

"...I think I like it more than the other one?" I pull it on—this one somehow fits better and for a minute, I just look in the mirror. When I exit the dressing room, Lada loses her shit.

"I am amazing at picking out dresses!" She says. "You look amazing."

I feel pretty good, but I'm not too sure. "You think this will really work for a costume?"

Lada nods vigorously. "I was thinking, if we add a white sash, it might help it look better in general. Now I'm starting to wonder if looking at those pictures did anything to help us at all."

"...Decide?" I say.

Lada shrugs. "I like it."

I really like it. "How much does this cost?" I grab the tag. It's about thirty bucks. "This isn't going to be too much, is it?"

"Definitely not," Lada says. "Like, it's so fine. This, those Mary Jane shoes, those red stockings..."

"What are we gonna do about the cape?"

She thinks for a moment. "...No idea." It's not very helpful, but paying for this is. "Go ahead and change back if this works, then."