The lobby of the library is a quiet, neutral territory, and it is the only place I feel like I could stop pretending. I sit in one of the high-backed chairs, hidden behind the ‘Arthur’ version of myself like it was a heavy winter coat I wasn't allowed to take off. I watch people come and go through the glass doors, but my eyes always drifted toward the girls my age—the way they tucked their hair behind their ears or the specific, effortless way they took up space.

Every time I see them, a strange, hollow thud echoed in my chest, a feeling I couldn't name but felt like homesickness for a place I’d never been. I caught my reflection in the polished elevator doors—broad shoulders, short hair, the person everyone else seemed to see so clearly—and for a second, my brain just refused to recognize him. I feel like a passenger sitting in the back seat of my own skin, just waiting in this lobby for a life that actually belonged to me to finally walk through the door.

What is wrong with me? As far as I know, other boys don’t avoid mirrors like the plague...

I sink further into the high-backed chair as Luanne pushes through the glass doors. She heads straight for her regular table—a small island of oak that most people avoid as if her 'lesbianism' were something they could catch like a seasonal flu.

She doesn’t seem to notice the wide berth they give her. She’s too busy shaking a fresh layer of orange cat hair off the sleeve of her green turtleneck before dropping into her seat. With practiced movements, she begins unrolling a stack of hand-drawn D&D maps, smoothing the curled edges exactly where she left them yesterday. Okay, maybe I’m a little obsessed with her routine, but only because she seems so much more comfortable in her skin than I am in mine.

I know I’m staring, but it’s hard not to. In the quiet of the library, she’s the only thing that looks real. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a leather-bound notebook, clicking a purple glitter pen with a rhythm that feels like a heartbeat. She dives into her campaign world, and for a second, I’m jealous of how easily she inhabits a universe she built for herself.

“Arthur? You good, man?” David said. I didn’t even hear him walk in. When David said ‘man,’ it felt like a door slamming shut in a room I was just starting to breathe in.

“Yeah, I guess,” I tell him. 

“Good, so you’re coming tonight?”

“To what?”

“My party! Come on, don’t tell me you already forgot.”

“Oh, that party, with guys. No, I can’t come. I have stuff tonight,” I quickly lie. Me? In a basement full of guys, where they all expect me to speak the same language as them? Not going to happen.

“Stuff? You never have anything going on these days. What is up with you?” David laments as he strolls towards the library’s open door.

I turn my attention back to the unrolling maps, letting the ink and parchment swallow me whole. It’s easier to get lost in a world that doesn’t exist than to figure out how to stand in the one that does.

I watch her hand move. It’s steady, unlike mine, which always feels like it’s vibrating with an energy I’m trying to suppress. She adds a tiny, jagged mountain range to the edge of a forest, the purple glitter ink catching the fluorescent light. To anyone else, it’s just a game. To me, it looks like a blueprint for survival.

She doesn't look up. She doesn't even acknowledge that I'm still sitting ten feet away, staring at the back of her green turtleneck. She just continues to ink her world into existence, oblivious to the fact that she is the only thing keeping me anchored to the floor.

I want to stand up. I want to walk over and ask her what the hidden path on that map leads to, or how she managed to build a universe where she actually fits. But my legs feel like lead, anchored by the weight of the name David just threw at me. Arthur. A heavy, iron anchor.

Luanne reaches up and absentmindedly brushes a stray hair behind her ear—that same effortless gesture I’ve been practicing in my head for months. It looks so simple when she does it. It looks like breathing.

The library doors hiss open again, a draft of cold air cutting through the lobby. I sink deeper into my chair, the high back swallowing me until I’m nothing but a pair of eyes and a heartbeat. I don't go to her table. I don't say a word. I just stay in the shadows of the high-backed chair, a silent passenger watching her live a life that is loud, and colorful, and hers.

Across the room, the elevator chimes. The polished doors slide open like a silver mouth, and for a second, the reflection of the girl in the green turtleneck and the boy in the heavy chair merge into one blurred shape before vanishing into the light of the car.

I turn back to the maps, watching her pen move until the ink finally dries.