And to be honest, I wasn’t super clear if the shirt was working. The fourth day I wore boring clothes (the same boring clothes), I got a brisk nod from Principal Lynde when I passed her in the hallway and nothing else.

I was even covering my hair with a hat that day. And nothing.

Tanner’s soccer training or whatever you called it seemed to be picking up for “the big game” (was there one of those every week?), which I knew because he talked about it loudly every day, so possibly I wasn’t his main concern.

So maybe, I was kind of riding the fitting-in train. . .ish.

And then. . .

Like right after Berry asked me about the shirt, I walked to English. And spotted. . .it. A piece of green construction paper with a printed sheet with lines on it. And at the top it said AUDITIONS.

My heart softly exploded.

“Auditions,” I croaked, like the word jumped out of my throat.

Berry smiled. “School play.”

“Right.” I could hardly breathe.

“Yeah, I was actually gonna ask you about that the other day,” Berry said as we took our seats. “It seemed like something that would be up your alley. I mean, among the many things that are.”

Up my alley? How about my whole street system? Which is not to say that people who are into music overall are into theater. Being an artist doesn’t mean you have to be into all forms of art. And in fact, the one thing I didn’t spend a lot of time on was, like, paintings and stuff. I’m into theater because when I was little, it was the first piece of magic I ever got to see. Millie and Lucy took me to see a production of Cinderella at this little playhouse. I guess it was in Anchorage, where we were living at the time.

And, of course, to be clear, my moms spent like let’s say a solid thirty minutes before and after Cinderella talking to me about why this model of heteronormativity, this idea of a princess needing to be saved by a prince who somehow loves her even if he’s never met her or only met her once at one dance, is problematic.

“Not that we don’t want you to enjoy the play! Or pursue your own concepts of love as they make sense to you,” Lucy had added as she took my hand and gave our tickets to the older woman at the front of the theater.

“But if you realize that the whole Cinderella story is a story and kind of a bullshit story, I don’t think that hurts,” Millie had concluded.

Turns out, I loved all of it. I loved the velvety seats, the feeling of sitting with all the people kind of squished but not, the moment when the lights came down and then the stage lit up with a whole other world.