"So," Jessica says. "Bella, did you know Delaney came to school in a dress?"
"Oh?" Bella says. "I wonder if he made it himself."
Jessica looks rather stunned that Bella could miss the point by so wide a margin.
[You came to school in a dress, huh?] Bella inquires.
Sure enough, when he he walks into the lunchroom, he is wearing a cornflower blue summer dress that is totally unsuited to the weather but surprisingly suited to Alice. Whispers and giggles and surreptitious pointing follow him to the lunch line.
[Want me to sit with you, or no? I have actual gingerbread I actually baked, this time.] Alice showing up at lunch with wish-baking for Bella and/or her tablemates has kind of become a thing, irregular but more than occasional.
"Okay, try this one on for size," says Alice, waving his gingerbread in a shrug-like gesture. "It's not a simple question, and it's not gonna be a simple question until you stop thinking there's any good reason why I shouldn't feel like wearing a dress, and at that point you're probably gonna know the answer already."
"Not illegal," Bella confirms.
"But it's weird! You're a boy, unless you're a trans, so -"
"I think it might be 'transgender'," Angela says softly.
"Oh. A transgender. So it's weird for you to wear a dress and you must have a reason because the boys who don't have reasons don't do it," says Jessica.
[Well, that was surprisingly lucid,] comments Bella.
"Well, why don't you care?" Jessica demands. "And it - well, there's no such thing as a dress fitting on a guy, anyway." She starts to reexamine the fit before apparently deciding that would look uncomfortably like she was checking him out and breaking eye contact.
The problem: he likes guy stuff and girl stuff, perhaps not equally, but both-ly. So if he says he's 'a trans' (Jessica's terminology doesn't bug him, except inasmuch as it is distractingly hilarious), that's wrong, but if he says he's not, that's also wrong. He's not a boy, but he's not a girl. Or he is a boy, and he is a girl. From where he's standing he can't really tell the difference.
Also, he just really likes dresses. He thinks they look cute on him. And he is totally going to make one that fits him perfectly, just to show Jessica what that looks like.
[So you're a mutant gender on top of everything else. Why am I not astonished?] Bella says. [Tell Jessica you're, I dunno, half-trans or something. I don't know why dresses are even a girl thing, they're awkward and impractical. I will go on wearing jeans or maybe motorcycle leather even after I take over the world and start affecting the use of crowns.]
"Cool," Bella says. "So I'll just stick around I guess." She scoops up the ball onto her toe and starts kneeing it back and forth, left and right.
"Do us all a favour and sit like a girl, Wonderland," says Ms. Finch. "No one here wants to see up that skirt."
Laughing, he crosses his legs. "Better?"
"Much."
Afterwards, she calls her dad - who is confused about why she didn't call an hour earlier - and goes home to add to all her applications that she plays flute and soccer. Then she submits them all, and conjures a flute and pentagons ability to operate it - and amuses herself playing it all the rest of the afternoon.