The novel with an image of Shirley at age 13 standing on the Miss Chinatown stage and Lily wondering “if this was what a Chinese girl should look like” (8-9). However, as the novel jumps forward to the girls’ last year of high school, Lily realizes that something’s different about her. She collects pictures of women, including Katharine Hepburn dressed in decidedly unfeminine attire, female pilots, and, perhaps more mysteriously, male impersonator Tommy Andrews. However, when she discovers the novel Strange Season, a love story between two women, she feels that “she had finally cracked the last part of a code she had been puzzling over for so long that she couldn’t remember when she had started deciphering it” (42). This sense of finally figuring out who she is excites her despite her concerns of feeling shame for being lesbian in a society that marginalizes those who aren’t straight.

However, she faces a challenge to decide what being honest means for her. Shirley warns her about Jean and Kath, urging Lily to avoid rumors by staying away from Kath. Even before they kiss, though, Lily knows that she doesn’t care about rumors enough to stop hanging out with Kath.