Freshman year started the same way my first year of middle school did. I was alone in a strange new world, and it was glorious; like escaping a black cave and finding your self on a white, frozen lake. Now all I needed to do was reach the shore without stepping on thin ice. Part of me promised myself I would stand up and face it and kick the universe's metaphysical ass. I wanted to be somebody triumphant, even though I didn't let anybody, not even my parents, know that about myself. It's harder for people to hit you where it hurts when you hide your soft spots. Sometimes you can't hide them. Sometimes, when they're written on your face, all you can do is grow your hair long and hang your head, sit in the back corner of the class, stay quiet, dress neutral, and hope nobody notices how ugly you are or mistakes you for a boy. It works most of the time. I thought often about being somebody, but in reality I'd be more actively concerned with who I didn't want to be than who I wanted to be. But the hope of starting fresh, of things being different this time, bubbled up inside of me. At my most optimistic moment I allowed myself to dream of being prom queen. I knew deep down that it would never happen, but it was fun to imagine. The optimism lingered with me, casting its bright shadow into the first few weeks of school.

Every day at lunch I would sit between one of the tall planter boxes and the east wall of the art building. I felt like I disappeared when I hid behind the big tree in the cool of its shadow; in the middle of the school day, I couldn't ask for more. Including myself, only two people sat here. It was the loneliest place on our California high school campus of over five thousand students, and I loved it for that. For the first week of freshman year, we sat in silence; me in my side of the shade, she on hers. Although I pretended not to notice her, I surrendered occasionally to the curiosity. She often sat in an awkward pose, with a book resting on knees pulled up towards her chest. Her shoe laces were usually untied, and despite the way she sat, her heels were apart and her toes pointed together. I couldn't make out her face, as she had long brown hair with lots of fly-aways and hung her head over her book. She was always looking down. Her shirt was baggy and plain; her jeans were too big but probably held up by a belt because they didn't sag. I thought she was the kind of girl everyone else would call ugly, the kind of girl who's been picked on her whole life, who expects to be looked down on; the kind of girl who's fortified herself from emotional injury and built a concrete wall around her heart. I thought that maybe she was like me.

I'd gone a long time without friends. I'd learned some hard lessons about trust. But I'm a hopeful sort of person. The world beats me down and I just get back up, ready to taste my own blood again. So one day, while we both sat in the shaded safety of the willow tree, I decided to say something.

"Hi," I said. I also waved at her.

One of her green eyes appeared out from between two knotty strands of hair as she leaned in my direction. It took her a moment to reply, and her voice quivered when she spoke. "Hello?" It was almost like she was answering the phone and didn't recognize the voice on the other end.

"What are you reading?" I asked. It wasn't necessary to speak loudly. Our location was removed from the rest of the school; from here, the din of other students was a constant, beautiful, ignorable whisper on the wind.

She turned her head to look down at her book, then back in my direction. "You might not like it. I have a weird taste in books."

"I have a weird taste in books, too," I said, then smiled. "I'm reading Orlando by Virginia Woolf."

"Oh," she said. "I've heard of that writer."

"You have?"

"Yeah. I'm a book nerd, I guess."

"Cool, me too."

My blood was rushing with the excitement of having one of my dreams come true. More than anything I wanted a friend; I didn't often dare to dream that friend would be someone I could have interests in common with.

For a while we sat in silence again. She turned back to her book. I rubbed my bookmark up and down between the pages, reaching frantically for what to say next.

"I think we have a couple classes together." I managed to say.

"I think so too. Is your name Alex?"

"Yeah," I said.

She remembered my name. That surprised and delighted me.

"Now I feel bad," I said.

"Why?"

"Well," I felt awkward, but decided to say it anyways, "you remembered my name, but I don't remember yours."

"It's Caroline."

We sat in desks beside each other in the next class, and every class we had together since then. We spent most of our early time together discussing our favorite books and authors. With pride, she said she'd read anything once and wasn't hard to please. I liked that about her. I was uneasy about the friendship at first; later she told me she had felt the same way. We kept it to school only for the first three months. Neither of us were familiar with the social etiquette surrounding giving out your phone number, and each of us was secretly worried the other didn't care and was just passing time with nothing better to do. For the first time in my life I was glad when the teacher assigned us a group project. It made exchanging phone numbers seem a bit more natural, and gave me a reason to call her that helped ease the fear of rejection. Even losers need to get their homework done.

After the group assignment was turned in it seemed we both lost the nerve to call each other, despite talking every day, exchanging books and gossiping about the more attractive, well-liked kids; they looked down on us and we looked right back down at them.

Things were looking much brighter, until one day in history class, one of the talkative girls pissed off the teacher. She'd been laughing too loud with her friend, so she decided to separate them, and assigned her to the empty desk next to Caroline. She knew who the girl was. They went to the same middle school. Her name was Britney. We started whispering when we saw her coming over. We didn't want to draw her attention. It didn't work.

The boy in front of her started talking to her.

"I'm so happy I can finally look back without needing eye bleach."

"I know, right? My mom almost invited her to a party once, but I told her no ugly people."

"That's a close one. It seriously bombs a party when there's a weird ugly person just sitting there. You just can't relax."

"Seriously."

"How do you know her anyway?"

"Went to the same middle school. I couldn't tell if she was a girl or a boy with long hair for the longest time. Personally, I think she should get her girl-card revoked. Females are just not supposed to look like that."

"I hear ya, Brit. If it were up to me it'd be nothin' but blond double-D babes."
"Like me?" Britney leaned forward, pressing her cleavage on the desk and batting her thick, mascara clumped eye-lashes.

"Hell yeah."

We both just sat there. We didn't even talk to each other for the rest of the period. I sank in to my seat and pulled my textbook up to hide my face. Caroline pulled her long hair forward. I could tell she was trying to sit still, but her shoulders were quivering. I saw the small puddles forming on her desk.

We talked about it at lunch that day. "I know I'm ugly," Caroline said. "I don't think there's anything wrong with being ugly. Why do people feel the need to remind me all the time?"

"People are just assholes and bitches," I said. I wanted Caroline to feel better. Nothing else really came to mind. Part of me was afraid of saying the wrong thing.

"Does she think I don't know I'm ugly or something? I mean I was sitting right there. She had to have known I would hear her."

"She's a bitch."

"I wouldn't want to be pretty, anyways," Caroline said. "I'd much rather be my ugly-old self. I like me the way I am just fine."

We spent the rest of lunch talking about how she would probably drop out senior year due to an unexpected pregnancy, and how much more successful in life we were going to be. We were smart. She wasn't. I reminded Caroline that we were survivors. We went through the shit in our youth, while Britney had her every whim handed to her on a silver platter. I knew this made us stronger, better people. We'd be better prepared to take on the adult world. I said the words out loud. I repeated them, thinking beauty ruled now, but that couldn't possibly last forever. I needed to believe the way you look on the outside didn't determine whether you were a real woman or not.

Caroline and I got closer after that. Every time someone tried to put us down, we would pick each other back up. We couldn't escape them at school, but when we would walk to Caroline's place after the last bell rang it was like we had our own world together. Her parents were rarely home and her older brother never left his room. Most of the time when we hung out at her place we would browse the internet, talk about books, watch TV or movies, or talk shit on the jerks at our school.

Sometimes Caroline talked about her family. She told me her brother smokes weed, and asked me what I thought about that. I said I didn't care. I only judged people on how they treat others. She asked me what I would think of her if she did it, and I told her the same thing. It wouldn't change a thing between us. I told her that I considered her my friend, and I hope she considered me a friend, too, and she said she did. I had intended to think it, but I said out loud that I wondered what it felt like. Caroline said she believed it felt like escape. We spent the rest of the day eating icecream and laughing at dumb actresses dying in horror movies.

One time at her place, I spilled some soda on the carpet. While looking for cleaning products in the bathroom cabinet under the sink, I found a huge box of unused make up. I asked Caroline about it, and she said her mother gives her make up every Christmas and birthday, but she refuses to use any of it. She said she had no desire to use it and didn't see the point. I understood. I had worn make up to school once before. Everyone laughed—they told me I was trying to be something I'm not. I hadn't worn any make up since then. I don't want to be told I'm just pretending. Sometimes I lie to myself and say that I don't want to, but I know deep down that every girl wants to feel like she's beautiful. But it's hard to believe it when the whole world and your mirror are telling you that you're not. Deep down inside, I wanted to play with that make up. I got my chance on New Year's Eve.

Caroline's parents were out at some fancy party and we had the place to ourselves. Around nine in the evening, we got bored and decided to explore her brother's den while he was out. The first thing I noticed was the smell; I felt as if I had been shoved in to Satan's armpit. From the clutter surrounding the computer desk, I guessed mold was forming in the glasses and on the plates piled behind the monitor. A kitty litter box sat in the corner, the sand more brown than grey. I had to hold my nose with my fingers as I tip-toed through the mass of sweaty clothes carpeting the floor. I wondered what it was we were looking for. Caroline knew; she had a method. When she found it, we skipped out of the room as quickly as possible and slammed the door shut.

Caroline ran upstairs to her room and I followed. Despite the fact that we were alone in the house, she shut her bedroom door. We sat facing each other cross legged on the bed, with the plastic baggie between us.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's my brother's weed." She held up the baggie and slid open the plastic zipper, and held it under her nose. I watched her nostrils twitching as she sniffed.

"Can I smell it?" I asked.

"Sure," she said, handing the bag to me.

I held it open beneath my face. "Wow. It smells kind of like skunk."

"I think that means it's good," Caroline said.

"It just looks like a plant. It doesn't look scary." I took one of them out of the bag: a forest green cluster with fragile orange hairs and about the size of my thumb. I held it by the stem, rotating it. "How does he even smoke this?"

"Let's check the internet," Caroline suggested. She pulled her laptop on to the bed. Because I wanted to see, I moved to the other side of the bed to sit beside her. We found several websites with how to guides for everything—how to roll a cigarette, smoke from a pipe or a water bong—but what caught our attention most was the fact that you could smoke it from an apple. We giggled at the silliness of it.

"Do you wanna get some icecream?" Caroline asked.

"Hell yes."

We went downstairs to the kitchen and prepared our frozen treats with ample helpings of hot melted chocolate. I finished making mine first and headed back up to Caroline's room. I sat on my usual spot on the floor in front of the TV to wait for her. She came in a few minutes after I did, sitting beside me on the freshly vacuumed carpet. She set her ice cream down in front of herself, and then set an apple down beside it.

I held my bowl of ice cream up and ate slowly, watching her eat her ice cream, and every now and then glancing at the apple. It was a bit awkward, because from the way she looked at me I could tell she knew that I knew what she was thinking. It made me nervous. The entire time, we ate in silence. When we were finished, I piled our bowls on the desk. Caroline sat back down on her bed behind her laptop, and when I joined her, I noticed that the page was still on the apple instructions.

"Would you be OK with it if I tried? I think it's safer if you do it with someone else around."

Part of me felt a bit honored that she trusted me so much, the other part was anxious. "of course I'd be OK with it," I said. "I'm your friend, you know, and friends want each other to be safe when they do stuff like that."

Caroline smiled. "It might not work anyways. This apple thing is just so random though, I have to try it. At least once." She got up from the bed and fetched an apple and a pen, then began drilling a hole in the top of the apple, and when that was done, she drilled another in its side. When she was finished, she checked the instructions for the next step, and continued by removing a thick green shrub from the bag, breaking it up in to small pieces, and then packing it in to the top of the apple.

"Now all you need is fire," I said.

"I'll be right back," she said, bounding out of the room.

After a few moments alone, I picked up the apple and smelled the green bits stuffed in to the top of it. I wondered if it would work or not. I heard footsteps, and put it back down, trying to look casual.

"Found one." She said, and sat back down in front of the laptop. "OK, so, according to the instructions, I hod it like this," she turned the apple around until the side hole was facing her, "light the top and breathe in through the hole."

"Be careful with the fire," I said, noticing how close it would get to her nose and her hair.

"Oh." She set her things down and pulled her hair back behind her ears, then resumed the position, her eyes glancing at the computer screen. I watched with curiosity and anticipation as she lit the lit the plant matter on top of the apple; it looked like she was giving it a kiss.

After a little bit she started coughing out a thick white smoke.

"Are you OK?"

"Yeah." Her voice sounded hoarse, and she coughed often between words, "I'm fine. This happens to my brother all the time. Perfectly normal."

After a little bit, she stopped coughing.

"Did it work?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe I didn't use enough?" And she tried again, coughing less this time.

"Did it work?"

"I feel a little bit."

"What does it feel like?"

"We're sitting on a cloud," she said, and bounced a little on the mattress. The biggest smile I've ever seen stretched itself across her face. "I feel good. I feel pretty, pretty good."

"Can I try?"

A couple hours later, I rediscovered the make up box in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. I brought it back in to the room with me. "Caroline," I said, setting it down on the floor as I leaned myself against the bed. "I have a secret."

"What is it?" She rolled over on the bed, and her hair fell about my face, and I lost myself in the forest of her tangled tresses, but managed to escape with my train of thought in tact. I turned around until I was facing the bed; I was sitting on the floor. The carpet felt nice under my fingers, I enjoyed the fact that it was short, and not long. You can lose things in long carpet.

"Do you think it's OK for someone ugly to pretend to be pretty?"

"I don't know," she said, putting her arms in to the air and twisting them about, admiring her hands.

"Or what if all those pretty girls are secretly ugly but we don't know it because they all wear make up. Like pictures of celebrities without it."

"Do you want to be pretty?" she asked, rolling on to her belly and looking at me. The way her hair fell about her face and her expression; she could have been a model.

"Sometimes," I admitted. It was easier than I expected to say out loud. "I really do. I really, really do."

"Sometimes I do, too," she said. "In some ways. But not in all ways."

"Yeah." There was a pause, and then I said, "I think we could play with this make up, I mean, otherwise it would just sit here. Unused and sad."

"It does look a bit lonely," Caroline agreed.

"No one has to know, no one is around." I smiled out of excitement.

"We could make it a game, or do it on each other."

"I don't know how," I confessed. "I've only used it once."

"We can use the internet to figure it out," she said. We both laughed. Caroline crawled down off the bed, sliding her legs on to the floor. "Let's see what we have here." She picked out a shade of fire-truck red. "Make your lips like you're kissing," she said.

I did as I was told, and a shiver of excitement went up my spine. It lasted the entire time she applied the make up; lipstick, eyeliner, mascara. I did the same for her when she was done. With small squares of toilet paper, we cleaned up where we had colored outside the lines. When all was said and done, I looked in to the mirror, at my own reflection.

I looked long, but I looked softly. My face surprised me. Who was that staring back at me? It was not an ugly face. It was not a boy's face. It was not a man's face.

Caroline began singing, "I feel pretty, oh so pretty—" and dancing about the room. But I just stood there, moving my head slowly from side to side; I had to be sure of what I was seeing.

"How do you feel?" The song's harmony lingered in Caroline's voice as she asked the question.

"Almost right," I said, without taking my eyes off of the mirror. "Closer than ever before."

"Almost." Caroline repeated. She knew what I meant by it. "Hey Alex."

I turned around, and there was Caroline: her hair pulled away from her face, revealing the deep emerald of her eyes, a clear peach complexion, and small round features. "You're beautiful, Caroline," I said. I meant it. There was nothing wrong with her face; it was perfect.

"I'm just pretending, Alex," she said, and looked away from me. "Thanks for saying it, though." After a moment, she turned back.

I wanted to be as beautiful as she was.

"I hate being judged on looks. I hate being a woman," she said. "I hate it so much, Alex. I didn't want to say that to you, but—I'm sorry."

"I know," I said. I had guessed it. "It's OK. I would trade with you if I could."
"What do you think it would feel like, to really get the body of a woman, to match your soul?" Caroline asked.

But I knew what that would feel like. I'd thought about it for so long, I'd spent hours focusing and imagining it. "I would feel like Odysseus, like coming home after twenty years of war, monsters and misfortune."