A teacher stops her on her way into class.

"Raine, you need to change."

"Why?" 

"You're wearing men's clothing. It's against school rules, except on Spirit Day."

.......of fucking course. 

The desire to keep doing what she had been doing fights the overwhelming impulse to never ever do anything that will make them single you out, be what teachers and therapists and parents want you to be at least while they're looking and — loses. 

"...........okay," she says. "Can I go into the bathroom and change there?" 

The teacher smiles at her.

"Of course."

She goes into the bathroom. Takes off the pants and the shirt and puts them in her bag. Keeps the dress. 

It's kind of weird, how wearing a dress — something she used to ache for a chance to do — can feel like it felt when they took clippers to her hair before camp. 

When he sees her in a dress, Lee frowns at her from across the hall.

Yeah. She's not thrilled about it either. 

After school, Lee is in the library trying not to be disappointed about the books he can read.

"Hey," she says, and sits down. "I brought poems. No new stories, though, I didn't get a lot done last night." 

"Thank you," he says, and reads them and makes happy noises. His thighs brush against Raine's as he reads.

Monet Refuses the Operation will probably not make much sense to him and Dirge Without Music might not either but probably Blackberry Picking will. It's good that he's happy about them. 

"Why does Monet see haloes?"

"When he was old he had cataracts -- uh, that's when part of your eye gets cloudy and it makes it hard to see. In real life he did get surgery for them eventually but that's not really the point of the poem."