There are times in your life when you're absolutely certain you've entered a parallel universe, and nothing that transpires next could convince you otherwise.

Of course, at first you're not sure how exactly you found yourself in this strange dimension. Maybe you jumped into a rabbit hole. Maybe you came across a suspiciously big wardrobe, and a faun awaited you on the other side. Maybe a jet engine crashed into your bedroom while you were sleeping, and the universe decided to give you one last spin to make up for it. But the logical part of you has to question it first before you decide to simply roll with it.

Seeing my best friend donning tight black clothes and surgeon gloves, all the while keeping a lackadaisical cow on a thick-braided leash, was without a doubt one of those moments.

"Please, Amber, tell me I'm hallucinating," I implored her for an affirmative answer. "Tell me this is just a side effect from that energy drink I had half an hour ago, and there's not an actual pasture animal behind you."

I looked at the being in question, half expecting her to speak up and explain herself. Instead, the cow shook her head – the way most cows do, not because it possessed spectacular telepathic abilities – and Amber gave me a sheepish grin. My mirror of disillusions shattered. I could already see the morning papers, the two of us meekly posing for a two-part mugshot, a pair of perfect scapegoats for the newspaper headlines.

"You brought a cow along. A freakin' COW."

Amber raised her arms in defense, and my eyes fixated on the fuzzy rope which hung loosely from one of her hands. "She's halter-broken!"

"Why does that even..." I stopped. After turning my head left and right to inspect the empty street, I strode toward the unusual duo and lowered my voice to an angry whisper. "That's not even remotely the point I'm trying to make here! What were you thinking?!"

The words that came out of her mouth did nothing to soothe my worries.

"It's the perfect prank, I'm telling you. We seat the cow in Jeffrey's chair, take a selfie with her, and then bring her back home. He will be none the wiser, and we'll have a story to tell for ages." Pride flickered on her face. "I've had it planned since we were freshmen, and I thought, why not hit two birds with one stone?"

"That's your innovative plan?" I squinted. "We could have just photoshopped the cattle in the background."

"Well... the original idea was to leave the cow inside his office, but we can't have that, can we?"

An owl hooted, and I said nothing.

"I mean, I guess I could have decorated Jeffrey's office in Hello Kitty toilet paper or put his stuff in Jell-O, but where's the fun in that? That's basic."

"Where's the fun in that indeed," I croaked.

I was very, very close to calling the whole thing off, and all I got was an apologetic smile.

"I guess I didn't think this through properly. I got a bit excited."

Deep breaths, I ordered myself. The longer we stood there, the better the chances a random passer-by would notice a humongous animal accompanied by two disguised girls and blow our covers, and I had no desire to get arrested before we even entered the school grounds.

"Just tell me one thing. Whose cow is it?"

Amber hesitated. "My old neighbor's. I used to play on his dairy farm when I was a kid, so I knew where he kept his emergency keys."

"I think I'm getting a brain aneurysm," I mumbled, my eyes closed as I massaged my temples.

"Relax," Amber extended her hand toward me and accidentally dropped the rope. She quickly crouched to get it as I leaned on the metal picket fence that surrounded the school territory. "Baby won't give us away. She won the Cow Beauty Pageant last year."

Just as she uttered her name, Baby mooed. I leapt toward her out of reflex and tried to cover her mouth, which didn't work out due to several reasons. I saved myself from a trip to the emergency room just in time before her jaw snapped shut.

"You should watch your hands," Amber warned me a moment too late. "Baby likes to lick people."

"We can't leave her here," I said through gritted teeth. "Let's go."

Blessed by a rare twinkle of reason, she nodded, so we headed for the gate. As the courtesy to all the Open School Night visitors, its mouth gaped wide open, inviting us and warning us off at the same time. It took me merely a few seconds to realize the only sound of footsteps belonged to me.

"What are you doing?" I turned back and propped my hands on my hips, feeling like I was scolding a toddler.

"This is a bit harder than I realized," she confessed. I stared as she tightened the grip on the rope and pulled it – miraculously, the cow didn't move an inch. After retracing my steps, I grabbed the end of the lead and helped her pull, suddenly thinking of The Giant Turnip story I had recently read to Maddie. I looked at the white-and-brown creature and sincerely wished I could have just left her there.

The rope was already bruising and cutting into my hands when the animal finally moved forward. Relief engulfed me for a single second as the tension left my muscles.

But then a bell jingled.

"Oopsie," Amber laughed. With surprising expertise, she untied the bell that was hanging around Baby's beefy neck and dropped it near a bush. "We can come back for that later."

I was mum as we moved past the empty parking lot, our feet and hooves shuffling on the tarred ground. Every shadow looked eerie in the silence of the night, floating and shapeshifting like flickering but tarnished candlelight. Our steps didn't echo, but their sound got carried by the wind, seemingly intensified with every second that passed us by.

Reaching the school building didn't ease my worries. The red beam of light shone like a warning, and I eyed the camera with discernible weight in my stomach.

"It's not working, I told you," Amber belittled my fear in a hushed voice as she dug out the master key with her free hand.

"But it's turned on," I hissed at her. "Why is it turned on?"

"Probably to scare off the intruders."

"Guess what? It's working."

"Don't be a baby, Liz," she cracked her rebuff like a whip. I watched as she pushed the simple-looking item into the keyhole and turned, and for a second I thought it wasn't going to work, that she would take it out and shrug and we would go home and laugh about what a ludicrous idea this had been, safe and forever resigned to the current status quo.

But the door opened.

It creaked a bit when she swung it outward, and I let my friend go first. The cow was reluctant again, probably unused to tight interior spaces and tiled floors, but I pushed against her flank and convinced her to follow. I slid inside after her tail whacked me in the face and closed the door behind me, finally free from the camera view.

"It's so weird to be here at night, isn't it?" Amber observed, and I had to agree. The color scheme seemed all wrong, faded. This curious world was painted in different shades of black, and the only source of light appeared to be the emergency exit sign, its quiet buzz augmenting the paranormal effect. All the familiarity distorted when veiled in apprehension.

"Come on. His office isn't far."

I took out my phone and turned on my flashlight app, casting light on the vinyl flooring ahead of us. The cow was now happily trailing ahead, and we almost tripped over our feet while trying to catch up to her.

I stopped in my tracks when we reached the end of the hallway, the biggest obstacle to our plan glaring at us in mockery.

"Wait," I told Amber after facing her. "I don't think the cow will want to go up the staircase. We should leave her here and come back for her after getting those notices."

"Check again," she laughed and raised her arm to point at something behind me. I followed her finger to see the cow trotting up the stairs like she had no care in the world.

"I guess we should worry more about getting her to come down," I speculated as we summitted the hurdle, slightly out of breath from the effort. Not taking PE this year might have been a mistake. "Now, come on. His office is the second door to the left."

I entered Jeffrey's premises for the second time that day. It looked exactly the same but darker, colored in the pale moonlight seeping through those blasted curtains. I kept them closed and turned on his desk lamp instead, not wanting to gamble with the possibility of someone from the outside noticing the light.

The forms were right in the spot where I saw them last. I picked them up and shook them a bit, but not a single speck of dust fell from the surface, despite the fact the office was a hazardous area for anyone with allergies. I suppressed the urge to sneeze and started shuffling through them, looking for Amber's and my names on the top. It didn't take me long.

"Found them!" I exclaimed and fluttered the pair of papers at her, but she wasn't looking at me. My eyebrow raised. "What are you staring at?"

"Isn't this the school mascot costume? What is it doing here?"

Draped over the guest chair and with its head almost touching the floor, the blue bull appeared a deflated, sad sight. I approached it and poked it a little, almost like I expected it to come alive.

"It's Aiden's, not the official school one," I concluded. "Look at the horns. Jeffrey must have confiscated it at some point."

"Oh. You're right." She tilted her head and frowned slightly. "You know, maybe he was dress-coded, too."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, his shorts are definitely above his knees." She gasped theatrically and knit her brows at me. "Seems like the dress code rules don't apply to everyone."

"Well, they definitely don't apply to cheerleader uniforms."

"Preach that," a sigh escaped her lips as she leaned against the desk. "Anyway, I want that selfie now. Where's the cow?"

I blinked. "In the hallway?"

She tapped the wooden surface a few times, rattling the wobbly legs. "Baby! Come here, girl!"

"She's not a dog, Amber."

The universe was most likely taunting me for the third time this evening, because Baby's head soon poked through the door, massive and wearing a curious expression.

"I told you she's smart," my friend retorted as she pulled the cow inside. When the creature's rump finally squeezed through, Amber turned around and pored over Jeffrey's chair like she was measuring its dimensions in her head.

"She's not going to fit there," I stated the obvious. "We should leave her where she is and try to fit as much of the room as possible into the shot."

"Maybe we can cram her in one of the corners?"

"Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

Amber bit her lip and tried not to laugh.

"Okay. Give me your phone."

"Why?" I narrowed my eyes in suspicion.

"Because mine is ancient and struggles under any artificial light."

I handed her the device and took the animal's left side, careful not to get too close. My nose scrunched up as I accidentally took a whiff, the smell of hay, barn, and a hint of manure filling up my nostrils. The phone appeared in my vision as I tried not to gag.

"Smile," Amber ordered through grinning teeth.

The cow's tail swooshed up as the flash went off, and the stack of forms flew up in the air. We both observed the mess on the floor for a while, neither one of us moving a muscle. Faced with the disaster she had caused, Baby had simply walked away and started chewing the carpet.

"Oops," Amber shrugged and kneeled down, immediately engaging her upper limbs.

I joined her without a word, biting the inside of my cheek in anxiety. This heist was getting out of hand, and I didn't like it. At all.

"I don't know if you can tell," I said as I meticulously picked up the forms one by one, my nails scratching against the floor when I tried to unglue them from the wooden panels, "but I'm seriously reconsidering our friendship."

"Oh, I can tell, alright," she wheezed. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but then she froze in place.

"What is it?"

"That son of a—"

"Amber?" I carefully crawled up to her to see what she was looking at. "Melanie Dalton? Is that the new British girl? Huh, that's bad."

My partner in crime shook her head.

"They're all girls, Liz. I've picked up at least fifty of them until now, and I haven't seen a single guy's name in the upper left corner."

I grabbed the small stack I've already taken care of and quickly skimmed through the top names. Georgina, Isabella, Jasmine, Anna, Christine, Tyra, Haley, Lena, Aimi...

"Lee!" I pointed at the scrawl. "Lee Hyori."

"Also a girl. She started transitioning right before the summer break."

"Right." I glanced at the remaining names, but it was fruitless. Not a single guy had been punished.

"He's selecting us," Amber growled through her teeth. "He's doing this on purpose. That whole dress code is so... so..."

"Sexist," I finished her sentence, voicing the same word both of us were thinking.

We let the silence embrace us, fall on to our shoulders like a heavy cloak.

"You wanted a selfie? Let's do something better," I scoffed as I stood up and reached for the chair's contents. "Let's make a video."

"Are you sure? I know you're mad right now—"

"Don't tell me you're not," I glared at her. "Don't tell me you're okay with this."

She handed me the costume instead of answering.

As I put it on over my clothes, the rough, plushie material tickling my bare arms, I wondered why this ticked me off so much. Was it because deep down, under all that complaining and quibbling, I actually condoned Amber's Machiavellian approach? Or was it because it had always been like this, me strutting along with whatever crazy idea she came up next, always happy with the supporting role – was this my way of finding my voice, allowing myself to get angry at everyone who had tried to dim my light?

But I wasn't angry at her, not really. She smiled at me as she approached me, zipped up the costume and put the giant, fluffy head over mine, and I glanced at the phone in her hand through the thick mesh. Just like that, everything fell into place.

"Are you sure?" she asked me once again I crossed my ridiculously oversized arms. "You know what happened the last time you stepped in front of cameras."

"I probably won't post it," I pointed out as she turned the phone's camera in my direction. I couldn't help but add. "Just don't show my shoelaces."

It had never been about them, but as our eyes met, I knew she understood.

"Alright. Let's show off some of that famous charisma."

I swallowed the lump in my throat and straightened my shoulders.

"Play the 'Say So' song by Doja Cat," I instructed.

The soft melody started a few seconds later, but I wasn't ready.

"Again."

And I did it. I performed the familiar dance I had tried to execute dozens of times before, my arms and my footwork now moving perfectly in tune. The music guided me as I gently thrust my hips, brought my palms up, and pretended to focus. Three seconds before the song reached its end, Baby entered the frame and showed her naked, hairy butt to the camera.

"I'm going to shed a tear, I swear," Amber whispered, her attention glued to the screen. "She couldn't have chosen a better moment."

"Not yet," I quipped and took it back. "It needs to be captioned."

Since the whole video lasted barely fifteen seconds, I didn't have much to work with. I opted for two simple headlines: 'Dress code says knee-length?' dissolved into 'What a load of bull' just as Baby mooned the notional audience. For the final touch, I hashtagged the whole thing as '#fyp = F your prejudice' and then pressed send after posting the video as private, making sure I was the only one who could see it. I would add Amber later.

I showed her what I'd done, and we marveled at the footage as it played on a loop several times in a row.

"The world needs to know your genius, Liz," Amber whispered in awe, her mouth pulled in a broad grin.

"Not today," my retort sounded as I put the phone in my pocket. "We should go. We've stayed here long enough, and I want to get at least three hours of sleep before school."

Thankfully, Amber had nothing more to add, so she nodded and put our two forms in her backpack. I grabbed the rope and urged the animal on the other side of it to follow, but no complaints came from her this time, her steps slow but confident.

"You know, I have to hand it to you," I laughed as we entered the hallway, then piped down as my voice echoed against the cracked walls. "This has gone much more smoothly than I anticipated."

We arrived at the staircase at the same time as I reached the end of the sentence, and the cow suddenly jolted.

"Should have known," I sighed. "Can you try pushing her from behind?"

Amber bit her lip. "I can try."

Several seconds passed. Nothing happened.

"Stop playing, Amber."

"I'm not!" she snapped at me. "The stupid thing refuses to move."

I pulled the rope with all my might as I held the railway so I wouldn't slip down the stairs. The cow simply dug her hooves into the ground, letting out another angry 'moo'.

"Wait, I'm sure Google will have an answer for this," she reassured me as she fished her phone out of the pocket. I clutched the railway again. The only two things I could hear were the sounds of furious typing and my own heartbeat pulsing in my ears.

"Oh-oh," she gulped, and I knew I wasn't going to like whatever came out of her mouth next. "Cows apparently can't walk down the stairs. Something about shifting their weight."

My entire bright future flashed in front of my eyes, fracturing into a million pieces.

Everything we had planned, every little thing that went our way tonight – none of it mattered if they knew we'd broken in. I glanced at my friend and saw her shaking.

I made up my mind.

"Take the rest of the forms," I directed her, my voice strangely calm and unquivering. "If they find a cow in the school and only two notices missing, they'll know we're guilty. We'll make it look like a senior prank like you wanted in the first place."

Amber didn't move. "No. Jeffrey will still remember he dress-coded you."

I gently slapped the cow on its side flank to lead her away from the stairs. "I did all this for you, you nitwit. I don't care if he remembers. And if any college I apply to asks me about it, I'll claim artistic differences," I grinned at her as my rabbit heart pumped up like crazy. "Now go before the cheerleaders start rolling in."

Her eyes glistened with gratitude before she turned around and jogged back into the office. Minutes ticked by as I waited, petting the livestock animal in order to calm down. Finally, just as I contemplated checking in on Amber, she rushed out of the office with her fingers clenched around her backpack straps.

"I left a note with the owner's phone number on it," she explained. "Don't worry, I used the pen with my sleeves tugged down. I didn't want to leave any forensic evidence."

I had no time nor the mental capacity to explain why her efforts were admirable but pointless, or to depict the mammoth amount of all the fingerprints and DNA we had already left all over the place. I pulled her hand instead, leaving the impassive cow behind us, running, leaping over the stairs, a manic laugh stuck in our throats as Baby bellowed her goodbyes.

"If we come out of this unscathed," Amber jabbered as we reached the front door, "I'm never eating beef again."

"Same," I offered her my pinkie, and she wrapped her own around my smallest digit. "Same."