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urges.
    “Where?” I don’t get it.
    “I don’t know. Anywhere. Just out of here.” She pauses. “The dunes.”
    “Now?”
    “Yeah.” She’s standing now, right hip stuck out, looking up from under her lashes. “What have you got this afternoon?”
    “Um. Supposed to have this A-level introduction thing.”
    “What’s the point of that? You’re not even staying.”
    “Well . . .” She’s right. And even if I did stay, it’s not like I don’t know exactly how it’s going to be. Same corridors. Same teachers. Same Emily Applegate. Just without the uniform.
    Stella is already walking backward to the gate, beckoning me to follow. “Come on.”
    And I realize I want to go. Old Jude wouldn’t. She would stay at school. Sit quietly through the blah talk. But that’s not who I want to be. So I follow her. Because I can. Because she makes me feel like someone else. Someone who can walk out of school when she likes. Someone who can be just like her.

WE STAYED in the dunes until four. Timed it so Dad would think I’d just gotten off the bus, back from school. Hoped he wouldn’t notice the sand in my hair, on my kilt, trailing from my shoes. She sits on the wall outside, sucking a Popsicle, watching me go in.
    Then she’s gone. For a week. A week where I rehearse my lines. Practice for hours in front of the mirror. Being someone else. Isabella, from
Measure for Measure.
A nun.
How appropriate,
I think.
    And I should be grateful that she stays away, lets me work. But I’m not. Because I miss her. She’s been gone nearly eight years and back just days and already I don’t know how I managed without her. I need her.
    So I made her promise to come back.
    And she does.
    She’s waiting for me after my exam. Outside the dressing room. I’m wiping makeup off my face when I smell it. Lighter fluid and gum. And my heart jumps. The lurch of seeing a new love. Or a lost one. At least, that’s what I read once. I pull on my uniform and run out into the corridor, scared I’ll miss her. That someone else will see her first and she’ll have to go.
    But she’s still there, leaning against the wall in this fifties sundress with cherries on it.
    She sticks her gum to the peeling paint of the door frame and smiles. “Ready?”
    “For what?”
    But it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what it is. Today I’ll do it.
    “You’ve got to stop dressing like a bloody schoolgirl,” Stella says as she pulls my kilt down for me. We’re in the changing room at Dixie’s, this vintage shop on Ship Street in town. A shop I’ve walked past a dozen times. Wishing I were the kind of person who would wear clothes like that. Clothes that shout, “I’m different! I’m somebody!”
    I laugh, letting her undress me. “This is my uniform,” I protest.
    “I don’t mean that,” she says.
    And I know what she’s talking about. Even out of school, I dress to disappear. Shapeless jumpers. Jeans. Faded T-shirts. Until now.
    She smiles, pulls the black silk down over my head. Zips it up. Dressing me like a doll. Then her smile drops. “Oh, God, Jude.”
    “What?” I’m worried now. Worried that I was wrong. That I can’t pull it off.
    But she’s shaking her head. “Look.”
    She spins me around to see what she’s done. To see her staggering genius. I look. I’m in this sixties A-line number, hair pulled back, feet pushed into patent heels.
    “Why, Miss Polmear,” Stella breathes, “you really are beautiful.” And I laugh. And Stella puts her arms around me. And we look at the reflection in the mirror. At this new person standing there. She is strange and strong and beautiful. And she is me.
    The dress costs thirty pounds. Stella lends me the money.
    “You can owe me,” she says.
    I’m not sure I want to owe Stella anything. But I want the dress. Have to have it. “I’ll pay you back,” I say. And I will. I still have birthday money from Gran left over in my account.
    I go to unzip it. But Stella has other ideas.