“Like … I like my body, because it’s fast and strong and good at football. But it also has to be a dude’s body, because I play football. So like, maybe sometimes I wish it was smaller or softer or … different … but I don’t really have a choice. And I can wear stuff like my letterman jacket and feel better because I could be shaped like anything under that, and I can imagine that maybe I’m not shaped like a dude sometimes. But that’s not the same thing as what you’re talking about, right?”
“Are there … times you don’t want to be a dude?”
Smith’s eyes are closed so Ash can keep working, but his eyebrows furrow above them. “Does it matter? I’d have to be a guy no matter what.”
“You know … if being a guy feels like something you have to do, like it’s an obligation or something…” Ash says carefully. “Maybe think about that.”
Smith looks like he might have another question, but the choir room door flies open, and a dozen lowerclassmen come tumbling in, ready to have their makeup topped off by Ash’s glitter stash.
“An orderly line would be appreciated,” Ash yells over the burst of noise, and Smith glances over their shoulder to check his face in the mirror wall. Chloe sees him smile before she leaves.
* * *
“If this thing makes me break out from your leftover face juices, I’m gonna murder you,” Chloe says, tugging at the mask covering one side of her face.
“I have great skin,” Ace says. “Which you should remember from all the times you kissed me.”
“I try not to think about that,” Chloe says.
Ace’s dress is a beaded floral confection that is straining dangerously across his chest and ends about four inches above his ankles. He looks like he’s halfway into a werewolf transformation, and he is having a spectacular time. Chloe found him surrounded by chorus members, yelling the punch line of some joke she can’t begin to imagine. He’s a little sweaty, but he’s got the spirit.
“I love kissing people,” Ace says. “It’s like, a hobby of mine. I would describe myself as a make-out hobbyist.”
“That’s nice,” Chloe says, checking her phone.
“I’ve kissed like, all my homies.”
Chloe glances up. “Even Smith?”
“Especially Smith.” Ace grins, wide and ringed with lipstick, and then he catches sight of something over Chloe’s shoulder and his eyes go wide. “Speaking of, holy shit.”
She turns, and over the heads of dragged-out, cupcake-cramming theater kids, there’s Smith.
His lips are lined in dark purple, fading into a soft lavender at the center. His cheeks are hollowed out with shadow and the bones dusted up top with iridescent highlighter that makes them glow sharp and high on his face. And his lids are glossy, his lower lash line dotted with big flecks of glitter. Chloe can’t help staring, not because he looks strange, but because he looks … natural. It’s a subtle drag, and it suits his face like he put it on himself. Something about his shoulders looks lighter.
He spots Chloe across the crowd and smiles a nervous smile, and the glitter under his eyes catches the grimy light from the overheads and turns it to stardust.
Two seniors descend upon him, whisking him into the party, and Chloe wonders if Shara ever imagined this as one of the outcomes of her plan.
In her hand, her phone buzzes. Shara’s reply: Then I guess it’s your turn to surprise me.
Soon, someone kills half the lights, and someone else cues up the backing track on the sound system, and the seniors shuffle into their places. The lowerclassmen pile on top of one another on gym mats with plastic cups of Sprite and smears of lipstick on their chins, and Mr. Truman climbs atop a row of bleachers with his phone horizontal, ready to film the whole thing so the seniors can have it for posterity. She notices Brooklyn handing her camera off to a sophomore before she joins the rest of them, and she makes eye contact with Smith, who nods. He shouldn’t have any trouble sweet-talking it away from her, not looking like that.
“Don’t screw this up for us,” Benjy hisses to Ace in the final second of anticipatory silence.
Chloe tucks her phone into her suit jacket and shakes out her cape. For the last time in her high school career, it’s curtain call.
Inexplicably, she kind of wishes Shara were in the front row again.
The organs start blasting, and Chloe steps to the center of the floor and sings.
* * *
“Did you get it?” Chloe asks Smith the second the performance is done.