“And he needs to shave,” a redheaded girl named Sarah commented. I sneaked a peek to see who she was talking about, someone whose name I didn’t know, who had dark curly hair and patches of stubble.

“It’ll be funnier if I don’t shave,” the guy said, who I immediately assumed was straight.

I wondered if I should ask to join their group, but I couldn’t rely on them not to laugh in my face or make excuses not to let me in. Anyway, just because I was gay didn’t mean I should automatically do drag. I’d never dressed in women’s clothes before, not even in private or, for that matter, gone out in costume for Halloween, since we didn’t have Halloween in the Philippines. No one at lunch seemed interested in asking me anyway.

I walked over to the mailboxes after my meal and ran into a girl I’d gotten friendly with the day I moved in, another sophomore named Lucy Bisognano.

“So,” she began, “what are you doing for Drag Night?”

“Just watching.”

“You have to at least dress up. Come over to my room. I have dresses that would probably fit you.”

I agreed to meet Lucy later that afternoon. Though I was excited to wear women’s clothes for the first time, I was even more thrilled that someone at Harvard cared enough to hang out with me, especially someone as popular as Lucy, small-boned and fine-featured yet unfailingly jovial, like a bird in mid-flight. I was a poor kid who’d gone to a mediocre public school in Chino, California, in the smoggy, working-class part of Los Angeles where my uncle worked as a nurse, so that was where we ended up when my family immigrated four years earlier. My brain and my will got me to Harvard, but I didn’t want to be the poor immigrant kid once I got there. I pretended to be like everyone else, did a good enough job with my accent to pass for white and native-born but not a good enough job that I could keep other kids from thinking I was weird. Hardly anyone wanted to be my friend, and the few who did I didn’t really care for, not until Lucy came along.

A couple of hours before dinner and the Drag Night festivities, I knocked on the door of Lucy’s suite, and she led me through the halogen-lit common room into her bedroom, where Monet and Degas posters livened up the beige walls. Her room barely fit her desk and single bed, which suited me fine because I liked being near her.

“I’m not sure what will fit you so let me just show you what I have.”