After about an hour, I start to kind of loosen up—which is a bit difficult because I struggle to see anything that's too far away and all the people are just a blurry, moving mass. Kohl's arrived and him and Deming stand near the snack table, flirting non stop and drinking while they hold hands. A few people make a few comments, but not very many, and then they're simultaneously flipped off from both of them and Lada tells them, "I don't allow dickholes at my party, GTFO my house if you're gonna act like that," and everything seems to be going pretty welL.

   My costume is not original—a handful of other girls are dressed as Red Riding Hood too, although they are different from mine, but still, recognizable as Red Riding Hood. One Red Riding Hood (who's wearing a corset, low cut and a short skirt with fishnets and an ankle long cape) actually stops me to tell me that I look nice. She also knows my name, but I have no idea who she is. Either way, I thank her and then she smiles and goes back to flirting with a guy dressed as a fairly hot looking pirate.

   I'm not like, one of the hottest people here, but I'm pretty hot. A few guys look my way. I hear a couple whispers. At one point, a pair of girls, one dressed as Alice in Wonderland (though she has short, bobbed, black hair instead of the long, blonde you'd expect) and the other the Queen of Hearts (complete with a corset, she looks like a senior, and a hoop skirt) start whispering, but when I hear them, they're just talking about how they're jealous of my eyeliner. I make a mental note to thank Deming.

   I grab myself a soda and find a corner to stand in—this is what I do at parties. I'll probably try and find someone I know after a minute, but for a second, I just stand there and watch people talk and laugh, drinking and dancing. Everyone seems happy, everyone is dressed up.

   And from across the room, I lock eyes with Zane Ferro.

   And I know it's Zane, because, even though he's in costume, he still has those familiar, brown eyes. He smiles, waves at me, and with the confidence I wish I could have, walks over.

He's also dressed like a pirate—and now I'm wondering if I have a thing for pirates.

He's a bit taller than usual in the boots, I have to look up at him a bit more, which he seems to notice. He takes a step back so I'm not just staring at the ceiling. "Hey," he says. "I didn't think I'd see you here."

I giggle—it's this weird, kind of high pitched, tittering sound. "I didn't think I'd be here!"

"Well, you look great," he says.

I can feel heat on the back of my neck. "Thanks, I feel great." I straighten out my headband again. "You look like a good pirate."

"I know, right? This is a kickass costume." He fixes his hat and grins—it's almost blinding. He has some really good teeth. "Me and some of the guys on the football team thought this would be fun, so we all dressed up as various pirates." He gestures to a plastic cutlass on his hip, secured to his pirate belt with pirate tape. "Dean got the saber, and then Clyde got the eye patch and hook, and his twin got the peg leg, even though he's not on the team."

"Cool," I say.

"Yeah. He's pretty cool. Gave me a fruit snack."

"Fruit snacks are the best," I say.

"Yes," he agrees. "I literally like them more than life itself—fruit snacks were my childhood. Or, at least the best part of my childhood."

"Same—Deming and I used to trade to get our favorites, but then we'd get to the grape ones, and we weren't sure who got those because they were our favorite."

"You're joking. The grape?" He shakes his head. "That's the worst flavor when it comes to fruit snacks. Nothing grape is good."

"What are you talking about, grapes are amazing, Zane." He shakes his head, laughs. "Oh, come on, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath—" He laughs louder. "Grape soda—I still love grape otter pops."

"Otter pops?"

"...Yeah? Otter pops—you know, the popsicles inside plastic tubes instead of on sticks?"

"Wait—you mean ice tubes?"

"What?" I am horrified—they are otter pops. I will sooner be convinced that I am a gold fish and this world is a simulation than I will that they are called something as stupid as ice tubes. "No, they're not called that."

"Uh, yeah, they are—they're ice tubes."

"No, that's a horrible name!"

"Otter pops make no sense, though! That's what my parents called them when we bought them from the store."

"Yeah, but I bet the box said otter pops." He laughs again. "Man, I loved otter pops when I was a kid. It may have only been me, but we'd buy the box of like, a hundred and in the summer, Deming and I would just devour them."

"My favorites were the green ones," Zane says. "I don't know what flavor they actually are, I don't even think I liked the flavor that much, but I saw green and knew that was the only one I could have. And when we ran out of the green ones, I ate the blue and pinks ones, and then my mom would be like, 'you're not gonna eat the other ones?' And I didn't. And they would just take up space in the freezer. My mom did not like me during the summer, just because of that."

"My mom had to go to the store about once a month to fill up the freezer in the summer with them again. She always got them on sale though—so, for like, five dollars, she kept me and Deming from burning down the house in our boredom because we just spent all of our time in the summer, eating otter pops and sitting on the curb, painting our nails with this super cheap nail polish that looked terrible and would come off by the next day."

He nods. "Still called ice tubes, though."

I snicker, he smiles at me. "So, where'd you get your costume?" He asks me.

"Oh, Lada took me shopping," I say and I straighten out the skirt. "It was...fun."

"Well, that's cool. You sure sound very genuine in talking about how...fun it was."

"Yeah," I sigh. "It was fun—but some Karen bothered us."

"Say no more, I get it." He's holding a bottle—he takes a sip. "Man...FUCK, Karens!"

"I know, right?"

"I've never met a nice Karen before," he says. "For real, I think it's the name. I think, you give a girl the name Karen and it like, corrupts them—and then, for the rest of their life, they're gonna be a middle-aged white lady, with a sad haircut who drinks bad coffee and is like, 'aLl LiVeS mAtTeR' and... I don't know, eats a bunch of kale? Doesn't vaccinate her kids? Is just not fun to be around?"

"Once, I met a black woman named Karen—and she was only slightly better. Like, less racist, slightly nicer, but she made some horrible, vegan, gluten free lemon bars, but she didn't believe in allergies and she said global warming's a hoax." I don't mention she's my aunt. "I've only meant her once, so I'm not sure if she's an actual person, or just like, a nightmare I had."

   "Ugh. Karens, man." He pauses, his eyes widen. "I-I-I mean, woman." But he pronounces it like, "woo-man," like "Anne" but with an 'm' in front, you know, man. "Shit. Shit. Sorry, m—" He groans. "I need to stop."

   I giggle nervously. "It's cool," I say. "Really. Deming's only recently stopped calling me 'dude,' I don't really mind."

   "Sorry, I don't mean to be like..." He clears his throats. "It's just...weird is all."

   I know I have the biggest crush on Zane, but I bristle and cross my arms tightly. In the back of my head, I think about the woman at the store, uncrossing my arms like it had been a threat on her life. "What is?"

   "Oh no, no, no, no, I meant..." He clears his throat again. "I didn't mean that you now being a woman...girl is weird, I meant, um... Oh, shit, I can't speak. I don't mean it's weird that you're...trans, it's just..." I sigh and tug my skirt down, kind of wanting it to be longer all of a sudden. "I never really knew? And when you came out, it was so obvious and..." He takes a deep breath. "I think I might be slightly drunk. I just thought you were super cool, you know?" He says but I don't know. "Like, there was some people in middle school who were queer, but you just rolled in with painted nails, in a denim skirt that barely fit and told the English teacher you wanted to be called...I want to say... Mei? But everyone misspelled it, so you switched to Enju because you thought it sounded cool, and then tried to find Native American ones, but you couldn't find any Flathead names and you hated the internet for a moment, but then you settled on Rozhan."

   I smile. "I'm surprised you remembered all those. It was...really difficult to name myself."

   "You picked a good name," Zane says. "It's nice—feminine, pretty." He nods. "Stand up girl name."

   "Thanks." That kind of made up for it. I'm over it now—also, seeing the panic in his eyes made my heart skip a beat.

"So, um..." Zane rubs the back of his neck. "I'm gonna go before I say something else that makes me seem like a dumbass and offends you—I need to get back to my friends."

"Yeah, me too."

He smiles. "See you, Rozhan."

A part of me does kind of hope he's Upside Down Question Mark, though I think it's unlikely. But it is likely to be anyone?