Spend almost an hour contemplating.

I couldn’t help it; I just wasn’t much of a planning guy. Well, that wasn’t strictly true, my real problem was that I thought things through too much and would talk myself out of doing anything at all. It was a major issue with my writing. I would get myself excited about ideas and then overthink them and consequently burn myself out on them.

This situation was no exception, it seemed. I sat there for nearly an hour, pencil in hand, rulebook opened, trying to think of a good first idea. I ran through so many options in my head, shooting each one down as they occurred to me, noticing flaws in every one of them.

Right as I realized that perhaps I needed to keep my scope on the smaller side, a distinct sound drifted up from downstairs. They were voices of greeting; Jennifer’s friends had arrived to let the festivities begin in earnest.

Slumber parties were a fairly common event for Jennifer, especially since Aunt Elise spent a lot of time at the office, and I never did much of anything but hang out in my room anyway. I didn’t often make it a point to go downstairs except to eat, and even then, I had a stash of snacks in my desk drawer for nights just like tonight. It wasn’t that I was avoiding them, it was just that it was a girls’ night, and I wasn’t one of them.

My mind drifted as I heard their indistinct but clearly excited voices. I didn’t know all of their names, just a couple, those I knew to be Jennifer’s best friends who managed to make it to every event my cousin threw. But those weren’t the only ones my ears could hear.

My imagination always ran wild with these events, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of things they got up to behind closed doors. Popular media and movies would lead one to believe such events were casual yet sapphic, though I was pretty sure such events were typically very mundane and boring. Still, it would be nice to know for sure, to be a fly on the wall. Or even to have a valid reason to get invited to such a thing.

My eyes were practically glaring at the rulebook now. And with very little preparation or consideration, I wrote my first true rule in it.

Old rule: I am considered female in nearly every social aspect. My male gender is only acknowledged academically and through pronouns, but I am treated like a woman in every other respect.

It would not occur to me until later, but the exact phrasing of this rule was much more specific than it needed to be to get the job done. If my intention was just to be able to sit in on female activities, I could have just made a rule allowing exactly that. But my subconscious was speaking when I wrote what I did, and for the time being, at least, I didn’t realize it.

I did study this new rule carefully, however, not the implications it had on my own psyche, but its potential aftershocks and wondered if it was too much. I spent a few minutes having second thoughts, but just as I was about to reverse my decision, there was a knock at my door.

Cautiously, I turned to it. It had been a great many years since Jennifer and her friends pulled a prank on me during one of their hangouts. Their middle-school days were long behind them, and they had chilled out considerably since then. Still, the idea wasn’t completely off the table, at least in my mind.

“Yeah?” I called out, carefully.

“It’s Steph, can I come in?”

I didn’t really know which of them Stephanie was, only that the name was definitely among them.

“Sure,” I said, still on guard.

The door clicked open, and I finally had a face to the name. Stephanie was almost a walking stereotype for a popular blonde cheerleader. The only real difference was that she wasn’t really all that mean or self-absorbed—at least I’d never seen that side of her. She was dressed pretty much how one might expect a slumber party-goer to be, in a white tank-top and milky pink fitness shorts. She was showing a lot of lightly bronzed, sun-kissed leg.

“Hey Casey,” she began, she sounded a bit nervous, “we were talking and we kinda feel bad that you’re always up here by yourself when we hang out. It’s the weirdest thing, like, none of us can really figure out why we never invited you to our parties before.”

“Oh,” I replied, nervousness creeping into my own voice now. Suddenly, the reality of the rulebook was crashing into me harder than ever before. I knew exactly why they had never thought to ask me before tonight, it was because previous to tonight they saw me as a guy.

“You okay? You look kinda pale,” Stephanie said with genuine concern, “Oh, right, Jenn told us you were really shy.”

I shrugged noncommittally and nodded slightly. That was definitely part of it. Now that I had made my desire of wanting to be a part of the group, my introversion was forcing me to have itchy feet.

“Well come on, then, I promise you’ll have a lot of fun,” without waiting for a reply, Stephanie walked over to me, gently grabbed my arm, and pulled her with me. I wasn’t sure what the source was, but she smelled faintly of cherries.

I decided that going with the flow was probably the best idea. So, I decided to go along for the ride. The only alternative was sitting here and tormenting myself about the rulebook, so I welcomed the distraction. However, I was mindful enough to grab the notebook and pencil before I was led away from my desk and down the stairs.