My dad is less easy to recognize. For one thing, he had hair then. When Gordo—yes, I call him by his first name—left us eleven years ago, he had a perfectly gleaming bald head that he kept ultrasmooth as a point of pride. In his senior photo, he sports dark hair in a tight fade with three lines carved out on the left temple. He smiles a sarcastic smile beneath eyes that look troubled, at least to someone who knows how they can darken into anger. He wears a plain black suit with a wide tie that his spread collar barely contains. I have looked at this photo a thousand times trying to imagine why Mom picked this guy.

“You’re obsessed with that picture.” Nix dispels my reverie with a familiar complaint. (They’re right, though—I can’t pass this hall without at least a quick check-in with Mom and Gordo. There’s probably a future therapy session in this.)

“And you’re going to be late to AP Latin.” I know Nix hates Latin—that’s a language only a parent would choose—and I get why they ditch so often. Language Hall is just about as far from here as you can get without leaving the building. They’ll never make it.

“Maybe I will, but your class is this way and I’m looking for you.” Nix is chewing their lip, which means I’m about to get a little speech. Oh god, that’s why they took the hall pass. I know what’s coming before they say it.

“You have to get rid of prom king and queen.” Nix knows I was expecting this and that I will try to duck out of it and they don’t care; we’ve been friends since before I had pubes and they pretty much never hold their tongue around me. “It’s so old school—not just an erasure of kids like me but like aggressive—Boys! Girls! Pair Off and Be Crowned!”

They step back, hands on hips that hide beneath the enormous T-shirt of the day, covered with anime figures I will never know, worn with boxy track shorts and tube socks. (Nix’s undying worship of Billie Eilish dates back to, like, that spider in the mouth video, and shows no sign of ending.) We’ve been through this.

“As if allowing same-sex couples isn’t already enough to get by Silverthorn? Let me leap that hurdle first.”

“The hurdle that matters to you.” Mostly, I love that Nix can read me for filth like nobody else, but right this second, I could do without it. (Cheng has already used up this morning’s “Doubt Luis” pass, thanks.)

I do my best aggrieved voice. “It matters to all of us. I’m getting you in the door!”

Can an eyeroll make noise? I swear Nix’s does. “The ticket policy isn’t keeping me out. You know what? I think—”