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The school gym looked better from the doorway than it did once Riri was inside. From the hall, the strings of paper decorations softened the basketball hoops and climbing ropes, coloured bulbs disguised the usual fluorescent light, and the music made the whole room appear briefly transformed. Inside, the taped streamers had already begun peeling from one wall, the floor smelled faintly of polish and old rubber, and half the students were standing in self-conscious clusters pretending not to inspect what everybody else had worn. Riri had been nervous for three days and was now irritated to discover the dance itself was ordinary.
Her clothes were not ordinary to her. The white shirt fit cleanly across her shoulders. Dark trousers had been hemmed to break properly over polished shoes, and the black waistcoat Eve Johnson had loaned her sat close enough at the ribs to make Riri aware of her posture without making her feel trapped. Evelyn had pressed the shirt twice and then pretended not to notice how many times Riri checked herself in the hallway mirror. The outfit mattered because it was the first formal clothing Riri had worn that did not feel like a compromise negotiated with somebody else's idea of girlhood. She looked masculine. She looked unmistakably herself. She also looked, in her own reluctant assessment, good.
Sister Mary-Agnes had made the possibility seem almost embarrassingly simple. Weeks earlier, when a teacher circulated guidance suggesting dresses or skirts for girls, Riri had asked what the actual rule required. She expected a discussion. Mary-Agnes read the notice, said that formal meant clean and appropriate rather than feminine, and told Riri trousers were fine. No speech followed about courage or self-expression. Mary-Agnes did not turn Riri into an example for the class. She treated the distinction as administrative common sense. The lack of ceremony had affected Riri more deeply than ceremony would have. She did not have to earn permission by publicly explaining herself.
Still, as she entered the gym, one thought crowded past the music and the students and the scratch of stiff new shoe leather: she wanted Mary-Agnes to see her. The realization annoyed her. She had not dressed for Mary-Agnes. She had dressed because she wanted to attend the dance without feeling costumed. Eve's generosity, Evelyn's alterations and Riri's own pleasure in the clothes belonged to her. Yet the desire for Mary-Agnes's approval remained, small and bright and impossible to dismiss. Riri scanned the adults along the far wall almost without moving her head. She saw two teachers supervising near the refreshments, another by the doors, then Mary-Agnes carrying a box of paper cups toward the table.
Riri looked away before she could be caught looking. For the next half hour she behaved as though the dance had been organized primarily to test her ability to ignore a nun. She stood with friends, accepted punch she did not particularly want, discussed the music, and refused an invitation to participate in a group dance until enough other people joined that refusal became more conspicuous than participation. She was not miserable. Gradually the discomfort of being dressed formally gave way to the surprising comfort of being dressed correctly. Other students glanced at her, some longer than usual. A girl from an older class told her she looked handsome and then blushed harder than Riri did. That single word lodged pleasantly beneath her ribs.
Mary-Agnes did not approach her. This became first a relief, then a disappointment, then a relief again. Riri knew enough by now to recognize the absurdity of wanting to be noticed while fearing the consequences of being noticed. Her crush had become less mysterious but not less powerful. She understood that she wanted Mary-Agnes romantically in the way adolescents can want an impossible person with both complete sincerity and very little practical imagination. What would she actually do if Mary-Agnes returned the feeling? The question still dissolved when examined. Riri's fantasies rarely progressed beyond being regarded as exceptional, being understood without explanation, perhaps one day becoming old enough that the imbalance between them vanished by magic. She had no plan because there was no real situation in which a plan would belong.
Mary-Agnes seemed to understand this better than Riri did. She was warm without becoming suggestive, attentive without rewarding the infatuation itself. Riri sometimes resented the steadiness of that line. More often she depended on it. She could be awkward, stare too long, care too much about a comment, and still return to class the next day without having been made ridiculous.
Near nine o'clock Riri escaped to the hallway for cooler air. The gym had become overheated with bodies and poor ventilation, and the waistcoat that had felt sharp and perfect at home now held warmth against her back. She stood near an open interior door, rolling her shoulders slightly. Footsteps approached. She recognized Mary-Agnes before looking and immediately stopped fidgeting.
Mary-Agnes carried a rubbish bag full of discarded paper cups, an object that destroyed any possibility of grandeur. She paused when she saw Riri. Her eyes moved once over the clothes, not lingering. "That suits you," she said.
Riri had imagined versions of this moment all week. In none of them had Mary-Agnes been holding rubbish. In none had the sentence been so short. The actual moment struck harder than anything she had invented. Riri said thank you and hoped her voice sounded normal. Mary-Agnes asked whether the shoes were comfortable. Riri admitted they were not. Mary-Agnes said formal occasions had an unfortunate habit of punishing feet, then continued toward the service door with the bag.
That was all. Riri remained in the hallway for another minute with a pulse that had accelerated more dramatically than it did in most hockey drills. That suits you. She repeated the sentence once in her head and then stopped herself. She knew exactly how little Mary-Agnes had said and exactly how much she was capable of making it mean. The compliment was about clothes. Mary-Agnes had not called her beautiful, had not created an intimacy, had not suggested that Riri's masculinity fascinated her. She had said the outfit suited her. The limits did not diminish the pleasure. If anything, they kept it clean.
When Riri returned to the gym, Eve found her near the wall and told her to stop standing like security. Eve looked elegant in dark green and moved through the room with an ease Riri envied. Their friendship was not romantic, but Riri admired her and had learned things simply by watching an older girl occupy femininity as choice rather than obligation. Eve dragged her into a loose circle of dancers. Riri resisted for two minutes, then stopped caring. The music was loud enough to defeat self-consciousness. Her waistcoat shifted when she moved, the shirt sleeves creased at the elbows, and the trousers allowed her legs to belong to her in a way dresses never had.
Several times she forgot Mary-Agnes completely. This felt important afterward. Riri could be in love with the sight of a woman across a classroom and still possess an evening that did not orbit her. She could dance with girls her own age, laugh, catch someone looking at her and enjoy it, feel handsome in her own skin. The crush did not have to consume every other form of becoming.
Later, during a slower song, Riri stood near the refreshments while other students paired off. A girl named Tessa Bell, who played basketball and had recently cut her hair shorter, came over for water. They spoke about nothing important. Tessa touched Riri's waistcoat and said she wished she had worn trousers too. Riri told her she should have. Tessa said her aunt had insisted on the dress. There was a moment, delicate and unfamiliar, when they looked at each other and Riri realized Tessa was not merely discussing clothing. Attraction moved between them with a reciprocity that startled her.
Riri did not act on it that night. She was not ready, and the recognition itself was enough. But the feeling differed from her love for Mary-Agnes in one crucial way: Tessa looked back with the same uncertainty Riri felt. There was no gulf of adulthood, vocation or authority. Riri did not need to become someone else before the situation could make sense. The discovery did not reduce Mary-Agnes's importance. It simply added another shape to Riri's understanding of desire.
Near the end of the evening, the decorations looked tired. One string had fallen entirely and lay curled against the wall. Students began collecting coats, complaining about curfews, arranging rides. Riri changed from formal shoes into her boots in the corridor and immediately felt her body forgive her. When she returned to help stack chairs, Mary-Agnes was working with two other teachers at the far end of the gym. Riri joined a group of students clearing cups and folded paper from the floor.
She wanted to be useful without making usefulness a performance. That distinction had become part of her internal discipline. She did not trail after Mary-Agnes asking what else needed doing. She took a stack of chairs because chairs needed stacking. When another student struggled with a table, Riri lifted the heavier end. Her body had become strong enough that adults sometimes praised strength as though it were character. Mary-Agnes never did. She expected Riri to use it sensibly.
At one point a teacher told two girls to leave a folding table because it was too heavy and asked a boy nearby instead. Riri watched the girls exchange irritated looks. Before she could say anything, Mary-Agnes asked why the table had become gendered in the last ten seconds. The teacher laughed, slightly embarrassed, and told the girls to carry the lighter end with the boy. Mary-Agnes said that was not what she meant. The girls took the table together and moved it without difficulty.
Riri looked down quickly so nobody would see her smile. This was why the crush had survived long enough to deepen. Mary-Agnes did not merely approve Riri's masculinity as a special case. She did not require Riri to prove that she was exceptional enough to be exempt from ordinary expectations. Her instincts were broader. Girls could carry tables if they could carry tables. Formalwear could be trousers if the trousers were formal. A rule should have a reason that survived scrutiny. Riri's love attached itself to hundreds of these small consistencies.
After the last students had gone, Evelyn arrived to collect her. Riri found Mary-Agnes near the doors checking the floor for anything left behind. Evelyn thanked her for supervising. They spoke briefly about the event, then Mary-Agnes looked at Riri's boots and asked whether her feet had survived. Riri said barely. Evelyn asked what she had missed. Mary-Agnes replied that formal occasions punished feet. Evelyn laughed and said she had been trying to explain that for years.
The two women moved into a short conversation about practical shoes while Riri stood between them feeling simultaneously exposed and safe. Her mother knew. Mary-Agnes likely knew something, perhaps more than Riri wanted to imagine. Yet nobody was turning the feeling into a spectacle. The adults were discussing shoes. Riri was permitted to remain a teenager whose heart could be ridiculous in private.
On the drive home, the streetlights passed in slow intervals across the windshield. Riri loosened the top button of her shirt and held the waistcoat closed with one hand because she was not ready to take it off. Evelyn asked whether she had fun. Riri said yes. She mentioned Tessa after a pause, casually enough that the effort at casualness became obvious. Evelyn only said that Tessa seemed nice.
Riri looked out the window. Mary-Agnes's compliment returned, but now it shared space with Tessa's hand on the waistcoat, Eve's certainty, the girls carrying the table, the music and the relief of boots after formal shoes. The night no longer belonged to one moment.
At home she hung the shirt carefully and laid the waistcoat over the back of a chair. She looked at herself in the mirror in trousers and an undershirt, hair mussed, cheeks still flushed from the gym. She did not look like a girl borrowing somebody else's masculinity. She looked like herself after a good night. Mary-Agnes had said the clothes suited her. Riri understood, perhaps for the first time, that the pleasure of hearing it depended on already knowing it was true.