The first morning after my initiation, I put on so much makeup that my face felt like a wax mask. Between 7:15 a.m., when I woke up, and 3:00 p.m., when classes ended, my girl self was in charge, and she had to be deep undercover. Afternoons worried me—after lunch, theater kids left the quad for our core classes: math, science, history, and English. The core academics building rose thin and conspicuous in the center of Kensington, closer to West Campus, and everything music-related, than I would’ve liked.
Since the West Campus kids had morning core classes, there wasn’t technically any overlap, but it still felt unsafe. If the Sharps found me out, I was done, even on the off-chance that the guys themselves were okay with having a girl as one of their tenors. I had a feeling that somewhere along the line, any petition to change Kensington’s most historic all-male society to coed would be stamped out mercilessly in its tracks. The administration had miles of bureaucratic red tape running around our student organizations. You wanted to change your club’s name? Switch your meeting space? Find funding? Get ready for a whole world of forms. A list of gatekeepers had to sign off on them, from faculty sponsors and deans to the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, probably. Then the forms vanished into a black hole of Student Life paperwork where they took weeks or months to process. No wonder nothing ever changed around here.
Still, none of that was scarier than the public shaming that would follow if I was discovered. I imagined a senior year where nobody would look at me, afraid of being associated with the girl who’d infiltrated an a cappella group, like the least impressive spy of all time.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t planning on getting caught.
For the first time since June, I felt grateful for my ex-relationship. I’d spent so much time with Michael that I’d never made any legitimate friends in the School of Theater. Kensington friendships took upkeep. I’d never done the work. I knew the others in my grade, of course, and I still waved in the halls to Lydia and my other ex-roommate, Katie Woods, a stylish girl from Providence even taller than me. But we never went out of our way to see each other. I was scenery; I was set dressing; I was never center stage to anybody but Michael.
This summer, the idea of returning to Kensington without him had terrified me. Walking into Burgess Hall on move-in day had felt like walking into quicksand: the sensation of slow drowning, with nothing to grasp onto.
Now, being alone was useful. The usefulness wasn’t a cure-all, but it lessened the sting.
After seventh period, I locked myself into my dorm. I rubbed off that morning’s red lipstick and peeled off my false lashes, slipping my long wig into its drawer. Minutes later, Julian stared out of the mirror at me, arranging his boy bangs into place, attaching fake sideburns in front of his boy ears with a Q-tip and spirit gum, courtesy of the costume shop.
Lastly, I slid on a pair of thick-rimmed glasses I’d found in the shop’s recycling bin. One of the hinges had been bent out of shape, but with a miniature screwdriver from the scene shop, I’d put them in working order. They were the perfect finishing touch. I officially looked like some grungy hipster.
The problem was the clothes. I’d signed out a few outfits from the costume shop for this week, but there was no chance of hanging on to those—the department rarely used wigs, but they would miss costume pieces soon enough. The current plan: raid the annual Dollar Sale this Saturday. During the week leading up to the sale, Kensington kids abandoned their unwanted bits and pieces in donation bins. On Saturday, everything was equal-opportunity dirt cheap, a dollar apiece. Snakeskin belts, leather brogues, and dorm accessories became a secondhand patchwork blanket strewn across the Marden Cathedral lawn.
With the twenty-three dollars left in my wallet, I needed boy clothes that could disguise my silhouette as thoroughly as possible. I also needed dresses and heels—Jordan had to be more feminine than I’d ever been, to make her 100 percent unrecognizable as Julian. I had makeup galore, raided from bargain bins and gifted from friends since I could remember, but I’d outgrown all but one of my dresses, and my single pair of heels had broken last fall.
Just as I finished my transformation, a knock came on my door. I froze with the pencil hovering over my eyebrow.
“Room check,” called Anabel, the Burgess prefect. The sound of a pen tapping on a clipboard rang through the door. I could picture the expression on Anabel’s face to the millimeter: dignified and determined, with one eyebrow arched high. With her golden barrel curls always perfectly in order, and her seemingly endless, neatly pressed array of semiformal blazers, Anabel Jennings looked exactly like the word “prefect” sounded.
“Shit,” I breathed, looking around. I had to hide. I had to escape. No way I’d fit between the wardrobe shelves, and under the bed or the desk was too obvious.
I dashed for the window and grabbed the iron latch. The first-floor windows weren’t supposed to open—it would make it too easy to sneak out—but I twisted anyway, gritting my teeth, praying they’d somehow forgotten to fix this one.
A horrible crunch came from the latch. Then the chunk of iron was dangling in my hand.
I stared at it for a split second, horrified, bewildered. How? This was iron! What was I, a wizard?
“Room check, second call,” Anabel said, and I hissed a stream of curses, smacking the window open. It swung wide with an appalling squeal from its ancient hinges. I snatched my backpack from the bed, shouldered it, and hauled ass out the window as she said, “Coming in.”
My sneakers sank into the dirt beside the rosebushes. Amid the distant scraping of Anabel’s master key, I swung the window shut and ducked under the sill. She wouldn’t see the broken handle, right? She was only checking for fire hazards, making sure we hadn’t draped dynamite over our lamps or anything. No reason to look at the window.
Doubled over, I fled down the side of Burgess like someone trying to outrun a hail of bullets, iron latch still clutched in my fist, and as I skirted the corner, I wondered why I hadn’t just told Anabel not to come in because I was naked and needed a second to become not naked.
Day one was going excellently.
That night, I got to rehearsal half an hour early, imagining that Trav would skin me alive if I wasn’t sufficiently on time. I expected to be the only one, but when I reached the top of the jagged stone steps, I found three of the guys sitting around the Crow’s Nest.