“I tell you what, breaking up with Darryl was the best thing I ever did. Otherwise, I’d’ve missed all this. We’re going to party, Liz.” Laughing, Julie did a quick hip-swiveling dance right there in the ladies’ room. “Big time. I’ve gotta go. Nine o’clock. Don’t let me down.”

“No, I won’t.”

Flushed from the day, Elizabeth hauled all the bags to her car. She knew what girls in the mall talked about now.

Boys. Doing it. Julie and Darryl had done it. Clothes. Music. She had a mental list of artists she needed to research. Television and movie actors. Other girls. What other girls wore. Who other girls had done it with. And back to boys.

She understood the discussions and topics were a societal and generational trope. But it was one she’d been shut out of until today.

And she thought Julie liked her, at least a little. Maybe they’d start to hang out. Maybe she’d hang out with Julie’s friend Tiffany, too—who’d done it with Mike Dauber when he’d come home on spring break.

Elizabeth knew Mike Dauber, or she’d had a class with him. And he’d passed her a note once. Or he’d passed her a note to pass to someone else, but that was something. It was contact.

At home, she laid all the bags on her bed.

She’d put everything in plain sight this time. And she’d remove everything she didn’t like—which was nearly all she owned—box it up for charity. And she’d watch The X-Files if she wanted to, and listen to Christina Aguilera and *NSYNC and Destiny’s Child.

And she’d change her major.

The thought of it had her heart spearing up to her throat. She’d study what she wanted to study. And when she had her degrees in criminology, in computer science, she’d apply to the FBI.

Everything changed. Today.

Determined, she dug out the hair dye. In the bathroom she arranged everything, performed the recommended spot test. While she waited, she cleaned up the shorn hair, then purged her closet, her dresser, neatly hung or folded her new clothes.

Hungry, she went down to the kitchen, heated one of the pre-labeled meals and ate while studying an article on her laptop about falsifying ID.

After she’d done the dishes, she went back up. With a mix of trepidation and excitement she followed the directions for the hair color, set the timer. While it set, she arranged everything she needed for the identification. She opened the Britney Spears CD Julie had recommended, slid it into her laptop’s CD player.

She turned up the volume so she could hear as she got in the shower to wash the color out of her hair.

It ran so black!