I read the caption again and again until I’ve memorized it. You might just be the Fiercest of Them All.

Double dumped in one night. Lucas wasn’t worried about coming out. He just didn’t want to come out with me. Hearing it, really piecing it together in my head and seeing the dots connect, cuts deep. But Clem. That hurts me in a way no boy could ever. If she really is going to Georgia, I get the message loud and clear. The life I dreamed up for us isn’t enough. She wants something bigger and better. Without me.

Fine. Let her have it. She can go. She can leave me. She can be anyone she wants to be. And so can I.

It doesn’t take me long to find the Merle Norman makeup starter kit Grammy bought Clem for her fifteenth birthday. The mauve leather case was tucked under her bed, collecting dust in between a shoebox full of failed drawings Hannah ripped out of her sketch pad and Clementine secretly kept and a chest of old dance shoes and recital costumes.

This moment feels almost inevitable. I always knew I would try drag, at least once. I just didn’t expect it to be today.

I sit down at my desk and use the old makeup mirror Mom keeps under the sink in the hallway bathroom. The bulbs around the mirror are burned out, so I take the lampshade off my desk light and use that to illuminate my face and highlight every little spot and blemish. Talk about a damn reckoning. Who needs extreme sports when makeup mirrors exist? Is this why we all hate ourselves? Instagram and harsh lighting?

Poking through the makeup kit, I find a few things I recognize from merely existing in a house with two women. Powder. Lipstick. Blush. Mascara—which looks terrifying, by the way. Who in their right mind would put that pointy-looking brush stick thing so close to their eyes?

I’ve definitely dabbled with things like lipstick and have found myself scrolling through pages and pages of time-lapse makeup tutorials, so I have an idea of how makeup works in a theoretical sense. I understand things like the fact that drag queens glue down their brows with a glue stick and repaint their brows on top. And I can see all the ways contouring can give you the illusion of cheekbones and a jawline. But I’ve never actually tried any of those things myself. It turns out that application is not as easy as the internet makes it out to be.