SETH CAME BACK A FEW minutes later, shaking his head.

“Go work on your speech,” he said. Code words for I don’t really want to talk to you right now.

I tried. For hours, I tried. Seth was right next to me, not prodding me at all. It felt weird to not be prodded.

It was after midnight when Pip got home, coming in with a sweaty yoga mat and a disgusting-looking green juice. I was comatose on the futon, in a state of shock and defeat. At this point, I figured why bother writing a speech if I had no costume to deliver it in.

“Salutations, dudes. I didn’t expect you both to still be awake,” Pip announced, predictably cheery.

I launched into the whole story about the costumes and how we suspected Tash. I asked him a million questions without giving him a chance to answer any of them: “Did you see the costumes?” “Did Tash say anything about taking them?” “Has Tash ever stolen before?” “Is Tash some kind of comic book villain?”

Pip was a little overwhelmed by all my questioning, which was understandable seeing as he’d just come from a group chant and meditation and had now just walked into a frenzy of crazed paranoia. He attempted to calm me down, but Seth told him that, based on personal experience, it was probably not the best idea to try to calm me in the midst of panic and that he should probably just go to bed. Pip told me he’d pray for the almighty universe’s rightful return of the costumes, and I tried my hardest not to scream again.

It was getting later and later, but I couldn’t go to sleep until I spoke to Tash or Heather. She wasn’t responding to our calls or our texts. It wasn’t that out of character for Heather to run off in the midst of being upset, but this was New York City; this was different. I knew Heather wouldn’t do anything to put herself in immense danger, but she was definitely capable of doing something stupid, like putting on a skimpy dress and meeting up with a thirty-year-old bouncer from a gay nightclub who she’d met only once before.

I stopped calling and texting her over and over, as I figured that was only making things worse. She was tired of feeling babied by us, she wanted her own adventure, and after dragging her across the country, who was I to deny her that?

Seth dozed off beside me on the futon. I lay wide-awake, waiting for the moment when the front door finally burst open and Tash stomped into the room.

“Sorry!” he said loudly. “Hope I didn’t wake you up! I know it’s important to get a lot of rest before the pageant.”

I stood up, trying my hardest to maintain composure.

“Tash. I know what you did and it’s not okay.”

Tash sheepishly held up a grocery bag with a carton of ice cream in it.

“I know, I know. I have no business having ice cream the night before a pageant, but I just couldn’t resist. Fine, twist my arm, I’ll share. Shall I get us some spoons? Where’s your little girlfriend?”

I could feel the beads of sweat forming on the back of my neck, the ones that always came when I had to deal with confrontation of any kind.

“I’m talking about my costumes.”

Tash’s face shifted into the kind of phony expression you’d make in a school play when the teacher asked you to look surprised.

“Don’t you dare pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, Tash! Don’t you dare!”

I was about to lunge in his direction, but Seth, awake now, put his hand around my waist.

“Okay, babe,” he soothed. “Don’t lose your cool.”

Tash clucked his tongue. “I have no idea what it is you’re accusing me of right now, but I have to say, I find it utterly offensive. You know what? For that, I’m not going to share my ice cream with you.”

Tash made his way to his room, but before he shut his door, he stopped and, with the cruelest of smiles, said, “And, Miss Thing, I saw those costumes, and whoever did steal them probably did you a very big favor.”

He slammed his door and locked it before I had a chance to explode. I was trembling; I had never experienced something so blatantly cruel in my life. Before I knew it, tears were streaming down my face. Seth pulled me into his chest. I could hear his heart beating as I choked on my cries.

It felt stupid to cry about a polyester pantsuit and some gowns, but that’s exactly what I was doing.

And wigs. I was also crying over the wigs.

All night, I tossed and turned with the images of my missing marabou circling my mind. Also, Heather hadn’t come home.

Seth was keeping some distance, but not so much that he made me feel like I was in this alone. I really appreciated that. Every now and then he’d wake up and murmur something like, “We’ve come so far already” or “We’ll figure something out.” Then he went back to sleep, and I could only hope the perfect solution would come to him in a dream. Because right now the pageant was less than twenty-four hours away, and I had zero costumes and zero wigs.

When it was time to go in the morning, Pip offered to walk over with me. Tash’s door was still closed—there was no way to storm his room and get to rehearsal on time. Seth told me not to worry about Heather, that he’d track her down and make sure everything was okay. I told him that I’d stop worrying about it, but it was clear that neither of us believed it.

That morning’s rehearsal was spent running through the choreography for the opening number. When Tash got there, he avoided any form of eye contact with me whatsoever, and I was too tired to keep arguing anyway. Eric Waters was in drill-sergeant mode, shouting at us from the back of the theater.

“How was your night? Did you get into any trouble? We did!” Milton bounced over and asked in one single breath, while we were on break.

He and Red shared excited smiles as they recounted their outrageous New York night, which included seeing a musical about Diana Ross (“The wigs, gurl! The wigs were to die for!”) and dinner at some fancy restaurant in the West Village where they were pretty sure the person seated behind them was one of the ladies who had been a Real Housewife of somewhere, at some point, maybe. They were buzzing with delight and it was hard not to envy them.

“What about you?” Milton asked, this time pausing for my response.

“I … well, I had dinner and then, um, it wasn’t that great.” I fumbled all over my words and blushed. Was I actually going to cry here over lost wigs?

“Did something bad happen?”

My attempt to keep it bottled up was clearly not working, I could feel my hysteria creeping out of me like coffee spilling out of a Starbucks cup when they overfill it and then have the audacity to still put on the lid so that it becomes your problem and not theirs once you walk out of the store.

“My costumes, my wigs … all of it … He took them.”

“Who did?!”

I lowered my voice, taking deep breaths to calm myself down. “Tash. I think. He says he didn’t, but they were at the apartment and I know Pip didn’t take them. And you said that he took that one queen’s wig a while back, right? I don’t know what to do. I want to tell Daryl or somebody, but I’m afraid they won’t believe me and will think that I’m only after their sympathy.”

Red and Milton had become very serious, listening like detectives at a brutal crime scene.

“Don’t! Don’t tell anyone.” Milton was eerily calm but stern. “He will find a way to turn it against you.”

A paranoid Red kept looking over his shoulder and shushing us to keep it down. Milton obliged, visibly shaken.

“The last time somebody turned Tash in for stealing a wig, he framed the person for stealing his. That was poor Miss Tootsie Roll, and she was never the same after she got disqualified from the pageant. Poor thing, she works at an Old Navy in White Plains nowadays.”

Milton winced at his own words.

“Disqualified?” I asked. “But how did Tash get away with it?!”

Milton shook his head with a frown. “I don’t know, girl. But he did, and he will again. Trust me. He always gets away with his shenanigans. The only thing you can do is ignore them and bounce back.”

“But I don’t have other wigs, or costumes, and I’m assuming no one here has extras, right?”

Milton and Red told me how much they wished they could help but that they only packed what they needed. They tried to calm me down, telling me that it would work out as long as I didn’t say a word.

I was called to the stage to rehearse my number, which was the last thing I wanted to be doing. Linda Lambert played Tina’s song and I sang it as best I could, but there was nothing there, none of the emotion or notes that had been there before. I was just trying to get it over with. When I’d finished, Linda looked at me quizzically.

“That was … good.” She tried to make her lie sound convincing, but it didn’t work. “Are you okay?”

I could feel everything welling up inside me, and I wanted to tell her what had happened. I felt like I could trust her—that maybe, hell, she’d loan me one of her pantsuits. But standing in the wings directly behind her were Milton and Red, both mouthing for me not to say a word.

“I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

“No problem. I get it. Save your energy for tonight. After yesterday’s rehearsal, I’m certain you’ve got your song down perfectly. Just do it like you did then and they’ll go crazy for you.”

Linda’s Tony Award–winning supporting words would’ve meant a lot more if I wasn’t wondering if I’d get to perform in the pageant at all.

I was sitting in the dressing room with headphones, not actually listening to anything but wearing them just so that no one would try and talk to me. My phone lit up with a text message from Seth reading: Come outside when you can. I have something to show you.

I snuck out the stage door into the alley behind the building. Seth was there with an enormous plastic shopping bag.

“Ta-da!” Seth exclaimed, handing over the bag. Inside was a pile of multicolored clothes and one super-cheap-looking pink wig.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“I know it’s nowhere near as nice as the stuff you lost, but it’s better than nothing.”

I pulled the wig out of the bag. It was one of those awful bright-colored bob wigs you buy at the drugstore during Halloween that are marked 100% FLAMMABLE MATERIALS.

If I kept going like this, that would end up being my drag name.

“Wow. Thanks.” I attempted to sound sincere, but with the sad excuse for hair in my hand, it wasn’t easy.

“Hey. You don’t have to pretend to like it. I know it sucks, but it was sorta the best I could afford.”

If I could have stepped outside my body in that moment, I might have seen just how lucky I was, with or without this pageant. However, stepping outside your body is impossible, and I was a moderately troubled seventeen-year-old boy freaking out about his missing wigs. This was not a time for introspection.

“JT, look. I’m not going to tell you not to worry. I can see how that’s not what you need right now. I get it. But while you’re worrying, let’s try to focus on what you still have. Because this contest isn’t about the outfit or the wig—it’s about you being the best drag teen you can be. And I have no idea what that means, but I know that you do, and that’s what will get you through. ”

I understood his point and he was absolutely right. The only problem was that to be the best drag teen I could be, I needed to actually be in drag.

“Where’s Heather?” I asked.

Seth sighed. “She was just getting in when I left this morning.”

“Was she okay?”

“I don’t know. She went straight to the bathroom and told me she was fine, that she’d had a good time, and that she’d see me later. I refused to leave for a while, wanting the full story, but she told me she wasn’t going to budge until I’d left her alone. So I left her alone. At least temporarily.”

“Is she still coming tonight?”

“Absolutely. She even said so before I left. Speaking of which—how’d your speech turn out?” Seth asked, pulling me out of my thoughts as he shoved the wig back into the plastic shopping bag. I stopped dead in my tracks. My speech. Crap times one million. With everything that had happened the night before, I had forgotten to write my speech. An entire three-to-five-minute speech that I had to perform in less than five hours and I still hadn’t written a single word. It felt like forgetting a math quiz, only worse, because I actually cared about this.

From my panicked expression, Seth knew exactly what had happened.

Before I could say anything, the stage door squeaked open and Miss Hedini, the drag-queen magician, poked her head out.

“Hey. You’re JT, aren’t you? Daryl’s got to approve everybody’s costumes. Hurry in here!”

The door shut behind him as Seth handed me the shopping bag.

“I am doomed,” I said.

Inside the dressing room, everyone had their outfits on display for Daryl and his assistant. He was going through the wardrobe to make sure everyone would be dressed within the guidelines of the pageant. I walked in as he was saying no to a few different looks for being too suggestive or risqué. I felt my stomach turn as I stared down at my plastic shopping bag.

The gowns these guys had were amazing, like the kind of thing Jennifer Lawrence would wear to the Oscars or, in some cases, the kind of thing Lady Gaga would wear to the grocery store. Their wigs were also perfect, the kind of expensive-looking wigs Tina had given me. At the other end of the long, narrow dressing room, I could see Tash nonchalantly combing one of her three stunning lace-front wigs that I reckoned were all actual human hair.

I waited with dread as Daryl and his assistant made their way over to my side of the dressing room. Daryl was gushing all over the outfits held by the guy next to me, the only contestant with facial hair, who’d introduced himself, aptly, as Katy Hairy.

I awaited my execution.

After he’d finished praising Katy, Daryl stood before me. “Hello there, JT. Great seeing you.”

As he smiled his big friendly smile, I didn’t want to disappoint him. It killed me to know that I absolutely would.

“You getting excited for tonight?” he added.

I nodded for what felt like thirty minutes as I built up the wherewithal to blatantly lie to this very kind man.

Finally, I let out a cheery “Yep!”

“Well, let’s see what you’ve got!”

The room fell silent in my ears as the crinkling of the plastic bag got way louder than seemed possible from me digging out the ugly prom dress. The horror immediately registered on Daryl’s face, but he was too sweet to mention it, and instead said, simply, “Uh-huh. And what else?” I pulled out whatever was next, a surprise even to me, and revealed a long pair of black bell bottoms and a blue sequined poncho. Daryl tried his hardest to seem delighted, but by the time I got to the following outfit, a terrible sailor-style dress that would cut off around my knees, he couldn’t hold back his disdain.

“Wow. Okay.” He cleared his throat, presumably because he had nothing else to say, and asked to see my wig. I could feel everyone’s eyes judging me as I pulled the pink wig out of my bag. Daryl’s face turned as white as a sheet. He just kept nodding and repeating the words, “Okay, great. Good.” Then moved on to the next guy.

I was very, very, very screwed.

Seth had stayed waiting in the alley for me, so when I finished with Daryl and had a fifteen-minute break, I went out to tell him how it had gone. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the horror people had shown on their faces was equal to what you’d see from people watching one of those Paranormal Activity movies or Sex and the City 2 for the first time. I lied and said it had gone okay and that I was feeling not quite as freaked out.

Really, though, I had just resolved myself to defeat, and was quietly coming to terms with it.

One more run-through of the opening number, and then we were on our own until showtime. I was too nervous to eat food before the show. I was in a pretty calm, resolved place about the fact that I would be the worst-dressed person in the pageant, and on top of that, maybe even the worst overall. Strangely, however, I felt like I had nothing left to lose. If I humiliated myself, Seth and Heather (if she showed up) were the only people in my life who’d know. The rest of the people—I’d never see them again. I’d lost my admission ticket to this brave new world. I would go back to my parents. Back to their blank stares and TV dinners. Back to the nothingness of my life in Florida.

Tash and I passed each other in the hallway. I tried to ignore him, but he stopped me.

“Excited?” he said in the phoniest voice I’d heard since Ariana Grande’s last album. I kept walking, but he kept calling to me. “Hey. JT! Are you excited?”

I stopped, turned, plastered on a smile, and as bitchily as possible called back, “Oh, don’t you know it!”

Then I kept walking, as I was fairly certain the alternative would’ve been to strangle him.