“God, I’m glad I’m living here this year,” she said, brushing a few purple-edged curls out of her face. “You’re gonna love it. It’s so much less straight here.”

She had been saying this since she helped me move in, in a sort of refrain. I didn’t respond because I was contemplating where to put my trans flag, a gift from my parents. It was . . . too big. I had to stretch my arms way out to hold it all the way open.

“Hey Elena, is this tacky?” I said, holding up the flag.

“What’s that?”

“The trans flag.”

“Oh,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “Yeah, I wouldn’t.”

I spent the afternoon and evening setting up my room. When I came downstairs, the living room was lit up by a purple, rotating light and my housemates were drinking beers on the couch. I sat in a wicker armchair near them and quietly rolled a joint on a hardback copy of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science that someone had left on a coffee table. By the time I was done there were more people. After someone started playing music from a Bluetooth speaker, I got up and drifted through the other rooms down to the kitchen, then out onto the porch, and then back to where I had started. People kept arriving.

In my first year of college, I realized, I had accumulated a lot of acquaintances but no one I could talk to for more than ten seconds in an environment like this. I’d say hi, and within a moment I would realize that we had exhausted our possible conversation. The groupings that formed on the porch and in the kitchen were opaque. People had formed new alliances over the summer, people were newly dating or broken up, people tried on new personality traits. Elena could parse it, I think. I would catch a glimpse of her laughing in circles full of boys or touching the bare, tattooed arms of girls, a light touch that was an extension of listening to whatever they were saying.

I ended up on the porch, where people were smoking and there was a lessened expectation for conversation. The purple light from the living room fanned out of the front windows in regular pulses. I stared out into the blue darkness of the yard, a hazy orange streetlight glow hovering at the end of it.

This is so stupid, I thought. And then, I need to think. When will I have time to think?

People filtered away, and eventually the only person left was a girl wearing a pastel pink hoodie and some complicated-looking skirt, puffing on the end of a cigarette and looking vacantly out into space. That was you.

“Hey,” you said as I approached.

“Hey,” I said back.

“Is that a joint?” you asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Are you trans?” you said.

“Yeah,” I managed.