"Did you see any of Valerie's Snaps this morning?" I asked. Alex and Benny had come over, and we were lounging on my unmade bed atop my wrinkled gray comforter, admiring the posters of metal bands covering my walls, eating junk food, and sharing the music we got for Christmas. Benny, lying on his stomach, took up over half of my bed, and still his legs extended multiple feet off the side, like a plank off a pirate ship. My tallest and densest friend, he looked like he belonged on our school football team's defense (and he had until he'd quit last year), but he also looked largely huggable. At least he looked that way to me. Alex had long legs, too, but he was sitting with them crossed, looking through my iTunes library, trying to get us all to determine the best metal music of 2015.

But honestly, my mind was somewhere else: I was still thinking about this morning, when Valerie Devant had posted a series of selfies of her with her new car in the background, embellished with the text, "Out w/ the old, in w/ the Audi." Yep, I got a newish mountain bike frame and an iTunes gift card for Christmas, and Valerie got a car. Must be nice. Not that I wasn't thankful for my mountain bike frame, which my stepdad had probably acquired after a dangerous trek through Craigslist. My bike was awesome. Even Alex and Benny agreed it was way metal when they saw it, and they didn't mean it was made of metal.

"Dallas, I don't even understand why you go on Snapchat," Benny said, brushing his shaggy brown hair to the side. "You never post anything," Even though Benny looked like a sports star, his hair outed him as a skater.

"I know why," Alex said. "She likes to lurk all of Valerie's Snaps."

"Shut up." I tried not smiling, but failed, because it was true. As much as I disliked Valerie, I had a huge and unexplainable crush on her. And I couldn't help thinking that even with her sexy new car in the background, she still looked better. I always wanted to replay her snaps, but I didn't want her to know how often I lurked her.

"I thought you decided you hate Valerie," Benny said. "Weren't you just complaining about her asking why you were wearing the same shirt twice in one week?"

Valerie had actually asked that question when we were in middle school, and she was so condescending when she did. That was before I came out as a lesbian, and it was like she was measuring my feminine worth, implying that worthy girls don't wear the same clothes repeatedly within a 7-day timespan. Since then, it had become a tradition for me to wear one shirt twice each week—to stand with all the girls who disagreed with constricting fashion roles, and to stand up for all those girls who legitimately couldn't afford more than a week's worth of clothes. How did the Valerie Devants of the world make them feel? Lately, Valerie didn't seem to care as much about me wearing the same thing, or at least she didn't bring it up until I did. It was in class a couple of weeks prior, when she was trying really hard to read my shirt, and I had asked her, "Are you gonna go on another rant about how I shouldn't wear the same shirt twice in a week?" And she had responded by saying, "I can never tell when you aren't wearing the same shirt, anyways. You're always wearing a black shirt with an unreadable logo. They might as well all be the same."

So I corrected Benny. "She told me all my band shirts look the same."

"Well, all her selfies look the same," Benny said. "Hot! And that car?" He made a low whistle.

I didn't disagree. "I wonder how much time she spends getting ready each morning." I guessed it was probably well over an hour, maybe even two. No matter how hard she tried to fool us, she didn't ever "wake up like this," with perfectly curled and tousled hair and glowing skin and bright eyes. I loathed her because I knew I'd never measured up to her standards, and I felt sorry for her for thinking she had to try so hard to surpass everyone else's. I felt sorry for all the girls like her. The ones who followed those scripts because they thought they had to. "You guys really have it lucky," I told Benny and Alex. "You don't have to do your hair or makeup."

"I kind of have to do my hair," Benny retorted, and we both looked at Alex, who had a nearly shaved head now (once, in middle school, he'd had an afro, but I was pretty sure he'd never had to do anything with that, either).

"It's not like you do your hair or makeup," Alex said to me in defense.

That wasn't true. I washed my hair every two days and brushed it regularly, and oftentimes straightened it. Not thoroughly, but enough to calm the kinks and waves. Usually, I was content to wear a backwards baseball cap when I wasn't in the high school building. And on most days, I wore foundation and mascara. Not enough for most people to tell I was wearing anything, but enough to brighten my face and cover up any zits or other unbecoming blemishes. It was my look: unnaturally natural. "I'm lucky I don't feel like I have to spend all that time and money on my appearance. One of the perks of realizing I don't need to be like what Valerie thinks qualifies as a 'girl' to be happy. I had to dress up the other night at dinner with my grandparents, and it totally blew."

"You wore a dress?" Alex asked, feigning disbelief.

I nodded disgustedly. "My mom made me." I thought back to that awful night; my grandparents kept complimenting me on how "pretty" I looked. Meanwhile, they kept asking my brother about his academic life. Double standards.

Alex grinned. "When are we gonna get to see you in a dress?"

"You know the answer to that." Never.

"I think you should really just go full butch," Benny said, putting his fingers into a square and framing my face. It was something he said a lot. "I can see it now, and I think you'd look totally lez with short hair. Maybe girls would actually think you were hitting on them instead of just complimenting them."

"No way. Long hair is metal."

"Agreed," said Alex, who thought it was much better having a friend who could sometimes pass as a femme lesbian. I thought it was because he kept holding out hope I would attract more girls to our group of friends, which hadn't worked so far. "You totally have a shot at Valerie with long hair. I mean, the reason you don't have to spend so much time on your appearance is because you're gorgeous, Dallas. You just don't realize it."

I ignored his compliment; it wasn't the first, and it wouldn't be the last, and honestly, comments like that made me uncomfortable. "I have no chance with Valerie," I said. "She's straight as a nail."

"And you are metal as a kettle," Alex said, "But you still go soft sometimes and listen to old pop rock."

"Well, I don't think she'll ever flex. She's been with Chad Anderson for like over a year now." Then I changed the subject, because I didn't want to talk about Valerie and her quarterback boyfriend anymore. "Do you guys have any clue what you're doing for your senior project yet?"

"I definitely want to do the applied project," said Alex, referring to the option our English teacher had given us right before Christmas break. Apparently, she'd been trying to get the administration to allow her to give us the option of doing an applied project instead of the traditional 15-page argumentative paper, and they finally decided to let her. I was pretty stoked about it.

"I love that Ms. Brooks isn't one of those adults who thinks social media is ruining the world," Benny said, checking his phone. "The project is gonna be rad."

"Agreed," Alex said, looking at me. "What topic are you thinking about?"

And there was my problem: I couldn't think of a topic. For the project, students were meant to effect change through the use of social media activism. But where did I want to effect change? How did I want to effect change? What were the things I cared about? I'd only come up with stupid topics. Trying to sound enthusiastic, I said, "Reality TV is bad for us, or schools should stop selling junk food."

They both scoffed, and Benny said, "Dallas, you watch shows like Naked and Afraid, and you were just eating salt and vinegar chips!"

Looking at the remnants of the bag of chips on my nightstand, I realized they were right: those topics weren't right for me at all. "I don't know what to do. My mind is on empty." Which was bad. I needed a good topic.

"Well, I think Ms. Brooks is pretty cool for letting us do a project instead of a paper," said Benny. "I hate writing."

"You're still gonna have to write," I said.

"Not as much."

"What's your topic?" I asked.

"Why masturbation is healthy and should be encouraged and practiced."

Alex and I both laughed, and I said, "Yeah right. That would never fly!"

"And why not?"

"You really think you can do a school project about masturbation?"

"He really just wants to research masturbation," Alex said, looking snarky. "Participant-observation research. Except he's the only participant, and also the observer."

We all started cracking up, before Benny said, "Ms. Brooks would probably let me."

"If any teacher would, it would probably be her, but really, Benny?" I looked at him, and he tried to act serious, but I knew him too well. He wasn't going to do that project. "Why don't you just do your project about how football sucks because of all the concussion research coming out?"

"That's a great idea," Benny said sarcastically.

I really did think it was a great idea, but I knew he would never get on board. All of the lovely dudebros on our school's football team still called him a pussy for quitting the team (he'd been one of their best defensive players), even though he lied to them and told him his mom forced him to after he got two concussions. He didn't want to risk being dissed on any more than he already was.

I turned. "What about you?"

"Mine is gonna be why metal is the best genre."

I let out a sigh/laugh. A saugh. "You two are hopeless."

"Why? Metal's your favorite," Alex said, gesturing to my walls.

"Yeah, but I also accept that everyone has different tastes, and that metal is definitely not for everyone. That topic sucks, Alex."

Rolling his eyes, he said, "Well, it looks like none of us have topics."

Suddenly, my door flew open, and my older brother Josh burst through. "Dude!" I said to him. "Don't they teach you how to knock in college? What if I'd been in here with a lady?"

Josh gave me a sly grin. "Even if you happened to be in here with two hot chicks instead of these two losers, I'm sure the scene would still be G-rated. I know you, Dallas."

He did know me, and he knew me too well, just like Benny and Alex did. They were unlike many of the rest of my peers, who seemed assume that, because I'd proclaimed myself a lesbian, I must have already had sex. Too often, dudes had invited me into conversations about oral sex, and people had asked me questions I didn't know the answers to—like how lesbians had safe sex, or how scissoring motions really went (I would usually do a little snip-snip with my fingers and they would laugh). I felt like some people just didn't understand that you could know your sexuality without ever having had sex. It made perfect sense to me. People who claimed to be straight all their lives had known they were straight before they had sex...hadn't they?

I never corrected this assumption, because I didn't mind not having to explain to people that I'd only ever kissed two girls and that only one of those kisses sparked any good feelings. If people knew my sexual history was zilch, they might ask me if I was sure I was a lesbian, or wonder if I was just going through a phase, or wonder how I knew I liked vagina if I've never had it, and...yeah. I was fine with them making assumptions and avoiding all that.

"Well, I knock on your door, and I expect the same respect," I told Josh, trying to be stern.

He ignored me, turning to Alex and Benny and asking, "You two going to Seth's tonight?"

"Yeah," they said at the same time.

Maybe it should have bothered me that Alex and Benny were probably going to spend more time with my brother than I would over Christmas break, but the party scene had never attracted me.

Josh looked at me. "I'm guessing you're not coming?"

I smirked at him. "Like you said, you know me too well."

"Well," said Benny. "Maybe you'll figure out the topic for your senior project while we're out having fun."